Notes on a Scandalous Life

Last month, the Guardian published a really interesting article that deals with the prevailing attitude among the Big 3 (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) that God hates women. Well, maybe he doesn't hate us, but he definitely created us to play supporting roles, at best.

The article is not anti-religious; actually, it seeks to reconcile religion to the modern blending of gender roles by pointing out that the abandonment of patriarchy does not necessarily need to lead to a disconnect from religion, but from history.

First, the authors gives examples of sexism in the modern practice of each of the Big 3: an Islamic man beating his daughter to death for liking a British guy, the Baptist church's official statement on the duties of womanhood (why, submission to our respective spouses, of course!), and a snide comment from the Pope in 2008, when he said that modern standards of gender equality take away from the differences that God established between the sexes.

None of this is groundbreaking, of course (and, Protestant-ly speaking, scant little of it is Biblical, either, considering Jesus' attitude toward and treatment of women), and, so, the article probes further, asking the question: "Why do so so many women actively participate in their own demeaning?" After all, we often make up a larger percentage of church-goers than men, even though we are typically stuffed into positions of subordinance and non-plus-ery. This is something about which I've often wondered, myself, and the article offered several possible explanations:

1. "Religions are sticky", and hard to get out of with any saving-of-face, especially for women, who are encouraged even less to think and act for themselves than their congregational male counterparts.

2. Because women, religious or not, tend to have more monotonous lives than men, going to church infuses a little excitement - provided the woman behaves herself and doesn't, OMG!, talk back to someone with a penis.

3. The article's final and, I think, ultimate answer is that religion consoles its members for what it has removed from them in the first place. Because religion often implements sexism in a big way, it also makes sure to let its members (men included, because it's not like they're all enjoying the pressures of traditional gender roles, either) know that life does, indeed, suck, but that God has something less crappy in store for them in the next life. Just as long as the men assume the responsibility of maintaining a dictatorship in their households, and the women are "submissive".

While all of the explanations make sense and are probably true in a lot of cases, the last one rings the most true for me, especially for those of us who were raised in the church. As the authors put it: "It's the sad, familiar, heartrending bargain in which the victim embraces the perpetrator, in some complicated, confusing, all-too-human mix of appeasement, need and stubborn loyalty. The fact that the embrace is all on one side is resolutely ignored."