Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Heavenly fatherliness #17 - Respect towards women

According to popular wisdom, a good father respects the women in his life.


The argument in favor of God respecting women I think goes something like, "He most definitely loves all of his daughters as much as he loves his sons! He's given women the amazing role of motherhood, which makes them not just beautiful but indispensable to the human race!" Sexist but respectful is the way to go.


The fact is that when it comes to examples and laws on how to treat women God has come up with some pretty shitty ideas (like giving some men many wives and concubines). Men always come first. It's clear that God thinks he has to talk to boys first and that women should be obedient to his sons.



The Creation and the Fall are two more classic examples of where a man (Adam) comes first and where a woman (Eve) gets shat on for disobedience.



A whole slew of disgusting rules and regulations have been created and persist to the present day restricting the kinds of things women can and cannot do from how to speak, how much to speak, with whom to speak, when to speak, where she can go, with whom she can go there, which doors she can use, what she can wear, what she can own, greater punishments for misdeeds, etc. The list is really quite extensive, if you care to look into it.



God's will has been one of the many excuses throughout human history for treating women first and foremost as the property of men and more recently/currently as second class citizens. You'd think that an All-powerful Father would work just a little bit harder to clarify the dignity and equality of women, wouldn't you?


And yes, even the Mormon version of God IS VERY SEXIST. In the LDS Church it begins young and follows you into adulthood. But there are some changes even conservative Mormons can get behind that would make things a little better.

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

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