Manipulating and Controlling Women through Religions and Myths Essay

The world-class c on the whole into question is, who authored most of the unearthly dogma, myths, and other thought systems that we hold back at present? Until now, that is to imagine finishedout all previous history, on that point has been a sharp gender asymmetry in the hierarchy of knowledge, and nowhere is this to a greater extent clearly institutionalized than in pietism (King 73). The written or oral creeds and their meter reading adopt for centuries dictated the societal agencys that custody or wowork force played. Our epics, myths, and com worlddments arose from the creativity or imaginings of decrepit society.The commonality of these expressions usually com piece of musicded fair sexualitys subservience to the male superior its author. in the first place the emergence of women empowerment, it was the fair sexs role to submit herself to the maintain no be what he is and did. If the setting was the home, she has to serve her king-the save. husbandry has dictated terms of what is feminine in bearing and appearance. Early roman letters phantasmal life has man as the paramount if non having the monopoly in a Roman citys affairs.In the spectral life of Rome we find reflected two the authority of the male members of society and the richness of the family as a unit of society. Women argon as invariably non an bustling federal agencyicipant in its activities. Women are to a certain extent excluded from cult activities, non least in the national arena. They do non h obsolete important government agencys of authority. close to whitethorn disagree with this and points to the so-called double-dyed(a) Virgins. Hinnels (Hinnels) points out that with the absence of women from public ghostly life there was one major(ip) exception, though that was a very evidential one.The complete(a) Virgins, the female priests of the cult of Vesta, were half a dozen women recruited as children of six years centenarian and committed to t he preservation of their pureity and the service of the goddess for thirty years. They were cin one caserned with a very all-embracing range of cults and rituals and it is clear that the security and health of the whole community depended on the alimentation of their duties. They had to keep the sacred fire on the ingleside of Vesta burning at all times. In periods of innate danger, the city neartimes turned on them and accused them of unchastity, simply seeking to blame them for the crisis.If found dishonored they were buried alive at the bounce of the city. In some theories, they were originally the girls of the old kings of Rome, so that their relationship to the fire and the hearth echoed the duties of the ordinary household. The theories are more harming than reliable. Important though the Vestals may have been, they were no more than a ace exception to the general exclusion of women from public positions of authority or power in the public life of Rome.Some women in the late Republic and early conglomerate did achieve per countersign-to-person power and influence, unless this did not change the basic rules by which social institutions operated. If you are a Vestal virgin, your lifespan is dependent on the sexual congress period of peace that your city enjoys. other than being fired, terminated, and buried at the narrow of the city is not an attractive prospect. Roman and Greek mythology may have tending(p) women important roles in their godhoods, since we have A accordinglya, Demeter, Juno, and Aprodite, only the important chief position is always to the man- Jupiter or Zeus.For the worlds coeval chief religions Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and the Confucian credos have order that it is the primary duty of women to be biddable and devoted. The natural laws that enforce them are based on the animate religious and cultural smell systems and their derivations. When women are physically disfigured through foot binding an d genital mutilation society, it is in compliance to tradition. How do these disfigurements served any conclusion to the woman or the man? thither have been disagreements as to the reason why footbinding has existed for a long time in China.Patricia Ebrey (Buckley)posits the following Footbinding was an alteration of the body that changed everything near a womans physical being. Because the subjectl upper-class man was by Song times a comparatively subdued and refined figure, he efficiency seem effeminate unless women could be make even more delicate, reticent, and stationary. What better than precise feet to accomplish this? For the footbound Chinese woman, the debilitation intent her to the home and reinforced her role as the husbands sole possession. shadowiness and being subdued is no beg off for this horrendous act.Female genital mutilation has been a tradition of many Afri tidy sum t laugh atal societies. It is a female circumcision done to coordinate a young girl fo r marriage. This is a very unhygienic and accordingly a very dangerous practice. Supposedly, mutilation ensures that the woman do not go astray since that part of her that makes her commit a sin has been removed. This inculcates a immoral feeling to the girls mind and reinforces the stamp that women are morally weaker and therefore indispensable to be put in their position of low esteem. Such are the level head uped prices that woman has to pay for being a woman.Gladly, their being widespread is imprisoned in the past. Religion, myths, and our beliefs systems favor the man and ensure his ascendance over the woman. The erstwhile Taliban political science of Afghanistan is the coeval extreme believer of this. Under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan at the beginning of the ordinal century, for example, punishment for noncompliance with brutally extreme restrictions on womens appearance and behavior included public flogging and execution. Compulsion, however, is not the only or even unavoidably the most potent means for load-bearing(a) women to subscribe to femininity norms.Social rewards and personal satisfaction are also motivators. devotion is its own reward for a woman of any faith who believes she is behaving in accordance with divine will. Depending on how she interprets her faith, a modern-day Muslim woman may then(prenominal)ce signal her femininity and her piety by choosing to wear the veil whether she lives under a theocratic or a worldly political system. Her choice to veil may be reinforced by redundant rewards, such as greater find and personal autonomy accorded to her by her family and the local anaesthetic Muslim community (Hoodfar and Hoodfar).If you are publicly flogged for wearing a knee-length dress, it is not time to fire your dressmaker it is enamour to question if the punishment is commensurate with the offense. If jihadists believed that shelling innocent civilians will ensure them supernal virgins, what will women suic ide bombers get? make a distortion of a religious belief by subordinating women as mens rewards acquits women from mistrust of establishing that belief. The Judeo-Christian belief is not spared from instilling disgraced feeling and low-esteem to women. Consider this passage from song 530 . .. or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to make her sales booth before the LORD and is to apply this constitutional law to her. The operative word her is suspicion. If you are suspected by your husband of having been unfaithful, you will be treated in the resembling manner as those be to be guilty of the same. This could be a Damocles sword hanging over the head of the woman as she is proven once again to be not having the same rights as the man. What do you expect when your hyponym position was ensured during creation when you were drawn from the rib of Adam.Children of Eve have borne their guilt when the first woman caused the man to t ransgress the law of God by eating that forsaken fruit. The woman may blame the snake who had scurried extraneous scarcely she had to stay by her man. This guilty feeling has always been foisted to the woman since nirvana was lost. In the same vein that the Nazis kill the Jews for having caused the crucifixation of the Christ. In the Old Testament, having the same occupation does not ensure the needed pith and respect nothing is more abominable than the story of Lot who offered his two virgin daughters to the unruly crowd who wanted to bugger guests.Ge. 195 They called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we discount have sex with them. Ge. 196 Lot went after-school(prenominal) to meet them and shut the door nates him Ge. 197 and said, No, my friends. Dont do this wicked thing. Ge. 198 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me take aim them out to you, and you can do what you interchangeable with them. But dont do anything to these men, for they have come under the tax shelter of my roof. If biblical characters and the Mosaic Law get over women to men, you cannot expect a different spatial relation from the society where these belief systems are integrated. When Judaic and Muslim men became polygamous, nothing is violate about it, but when otherwise you can surely expect a stoning. In some parts of part of Tibet, polyandry is not frowned up, but Tibet is a very small(a) country whose religious influence is confined within its small borders. Hindu Universe, an internet website explained that in Hinduism the religious root of womens oppression stems from the belief that the son and daughter are not inherently equal.though many sages argued that since both come from the gets body, there is no variance between the two, ritual status of the son is higher. Perhaps this belief that if a mans animation is greater then a son would be produced, but if a womans vitality is greater then a daughter would be produced is also responsible. Men looked upon their sons as mirrors of the father. A son therefore conducts the funeral ceremony of the parents. Though in absence of a son, a daughter can also perform them, it is only in absence of a brother. A daughter is seen as belonging ultimately not to her fathers family, but to her husbands.So the first thing that essential be done is to remove this idea that a son is more judge and that daughters are born to go to some others house. Conclusion There is something ill-timed with the way women were manipulated and matchled in the past plainly in compliance with the written and traditional beliefs. If this was not so, widespread women empowerment at present would not have been possible. The fall in Nations Millennium Declaration pledges explicitly to rubbish all forms of violence against women and to implement the prescript on the Elimination of All Forms of divergence against Women (CEDAW) (Waldorf).And it fu rther recognizes the importance of promoting gender compare and womens empowerment as an effective pathway for combating poverty, hunger and disease and for touch truly sustainable development. Such resoluteness does not ensure that manipulation and control of women will cease in some corners of the world. Yet this global consensus is an indication that therefore misconceptions about gender roles are existing and should therefore be corrected.If this is a irreverence of Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and other religious precepts, why then had this been adopted by many countries who had secure the belief systems based on these religions? why the shift to expanding women roles and even placing them in positions of leaderships in many countries? We can only bring to an end that this is an acceptance of women having been contained for so long. This is a soundless acquiescence that indeed the forefathers and not the foremothers may have treated the children of Eve unjustly. Refe rences Buckley, Patricia.The privileged Quarters Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period. Berkeley University of California, 1993. Hinnels, John R. Ed. A handbook of ancient Religions. New York Cambridge University Press, 2007. Hoodfar, Homa and Homa Hoodfar. More Than costumeVeiling as an Adaptive Strategy. Toronto Womens Press, 203. King, Ursula. Religion and Gender Embedded Patterns, interlacing Frameworks. Oxford Blackwell, 1995. The Ages Digital Library. The Holy Bible. Albany Ages Software, 1996. Waldorf, Lee. highway to Gender Equality. United Nations Fund for Women, n. d.