Religion is sexist!

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DD2, 11 has decided religion is sexist. I don't think any of you will disagree, but thoughts please.

@Calin I agree with you about all points except being cleansed after birth. It is in the Bible and Jewish women (well orthodox anyway) do that.

Do you have a link to Catholic teaching about this?

@Juggling That's what I am trying to say about society rather than religion. I htink society is v sexist too but religion gets hit far, far harder gor the same faults. In a way it is good that it stimulates debate abroudn sexism and oppressionof women, but I feel that many fail to realise that if everyone stopped being religious tomorrow, it would all still exist.

What other books?

Churching. I'm aware a similar thing happens in other religions, but that doesn't make it any less sexist, does it?

It is a blessing, according to that link.

The idea of cleansing after birth is sexist and dispicable, yes. Esp the belief that you need to be cleansed for longer after giving birth to a girl, whatever the faith.

But a blessing to pray for their health and strength after giving birth. Why is that sexist? Men can't give birth...

Have I missed the point?

Well I mean we don't just look to the Bible. There's a Quaker phrase "Be open to new light from wherever it comes" and many individual Quakers have their own favourite texts/authors.

I'm a fan of the Rabbi Lionel Blue (of Thought for the Day fame) and the Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chodrun for example.

oh bloody hell i never knew about all this cleansing bollocks and longer after giving birth to a girl. i am horrified. BLOODY HELL that is showing such a strong hatred of women.

Churching sounds like a horrible mixture to me ...

Yes, you'd quite likely want to celebrate, give thanks, and pray for mother and baby's health and well-being.

But mix that in with aspects of needing to be cleansed, having to wait before being accepted back into your community, and of some difference after giving birth to girl or boy and I'm not liking where they're coming from !

That link couches it as a blessing but traditionally it was a cleansing and purification ceremony. The man didn't need to be cleansed and purified after the birth, he was considered clean. The woman however, had to go through the ceremony in order to be considered worthy of communion and her husband was expected not to sit with her in the church until she had been cleansed. A woman being "churched" would have to wear a veil and "dress appropriately" ie covered up. The whole tone of it was that the woman was unclean and needed to be reaccepted into the the church. It's a disgusting ritual that has been silently dropped from most churches. If it was truly a blessing ceremony that had only positive connotations (like baptism) then it would have stayed.

Just to point out the prayers that the priest says (conveniently just mentioned in the first link I posted) refer to the mother being cleansed of sin.

Just found the actual prayer, here it is:

O Lord God Almighty, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by thy word hast created all things, both men endowed with speech and dumb animals, and hast brought all things from nothingness into being, we pray and implore thee: Thou hast saved this thy servant, N., by thy will. Purify her, therefore, from all sin and from every uncleanness, as she now draweth unto thy holy Church; and make her worthy to partake, uncondemned, of thy Holy Mysteries.

A woman is considered "unclean" for 40 days if she has a boy and 80 days if she has a girl. It is just plain sick.

Cailin i hope you dont mind me asking this but did your experience of Catholicism affect you psychologically. It did affect me. Please tell me to piss off if im being too nosy.

So she is punished for giving birth (though im guessing its the sex shes being punished for) punished if its a boy and punished even more if its a girl.
SICK SICK SICK

Hmm - that link on churching - tremendously patriarchal isn't it ! "The Son" has made you fruitful.

Trying to negate the amazing power of women to create new life !

Also I feel trying to make you feel guilty that you had sex to make this baby by talking about the Virgin and her Son. Or is that just me ?

In any case it seems a very strange custom at what should be a time of unbridled celebration by the whole family and community together on the occasion of a baby's birth !

To a certain extent, yes, carer, though not in a big way. I found confession very very scary as a child and thinking back it was a horrible thing for a child to have to go through - going to tell some man my innermost thoughts and failings - just weird. All the children in my class were scared shitless of it, it hung over us for weeks before our first confession. We used to have a headteacher who would ring a bell and tell us we'd all go to hell if we didn't confess and go to mass. Scary shit. Being brought up in a Catholic society really does load you with guilt - it's not just a cliche.

Other than that I feel very angry that my lovely grandmother had to bring up nine children in poverty when simple contraception would have saved her huge hardship. She had nine - yes NINE - c-sections!!! In a normal society the doctor would have strenuously advised her to stop after three would have insisted on medical grounds that she use contraception. But because she was living in a fucked up catholic community she had to keep having child after child until it nearly killed her. She adores all her children now but it's only due to the fact that she happens to be the hardiest woman in all of history that she even survived.

How did you feel it affected you carer?

Cailin, I know this was traditional but in all fairness, I have had five children and was never asked to be churched. I have never once seen or heard of this being done in my lifetime and never heard it mentioned by anyone my age (43) And I live in a village in Ireland. Is it still supposed to be done according to the catholic church.

I am not sure I have been affected by being brought up Catholic. Probably because I ignored most of what I was being taught. I remember sitting in school when I was around 12 and being told sex before marriage was wrong and thinking "but if you love each other why does it matter if you're married or not?" Also my father was put into a junior seminary to make him into a priest but was expelled for being rebellious. My mother went to Mass but was otherwise indifferent. So I was probably never going to be a paragon of piousness.

It affected me badly when my mum blamed me for my affair. she acted more like a mother in law than a mother.
When i moved out at 19 she moved into my bedroom.
Last year she found a receipt for an expensive bracelet in my dads wardrobe.
She expects him to endure no affection and then moans when he looks elsewhere.
She phoned me to rant down the phone about it saying that "my dad seems to like women with super big holes" yes i loved hearing my dad spoken about like that ....NOT. She expected support from me yet in 2003 she didnt show me the same support when i had an affair because my marriage is sexless. She started crying and wailing and waving her hands about saying "what will people think." my dad bless him told her to grow up,at the time.

It sounds like your mother is more the issue than religion. FWIW my mother is a bit like that but I'm not sure it's due to Catholicism. Perhaps it is, who knows?

MIL is like that and very, very Catholic. Unfortunately she's not much of a Christian.

She was brought up in post war Italy and going by what ive experienced it is a mysogynistic looks obsessed country.

A Catholic society can't be anything but misogynistic IMO. Ireland in my grandmother's time was the Catholic version of what we perceive strict muslim societies to be like now. Women had no rights and no say in anything. The local priest was the law and an unmarried mother was the lowest of the low.

I think you should be happy that your daughter has come to this conclusion by herself and so early on in life. She will probably be a more confident person as a result. Good for her.

I think there are certain people, men and women, who use religion to support their own inherent bigotry and misogyny.

This is a bit tangential, but may still be of interest.

I've just started reading 'Religion for Atheists' by Alain de Botton, which has just come out. I've barely scratched the surface but already love it - its basic point is that you may not believe in God but that there are still some beneficial aspects of religion that atheists can scrounge!

Casual misogyny is not one of them :)

Help, I'm not sure I need DD2 being any more confident.

You do all realise the ritual cleansing is still done in some Jewish communities today in the UK? same for menstruation

One of my Mother's best friends is a Catholic priest. He reckons celibacy does have a link to paedophilia - his reasoning is that taking teenage boys, just at the point when they are boiling with hormones, and sticking them in a seminary so they never have the chance to develop normally or express a pretty darn fundamental part of their humanity does something very bad to them. Many manage to survive this, but some (he says) get twisted and all the urges and desires that would normally be expressed in a relationship are frustrated - they can only 'relate' to children as their development is frozen.

I'm not sure this is entirely true, or not entirely true for every child abuser in the church, but it's an interesting idea. He's gay, btw, but didn't turn to the priesthood until he was in his 40s, so feels OK about his sexuality and celibacy as he's had the chance to explore that part of his nature.