Should feminists complain about other religion's sexist practices?

did have stuff i wanted to contribute but now just chuckling over the holy, righteous Penis comments.

(I don't believe we were ever predetermined to be sexist, not even by language, btw.)

at notadude's DH.

It's the same argument as 'why would God let wars and famine happen', IMO. Which is a perfectly good argument, unless you like the idea of free will rather than paternalistic (snigger) gods.

Not that I'm wanting to claim scriptural authority equal to Cranmer's for DH -just realized the potentially unclear phrasing :o

Well, DH claims god is linguistically male because semitic languages don't have a neutral gender. My counter argument was that if there was an omniscient God with the foreknowledge of the fact that he/she/it/whatever was going to be revealing himself at one stage he'd have had the foresight to allow only languages with a neutral gender. Or to make one magically appear. Or make all languages genderless (plenty already are). Or wire the human brain in a way that makes it unambiguously clear that sometimes "he" really means "it". Or something way smarter than what I can think of, being a mere mortal and all.

This not being the case I conclude that this particular god is

A) male
B) non existent, but was invented by a society that strongly favours men

Sometimes I'm really happy I'm an atheist.

alex - yes, wish I'd heard more than a short paper really.

notadude - cranmer reckons god is a 'which' not a 'who'. An 'it' not a 'he'. Though it is a father, too ...

Hmm, my counter argument to that would be that once she had started not only to walk but to disco dance on water she would have looked pretty darn convincing. Not to mention the opportunity for god to address that silly sexism issue once and for all. May we assume this was a deliberate omission, then?

That created in the image thing is very interesting, by the way. Every version I could find describes the creation of male and female but uses the pronoun "him" exclusively for subject as well as object. Now, I don't know any ancient Hebrew - I do speak some Arabic though, which is also a Semitic language. It has two genders only and the male is used where both genders are concerned. However, there most certainly is a 3rd person plural. I'm hence thinking this must refer only to Adam (no surprise there) and God has a penis (loon alert!).

Sounds very interesting LRD (I mean the feminist liturgy). I agree, it is a rubbish argument

I think that's a rubbish argument alex. Christ was meant to be utterly humbled - if he'd been female it'd have made more sense. I think it's simply that society has been misogynistic for a very long time and couldn't conceive of (see what I did there? groan) a female God. Though medieval people can imagine a female Christ, because they're deeply into the whole suffering/bleeding/nurturing Christ image.

I went to a conference recently that included a paper on re-writing the liturgy as a feminist - it was interesting.

FWIW, I have seen people use the argument that God is neither male nor female and has aspects of both in deeply, deeply sexist ways. Eg., 'God is like a mother because He loves us' - because, erm, fathers can't? It is a minefield and interesting to talk about rather than ignore/dismiss, IMO.

Yes, I agree with your point about other people being able to speak for themselves.

I was talking to a Christian (I am atheist) about God the Father and the Son. He was saying that God had to have a son and not a daughter because at the time when Jesus was born society was heavily patriarchal, and Jesus would never have achieved anything in such a society as a woman and would have hit the dust of history, no one would have listened to a word she said. This argument seemed a bit lame to me, as surely a woman in the role would have made the point even more strongly, and may have stopped 2 milennia of misogyny before it even got started. Parthenogenesis, I'm afraid, is easily explained as a miracle, something which God is very good at.

However, he did say that women should pray to "God the Mother" if they felt more comfortable with that, as God is neither male nor female, it's just convenient to use a pronoun like 'he' because we have to say something. (He quoted something from Genesis about human beings having been made in god's image, male and female, to suggest that God actually has both aspects, but I don't know exactly where the quote comes from).

cleared it up

Enlighten me? I never got that one - especially as parthenogenesis produces exclusively female offspring (then again that one was phoney before genetics cleared it for good).

I absolutely agree that we're free to criticize any aspect of any religion, by the way.

My point further up - in case it wasn't 100% clear - was that if we do so we should make it clear that we as the people doing the criticizing are unhappy about it instead of pretending to speak for someone who's part of the group concerned (because a) they may disagree and b) they are capable of speaking for themselves).

Why should feminists (or indeed anyone, for that matter) not denounce sexist practices in religion? I disagree with the idea that one must be a part of a culture in order to disapprove of or denounce its practices. I think that cultural relativism can be intellectually dishonest. You cannot say "It is not good enough for me, I deserve better, but it's good enough for them because they come from a different culture" It implies that you believe you are superior and therefore the other culture is inferior.

Instead, I believe that sexist practices exist in every culture, every religion, every society, so I have no qualms in pointing them out, whether it's Islam, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Hinduism or whatever. I had an interesting discussion just recently on why Christians pray to "God the Father" (rather than Mother) and why God had a son and not a daughter.

All Abrahamic religions are patriarchal in nature and oppress all by their insistence on an alien moral code which was imposed on the western consciousness. It is for muslim women to define their place in Islam. I know several women who describe themselves as feminists yet trot off to church or mass on Sunday morning like the obedient little sheep that they are. They even insist on bringing the children to ensure that the poison is passed on to the next generation. I have no doubt that there are a few here too. They will then voice their indignation at the perceived injustices of someone else's religion.
Where there are genuine HR concerns like rape, mutilation of children and so called "honour killings" it is right for all of society to intervene, regardless of what spurious cultural or religious excuses are offered.
As for articles in the DM, words fail me. I wouldn't be seen dead buying it, let alone reading it.

I feel that I should be able to criticise the religion (whichever) without criticising the individual for their belief, but only for their actions as a direct or indirect result of that religion.....unless it's nothing to do with it.

IE. Honour killing, I blame the construct of the community that accepts this and hides it. I think the religion, ie community, is partly to blame.....agina due to the misplaced importance on honour. But mostly I blame the evil bastards that commit the crime. When something happens as a trend, habit, or whatever within a community we have a right to ask why.....this is from rape & DV in the UK to genital mutilation.

posie - God does transcend time in Christian theology.

Hmm, IMHO there's a huge qualitative difference between "I oppose your system for imposing social control by the means of invoking an imaginary entity" and, say, claiming that it is the ultimate goal of "muslims" (who's in that collective, anyway?) to impose sharia law on the UK and charge us all some form of tax for being non-muslims. And that this is inevitably their desire courtesy of the fact that they belong to a monolithic faith which demands that this must be the objective.

The former is a neat summary of one of the many things that's wrong with religion (there very, very likely not actually being a god would be another one for me). The latter is factually wrong, indiscriminate, intellectually lazy and - this is the biggie as far as I'm concerned - creates (deliberately, IMHO) resentment against members of a group the overwhelming majority of whose members also happen to belong to ethnic minorities and tend not to belong to the economically or politically most powerful segments of society.

I think religion is the ultimate tool of control and therefore The Patriarchy. The books/laws/stories or whatever you wish to call them all conveniently allow a God to not transcend time and understand that men and women are equal, so for me I cannot fathom how anyone believes this stuff. From the get go religion tells women that they are the protectors of men's lust, from hijab wearing to the evil of Eve and consequential painful childbirth...

What is an Islamophobe, really? Because if you think at the core of religion is control then surely you have to oppose it.

This is actually a thread I have been thinking of opening for some time.

As I see it, there are several interrelated aspects that are of importance here:

First and foremost, as an atheist I happen to believe that we have a general right to criticize religion in general and those aspects of it we deem to be harmful in particular. This includes - but is not exclusive to - their often extremely patriarchal nature.

In my view a particular difficulty with treating islam in this was is that a) there currently does appear to be quite a bit of negative sentiment about it within parts of society, that b) this cannot always be clearly distinguished from good old racism (albeit often poorly disguised as progressive values) and that c) (pseudo)feminist concerns are being cited as an issue of concern/abused as a fig leaf - often by those who otherwise couldn't care less about women. (Classical example: "We in the west respect our women!"). The tough question for me hence becomes how I can criticize religious principles while at the same time distancing myself from islamophobes and racists.

My own approach to this tends to be rather inconsistent in that I tend to argue to those advocating a certain practice that they are wrong while pointing out to some of their critics some of the more sexist bits of christian scripture. It's not something I recommend or favour, though.

One final factor that I find tends to get slightly lost in these kinds of debates is this: Roughly half of the believers in islam are women - and quite a few of them don't actually find their religion oppressive at all. Now, as a non-believer I disagree on that particular point - nonetheless, the idea of a bunch of non-muslims (extra points for white, educated middle class, non religious ones) looking to "explain" to muslimas how they are disadvantaged by their patriarchal believes is incredibly patronizing.

FWIW my DH is (nominally) muslim. As mentioned, I don't believe in any god, never mind religion. Every once in a while someone tells me - upon learning of his background - how "brave" I am for resisting the burqa. My paternal grandmother whose husband beat the living hell out of her until his cancer prevented him from doing so - and who 30 years on still maintains that husbands may indeed do this - worries that DH might not "respect" me. My new agey dad, who thinks that "souls" have an unchanging gender as which they keep on incarnating is worried that DH might hold sexist opinions.

Every time anyone says anything like this to me I feel like screaming into their face "stop patronizing me with your fucking prejudices, you moron!" I can only imagine what this must be like for someone who happens to believe that some of the stuff being criticized is actually objectively correct as per communication from the eternal big boss. I also happen to know for a fact that some muslimas do feel very negatively about such criticism.

I am wondering whether it is less patronizing for non-muslim feminists to express opposition or offense on behalf of ourselves rather than "them". I.e. is it preferable to say "as a woman I am offended to think that you do not seem to trust my judgment" rather than "It is offensive to muslim women that their testimony is not always regarded as equal to that of a man".

This approach probably has its own drawbacks, would love to hear how others see this, though.

I don't see the OP's thread as Muslim bashing, I just think she was using one particular story to illustrate a point. If we have more than 30 seconds to spare I'm sure we could all find practices in all religions that are anti-women.

And I also don't think she meant to imply (sorry if I'm putting words in your mouth, OP) that we're all the same religion.

As I understand it, we're being asked if we should stick to tackling oppressive practices in our own religion only, or extend our activism to other religions too.

There are two sides to the argument IMO.

On the one hand, if you stick to your own religion, you are likely to have more of an inside understanding of the religion and know where best to apply the pressure without completely pissing everyone off and alienating those in power.

But on the other hand, while most religions and denominations thereof have their misogynistic tendencies, some are obviously worse than others, and it may be harder for women of these religions/denominations to make their voices heard. And in these cases it's hard for women in other religions not to want to step in to help.

Very clever of the Daily Fail to manage to have a go at Muslims and feminists all in one story. A creative economy of column space.

It's a tough one; although I would agree that sexist practices and laws are rarely religious, or are a perversion of religious teachings.

My main gripe with the niqab/headscarf debate is the idea that women are being oppressed by being told what to wear; so the state must tell them what to wear instead. It's just oppression by another oppressor. At no point is a woman considered to have a voice.

Imagine having to sort out 6 lots of family birthdays instead of just 2.

And entertaining 6 obnoxious BILs.

Shite.

Although .... if the person who wrote Wifework is correct, then polyandry would actually be more oppressive of women than not ...

Well the first thing I would say is not to take anything the DM say about muslims with the slightest seriousness whatsoever.

With that out of the way, I think it's certainly right to examine any form of misogyny happening under the guise of religion in our society. I do think however that the most important voice in that examination is that of the women who are living under the religion, and these voices are often overlooked. The ongoing debate about the burqua is a case in point. Not saying I like it, at all, but I've seen muslim women themselves make a variety of points about it and all too often the reaction of well-meaning liberals to points they find uncomfortable is "oh well they're only saying that because they've been brainwashed to think that way". There may be something in this, sometimes, but I think a truly open-minded starting point is needed that acknowledges the rights of all muslim women to articulate their experience, and not have that experience written off because it doesn't accord with the liberal agenda that has been decided in advance, without them.

Incidentally I don't think polygamy is inherently sexist, and am not against it per se. If it exists it should be equal though (ie a woman should be allowed to marry several men), so it's clearly sexist in the form it takes within Islam.