You have one thing right.
JeffSmith,
JeffSmith988 said:
Some character once said: Guys want to fuck all the girls ONCE while woman want to fuck one guy ALL THE TIME.
Obviously, neither is correct.
JeffSmith988 said:
It's religion that has fucked us up.
You have that right. I would suggest, however, a modest revision of your statement: "Religion has fucked women over, and continues to do so."
A primary purpose of the mainstream religions — in particular, christianity including, most especially, the catholic church and its male hierarchy and also, in particular, fundamentalist christianity and Islam, is to perpetuate patriarchy and maintain male superiority vis-a-vis women throughout society. "Perpetuating patriarchy" includes men passing along their wealth and property to their sons via inheritance. Hence, the sexual faithfulness of every wife to her husband *must* be enforced, wives who are unfaithful *must* be punished, and husbands who allow themselves to be cuckolded by their wives, whether involuntarily or voluntarily, must be scorned. By implication, sex between unmarried men and women is considered a threat to patriarchy — since obviously, women who fuck whomever they like before marriage might continue to do so after marriage. (A patriarchal corollary is that everyone will get married, or should at least aspire to that.) Western religious views of women have evolved somewhat from the days when women were considered, by religious law, to be the property of their husbands (sort of like your television set), but religious fundamentalists are being dragged along with their heels dug in as hard as possible... often kicking and screaming.
Other primary purposes of the mainstream religions include perpetuating and, if possible, increasing the power of the male members of the religious hierarchy with respect to the rest of society — or at a minimum, with respect to their congregations; extorting sufficient resources (money) from their congregations and, if possible, from the broader society to support the male church hierarchy; and enforcing traditional social norms and practices — an enterprise that appeals to those with "conservative personalities" (a large fraction of society).
Conformity with religious "values" is enforced with assertions that those who obey religious leaders will be rewarded after death by eternal bliss in a place called "heaven," where they will associate with someone named "god," while those who don't will be tortured throughout all eternity in a place called "hell" by someone named "satan" (god's employee) — an implausible assertion, at best, that is indeed physically and "spiritually" impossible, but conveniently it cannot be disproved (many think), because no one ever returns from the dead to talk about it. (Fortunately for religious leaders [and the rest of us], dead is dead.)
As an aside, it can be noted that the christian concept of "bad people" (often those who do not conform to religious dictates re. sexual behavior) being tortured after they are dead, throughout all eternity, in a place called "hell," by an employee of the christian god named "satan," far exceeds the concept of beating a dead horse. It would be more like beating billions of dead horses for billions of years. We can conclude the christian god (whoever that is) would not do that because — as an economist might put it — it would not be cost effective. The concept of the christian "heaven" can be similarly dismissed. Ergo, the religious concepts of "heaven" and "hell" are nothing more than medieval (/premedieval) myths used for purposes of intimidation by men who want desperately to retain their power and influence over their followers.
To remain seemingly-relevant and pursue their goals, of course, religious leaders must gradually change their "values" as social norms change, but — as one author noted — in doing so, they tend to lag about a century behind the times. (At least two prominant examples can be cited as evidence that the evolving "values" of major religions lag much farther than one century behind contemporary society.)
JeffSmith988 said:
I once read that in the old days when Rome ruled the world... if you invited a few guys over for the evening, the wife was expected to suck them all off as a gesture of your hospatility. Now that is certainly the right way to start the evening!
Interesting. One doesn't have the impression that practice (if it was real) represented enlightenment of the men of the Roman Empire with respect to women, but do you have a reference for that?
Regards—
Custer
