The first time they did it no-one noticed: we're fighting the second now.

[Treaclewell]

The other day my friend went off to church to a service led by a male bishop. Grounded in my Free Church childhood, when ministers wore dark suits and dogcollars, I laughed and said "Men in frocks". And then did a double take.
I've been reading about the early church, when they didn't have vestments. And they did have women ordained as deacons, though not priests.
It struck me that the two changes, the elimination of women from holy orders and the dressing of priests in gorgeous apparel seem to have happened at about the same time.
The dissing of women even extends to reducing the person Jesus chose to tell of his resurrection to the status of a prostitute.
I used to think that with Constantine's adoption of Christianity came an influx of priests from paganism, but suppose it was a deliberate plan to eliminate women? And the rise of the idiot Tras is a response to some church changes leading to women getting back where they belong.
Nah, ridiculous.
But see what version of the Easter story the man in a frock reads out tomorrow.

This is quite far fetched.

Maybe tangential, but vestments are just "Sunday best" Roman clothes, a bit stylized and fancified over time. It's not something the church deliberately adopted -- more than the church stayed frozen in time while the rest of the world moved on (a familiar story).

I think you're projecting a bit too much on this one.

i think the ‘men in frocks’ like ess to current trans issues is pushing it a bit but surely it’s not a sudden shock to you that Christianity (and pretty much every other major religion) is used to keep women in their place and empower men.

There was a bit in 'Fleabag' where the Hot Priest tells the main character that he might have become a priest because he loved the clothes.

Fiction, I know.

Christianity was the Roman Catholic Church, it was created from the embers of the fallen Roman Empire and in ancient Rome women they had no voice in civic affairs, they had no rights, they were the chattels of the men. It's not surprising that Christianity placed as little value and as many restrictions on women as the culture that created Christianity did.
Originally priest were allowed to get married and have children but then the church hierarchy notice how much money and property were going out of the church to the dependents of the priest, so they put a stop to it by stating that priest couldn't have earthly marriages because they were married to the church (or some such nonsense).
It was all to keep their hands on the wealth, I don't think it was anything to do with 'men in frocks' because 'frocks' were quite normal attire for men for century's.

This. AFAIK the only "religion" that celebrates women is paganism. I think there are people on MN who know a lot more about this than me though.

Christianity is a bit more complex than that. Paul, who said some things that many women find fault with, was also quite counter-cultural by saying "in Christ there is neither male nor female". And Jesus is recorded as interacting respectfully with women. I think there is a case for arguing that feminism has some roots in Christianity, despite the clear misogyny of some well known theologians of the last two millennia.

The early church wasn't Roman, it was Jewish, with different culture with regards to women than the Greek or Roman cultures.
The difficult supposed Pauline misogynist writings are probably not Paul. It is odd how given a choice between positive texts - Paul's praise for named women apostles - and the submissive silent commands in the Timothy books, the scriptures go for the negative stuff. It's the same in Genesis. You've got God making male and female together in his own image, but how often do you hear that instead of the folktale rib stuff.
Every now and then I get a reaction about vestments. All that glitz, and some of it is marvellous craftswomanship, should be to the glory of God, not man. It is a means of separating the priest from the people. Not a good thing.
And I do think it is interesting that the Romanisation of the church had these two effects, together. It might not have been deliberate but it has led to a diminution of women as human. We don't have to be celebrated, but recognised as equally in the likeness of God, and the frocks haven't helped.
A tour guide in Greece was scathing about the Orthodox priests and their relationship with the women in their flocks. No frocks, no cellbacy, but the waiting on him and his needs, lacey surplice making and laundering. The worst was the case of one of the monasteries at Meteora where a shortage of novices had led to one of them being turned over to nuns, which the monks regarded as a fouling of its original dedication. She was religious, the guide, but had obviously had a bad experience with priests. She was also scathing about Hera, so hadn't fled to paganism.

Very pleased to report that yesterday we had a woman in a dog collar explaining that claims that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute were unlikely to be true and that the reason it was the women who went to the tomb was because in that society women didn’t count and so women could occasionally get away with more than the men. I always like it when voices from the pulpit try to challenge the church’s misogyny.