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THE WORTH OF A RIB
We
are often told that if you want to keep your friends and not cause any
trouble, never discuss religion or politics.
Now, most of us are discussing both. Recently, a question posed by the
media has been answered and re-answered but they won't stop asking it.
Seems as if they are practicing idiocy with a purpose.
"Why" they ask, even to the person who has given them the same answer several times, "Why is it you don't complain about the Democrats talking about God, yet if it was Roberts or Dubya, you'd be all over them?" And the answer, always the same is: "We don't mind people having a religion and talking about it. What we mind are those who try to force their religion on us."
Be this as it may, Joe Lieberman may be putting too much religion in his political speeches according to the ADL. The Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism, issued a statement warning Lieberman that "there is a point at which an emphasis on religion in a political campaign becomes inappropriate and even unsettling in a religiously diverse society such as ours."
We agree that we live in a "religiously diverse society," but the argument concerning the separation of religion and politics is moot here. Look around and listen. Religion IS politics.
However, all this god-talk can be disconcerting for most women at some level. Women never had any say in the invention of religion and are allowed very little input or leadership roles even now. Most religions only give women am "auxiliary" status anyway, telling us we can participate, but only on their [God's] rules, never equally with males who created god in their own image. This is because our plumbing isn't the same as theirs and their God's.
It is the same in all science whatever theology. It permeates all anthropology, for example. Anatomy text and diagrams deal with only one gender -- the male. When discussing reproduction, the female genitalia and reproductive organs are trotted out much like an afterthought, sans head, sans extremities, sans all else that makes her a part of the human race.
And, whether it be science or religion, women have either gone along to get along, or have reverently and joyfully embraced the concepts laid down by men. They praised God (man) from whom all blessings flow and if they didn't flow, then women meekly accepted that the fault was theirs. Guilt became her second nature. She was there to shore up his church and his ego.
In war, men use their God, who is advertised as representing all that is good, to justify their most horribly depraved actions. Winning is everything and their ends justify their means. Their eyes will dampen at the thought of the cruelty of the Japanese and their treatment of women and children, but the horror inflicted on women and children by our fresh-faced American boys was deemed necessary. Men testify to the slogan that "God is my co-pilot," but one will never hear them claiming that "God is my flame thrower."
In sports, men use their God as the expressed reason they excelled over all the others on the field and in the statistics. When these sports figures bomb, there is never a word said about God's responsibility, but it may be implied.
In professions, men use their God to diminish women's place in his world. Spice Girls, at first, was a nickname of the entire Gore press corps but became The Bitches on the Bus (a snarky reference to Timothy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus, a book about the reporters covering the 1972 presidential campaign.) Could it be because the reporters covering the vice-president for three of the most influential news outlets in the country are women? Jane Mayer, who often writes about politics for The New Yorker magazine, speculates that the answer could be yes: "If Bob Woodward and Jeff Gerth wore high heels, they'd be called bitches, too," she says, referring to two of the country's most highly respected investigative reporters. [ -- from article by Mnookin in Brill's Content 8/29/2000.]
In
government, men use their God to pass laws that benefit them. Until Roe
v. Wade, they deprived women of the right to their own bodies and are
still trying to force women back under their control with the God card.
They have their governmental sessions begin with a prayer to the universal
God the one that all men agree to call God. This never stops them from
demanding that their particular God bless their activity and damn the activities
of their enemies.
In politics, men use their God as a character witness. A man can say with conviction that the most important "political philosopher" in his life was Christ "because he changed my heart." He will swear that HE will not stoop to personal attacks on his opponent. Then he does just that and claims that it does not count because he was doing it in a humorous fashion.
Would women have done it better? Who knows? But we would have done it differently, because we know spirituality to be all encompassing. We would NEVER have devalued the entire animal, vegetable and mineral population of the planet Earth by constructing a deity that duplicated only OUR physical structure.
2000-036
Copyright 2000 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@gendergappers.org.
G e n d e r G a p p e r s T M
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