Womb for improvement

Found via Tweep Nullafide, who critiques the Bible from a feminist point of view, is this cynical breakdown of certain verses. 

It explains how and why women have suffered through ages of ages -- and says something about so-called ''honour crimes'' which, by the way, happen in most religions. 

Some excerpts:

Genesis

"She was barren."

In the Bible it's always the woman that are "barren", never the men. And when God "opens their womb," the resulting babies are always little boys. 25:21-26

Dinah's brothers, to justify the massacre of a town for the rape of their sister, say: "Should he deal with our sister as with a harlot?" To the author of Genesis, rape is a crime against the honor of men rather than against a woman. 34:31

Rachel dies in childbirth; but at least she had another son. And in the Bible, a woman is expected to die happily as long as she has a son. 35:17-18

Exodus

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, ... nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." In the Bible, women are the property of men; they are his possessions -- like an ox or an ass. 20:17

God explains how to go about selling your daughter -- and what to do if she fails to please her new master. 21:7

Numbers

When "Moses numbered them according to the word of the Lord" he was told to count "every male from a month old and upward." Women and girls didn't count as persons. 3:15-16

There's more. Go forth and readeth the whole thing.

Illustration: ''Lot and his daughters'' by Lucas van Leyden (ca. 1490-1533)

Support Bros

One of the greatest things about PM Stephen Harper's sudden professed interest in women's well-being -- at least that of those women who don't live in Canada, of course -- is how it's making many men here owning up to being pro-choice. They're actually blogging about it.

Now, a quick look at the male opinionators listed in my blogroll will reveal that there were already many guys out there who got it. It's just that, now, even more are speaking out. (And, yeah, even if it's about scoring partisan political points, who cares? We women need all the Support Bros we can get.)

In the US, in the wake of that Tebow anti-choice uproar, feminist bloggers are cheering on the likes of pro-footballer Scott Fujita as well as these guys:

Which brings us to this post today by BCer in Toronto Jeff Jedras (I added the boldface):

In a story in Embassy Mag (behind a subscriber firewall, but I’ve pasted the relevant sections below) Canadian International Development Minister Bev Oda confirms safe abortions, and even contraception, will not be part of the Conservative push on maternal and child care:

Oda says no abortion, contraceptives support
   

But the WHO reports that lack of both contributes to unnecessary deaths.

CIDA Minister Bev Oda says the government's child and maternal health strategy will not address unsafe abortions in developing countries or support access to family planning and contraceptives. Rather, she said that to ensure the aid agency remains effective, "it's the lives of mothers and babies that we are focused on."

<SNIP>

When asked about support for contraceptives and family planning in an interview last week, Ms. Oda said: "In order to maintain our focus, again our focus is on maternal and child health and mortality rates.

"We want to make sure that mothers, pregnant women, are healthy and can have safe births, and that the birthing process is made safer because if you look at the number of births during the actual birthing process, that's where a number of maternal deaths happen," she added.

"We also want to make sure when babies are born, they are born as healthy as possible so that they can live through their early age, up to the age of five, with as strong and good health as possible."

Which is pretty much on the same HarperCon Wombs on Wheels message track she was on when she spoke to CBC Radio's Carol Off last week.

I won't belabour all the reasons why maternal healthcare includes contraception, family planning, AIDS prevention and, yes, abortion. I've done it so often. I just want to emphasize Jedras' point:

The idea of a major push to address maternal and child care is a noble one. But ideology can’t be allowed to dictate the program and the help we’re going to give to women in need. We should listen to the experts on the ground about what is needed and what will be effective to meet the goals we’re trying to achieve and let them direct the resources accordingly.

That has always been the Canadian policy, and the Conservatives desire to address this challenge is legitimate, it shouldn’t change it now. Sadly, though, it seems that the trend of the Harper Conservatives allowing ideology to guide development and aid decisions is ever expanding.

Jedras also dug up this video. It's from CBC News yesterday.

Please pay special attention to the note The Family Canada put up with it.

Your letters and emails to Members of Parliament has paid off! Shelly Glover confirms that Abortion will now not be included in the Canadian Government's plan to help women and children overseas.

Pray for the Conservative Party of Canada and our Prime Minister! Donate and volunteer your time at www.conservative.ca

Forward this video to all of your Christian friends!!!!!

Canada: Now Under OMG Management.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Joyce Arthur has more.

Of course, Ignatieff is a politician, and bringing up abortion is no doubt a political strategy in part – but it’s also the absolutely right thing for him to do. It is impossible to tackle maternal health without addressing unsafe abortion, which is a leading cause of maternal death in most developing countries. Given the critical importance of legal safe abortion in saving women’s lives, and the Conservative Party’s well-known anti-choice stance, Ignatieff would have been remiss not to make it a burning issue. The majority of women in Canada are pro-choice, and we are surprised, pleased, and hopeful to see Ignatieff stand up to defend the rights of poor women in other countries.

Conservative politicians and commentators have heaped scorn on Ignatieff’s concerns, however, and condemned him for turning women’s health into a “political football.” But most of the politicking is actually coming from Ignatieff’s critics, who have launched attacks without the benefit of any facts, and even less compassion for women. Some of the coverage is so shockingly ignorant that it qualifies as being misogynist.

Go to her page for a misogyny round-up.

If you can bear it.

Gimme some of that ole time religion

That's why they call it a ''moneymaker''

And I thought this was bad?

Hah.

It gets worse:

Yes, there's more. Feel free to go read it.

But blogging it is going to make me even pricklier than usual.

Where would Jesus invest?

Verily I bloggeth, today's treeware column pretty much speaks for itself. So here it is, with linky freshness.

Lo, last week, when news of the Conservative Bible Project broke on Twitter, the Tweeple rang out with sarcasm.

Progressives fired off fake verses one might find rewritten by the "family values'' fundamentalists behind Conservapedia, the so-called "trustworthy'' online information source for all things right-wing.

Verily I say unto thee, these U.S. conservatives, led by Andy Schlafly, begat by Phyllis Schlafly, best known for stopping the equal rights for women amendment, consider modern translations of the Bible to contain too much "liberal bias.''

For example, the "economic parables'' aren't suffused with sufficient – I kiddeth thee not – "full free-market meaning.''

To take that to its logical anti- socialist conclusion, when Jesus fed those two little fishes and five loaves of bread to the multitude, he should have charged the going market rate.

No wonder the lefty-libs on Twitter launched their snark attacks.

"Let my people GOP!''

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence I can see Russia."*

"Physician, heal thyself. And your patients without insurance should heal themselves, too."

"Suffer the little `preborn' children to come unto me, and forbid them not dominion of women's bodies."

Now, you'd think that, considering all the fundamentalist keening and wailing over, as many of them deem it, the abortion "holocaust,'' the Bible has lots to say about the termination of pregnancy.

But it doth not, not according to some serious theological scholars.

In fact, according to the Washington-based Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which has many papers published on its website, one of the few places it is mentioned is Exodus 21:22-25 – and even there, the pregnant woman is considered to have "greater moral and religious worth than the fetus.''

Yes, surprisingly, there are indeed people of faith who believe that abortion is a choice "a woman must make for herself in keeping with her faith, beliefs, conscience, and her own personal situation."

Yet, if you saw those "Life Chain'' demonstrators on street corners all over town two Sundays  ago, with signs equating abortion to murder, you would think that religious groups have no regard at all for women's lives, health, independence or, if you believe in that sort of stuff, souls.

That despite how Genesis 2:7 states: "Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

Which corresponds with Canada's legal definition of personhood, which states, in much less florid language, that life begins after birth.

The thing about so many of these anti-choicers is, while they profess to be pro-life, most are doing little or nothing to ensure that no child is born unwanted, or that women get the support they need if they do go to term.

Such as state-funded daycare.

Instead, it's about taking women back to – conservative – Bible times. How else to explain why they also advocate abstinence-only sex education? Why not appeal to their church leaders to drop their prohibitions against contraception?

In fact, many of these groups insist that, if a woman has sex, she should face the consequences – as if having a baby as punishment is a good reason to be a mother.

As for the woman, she doesn't matter.

According to numbers released Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute, a world-renowned research and policy institute on reproductive health, every year, illegal abortions result in 70,000 deaths, with an additional five million women getting treatment for complications resulting from unsafe abortions.

Would Jesus want that?

Oh yes, say the Conservative Bible Project backers who insist that the scriptures be rewritten to kill the "pervasive and hurtful myth that Jesus would be a political liberal today.''

God help America.

Nothing more to add really except that the response has been awesome, and that the tweet about seeing Russia marked with an *asterisk* is not, like the others reprinted here, one I wrote but came from @sinfonian who blogs here.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: This is what they call blogrolling. :-)

Losing his religion

Nobel Peace Prize-winning former US President Jimmy Carter has been criticized for many things. That includes everything from his stance on human rights for Palestinians to, as featured in today's Star, making the worst political (but most prescient) speech ever.

But nobody has ever questioned Carter's unwavering faith.

Now Carter, in a brief essay for Australia's The Age, has announced that he's cut the tie with his long-time church, the Southern Baptist Convention after 60 years.

It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

Which is in accord with what this blog is, among other things, all about.

Kudos to Carter for getting it. He recognizes that there is little space between Islamofascist and Christofascist attitudes towards women. We're talking a few degrees which, without women constantly fighting for equality here in the West, would likely dwindle until there's no difference at all.

The sharpest illustration of this came two months ago when Dr. George Tiller was shot. And here on Broadsides, we see how many male commenters have little or no regard  for women's independence, privacy or rights when there's a fetus involved.

Writes Carter:

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

Which is why Jimmy Carter ranks as ''A Man I Love.''

H/t to my cyber sister @DigitEyes.

The Devil made me do it

Okay, so I've hit this before.

But then I spotted this.

After all the arguments for subordinating women have been shown to be self-serving lies, what are misogynists left with? They have only one feeble argument that is still deferred to and shown undeserving respect across the world, even by people who should know better: “God told me to. I have to treat women as lesser beings, because it is inscribed in my Holy Book.”

Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom are the editors of Butterflies and Wheels, the best atheist site on the web. In Does God Hate Women? they forensically dismantle the last respectable misogyny. They argue: “What would otherwise look like stark bullying is very often made respectable and holy by a putative religious law or aphorism or scriptural quotation . . . They worship a God who is a male who gangs up with other males against women. They worship a thug.”

Every major religion’s texts were written at a time when women were regarded as little better than talking cattle. Their words and commands reflect this, plainly and bluntly. This book starts with a panoramic sweep across the world, showing – with archetypal cases – how every religion has groups today thumping women down with its Holy Book.

<SNIP>

There are people in all religions who have – through theological contortions – managed to leave behind literal readings of the text and invent a less foul God to believe in. It is not for atheists to say that one group of believers is right and the other is wrong, as we think they’re all wrong. We can note that the less literalist a believer is, the easier he is to live beside, but we will only discredit literalism and force reform if we are honest about the words of the texts, rather than trying to soft-soap believers.

By the end of this book-length blast, Benson and Stangroom have left religious hatred of women in rubble. Anybody not addled by superstition will have to conclude that such bigotry deserves neither respect nor deference. It does not deserve the taboos that today surround it. It deserves the opposite: contempt – and relentless, unyielding opposition.

I haven't yet read the book so I can't comment on its research or content. But I have read other books with similar themes, most recently Susan Squire's I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage. She posited that, because women quickly learn their (male) mate's weaknesses, men feel emasculated, and need to exert control over women in order to restore their sense of potency.

Also, too often, in many cultures, the measure of a man is ... how many children he sires. (Fooled ya.)

That's obviously a simplistic distillation but it will do for the purposes of this blog post.

The thing about religion is, it's man-made -- and almost always patriarchal. God is always male, the priests and rabbis (except in very progressive churches and temples) are always male, and the dogma always favours males.

It always turns out badly for women.

Case in point: Those whacky Christianist movements now spreading in the US which are all about women staying home and making babies. And let's not even get started on the crazy Islamists, or the out-there ultra-religious Jews.

So anyway, how come virtually all of the anti-choice commenters on this blog are men?

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Almost forgot to h/t Chrystal Ocean.

Why does God hate women?

A must read, from The Observer:

There is plenty to criticise in Islam's view of women. Last year, the Observer told the story of a  man in Basra who stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed to death his 17-year-old daughter for becoming infatuated with a British soldier. The relationship apparently amounted to a few conversations, but her father learnt she had been seen in public talking to the soldier. When the Observer talked to Abdel-Qader Ali two weeks later, he said: "Death was the least she deserved. I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion."

This was clearly extreme, but the truth is that the God many people believe in - whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish - hates women. Take America's Southern Baptist Convention, which declares in its faith and mission statement: "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." That's fair enough, isn't it? After all, he's probably stronger than she is.

Or there's the Catholic church. The Pope put things more suavely in an address in 2008: "Faced with cultural and political trends that seek to eliminate, or at least cloud and confuse, the sexual differences inscribed in human nature, considering them a cultural construct, it is necessary to recall God's design that created the human being masculine and feminine, with a unity and at the same time an original difference." The insistence on difference is the necessary first step to insisting on inequality and subordination and it is a step that popes have been taking at regular intervals for decades.

<SNIP>

So why is it so often women who fill the pews? Is it a form of Stockholm syndrome? Religions do a good job of training people to be obedient and loyal to the authorities and women in particular are raised to be both devout and submissive. Religions are sticky: they are hard to abandon and that is doubly true for women, given that subordination and unshakable fidelity are their chief duties.

The fact that women are defined as different from men ("complementary" is the religious euphemism) and confined to narrower, more monotonous lives as a result, means that they have more need of the excitements and passions of religion. For women, religion often is the heart of a heartless world. All they have to give up in exchange is their right to shape their own lives; as long as they behave themselves, all will go swimmingly.

I never understood why my YiaYia (grandmother), a young widow who single-handedly brought up 11 kids during the Great Depression, was highly literate, and who kicked major ass, accepted Greek Orthodox dogma about women being second class humans.

Maybe it's because she came from long ago and far away, a small town high in the mountains of a Greek island.

More likely because the church was the port in so many storms for her.

That's her in the middle, my Mom on the right.

H/T Twitter friend @GreenJay

Mum's the world

So, what's it like when women run the show?

Argentinian writer Ricardo Coler spent two months living with one matriarchal society -- the Mosuo in Southern China -- and discovered that women on top create a kinder, gentler and surprise! sexier life.

In fact, men are treated like stud muffins. And there's no word for ''father.''

In contrast with patriarchal China, girl babies are valued here, as are boys. In the rest of the People's Republic, female infanticide or the abortion of female embryos is common.

Here are snips from Coler's interview with Germany's Spiegel Online:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is Mosuo society a paradise for feminists?

Coler: I had expected to find an inverse patriarchy. But the life of the Mosuo has absolutely nothing to do with that. Women have a different way of dominating. When women rule, it's part of their work. They like it when everything functions and the family is doing well. Amassing wealth or earning lots of money doesn't cross their minds. Capital accumulation seems to be a male thing. It's not for nothing that popular wisdom says that the difference between a man and a boy is the price of his toys.

<SNIP>

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What astonished you the most?

Coler: That there is no violence in a matriarchal society. I know that quickly slips into idealization -- every human society has its problems. But it simply doesn't make sense to the Mosuo women to solve conflicts with violence. Because they are in charge, nobody fights. They don't know feelings of guilt or vengeance -- it is simply shameful to fight. They are ashamed if they do and it even can threaten their social standing.

<SNIP>

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are men raised to be incompetent?

Coler: For the Mosuo, women are simply the more effective and reliable gender. However, they do say that the "really big" decisions -- like buying a house or a machine or selling a cow -- are made by the men. Men are good for this kind of decision-making as well as physical labor. The official governmental leader of the village, the mayor, is a man. I walked with him through the village -- nobody greated him or paid him any attention. As a man he doesn't have any authority.

Is this the way it was in many prehistoric and ancient societies before the guys started freaking out over what happened to their semen, who were their heirs and started controlling women?

I am willing to guess yes, especially based on what went on right here in North America among many native peoples.

Wouldn't it be better for the future if we returned to some aspects of our past?

There's a YouTube video of the Mosuo here.

Oh Goddess!

The New York Times has a fascinating report on the recent discovery of a tiny statue, believed to be 35,000 years old.

No one would mistake the Stone Age ivory carving for a Venus de Milo. The voluptuous woman depicted is, to say the least, earthier, with huge, projecting breasts and sexually explicit genitals.

Nicholas J. Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen, in Germany, who found the small carving in a cave last year, said it was at least 35,000 years old, “one of the oldest known examples of figurative art” in the world. It is about 5,000 years older than some other so-called Venus artifacts made by early populations of Homo sapiens in Europe.

Another archaeologist, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, in England, agreed and went on to remark on the obvious. By modern standards, he said, the figurine’s blatant sexuality “could be seen as bordering on the pornographic.”

Well, I suppose ...

But doesn't it make more sense that it would celebrate women's life-giving abilities, especially in an age when they couldn't put 1 + 1 = baby together?

The tiny statuette was uncovered in September in a cave in southwestern Germany, near Ulm and the Danube headwaters. Dr. Conard’s report on the find is being published Thursday in the journal Nature.

The discovery, Dr. Conard wrote, “radically changes our view of the origins of Paleolithic art.” Before this, he noted, female imagery was unknown, most carvings and cave drawings being of mammoths, horses and other animals.

I can remember studying this in art history many years ago, with the speculation being that such art was created by men -- naturally -- to illustrate their hunts or as some sort of spiritual tribute to the beasties being hunted.

Me, I always thought they were painted by women either to decorate the cave walls, entertain the kids or explain to them where daddy had gone.

To continue ...

The object reminded experts of the most famous of the sexually explicit figurines from the Stone Age, the Venus of Willendorf, discovered in Austria a century ago. That Venus is somewhat larger and dated about 24,000 years ago, but it is in a style that appeared to have been prevalent for several thousand years. Scholars speculate that these Venus figurines, as they are known, were associated with fertility beliefs or shamanistic rituals.

Perhaps. Or, more likely, they were representations of the Mother Goddess, the dominant figure of worship in these prehistoric close-to-nature matriarchal societies.

But then somebody did the math, which came out to nine months, and next thing everybody knew, it was a white guy sitting in the clouds and burning the occasional bush who was in charge.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Now this has to be the dumbest theory of all. That the statue reflects a prehistoric ''obsession'' with naked women, ie. early porn.

Um, I wasn't aware that, 35,000 years ago, clothing was much of an option, ya know?

The rest of the piece is interesting though.

The tiny statue is carved out of the tusk of a woolly mammoth and is less than 2.5 inches (60 millimeters) long. Instead of a head, it has a ring that scientists think meant it was worn as a pendant looped through string. Paleoanthropologist Nicholas Conard of Germany's Tubingen University reported the discovery in the May 14 issue of the journal Nature.

The oldest human art dates back much further, to between 75,000 and 95,000 years ago in Africa. But that art was abstract, and consisted of geometrical designs engraved on pieces of red iron oxide. This is the first known art to represent a woman, and possibly the first art to represent anything real at all. Another find, a simple drawing that may represent a half-man, half-animal, could be a few thousand years older, but the date on that is uncertain.

The jump from abstract art to representative art seems significant, and might reflect a leap in the cognitive capacity of the human brain around this time. Some experts think that the development might have gone along with a leap in the complexity of human language.

"Language is a symbolic system — words are symbols for things. And so is art," Mellars said. "Art is a glaring illustration of a capacity for symbolic thinking. Since symbolic thinking lies at the core of language, people have often tried to link the two."