Are religions unfair to women?

Btw, thank you to Ana, Sel, Nonu, and Dorset, for being normal reasonable human beings. #thankgodtherearesomeonhere

Words define practices. If you call something by a name that minimises it, you also minimise the practice.

Would you call a prolonged assault with an offensive instrument a little disagreement?

This is more than a little snip at the tip of the clitoris - and imagining even that makes the toes curl. It is more than a circumcision by a surgeon. It is deep and mutilating butchery on a frightened girl, carried out against her will and under restraint. When she then reaches an age for sexual intercourse, she must undergo more cutting to make it possible, and may never enjoy intercourse as a result. Then she will bear a child. . .

Good grief, anyone who cannot speak of this without flippancy would be better to say nothing at all, and those who think that it is being "nasty and spiteful" to tell them so are being just as insensitive.

And as for mentioning my grandchildren, that is totally ridiculous. Talk about trying to play on people's emotions.

And, anyway, they're boys.

This is really not about you jo8 but about the many damaged and hurt women.

Culture or religion are irrelevant here. It is an abhorrent practice which we should be uniting to stamp out, not argifying about what causes it.

Would you be OK with your boys strapped down unanaesthetised and circumcised with a unsterilised knife, then? And having the operation repeated so that they could have sex?

To be fair I don't think J08 was saying FGM was OK!

She just does not appear able to admit, or apologise, that she made a bad choice of words that sounded as if she was trivialising the process and by doing so upset some people.

No sodding flippancy was intended! You try typing on a Kindle Fire while you're watching telly and gransnetting at the same time.These things come out of the blue. But people like you do have the empathy needed to understand that kind of thing.

Btw I'm only doing this cos it's raining and we can't get out. Don't give a donkey's fart about any of you narrow minded, obsessive lot.

Elegran - it is beyond belief that you can bring my grandchildren into it in that way. I think you are truly despicable for saying that.

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Condemned out of your own fingertips J08

You are either deliberately annoying people for whom this issue is important (clearly showing you do not give a donkey's fart for anyone unless they are just like you) or you are stupidly insensitive. #betshe'lltellmedifferent

I didn't bring them in, JO8, they were already in the thread. Someone mentioned grand-daughters and you said you only had grandsons so it was not relevant. I asked whether grandsons were therefore fair game for unpleasant practices.

Clearly it does bother you a great deal to think of them in the same context as these atrocities.
If someone made light of something that damaged them, it would strike at your heart which was my point

Every child is someone's daughter or son, grandson or grand-daughter, unless they have been orphaned and have no-one to care about them.

If you say something that gets people upset, they will respond - as you respond when anyone else gets you upset.

I was engaged to an iranian before the coup, and called it off when his mother came over to prepare me for the life ahead. She was an armenian and had had a fairly independent life before marriage, and still resented not being allowed to drive and various other 'little' things that annoyed her. She was a widow but still had to defer to her husband's family's wishes, even to getting her brother in law to sign papers so that she could leave the country. On the surface life was very modern, heads uncovered, western clothes, people drinking alcohol albeit quietly. Even the girls were being sent to british boarding schools.

Then came the coup, only a few years later. Friends I had made were recalled by the government, no longer to be contaminated by westerners, I never heard from them again. Ex-fiance was back by then, I was so worried for him but so relieved that I hadn't gone. I heard about ten years later that his father had not survived the upheaval. When you are young and have lived a very free life over here, albeit being aware of being somehow 'not quite as good as a boy', you have no idea that some of the strange but colourful customs that you see are a real slight to women - such as having to cook a meal, serve the men first and eat after them. Just because some male thousands of years ago decided that it would be a good idea.

In effect, I realised in the nick of time that I would be a mere possession, and could be disposed of in the space of time it took to say 'I divorce thee' three times. That was what I was told every time I did something my fiance didn't quite approve of. I had such a narrow escape.

Phew! - glad you kept out of that one!

I don't think it is really possible to separate religion from cultural practice or vice versa as religion is itself man made. By that I mean religious practice rather than the simplicity of having faith. The so-called Holy Books are open to interpretation. Moreover some people believe them to be literally the word of whichever god manifested through one or more men - usually literally male(s). Most religions are hierarchical and those at the top of the tree are also mainly men. Therefore, it is meaningless to say that a particular practice, say, covering the female head, seating men and women in different sections of the place of worship, eating fish on Fridays, is cultural rather than religious because the two are so closely intertwined.

I would argue that the 'world religions' are now so widespread that any narrow cultural definition is meaningless. I don't think eating fish on Fridays is a good example of your point, either, since it is quite obviously a religious rather than a cultural requirement - and in any case, fasting and abstinence, of which it is an example, are so common to all major religions, they can only be defined as being culturally human.

But individuals still cling to the cultural shaping of their religions. Eating fish on Friday, which, of course, is not fasting, applies in some Christian cultures but not in others. Some women wear a niqab because they regard it as part of their religious identity while others don't although both are Moslems.

I think you have confirmed the point I was making! Cultural, not religious practices.

I find it very hard to imagine how anyone might argue that the major world religions are and have been fair to women and treat them equally and reasonably.

Religion and culture are inextricably linked we know, but the basic tendency of religion to be male-led and for women to be secondary is widespread in religious doctrine and practice. Can there be any dispute about that? - it is there for all to see.

No dispute at all Mishap - the inextricable link is clear - for example, FGM whilst that might be cultural, the fact that women accept it and foist it on their daughters is linked with accepting male dominance which is based in religion. Impossible to separate.

I don't intend to rehearse the entire discussion and I think we are back where we started.

Well that's ok - at least we're being polite to each other

We now live in a multi cultural society so do we pick and choose the parts of the imported cultures we approve of in the West? These practices which to us seem barbaric belong to other cultures, cultures where women are considered lesser beings. Interesting, yet another case of Pakistani men grooming and abusing young white girls in the news today, in Oxford. Oxford. We in the West have moved on thankfully but why are we so outraged and angry that other cultures haven't? Is it because they live amongst us? Should they conform to our ideas of what is right and wrong?

What an interesting question, Sel! A bit too early yet to consider it fully, but it crossed my mind when I saw the news last night.