Ship of Fools: Imams and nail polish

Thread: Imams and nail polish Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

Looking at this article in the Guardian , I can draw simple parallels with the whole "women in church" issue.

Is the problem centered on having men in the priesthood in the first place? Are men too insecure to accept that they are only half of humanity?

To illustrate this I would add "Ten reasons why men should not be ordained" , just to lighten this up a little.

Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :

Joss Whedon says its "womb envy":
Let's watch a girl get beaten to death

And as he points out, it isn't just Muslims. Or Iranians. "How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable?" Misogyny is universal. OliviaG

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

I'd guess that misogynistic ideas create all-male priesthoods, who then have more misogynistic ideas, and I'd also say that the idea of scripture privileges ancient ideas/texts over modern moral insights and changes in knowledge and insight in damaging ways.

Until very recent times it wasn't possible for paternity to be established 100%, so a lot of sexual restrictions and repression aimed at women, probably had their roots in men wanting to make sure the children they were raising were theirs. Without contraception, sex generally leads to regular childbirth and largish families, and in early societies where you'll need brute muscle either to produce resources or to control them, that's probably a lot of male labour needed on top of anything women and children can contribute to sustain a family group.

In fact, it's interesting to note the Quran doesn't go down the Christian or Jewish route of blaming Eve for the Fall, but does quite baldly state:

quote:
"4:34: Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God’s guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them; God is All-high, All-great."

So the need for substantial male investment plus their inability to know whether children are theirs (if a woman has sex or the opportunity to have sex with someone else), led to a lot of assumptions about needing to control women and being owed deference.

However there's also a particular strand of ancient misapprehension about the nature of semen, that it contained potential souls, and that men who used semen for non-procreative uses were killing souls or destroying potential souls (women of course had nothing to do with that - they were seen as just providing base matter and nourishment for the ensouled seed being implanted in them). This led to fears and prohibitions about masturbation in various branches of Judaism Christianity and Islam. Once you get that, you get fear about women exciting lust which may lead to male sperm being spilled in a quick wank, because they've seen someone they fancy. So dress and appearance of women, and their ability to travel/work independently or to mix with men were often strictly policed and preached about.

Fear of adultery plus fear of a quick wank = Slut! How dare you use that nail polish!

Add this to religious traditions which put a huge premium on self-control and turning the mind towards God, and not being controlled and distracted by the passions, and the more powerful sex with control of the religious hierarchy gets to call the shots and to dictate terms to the less powerful sex, who get their liberty and freedom curtailed so as not to distract the important men from their much more important devotions.

Fear of adultery + fear of a quick wank + vast sense of self-importance about male piety = Slut! Get your distracting impure presence out of the way of my pure and holy communing with God!

Now much of this fear and entitlement traces back to pre-modern situations and beliefs. Don't know if you're the father of the child you're supporting? Take a DNA test. Had a wank? No you've not killed any 'souls', women too produce gametes, nobody thinks a soul's died every time a woman has a period, so why do you think your cum's so special? Modern security of income and protection is no longer strongly linked to physical strength - so physical strength to provide protection and income is no longer a good basis for any sort of deference etc etc.

But the problem is that the sacred texts of most western religions were written before these modern conditions obtained and before the biology of reproduction was understood, and the nature of scriptural authority is that people identify their Torah, Talmud, Quran, Hadith, Old and New Testaments etc with the eternal word of an all-knowing God speaking through his prophets, who they assume could not get it so badly wrong. So in order to maintain the authority of the text, and to insist that it could not be mistaken on anything so big, a lot of people continue to use the paranoid, entitled, male-privileged lens of certain strands of pre-modern beliefs to view women - often without knowing or thinking how they came about.

It's a real problem because to get rid of it, you have to ditch traditional forms of religious authority or radically change the way you use the texts. The problem isn't so much all-male hierarchies now (though it doesn't help), so much as male religious establishments then: at the time sacred texts were written and collected and redacted and accepted as canonical.

L.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:

To illustrate this I would add "Ten reasons why men should not be ordained" ...

quote:

Men can still be involved in Church activities, without having to be ordained. They can still take up the offering, shovel the sidewalk, and maybe even lead the singing on Fathers' Day.

The author has obviously been to our church.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Louise:

However there's also a particular strand of ancient misapprehension about the nature of semen, that it contained potential souls, and that men who used semen for non-procreative uses were killing souls or destroying potential souls (women of course had nothing to do with that - they were seen as just providing base matter and nourishment for the ensouled seed being implanted in them).

I don't think its even as complicated as that. Just expecting priests to be celibate will do it. Instantly women come to seem as sources of temptation. The combination of an all-male priesthood, and compulsory priestly celibacy, and a church run by priests for the laity will pretty much inevitably reproduce the attitude that women are causes of sin and inherently rather dangerous.

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

Yes, that's another important one, Ken, but you do get the dynamic I was mentioning in Orthodox Judaism without a celibate clergy, and Shia Islam thinks that way too ( though I think there is some variation in the various Sunni schools of thought) and they don't have celibate clergy either.

cheers,
L

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

Well said, Louise [Overused]

, much better than I could put it.

Posted by crynwrcymraeg (# 13018) on :

Thanks a lot Louise. So clear and helpful. You drew together so many strands for me; and added to my understanding.

I find the motivations and doings of straight men en bloc hard to fathom anyway. But I think I now see how it comes about over centuries or millenia.

The are some great queer and feminist readings of Torah and Second Testament, that I find helpful. But I guess if I am being realistic, they won t change mainstream Jewish or Christian bodies any time soon.

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This sig is not mine

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

quote:
originally posted by Louise:
It's a real problem because to get rid of it, you have to ditch traditional forms of religious authority or radically change the way you use the texts. The problem isn't so much all-male hierarchies now (though it doesn't help), so much as male religious establishments then: at the time sacred texts were written and collected and redacted and accepted as canonical.

In the Judaeo-Christian scriptures there are still traces of an older view of women in religion and society which the later redactors edited out. Before the Babylonian exile it's quite clear that there were women prophets, that women were involved in the religious rites in the Tent of Meeting and that women were economically independent of men. The Priestly revision of the scriptures included a major re-write job on women's role and things just went on getting worse from then on.

I find the traces of the older view quite useful for challenging "Headship" and all the associated nonsense. Huldah the prophetess has to be one of my favourite Bible characters - did that woman kick ass! Great fun in evo-con Bible studies!

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
To illustrate this I would add "Ten reasons why men should not be ordained" , just to lighten this up a little.

Thanks so much for this!!! I may just send it to a few...primates... [Biased]

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

ken:

quote:
I don't think its even as complicated as that. Just expecting priests to be celibate will do it. Instantly women come to seem as sources of temptation. The combination of an all-male priesthood, and compulsory priestly celibacy, and a church run by priests for the laity will pretty much inevitably reproduce the attitude that women are causes of sin and inherently rather dangerous.

I think things are a little more complicated than you make out, ken. Priestly celibacy is a relatively late development in Christianity (13th Century?), and then only in the West. Suspicion of women as automatic causes of sin is sadly present much earlier than that, as many early saints' lives show.

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

The Ten Commandments contain a proscription against adultery without specifying which gender is the initiator.

OTOH, another commandment warns against coveting another person's property. "Property" includes "wife" (and, amusingly, "ass"), which would imply that men are the source of the coveting, not women. Somehow, the idea became inverted, so that a man was too weak to avoid being led astray by a woman.

Which would indicate that men are too weak to be left alone safely, and therefore should not be leaders, as specified in my link above.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

Apparently, though I have not yet checked out for confirmation, certain Jewish groups consider that a man should not pass between two women, dogs, or pigs, and that men should ensure that no waman, dog or pig should pass between them. (This came up in a site discussing a certain Mr Fuchs who considered himself harassed by an Israeli female soldier because she would not travel at the back of the bus.) There is something much more than fearing the loss of men's own purity by thinking about women for a group to come up with this equation.

Penny

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

First check - woman, dog, or palm tree - or a man might forget his Torah learning. Signs going up in New York requesting women to get out the way when approached by a man.

Or date trees, or pigs, or snakes.

Let the one with the problem avoid it. A rabbi points out that one who avoids common decency and respect for others is more likely to sin than others.

Penny

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
A rabbi points out that one who avoids common decency and respect for others is more likely to sin than others.

That kind of statement can be used either way. Does the rabbi mean women who won't get out of the way lack respect for others, are dissing the deeply felt needs of the men; or does he mean the men who won't tolerate being near women lack respect for women? (Those men might openly boast they don't respect women? I've met Christian men who resent gender neutral language because they are deeply insulted by the implication men no better than women, they KNOW women are low value beings.)

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

Belle R.: that anti-gender-neutral thing would be the opinion of any anti-OoW priest or minister!

Doesn't have to be just the imams, y'know. Fair shares.

[ 04. January 2012, 00:52: Message edited by: Horseman Bree ]

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
A rabbi points out that one who avoids common decency and respect for others is more likely to sin than others.
That kind of statement can be used either way. Does the rabbi mean women who won't get out of the way lack respect for others, are dissing the deeply felt needs of the men; or does he mean the men who won't tolerate being near women lack respect for women?

He was referring to the men who equate women with dogs. Sorry I wasn't clear.
I'm wondering how much one should respect of others' deeply held beliefs when they are so obviously abominable.
A further twist is that there has been a belief that if a woman who is menstruating walks between two men, one of the men will die. This is religion? Sounds like magic to me.
Penny

Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
... A further twist is that there has been a belief that if a woman who is menstruating walks between two men, one of the men will die. This is religion? Sounds like magic to me.
Penny

So if one of the men dies, the other one ... what? Lives forever? OliviaG

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

Olivia, I quote! The time scale was not given. There is, apparently, a distance specified in amoses, whatever they are. And circumstances where death would not follow, but something elsre unspecified but bad would - can't remember what the circumstances were. Can't be bothered with the details of twaddle. There was a reference to a situation where two women might be seated on opposite sides of the road at a crossroads, gazing at each other. These women would clearly be witches and intending harm!
If this is what is contained in Talmud, my respect for scholarship descends to a low level.

Penny

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

quote:
A further twist is that there has been a belief that if a woman who is menstruating walks between two men, one of the men will die.

Sigh...all the mayhem I could have caused back in my premenopausal days.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

And just to equalise things, I have recently come across medieval stuff from Christian scholars (if such they can be called) in which it is totally denied that women were created in the image of God (despite Genesis 1). I think this was links from the headship thread which I am gradually reading through. You couldn't parody the stuff.

And Stephen Hawkings jokes about women being a complete mystery to him - what is it with men? He would not accept the sort of remark people make about being no use at maths, so why go along with not being any good at recognising another human being. I think it is very amusing how God hid in the chromosomes the truth that it is men who are the incomplete humans.

Penny

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
A further twist is that there has been a belief that if a woman who is menstruating walks between two men, one of the men will die. This is religion? Sounds like magic to me.

I'm not sure there's a real difference between magic and religion. There doesn't seem to be a good reason to classify the belief that a menstrating woman walking between two men will make one of the men die as "magic", while muttering the right incantation over a cup of wine will transmute it into the blood of a demigod is considered "religion".

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
And just to equalise things, I have recently come across medieval stuff from Christian scholars (if such they can be called) in which it is totally denied that women were created in the image of God (despite Genesis 1). I think this was links from the headship thread which I am gradually reading through. You couldn't parody the stuff.

Even (relatively) more enlightened scholars like Aquinas considered women to be misbegotten/incompletely formed men. Granted he cribbed the idea from Aristotle, but he saw no contradiction between this notion and Christianity.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I wasn't going to point the finger at Aquinas - after all, we are obviously missing some fairly vital parts. But I didn't know about the denial of divine image in contradiction of Genesis 1. How was this justified?

Penny

Posted by Ann (# 94) on :

I think this isn't totally serious.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Be reassured!

I think ....

Posted by crynwrcymraeg (# 13018) on :

Archbishop's outrageous comments about rape

The Archbishop of Granada in Spain, Javier Martinez, said in his Christmas sermon that it was acceptable for women who have had an abortion to be raped. Author Manuel António Pin expressed his outrage in the daily Jornal de Notícias :
"The Spanish Church won't let anyone dissuade it from its intolerant traditions. ... After [Prime Minister] Mariano Rajoy, who is close to the Church, announced his intention of 'extirpating the putrid secular abortion law' that was passed under Zapatero's government I was given a copy of a Christmas sermon delivered by the Archbishop of Granada in which he says that 'a woman who has an abortion gives a man absolute licence to abuse her body without restrictions because she has committed a sin as if she had a right to do so'. ... For the Archbishop Hitler's and Stalin's crimes (he forgot Franco's) were 'less dreadful than abortion'. In such situations even a non-believer wishes there was a God to condemn these people."

Source NSS e-bulletin 13.1.12

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sig not mine

[ 13. January 2012, 17:22: Message edited by: crynwrcymraeg ]

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

This morning, in the context of Cameron's visit to Saudi, a minister (political) referred to, first, "human rights", and then "women's rights". There does seem a persistent strand of thought in which people who would probably deny it if approached frontally, actually regard the default state of human to be male. I've been noticing it for a few months now.
Leaving aside the current strand of church intention to keep an uncontaminated line of bishops.

Penny

Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by crynwrcymraeg:
Archbishop's outrageous comments about rape ...

I can't remember whether it was BXVI or JPII who said that abortion was a greater crime than the sex crimes of the clergy. In that mental world, the absolute worst thing a woman can do is have sex and NOT have babies. Women are first and foremost breeding stock, understand?

Seriously, folks, though, what's there to discuss? This entire fucking planet is still ruled by patriarchy, and every religion in the world supports it. Let me say that again: this entire fucking planet is still ruled by patriarchy, and every religion in the world supports it. It ain't news. What would be news is even a few more men actually recognizing it and accepting that it needs to end. OliviaG

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

Ah, but why then is the non-fucking part of the world so concerned with what women do?

At least, I'm assuming that the celibate intend to be non-fucking.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Ah, but why then is the non-fucking part of the world so concerned with what women do?

At least, I'm assuming that the celibate intend to be non-fucking.

Because they have difficuty with being non-f, and externalise the fault so as not to acknowledge it as their own.

Penny

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
There does seem a persistent strand of thought in which people who would probably deny it if approached frontally, actually regard the default state of human to be male.

The irony is that biologically, it's the complete opposite - the default biological body is female. As evidenced by androgen insensitivity syndrome.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

Oh, I know, and who's short of a bit of chromosome? Not us XXs, that's who.

I wonder how Aquinas et al would have interpreted that? Or indeed, how they have appreciated the irony after attending biology 101 in Heaven.

I look forward to the creationists going to Geology and Evolution 101, as well.

I wonder what I'll have to learn as basics for appreciating the wonders of creation.

Penny

[ 15. January 2012, 11:54: Message edited by: Penny S ]

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

Actually though the default develompmental path for mammals is to a female-looking body, its also females who lack a bit of a chromosome - there are a handful of genes on the Y chromosome that male mammals usually have but females don't (for most but maybe not quite all mammal species), but there are no genes that females have that males don't.

One of those male-only genes called sry kicks off a gene expression cascade that nudges the gonads towards becoming testes - but it also supresses the expression of some specifically female genes that help control development of ovaries etc. Males do have those genes but they are turned off early. There are also some "anti-male" genes that are in both sexes but turned off in males.

It is possible (but very rare) for an sry gene to end up on an X chromosome, and its also possible (and less rare) for some of the supposedly female genes to be activated in males and suppress the action of the male-determining systems, or for them to "accidentally" encourage development of male sex organs. Embryos sort of have a balance between anti-female and anti-male genes, nudged one way or the other by presence or absence of sry.

So its all really complicated...

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

"Di Tzeitung has a policy of not printing pictures of women because pictures of women are 'sexually suggestive.'"

The article goes on to explain "women should be appreciated for who they are and what they do, not for what they look like, and the Jewish laws of modesty are an expression of respect for women, not the opposite." article here

I'm not sure if it's just *photos* of women that are somehow sexually suggestive, or women per se.

A different article I can't find at the moment, from Huffington Post, said the female figure is immoral. But that was interpreting, not quoting an ultra-orthodox spokesperson.

At least the ultra-orthodox Jews don't wrap their women in sheets and forbid them to leave the house! I don't know if there are rules about nail polish.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

Thanks ken, I'll be reading some more on that. Do you have any info on the idea that in women there are differences in the way the genes on the X chromosomes are expressed depending on which parent they come from? It's something I half remember, and don't know where to go to look.

Penny

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ann:
I think this isn't totally serious.

Women may "consider yourselves saved until further notice." Love it!

Decades ago I took an area studies course on Saudi Arabia, wish I had kept the book, in a footnote it mentioned a sub-set of Islam that says women have no souls.

Some may think it. Via Google: "Women have no souls according to Syrian President

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

Just to get this onto the thread: Libby Anne in "Who are the real babies?" explores the general question.

Why are grown men incapable of looking after their own hang-ups, while babies can be taught self-control?

quote:
Babies - should be taught self-control. To not act on what they see. If what they see (i.e. Mom’s glass vase) causes them problems, they should be taught to simply not act on their urges. Nothing should be hidden to protect them from stumbling.

Adult men - should be protected from seeing things that makes them stumble. If what they see (i.e. the female shoulder or knee) cause them problems, it should be hidden from them. Nobody expect that their self-control has to protect them from stumbling.

There is something seriously wrong with a system where babies have to be punished if they don’t act right, and the world has to be adult-male proofed to not tempt them. In a sane world adults are punished for not acting right, and houses are baby-proofed.

. . .

Who are the babies in patriarchy? The 16- month olds who are expected to have self-control even though your ornaments are on display, or the 30 and 50 year olds from whom you should hide things? And why does patriarchy want people to be led by the “babies” from whom self-control is not expected?

She's referring to the Christian patriarchy, but the same stricture applies to Hasidic and other fundamentalist Jews, and to the more extreme Muslims as well. I don't know enough about other major religions to be able to comment.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:

I'm wondering how much one should respect of others' deeply held beliefs when they are so obviously abominable.

And here lies the root of so many of our problems. We can ridicule and disagree with those who hold abominable opinions. But as soon as they slap on the label "belief" such reactions become inexplicably frowned upon.

Bonus points for those who say "you didn't respect my deeply held belief so I'm going to kill you".

Extra bonus points for those who say "you didn't respect my deeply held belief so I'm going to kill a random group of people".

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