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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 3:22 pm Post subject: Does God hate women? |
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I confess I find it strange when people single out Islam as the religion of misogyny, as if it were somehow unique. Since being a school girl, I've always felt that just about every organised religion I came upon (Catholicism, Hinduism, Judaism etc) had a pretty crap attitude to women. Not necessarily what their founders (like JC or Muhammad) intended - they both seemed to have more enlightened view than their peers - but the general practioners' view of women and their roles always struck me as being very far from egalitarian.
Someone's gone and written a nice little book about it.
God is merciful, but only if you're a man
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Jew, Christian or Muslim ... whatever the faith, women are still treated with disdain or worse
There is plenty to criticise in Islam's view of women. Last year, the Observer told the story of a man in Basra who stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed to death his 17-year-old daughter for becoming infatuated with a British soldier. The relationship apparently amounted to a few conversations, but her father learnt she had been seen in public talking to the soldier. When the Observer talked to Abdel-Qader Ali two weeks later, he said: "Death was the least she deserved. I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion."
This was clearly extreme, but the truth is that the God many people believe in - whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish - hates women. Take America's Southern Baptist Convention, which declares in its faith and mission statement: "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." That's fair enough, isn't it? After all, he's probably stronger than she is.
Or there's the Catholic church. The Pope put things more suavely in an address in 2008: "Faced with cultural and political trends that seek to eliminate, or at least cloud and confuse, the sexual differences inscribed in human nature, considering them a cultural construct, it is necessary to recall God's design that created the human being masculine and feminine, with a unity and at the same time an original difference." The insistence on difference is the necessary first step to insisting on inequality and subordination and it is a step that popes have been taking at regular intervals for decades.
In November 2006, Nicaragua enacted a ban on all abortion, with no exceptions, even to save the mother's life. The law was ratified by the National Assembly in September 2007. Both the original enactment and the vote in September 2007 were widely attributed to the influence of the Catholic church. In a report this month, the United Nations Committee against torture called Nicaragua's total ban on abortion a violation of human rights.
Then there is Judaism. In one neighbourhood in Jerusalem, religious seminaries flank streets with yellow signs that warn: "If you're a woman and you're not properly dressed - don't pass through our neighbourhood."
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One survivor of Goldenbridge, the most notorious industrial school for girls, run by the Sisters of Mercy, told the commission: "The screaming of children will stay with me for the rest of my life about Goldenbridge. I still hear it, I still haven't recovered from that. Children crying and screaming, it was just endless, it never, never stopped for years in that place." Many of those children were there simply because their mothers were unmarried or divorced.
The God we have in the Big Three monotheisms is a God who originated in a period when male superiority was absolutely taken for granted. That time has passed, but the superior male God remains and that God holds women in contempt. That God is the one who puts "His" imprimatur on all those tyrannical laws. That God is a product of history, but taken to be eternal, which is a bad combination. That is the God who hates women.
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click on the link above to read the full article. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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| God is a woman. She's a jealous god. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
| God is a woman. She's a jealous god. |
It's odd that you don't see men as jealous. Perhaps you've yet to date one? |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 4:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| VanIslander wrote: |
| God is a woman. She's a jealous god. |
It's odd that you don't see men as jealous. Perhaps you've yet to date one? |
Dating one? Uh, how is that related to the question of 'Does God hate women?'
I meant to allude to the sociological insight that a woman in power is known to be less than supportive of other women in a corporate setting.
Q: Does God hate women? Answer: She doesn't hate other women, She is just jealous, protective of her power.
(seemed witty when simply alluding to the point, now, ugh) |
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Koveras
Joined: 09 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 7:07 pm Post subject: Re: Does God hate women? |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| The insistence on difference is the necessary first step to insisting on inequality and subordination |
We're all comrades, right? |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Yes, like the main characters of most best selling works of fiction, God has character flaws. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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Well, you have to remember that Eve was only created because Adam was whining about being lonely. It's interesting that God made woman roughly as intelligent as man - I wonder what it would be like if women had been created significantly more or less intelligent. Or what if like, with certain species of animals, female humans were generally bigger and stronger than their male counterparts?
All the same, considering that God didn't have to bother creating women in the first place, and they're generally better off than almost everyone else in the animal kingdom, isn't it kind of a rude question to ask? |
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eperdue4ad
Joined: 22 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 8:13 pm Post subject: |
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| I don't think god hates women. But organized religion, and the men whose lives profit from it, sure has a lot to gain from the upkeep of cultural hegemony. |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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Does God hate women?
The question makes the assumption that the sex of a person is actually relevant to God.
In all fairness, how much sex do you expect to have after you are dead?
Does God decide you are good or bad depending on your sex?
Does God even care?
Oh by the way, supposedly God is not the name of the one that christians believe in. The Lord is the name.
But hey, dont let that stop the argument.
I thought one of the arguments of athiests is that we are god and we don't need any other. Well I am probably wrong, so who cares? Not me said the crab. |
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Koveras
Joined: 09 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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| You're very quirky! |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 10:27 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you.
I always take quirky as a compliment.
Steadfastness in your belief always seemed so staid to me.
(Yes, it has been edited)
Staid - : marked by settled sedateness and often prim self-restraint
Last edited by Summer Wine on Sun May 31, 2009 10:31 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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| If He didn't, my gochu would taste of chocolate. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 2:57 am Post subject: |
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Well, there is a lot to be said - negatively - for *all* the "Abrahamic" religions...in contrast, there is nothing about Buddhism, one of the world's major religions, that seems to regard women as slaves or inferior, or subject to the will of men.
But frankly speaking, I think Islam gets a lot of bad press because of a few extreme interpretations of it. Lately I've been hanging out with several exchange students from Kazakhstan, a Muslim country, and other than not eating pork or drinking alcohol, you'd find them indistinguishable from students from the Philippines, China, Japan or Vietnam. I knew a lot of exchange students from Malaysia and Indonesia when I was in college...and I was amazed that girls from a Muslim country would/could wear such tight jeans.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.  |
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huffdaddy
Joined: 25 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:46 am Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
| Lately I've been hanging out with several exchange students from Kazakhstan, a Muslim country, and other than not eating pork or drinking alcohol, |
No alcohol? Really? I never met a Muslim in Uzbekistan who didn't drink alcohol. And it was usually to excess.
BTW, to answer your question BB, outside of Lesbos and the Amazon, women are always treated worse than men. Religion or not. |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:01 am Post subject: Re: Does God hate women? |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| I confess I find it strange when people single out Islam as the religion of misogyny, as if it were somehow unique. |
You find it 'strange' because - regardless of your sex - you are a Western leftist and, therefore, simply incapable of critical thought.
For example, your premise - that all the religions are misogynistic - results from the fallacy of assuming sameness where there is no sameness. Just a casual glance, only, of societies organized according to the religions you wish to condemn - the West, India and Israel - and the societies you seek to make fawning apologetics on behalf of - those organized according to Islam - is enough to reveal how childish a fallacy it is.
Anyway, since you appear to take such a view of all religions and the misogyny you observe therein, why not become an atheist? Or are we too offensive (but not to women?) too? What could possibly be the source of happiness to a person whose ideology is that of Big Bird? |
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