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The Conservative Christian Taliban’s Campaign Against American Women
Throughout the course of history it has always been a man’s first instinct to intrinsically protect women because they were not physically as strong as a man. It had nothing to do with chivalry, but was an innate, built-in mechanism that went beyond familial ties from the cave-man days to the modern era. However, here in America in the 21st century, a segment of the male population has been indoctrinated by evangelical snake-oil salesmen to believe that women are objects to be manipulated and used as incubators instead of equal members of society worthy of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
Let it be clear that this is not an indictment of all American men. It is an indictment of Christian conservatives who are in positions of power who have made it their goal to place women in an untenable position of forced birth based on their belief in an ancient, Bronze Age mythology from the Holy Land. By extension, it is also a condemnation of Christian conservatives who support such Draconian beliefs by voting for and supporting politicians who are proud of their suppression of women and unapologetic for allowing religious dogmata to dictate the worth and place women occupy in American society.
2011 will go down in history as the time American women were forced to subject to Taliban-type rule at the same time our military is fighting and dying to protect the lives of innocent Arab civilians and women who are treated like slaves and beaten, stoned to death, and dishonored because they were raped or had the audacity to show an inch of skin. The pertinent question in this issue is; where are America’s men and why are they giving their tacit approval for the degradation and vile treatment of American women? Why are men in America sitting idly by and allowing a select few Christian conservative legislators degrade women and subject them to such horrific treatment? It is a combination of abject fear of displeasing the religious right and a belief that Christians will only persecute someone else’s woman. In other words, it is acceptable to persecute an unknown, faceless woman; especially if they are poor women of color and women who are not Christians.
The good Christian men (and women) in the Republican party have consistently voted against equal pay for women doing the same job as a man because of a belief that women, no matter how qualified, do not have the same value as a man regardless how unqualified the man is for the job. Do men accept as tolerable that their daughter they’ve sent to college is worth less than a man with a high school diploma? It extends beyond just equal pay because in state after state Republicans vote against gender equality in health care coverage and retirement benefits because women are inferior. Do good Conservative Christian men think their wives are not worthy of the best medical care because of their gender? Since the beginning of the year, conservative Christians in Congress and state houses have passed legislation that restrict a woman’s right to choose their reproductive health, and they have gone to great lengths to demonize women who have the audacity to speak up or make choices contrary to Christian-inspired beliefs.
The spending cuts Republicans proposed inordinately target poor women by cutting benefits for programs to assist women in caring for their children; children Republicans abandon as soon as they leave the womb because as Christian conservatives have shown, they are pro-life as long as the life is a fetus. In many states as well as in the United States Congress, women who are violently raped must prove their rapists beat them before sexual assault is considered rape. It is questionable whether a Congressman whose wife was raped would allow anyone to consider her an accuser, or if she would have to subject to a physical examination to determine the rape was brutal enough to warrant being called a victim. Would a conservative Christian congressman tolerate his wife being called a whore because she wore a dress the rapist thought invited a sexual assault? What kind of man would force his daughter to give birth if doing so meant her life may be in danger? Based on recent legislation at the Federal and state level, any good Christian man would force his daughter to die just to satisfy Catholics and evangelical Christians.
The problem men have with women is endemic and has been around long before this current round of Christian conservatives gained majorities in Congress and state legislatures. Today 28% of unmarried working women with children fall below the poverty level but just 6% of men are in the same situation. There is a structural inequity that has been in existence since American society began. The Republican spending cuts are disproportionally aimed at women and the attacks on unions, public-sector employees, and social services are attacks on jobs that are predominately held by women.
The point is that women are held in such low esteem by men, especially Christian conservative men, that it has become socially acceptable to target women whether it is for reproductive choices, employment equality, or the right to a safe environment. Still, at some juncture, targeted women must have a man in their lives that should bristle at the thought of their mother, daughters, or wives being unfairly singled out for discrimination and legislative assault. Yet, men are silent. There are some males who advocate for women’s rights but they are few and far between and the religious excuse doesn’t hold water. There is not a proliferation of devout evangelical Christian men who advocate for their own women to undergo the shame Christian conservative legislators have set in motion with the new wave of anti-women laws being passed in the legislatures.
American men, indeed all men would protect their women if they were under direct assault by anyone whether it was a criminal or an irate boyfriend, husband or a casual acquaintance. However, when Christian conservatives in Congress and state legislatures pass laws that directly target women there is absolute silence. It is of no consequence that congressmen (or congresswomen) claim to be doing the lord’s work or that they are protecting a zygote or fetus, they are still singling out women for abuse. It is time for more American men to make their voices heard in defense of women’s rights before they lose the opportunity. At the rate Christian conservatives are moving, they will shift their focus to include men who speak up in defense of women’s rights and at that point it will be too late. It has been said that chivalry is dead and that may be true. Recent attacks on women that are left unanswered are making it painfully clear that justice for women is dead and so are the men who are tasked to protect them.
Image: barbywithaybytch.blogspot…
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34 Responses to The Conservative Christian Taliban’s Campaign Against American Women
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Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 10:35 am
I have kept generations enough of my own animals, and then studied them enough, to arrive at the following hypotheses:
a. Among mammals, the primary social unit was a foremother, her female descendents who didn’t leave, and ungrown youngsters of both sexes. Knowledge of hunting and foraging grounds, paths, and survival skills was passed down matrilineally.
b. As long as males were only inseminators, young males, driven out of the group to prevent inbreeding, were primarily predator food. The few that were strong and clever enough to survive fathered the next generation.
c. Males next made themselves valuable to the group as sentinels, who stayed on the perimeter and warned of attackers. In return, the group gave them protection.
d. Then, some moved up to sentries, attacking predators that threatened females and young. Some males received preferred positions in the group for this.
e. Finally, some began to provide food for females and weaned young, chiefly meat. That was the state of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, as well as canines and some felines (I’ve seen tomcats kill mice and give them to kittens). These males became cherished family members.
f. A rogue male who savages females and youngsters is driven off and even killed, like any other predator. I’ve seen some surprising mob action about this.
With us, though, it’s all gone haywire. The rogue males go into politics and institutionalize the oppression of females, youngsters, and those seen as weak. Maybe it’s time we returned to Nature, red in tooth and claw.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 10:41 am
Rogue males is a good term, in service to what they see as a rapist god. The Jewish Yahwists of the 7th century BCE couldn’t wait to take the feminine out of god by going after Asherah. It’s high time Asherah gets her revenge.
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 10:56 am
I don’t want to make anyone nervous, but the sperm count of a 30- year- old man is already half what it was in 1950, and our population problem may be fixing to fix itself.
Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 11:11 am
I have read a little bit on that subject and you are absolutely correct. It’s primarily cause from the foods that we eat. Processed foods, fast foods and that kind of rot create diminished sperm count. If you had to that certain environments which also causes sperm count to go down. We are asking for our own end. and this is happening all over the developed world. Cigarettes, drinking, lack of sleep, sleep apnea are just a few of the things that caused this.
A pretty good article on it
www.thedailybeast.com/blo...
KarenJ
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Unfortunately, the sperm that remains seems to be producing an increasing percentage of unintelligent, incurious, unalert offspring who seem interested in pointless or violent amusement.
Unless they go into politics.
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
And then, they’re even worse.
Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 11:16 am
you see this down here in the South. As there is a Baptist church in my area every 15 ft.² women are strictly told what to wear to church. Very little makeup, very little jewelry and never can a woman in a Baptist church down here wear slacks. She has to be wearing a dress simply because the Bible tells women that they cannot dress like men. Old Testament Of course. this is quite a contrast from Michigan where the Methodist Church a woman can wear whatever she wants.
I think the idea is to keep women at home and unseen.God says so because he is a strong male presence
KarenJ
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
But the men, in Biblical times, DIDN’T WEAR PANTS!
They wore robes, tunics, and loincloths.
Again, another wonky interpretation of Biblical passages by some present-day patriarchal male with an agenda.
Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
AND……….the women wore obes, tunics, and loincloths as well! the plot thickens!~
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Also, in some cultures, they wore a type of trousers when the men didn’t, the stylistic descendants of which are the tie-on, wraparound ones you occasionally see for loungewear today.
Larke Bryson
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Thank you for bringing in the pagan perspective. I appreciate it every time you write.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 10:44 am
Once again I feel like you’re talking out of my own head, Muse. We’re on the same page here.The problem is endemic, it’s getting worse, and it’s past time we do something about it. I can’t help but agree with Reynardine’s “red in tooth and claw” approach.
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 11:39 am
An even greater culprit is the plastic/vinyl industry, whose effluents have caused our streams to be filled with hermaphrodite fish and our drinking water to contain metabolic poison that is deranging the development of human children… and then, our food gets packaged in that. Our farm animals are kept on steroids and antibiotics almost up to the time of slaughter, and then we wonder why our hospitals are filled with superbugs and our youngsters are fat and shapeless. Mid-twentieth-century, men looked like men and women look like women. Now, too many have the same, shapeless, thick-middled physiques, even in their teens and twenties. Hand and foot sizes are increasing exponentially, a sign of exposure to steroids – in most cases, I suspect, not a voluntary one. But the Dissocialists scream for the removal of clean air and water guards and safe food laws even as they seek to punish women for miscarriages and young people for “wrong” sexual orientation or gender identification, which could well be linked to the exposure of “sacred” fetuses to these chemicals. They are, as far as I am concerned, group sadistic psychopaths, misobiotiists, and necrosadists.
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 11:42 am
Misposted, again, but my android is busy scrubbing glass panes.
Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Add to that the fact that every processed food is heavily laden with salt and sugars to keep you eating it. Most of the kids obesity problems could be ended if parents stopped feeding them so much processed foods
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
It would help, of course, but kippers, bacalao, bacon, dried apricots, sugared almonds, and lokum have been around for centuries, while the chemicals have not, and those coincide with the abnormal growth and hormonal anomalies.
Sarah Jones
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 11:44 am
I couldn’t agree more, Rmuse. You and Hraf are both hitting on this theme that speaks to a sad lack of care and acknowledgment of women in this country.
I was once in a Baptist church and the pastor said women have two gifts to give to their husbands, “their virginity and a male son.”
By the same line of thinking, our entire society is functioning on a distorted set of values that feminism fights against, including valuing a man based upon what he earns and whether or not he is the alpha dog — a line of thinking that reduces us all to barter and trade type of relationships with no basis in mutual admiration, love and friendship based upon who we are as people. I see so-called Christians selling that every day now.
I call it the Pottery Barn life — plastic people buying “success” and “godly approval” through material goods and external signs of achievement with no regard for the soul. The crushing of the most vulnerable among us is but a sign of our moral crisis, a crisis being perpetrated by men and women claiming to be messengers of God.
Sarah Jones
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 11:50 am
p.s. That image makes me sad — these people sell an angry Jesus Christ who labels others as “wicked” – yet Christ said that we are not to judge, leading one to conclude that the wicked (having strayed from the teachings) are the people holding the signs, not the people they are aiming their hate at. I say that acknowledging that the best of any religion teaches compassion and kindness, and the worst of it gets co-opted by man and used as a weapon of abuse and power over, which is exactly why religion has no place in government.
Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 12:29 pm
my impression of religion is, if you Live the Way, Jesus Christ wanted you to we would all be far more contemplative of our lives. In fact, I think we would be far more like a Buddhist then we would our current crop of Christians. When people assign human emotions to the God they believe in, there simply remaking that God in their own image. You will know the Lord thy God as being your God when he believes in the same thing you do
Rmuse
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Shiva, you have it correct. Except for devotion to an air-fairy with a beard, Christ’s teachings echoed those of Siddhartha Gotama. I am a Zen Buddhist, a Bodhisattva, and can assure you that the contemplative nature and desire to end suffering for all sentient beings pre-date and influenced Christ’s teaching to care for the less fortunate. Whether or not Jesus actually knew Buddhism is questionable, but his teachings certainly are not traditionally Jewish. Since Siddhartha lived 500 years before Christ, it is possible Jesus learned of compassion from some traveling follower of Buddha. Jesus would not know or approve of any part or parcel of Christianity. From the Easter, Christmas, and myriad Catholic practices to the desire to gain wealth at the expense of the less fortunate, he would condemn it all. There are hardly any religions (if any) that follow Christ’s teachings. In a twisted bit and moments of weakness, I have hoped Jesus returns just to see him reject 99% of the world’s Christians. But, as a Bodhisattva, I hate the idea that the faux Christians would suffer disappointment and death.
Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
I think its called follow what you think Jesus would have said instead of follow what he actually taught
I would not be surprised if Buddhism had passed through the Middle east knowing that China sailed to Iran and the African coastline
Rmuse
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Sarah, it is the way of Christianity from the beginning to mold the faith to fit man’s evil tendencies. Mankind is evil, jealous, angry and wicked. In order to justify the hateful tendencies of Christianity, the adherents have made Jesus in their image. It is incredible sad. I tend to agree that religion has no place in government, but have concluded, like Chris Hithcens, Sam Harris and others, that religion has no place period. Before you say anything, Buddhism is a path, not a religion. Just a way of life. A harmless existence. Very difficult path, but incredibly rewarding. :)
Sarah Jones
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Since Buddhists have never come for my rights nor advocated hate as a social policy, I’m inclined to agree in principle – faith, a guiding path, whatever we call it – when turned into an organization of power will never remain true to important principles.
I try to be careful to not include all Christians in my denouncement of some of their hateful policies, as I know plenty for whom the church is a positive force, but I long ago left organized religion post 9/11 hate mongering.
Enjay in E MT
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Is it possible that the underlying goal of the Christian Conservative “social” agenda has to do with The Family – Article 18 SBC? ( www.sbc.net/bfm/bfm2000.a... )
By limiting access to government safety nets such as welfare, food stamps, health care, low income housing, etc. it will deter the break-up of a family unit. Without assistance, women would have no option but to stay in the family; regardless of a loveless relationship, infidelity, or even abuse. Also, by not supporting equal-rights for pay equality – again financially limits a womans earnings to considerably less than a man, therefore making her more dependent on him.
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
More likely, in the missing eighteen years of his life, Jesus sojourned on the Subcontinent. I worked with a number of people from there, and have been assured that there are and have been yogis, sufis, and darvishes who can not only survive grievous wounds but stop the bleeding and infections from them, and who can survive prolonged burial. In short, the Crucifixion and Resurrection may have been the result of intense yogic training. The words attributed afterwards -”give me some fried catfish with honey, and I’ll show you what kind of ghost I am-” are not only human and mundane, but reflect the kind of diet observed among such people on the Subcontinent. Not a bad dish, by the way, but even better with batter-fried shellcracker.
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
And hot, buttered drop biscuits.
jlt
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Personal experience has enlightened me to the fact that it is the religious fringe and has more to do with the paternalistic fears of some men.. through history the women has been confined to ‘property status because we could do what men could not! Give birth!
That in itself is the SUPREME POWER…Since organized religion is just another power structure with rules to keep the ‘flock’ in line , then the ultimate challenge would be to harness that power! Protection of women, as used today, is the same ruse it was that created Sharia Law and the extremes of all religious rather than ‘spiritual’ groups! The right claiming men are using the ‘protection of the little woman’ as a benign seeming falsehood bent on the need to control! If women no longer ‘need’ men then where does that leave the small small minded ineffectual members of the race! They go back to being sentinels maybe or less!
Reynardine
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
¿This minister thought there were female sons? Actually, in some cultures, there are. In certain Central Asian cultures, for example, if too many men were lost to war or monasticism, an unmarried daughter married the family house, and then all her children were scions of the house. Certain African tribes enabled sonless men to declare a daughter a son, and then she married a woman, whose sons were her descendants. I doubt, though, that the good reverend knew of such customs, which would doubtless have horrified him, so I wonder what he did want?
Teaelle
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 8:05 pm
I believe so much of this is about power, and about feeling big as long as *someone* is smaller than you.
I think conservative christian men don’t worry about their wives/daughters being treated the way they want to treat other women because they believe they are “Good” women. As such, they won’t NEED to be able to afford quality health care for example— they’ll have their husband’s insurance to provide for them! Same for equal pay. Their daughters may go to college and get a job, but as good Christians they will marry someone who will be the primary breadwinner anyway so pay equity is not such a big deal.
And as for all the stupid laws about “forcible” verses other (?) rape– I think those are proposed by men who probably resent the fact that women are even allowed to say no at all.
There is a “1 million Pissed off Women” march being planned for Washington DC this summer and I want to be there because I am worried about the world my daughter will live in if this trend isn’t stopped cold.
Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 11th, 2011 at 8:24 pm
I have not heard of a 1 million Pissed off Women march, but I hope it grows to 50 million
Lainie
Apr. 17th, 2011 at 11:16 am
It’s One Million Pissed Off Women on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/OMPOW
Reynardine
Apr. 17th, 2011 at 11:44 am
They don’t want any woman to be able to say “no” to any man, except that the women they own are supposed to be able to say “no” to all other men and make it stick. I mean, Hell, that’s fair enough, isn’t it?
Anne
Apr. 12th, 2011 at 9:57 am
Repression of any kind always stems from fear. These angry, insecure “men” among the Christofascists have always been fearful of strong, self-assured women like Hillary Clinton. They have been as successful over a long period of time in making “feminism” and “feminist” pejoratives as they have the word “liberal,” to the point that some women who voice support of all feminism has done qualify their statements by saying they are not feminists.