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Religion and Fear of Urges
2:57 PM
One reason religion isn’t sexists because they all have teachings, that are very progressive for their times. Religious books are much more than just collection of mythological stories. They teach people how to become a virtuous and a loving person and they bring rules and order to the chaos of people’s lives. In Biblical scriptures, there are stories about how Jesus treats people, men and women, lovingly and equally. The culture of Israel at the time was really patriarchal. However, Jesus have spoke to women in public. A good example for that is the story of Jesus and Samaritan woman, where Christ treated the woman just like anybody else and asked for water. Jesus also had women disciples, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He even taught to Mary about his teachings which was only permitted to men, back in those days (Bohlin, 4). While, back then, the community that Jesus grew up was very misogynistic and women held very few rights, Jesus, clearly, bends the norms, and treats women with respect and in an egalitarian way. Other examples from Christianity is Apostle Paul suggests husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church as he gave up his life for it. Also, while for women to pray in Judaism was not permitted, in Christian church, women could pray and they were told to talk about the teachings to their children and grandchildren (Bohlin, 3,6, 7). These examples show how Christianity changed Judaistic culture by bringing more rights to women. Their social status increased dramatically because of the Biblical teachings. On the contrary of the popular belief, Quran is more progressive than Bible. It states that in the eye of Allah, a believing man and a woman are equal in regard to their respective duties, rights, virtues and merits (Doi). While in Jewish teachings and laws, men could marry someone that they have raped, Quran states that the men are forbidden to inherit women against their will (Doi) and can choose their own husbands and can make pre-marriage arrangement in case of a divorce (Bakhtiar). Doi also suggest that the Prophet Muhammed said “Women are the twin halves of men.” and while they are divinely equal, because of the difference physical labours that are available on the mortal world, they are different. Therefore, religions are very progressive for their times, they brought new rights and taught men to treat women with respect.
A problem about religions texts are that the interpretation and translation can differ because of the language and different sources with different credibility. There are 2 different methods of hermeneutics. Exegesis and Eisegesis. Exegesis is the method where the person who is interpreting the scripture would use analytic processing and Eisegesis is interpreting in a subjective way (Smith). “Eisegesis” is problematic, because this causes people to use their interpretations of religion according to their own agenda, ideology and subjective world views. When religion is mixed with ideology, people tend to use eisegesis methods. While the religious books may not be sexist, the heads of the religions are acting sexist to demean women. A great example for this is the story of Adam and Eve which shows men the “true nature of a woman”. Because of the story, for centuries, women were seen as “disobedient, guileless, weak-willed, prone to temptation and evil, disloyal, untrustworthy, deceitful, seductive, and motivated in their thoughts and behaviour purely by self- interest” (Witcombe, 10). This caused the Christian communities to form up their laws and treat women according to these stories, which makes people to see them as second class citizens. In his letter to St. Timothy, St. Paul stated that he doesn’t allow woman to teach or lead and make women stay quiet because Adam was created before than Eve and Eve was the one who was deceived, not Adam, Christian theologian Tertullian tells that every women are no different than Eve, also they are the ones who “opened the door to the Devil” and he even accuse them by saying “even the Son of God had to die” because of their fault and St. Bernard of Clairvaux claimed that “Eve was "the original cause of all evil, whose disgrace has come down to all other women.”” (Witcombe, 11). What these Saints and theologians saying are important because back in those days, until recently, culture was all about religion and folklore. Religious heads had the power to create societal bias toward anything by using the scriptures according to their ideologies, by using the Eisegesis method. This way of understanding of the Adam and Eve story are still causing many problems in gender inequality between men and women and makes people, both males and females, subconsciously accept that this is really what a woman is.
A potential reason behind the men’s sexist actions towards women is the fear that occurs because of the human consciousness which made men ashamed of their natural senses and feelings. “What sane species would treat half of its members — and the very half which gives birth to the whole species — with such contempt and injustice?” asks Steve Taylor, a psychology lecturer in Leeds Beckett University. First accusation comes to everybody's minds is that males are hungry for power and they want to dominate the world, the women and everything on there. However, this doesn’t explain the misogyny that most religions have. The fruit of knowledge, in Genesis, is a pretty good symbolism for the consciousness that humans gained, because it talks about how humans would “open their eyes” and know what is good and what is evil if they eat from the tree of knowledge. However, awareness brings shame. Before their eyes opened, they didn't feel ashamed of their nakedness and bodies just like babies, who are naked but doesn’t feel ashamed because they are not aware of it. “When Adam became aware that he was naked, judgment entered over whether this nakedness was good or bad.” (Osho, 137). After they ate the fruit, Adam felt shame because he saw that other animals were also naked and they were unaware of their nakedness. “Shame is egodystonic, that is, in conflict with our self-image and the needs and goals of our ego…” (Burton). This means that Adam didn’t want to be like animals, he was told that now that he ate the fruit of knowledge, he is just like God and that made his self-image different than the reality. When he found himself naked, just like other animals, his human-ego made them cover themselves with fig leaves. Humans are suffering from God-complex that is caused by their consciousness. They don’t want to remember, or believe that they are mammals, animals. A good example of this argument is Darwin. His theory of evolution was opposed because man were taught that they were descendants of God, and to accept that ape was their real ancestor, father, was hard for them and their ego (Osho, 137). Men created different rules, a code of conduct, in order to make themselves feel superior. An example to this is eating. Eating is what animals do, they use their “hands” and eat on the floor, men invent forks, spoons, knives, tables, chairs, etiquette rules. Animals eat alone to not to share their food. So societies teach men that eating alone is a “bad thing”. “Share, eat with family, eat with friends, invite guests. No animal is interested in guests, in friends, in family. Whenever an animal is eating he wants nobody to come near; he goes into solitude” (Osho, 113). Another example is, again, nudity. Seeing a nude person makes men feel discomfort because he makes them aware of their own nudity, under their clothes, it hurts their own ego, their self-image. All religions are similar at one concept, praying. They state that man should pray, go to church wherever he can. Osho says that the most religious thing is going to church and praying because no animal does this things (114). Most “womanly” processes were discomfortable for men, which made women discomfortable for them. “Since biological processes like sex, menstruation, breast-feeding and even pregnancy were disgusting, women themselves disgusted them too” (Taylor). Men also blamed women because of their unclean urges that they can’t really describe, desire to have sex, which was uncontrollable by themselves. They called these feelings uncomfortable, unclean and sinful, and because women were making men feel these things, they blamed them. Dependence to a woman and possibility of a rejection and being like animals were the reasons behind the fear of sex. Women had the power over these feeling of sexual desire and because men felt weak and their ego hurt they felt an animosity towards women. Men had to take control over women to stop this embarrassing “emasculation” (Recall that every religion was sharing the idea that women should obey his husband, in every way possible). “It was sexual pleasure that carried the original sin from generation to generation. Now sex between husband and wife, Augustine taught, for any other purpose except procreation is mortally sinful and should be avoided. Sex for procreation, while still sinful, is pardonable.“ (Tobin, 17). Seduction was a powerful weapon held by women that men couldn’t understand also couldn’t resist. This can be seen in “the Vulgate, St. Jerome uses the word seducta to describe Eve's transgression clearly implying that she used her sex to tempt, or seduce, Adam into disobedience” (Witcombe, 12). Another example for this is the statement made by Bishop of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom, “The whole of her body is nothing less than phlegm, blood, bile, rheum and the fluid of digested food. If you consider what is stored up behind those lovely eyes, the angle of the nose, the mouth and the cheeks you will agree that the well-proportioned body is only a whitened sepulcher” (Tobin, 15) He is not trying to degrade women, but he is trying to force himself to not to resign to his urges that caused because of women. The biological horror, that is caused because of natural urges, made people praise modesty, chastity and running away from “sinful” thoughts that are about sexuality. Men tried to shelter themselves from the “scary concept” of becoming like animals so much that they even tried to conceal womanhood in order to live under the illusion that men are not animals. Other methods of shelter was telling women to keep away from praying in synagogues, veiling them when they go out, constantly making women feel inferior than men. Therefore men used religion in order to escape from the reality that they are animals and used it as a weapon against women to keep them away from their eye, but also as their subjects, because women remind men the otherwise and hurt their egos.
As I have shown, while most anti-religious people try to prove otherwise, religious scriptures are not actually sexist. While they weren’t fully feministic, their teachings were pretty avant-garde and challenged the norms of the times that they come up. Bible had stories about how Jesus Christ treated women as equal to as men. Quran brought laws that gave women many rights that empowered them. These examples show that religions, looking at the pure scriptures, weren’t really sexist towards women, they were egalitarian for their times. On the contrary there are also stories like Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve story taught people that women were deceptive and stupid that can be conned easily, so people shouldn’t trust women. The potential reason behind this is men’s fear towards natural occurrences and phenomena that they can’t accept that are natural, such as pregnancy, menstruation etc. Men are diseased with God-complex which makes them feel superior to the other living beings, because they are conscious of their surroundings while animals etc. are not. This makes men very strict about topics which are natural and biological, such as sex, menstruation, pregnancy etc. Especially the drive of reproduction is very powerful to control and men are scared of their emotions, feelings and urges that they get because of women. They are scared to death that their ego would hurt because they might lose their humanity’s control, seduced and become like animals once again, which reminds them they are not a superior being, but a mammal with awareness. Therefore, men used religion by interpreting it according to their own goals, using an eisegesis method, to demean and subjugate women. That way, just like men control the etiquette rules of eating food, they acquired the control over sex, nakedness and other natural occasions and hid it under blankets, where they can’t hurt people’s egos by reminding them that they are mammals. The outcomes of this was pretty awful. In most religious countries, women suffered greatly through the history because men were too weak to deal with the reality of them being animals. Women had to veil themselves before going out, they were prohibited to seen by any other men, other than their family and husband. In some countries, they are not able to go out without a man, escorting themselves. Because religion teach that women need to serve their men and this is their only goal in life, fathers marry their daughters in young ages, before they menstruate, before they become impure. In middle ages, witch huntings against women who live by themselves were very common. Genital mutilations in order to prevent sexual enjoyment is a big problem in Africa. Domestic abuse is legitimized by some interpretations of Quran. While as the times go, everything is getting better for women, especially in the Christian countries, east, still, has a big misogyny problem that is based on religion, which we hope will end in time.
Works Cited:
Bakhtiar, Laleh. “How Islam Confirms Women’s Rights.” Muslima. Web. 16 May 2017.
Bohlin, Sue. “Christianity The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Women.” Course Book. PDF. Probe Ministers.
Doi, Abdur Rahman I. "Women in the Quran and the Sunnah." Islam's Women. Web. 16 May 2017.
Osho. “Sex Matters.” New York. 2002. Ebook.
Schaeffer, Frank. “God vs. Women’s Bodies.” The Huffington Post, 21 September, 2011. Course Book. PDF
Smith, Calvin. “Is there a universal way Christians should interpret the Bible?” Creation. Web. 16 May 2017.
Taylor, Steve. Ph.D. “Why Men Oppress Women. The Psychology of Male Domination” Web. 16 May 2017.
Tobin, Paul N. “The Position of Women: Teaching of Theologians.” Pascal’s Wager. 2000. Course Book. PDF.
Witcombe, Christopher L.C.E. “EVE and the Identity of Women.” Course Book. PDF.
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