Are religions unfair to women?

Oh, is that the time...?

Oh God! Here we go again.

'Snip clits' , 'clit snipping' - anybody else find this flippant use of language for FMG offensive ? For one thing, FMG is often far more than that - although that's bad enough. Young girls die as a result at worst and if not, often suffer throughout the rest if their lives. Ask any midwife who has assisted with a woman giving birth who has suffered FMG. With women who use phrases like 'clit snipping' who needs men to treat women badly?

Yes, I do too.

Like the Angry Birds top!

Or he could be just out of sync with the rest of them.

Talking of religion love this picture

Looks like he is saying "what the heck is all this about?"

I feel that many religions usually began as reasonable ways of ordering societies but inevitably powerful people (men) used them for their own selfish purposes and twisted and 're-interpreted' the rules.

For example in the Q'ran there are strict rules about the evidence required before any punishment can take place which was wisely there to protect people from 'kangaroo' courts and vigilantes. However this aspect of the original religious writing has been conveniently forgotten by the men who mete out sharia 'justice'. Also Mohamad's strict rules about the equal treatment of wives is thought, in some circles, to be an attempt to reduce cultural polygamy rather than promote it.

Nowhere in the gospels does it say that Jesus said women could not be bishops! But the powers in the Christian church have decreed it. Jesus did not advocate killing and slaughter..in fact he seemed to condone subservience to ruling powers ( give unto Ceaser etc) but the Crusaders
(and more recently Catholics /Protestants) fought in his name.

I cannot think of any religion that challenges the view that men are in control and women are subservient. They just do it to different degrees!

I know about chastity belts.

Yes, saw the Casualty. Not sure it had anything to do with Britain 300 years ago though. It was about African girls Wasn't it?

The 'clit snipping', that is.

It wasn't customary practice in this country 300 years ago, Granny23, that was the point J08 and I were making.

It has been fairly convincingly proved that the chastity belt was a 19th century invention! While the men were away fighting, it was the women who ran things. As usual. The reference to FGM was in the original article. I didn't introduce it arbitrarily. Granny23 this is an imported practice which men and women of all faiths as well as secularists have denounced and are denouncing. I didn't see the programme mentioned but I have seen other programmes and have received literature which makes this point clear. Inquisition, yes, wicked. Four hundred years ago. The Killing Fields, the Gulags, the Holocaust.....during our lifetimes. I'm sure we've discussed the straw man before but it involves creating your own version of the thing you want to take issue with rather than addressing any flaws that exist in reality.

'They never used to snip clits off 300 years ago in this country'.....

'They' are still doing it in this country now - did you not watch 'Casualty' a few weeks ago?

In the middle ages, in this country, fathers and husbands had their daughters/wives welded into iron chastity belts to ensure they stayed pure while the menfolk were away sowing their wild oats. (I think this practice has died out). It has always been 'lock up your daughters', never 'castrate the rapist'. It is still the case that if a dangerous rapist/murderer is on the loose, it is WOMEN and girls who are advised to stay at home, when if all decent MEN stayed at home under curfew, the prowling, dangerous man would be easily identified.

Bags What would you actually like done about all the religious people in the world?

Just been watching a wonderful programme on Verdi's life and music. When his requiem was first performed in a cathedral in Italy the women singers had to wear veils and sing behind a curtain. Hmmm! Not religion oppressing women?

Exactly.

Agreed, nfk. Religons have 'normalised' evil things. When the major world religions treat women as equals with men (women bishops, anyone?) and stop feeling they should have any control over people's sex lives, and just worship their gods quietly while leaving those of us with no gods alone, then and only then will I grant that they do no harm.

That was Lily's example. I was thinking more Inquisition. All done by evil men in the name of religion. True, the evil would still have been there, but perhaps not accepted by normal God fearing people.

I thought that, too...

They never used to snip clits off 300 years ago in this country! I'm sure we would have heard about it.

I do not think it is a matter of blaming religions - as I said, they simply reflect the prevailing cultures, which are usually male-dominated. They just provide a channel for endorsing those oppressions and a divine justification.

The existence of oppression within religions is indisputable, as it is outside of religion too. Neither justifies nor excuses the existence of the other.

It must be painful for those with genuine religious convictions of a non-oppressive nature to have to acknowledge how religion has been used for negative aims.

However, religions cannot totally cop out of responsibility, however attractive that idea might be. Many of the written doctrines of the main religions are frighteningly cruel. Look at the old testament. It is not enough to say that attitudes to this have moved on - if that is the case, then stop reading this stuff out in church every week. Many of the teachings in the old testament have formed the basis of religious oppression.

What happens now is that religious philosophers and intellectuals tie themselves in knots to say that these archaic attitudes have been superceded and we now take a more rationalist and liberal view of them - but we cannot escape the damage that they have done over generations. It really is not good enough just to label other religions as primitive, or older attitudes to western religion thus - the inherent danger in religions has to be acknowledged.

This does not mean that their positive aspects should be ignored either.

The role of religions in the oppression of women is not disputable - it is a fact.

There's no point in campaigning against say female genital mutilation if the religious leader says it's ok and should be done. It will only stop and cease to be 'normal' if said leader says it's wrong.

It stopped here 300 or so years ago when secular power became stronger than religious power.

I agree that people, particularly men, use religion to justify the oppression of women. But why? As I see it, the men made the religion, the men made the rules of the religion (I'm not talking about spirituality here), and men apply those religious rules to justify men's oppression of women. If anyone has erected a straw man, it's the same kind of people as the ones who felt the need to justify injustice in the first place, and they called that injustice and all its unjust rules religion.

Human injustice is perpetrated against other humans by humans in the name of religion. Religion is a human invention. Where's the straw man?

Actually, I don't think I really understand the term straw man. I really mean that, and I think using that term is just a distraction technique.

I would argue that none of these oppressions can justifiably be blamed on religion. Many of them cross cultural and faith boundaries; in other words, men (people) use religion as a means of justifying the unjustifiable. Just as they use the divine right of kings, or the authority of the Party or the respect due to the elders or the demands of the Five Year Plan. If you are against female genital mutilation for example, campaign against that. Don't erect a straw man to attack. It will divert attention from the real evil and is not, in any case, true.