Should feminists complain about other religion's sexist practices?

[orangeisthenewgreen]

My oh so favourite publication the DM is congratulating itself on a "special investigation" into the way that muslim men living in the UK are allegedly marrying several wives as a way to rake in benefits.

polygamy

I was gobsmacked to find the following highly rated comment:

"So what are the feminists saying? They never seem to condemn this disgusting religion or culture where disgusting men use, abuse and cast aside naive and poorly educated women in pursuance of their own selfish gratification - and then expect the taxpayer - for example me, to pick up the bill for feeding and housing all those extra mouths. The politicians (all parties) are useless and the feminists don't tackle the real abuse of women that is happening under their noses."

I mean seriously, not even a DM reader can fail to spot the irony in that? We complain and we're told to shut up. We don't complain and we're told that we're not doing enough! It's just mind-blowing....

Anyway, moaning aside, I was wondering what people thought? Do you feel that we should tread with extra sensitivity to other religion's practices that are sexist (in this instance polygamy) because we couldn't possibly hope to properly understand all the issues at hand?

Or should we put anti-sexism first denounce them regardless of religion?

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

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!).

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 ...

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.

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

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.

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

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