In the news yesterday there was a story of a Ugandan female Olympian runner being killed by her ex-boyfriend. He had doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. She lasted a few days before her organs finally shut down. This has to be among the worst ways to die, the most vile crime of them all. I would be hard pressed to maintain my vow of non-violence, if I had the chance to sentence him. But in his East African nation, he is still free. So are the several other men who have done this to their athlete wives.
Sexism will never die. It rears its head in the most unexpected places, always there, waiting to be nurtured by ignorance and insecurities. Its so easy for us to confuse love with power, to deny the reality that we are all and each humans in our own right, that one sex is not more ‘right’ or dominant than the other. One may, on average, be larger, and the other bring life into the world, but the two are not in competition. But it all depends upon the culture and people.
Among the world’s best educated, there are many who feel that women shouldn’t have control over their bodies when it comes to pregnancy. We witness the Taliban and other groups in Central Asia and as the news-story told, the area of East Africa where women are in grave danger if they become more popular than their menfolk. Single women doctors in India lead perilous lives. It is depressingly common for men to main, rape or kill women who have risen ‘above their station’. They aren’t human in the same way that men are, anyway. In North America, how many more women and girls are abused or killed, than boys or men, simply because they are?
Most religions haven’t helped that much. Sexism is found among people of many understandings. Judaism is probably the best exception. In that understanding, only one of the five names-of-God is masculine, as a God of War. Yahweh, the most used Holy name in Hebrew scripture, is gender neutral, without a sexual content. El-Ohim, the second most used name, is both genders, meaning She/He God. In Jewish tradition, although there were definite male and female roles, great car was taken to ensure abuse was limited. Both sexes equally reflected the Holy.
Jesus expanded this assumption in that his Way assumed the equality of both sexes. He had women disciples and followers who joined him on their own, quite apart from their families. His Way was scandalous and reputed to be very much against ‘family values’. Sadly, this egalitarian trait was soon abandoned after the Jesus Movement lost its Jewish followers and Greek thinking prevailed. By the late 100’s, the leading Christian theologian, Tertullian, preached that women weren’t human at all, and had no souls and therefore, couldn’t go to heaven. Christianity has never fully recovered from that tragic aberration. When the first Bible was translated from the original Hebrew and Greek, into Latin, in the 400’s, all references to God were made into male. In the original texts, over half are in the feminine, yet even today, no translators have the nerve and faithfulness to break with the sexist tradition.
So yes, Christianity perpetuates and even encourages sexism as much as any other tradition, maybe more. In the much-touted Christian Reformation of the 1500s and 1600s, the first thing most reformers did was tear down the convents (and appropriate their land). They knew it was God’s will that women should never be able to live alone, without being under the thumb of males. The ‘Reformation’ set women’s rights back several centuries. (We don’t hear much of that ‘in church’, do we?) Remember that witches, coincidentally, were usually women who lived alone or without ‘supervision’ of males. Very unnatural. Must be demonic.
So, guys, I know that we’d all love to have a prom-queen as our mate, someone who makes us look good and successful. But sometimes when they get better than we are, or more popular, or more educated, or make more than we do, it’s just too much for our little egos to take. It’s unnatural for us to play second-fiddle. We just might snap and get some gasoline. But we’re not to blame, right? We’re made this way, meant to be in control!
What’s most frustrating for me is that I find it hard to do anything about this terrible blight. Kenya, India and Afghanistan are out of my reach. But there’s plenty of sexism here as well. Within myself, also. I’ll just keep talking about it and try to recognize it for what it is.
Anthony, speaking with authority on this because sexism is a part of me as well.–
