American Heathen®

(This is a transcript of Al Stefanelli’s “Voice Of Reason” segment on my American Heathen® Internet Radio Show)

There’s been so much talk in the news over the past several months about the Republican Party and their desire to control women. People ask me why I think these men, and the occasional woman, think it’s perfectly fine to spout off these things, as it seems to the reasoned mind to antithetical to common sense.

Well, that’s because it is. It is a religious mindset, and a patriarchal one, at that. It’s not necessarily because most of these politicians are older, or even white. The religious mindset knows no age, gender or race. On any given Sunday, you will hear the same rhetoric being spouted from pulpits all over.

This is because in the bible, women are basically commanded to accept a role of inferiority and to be shameful for the simple fact that they are women.

Misogynist bible verses are so common that if one opens a bible to a random page, the odds are pretty good that you’ll find one close to wherever your finger lands. To add insult to injury, many Christian women will defend these passages with apologetics that were written by misogynist Christian men.

The most common one is that women are equal, but have different roles. This, of course, reeks with the Orwellian “some are more equal than others,” which is a common theme that many of you have read or heard me use many times before.

The book of Ephesians, chapter five, states,

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. . . .”

Yes, there is the second part about men treating their wives as Christ treats the church, but it seems that part is largely ignored. I know plenty of Christian men who use this passage to justify some pretty bad behavior.

In fact, I have been privy to many conversations where Christian men joke about how they order their wives around and treat them like property, refer to the “submission” verse, and have a good ol’ laugh-fest.

Christian men have a long history of treating women as chattel, and up until recently, it was still legal for a man to beat his wife, and those husbands who beat their wives were largely exempt from prosecution.

This behavior is learned, my friends. I can tell you with great certainty that there are Pastors, Preachers and Priests all across the land who continue to advise abused women to stay with their husbands and Christian children are taught misogyny to be perfectly acceptable every week in Sunday schools across the nation.

These children grow into adults who continue to perpetrate this dogma toward their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. This dogma is manifested whenever we hear men talk about what they think a woman should be doing.

And, boy, do they have a fixation on vaginas. These guys have no problem telling women what they can do with their vaginas. When to have sex, who to have sex with, why to have sex, when to have babies, who to have babies with, and what to do with the babies they have, what may be inserted in their vaginas by whom and for what purpose and the contribution women make to their own rapes and sexual assaults

Religious men are only too happy to also dictate what a woman should wear on their bodies and what can happen to them if they wear the wrong clothing. Or how to speak in the presence of a man.

The fact is that the way that the religious right treats women is horrible and they should be ashamed of themselves. But they aren’t, because they are immoral and unethical. They are cold, uncaring and delusional people who have no concept of anything even remotely connected to compassion.

Christopher Hitches said that religion poisons everything. I wish he were wrong. I really do. But all one needs to do is click on a news site, turn on the television or sometimes just look out the window to realize just how true those words are.

This entry was posted on October 28, 2012 at 11:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.