Misogyny & The Bible

Women: The very image of motherly love and yes, the very object of lust which generations upon generations of pious, stupid old priests had ceaselessly reminded us. The images of bikini-clad babes sashaying down the beaches in insipid Baywatch episodes, nude, lewd naked women in porn magazines..... in whatever shape or form, the archaic Judaic-inspired monotheisms love to treat women as some kind of a wicked taboo.

In The Beginning..........

Paradise Gone Wrong: Eve Persuades Adam to Eat the Darn Fruit

& no wonder: Right off the bat, in the first few Chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve, the first human creatures ever to be created by Adam's alter-ego, God, the role of the temptress became the indelible curse of women: Tempted by the talking serpent, who was actually the Devil in disguise, Eve persuaded Adam to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. While both were to bear the curse of their disobedience, Eve faired worst:

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." -Genesis 3:16

In essence, God had, in his infinite grace, instigated what seems to be a mass-orgy of sorts: Instead of restricting the error of Adam and Eve well within one single episode of disobedience, he chooses Eve to harbor the first pregnancy on the planet, and thus ensuring that generations of generations of so-called sinners were spawned to carry on the debt of sin. Meanwhile, Eve becomes the archetypal figure of womanhood: The evil temptress who ruined her husband's good fortune in Paradise.

It is on account of such archaic nonsense that Catholics and other religious bigots are so adamant in their opposition against birth control and contraception: Sex, if anything else, is solely meant for reproductive purposes, so that women have no choice but to be punished for the sins of the first Mother, Eve.

The Unclean Woman?

If one is to study the insipidity of the bible, it is hard to miss out the fact that women bear the worst blunt of irrational prejudice: Women, if anything else, are anything but "clean":

¹ The LORD said to Moses, ² "Say to the Israelites: 'A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. ' ³ On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. ⁴ Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. ⁵ If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding.

⁶ " 'When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering. ^[

⁷ He shall offer them before the LORD to make atonement for her, and then she will be ceremonially clean from her flow of blood. These are the regulations for the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl.

⁸ If she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean."

-Leviticus Chapter 12: 1-8

It is quite difficult for us, in this time and age, to fathom how such erroneous, pious stupidity can have any place in our secular setting. Yet, if anything else, such biblical nonsense remind us that we have progressed a hell lot, even from a moralistic point of view, than the authors of such breath-taking stupidity.

As we can glean from Leviticus, the sight of bleeding virginals, be it from menstruation or child birth, is considered a disgusting act, not fit for Gawd's divine, ceremonial functions.

The idea that a woman has to wait for 66 god-damned days after giving birth to a girl, compared to 33 days, gives us an indicator of the lowly, filthy status of women in the minds of religious morons. The idea that women must be "clean" after menstruating or giving birth in order to be considered fit to enter Gawd's opulent churches is nothing short of bigotry; the extraordinary sacrifices of lambs, pigeons and what-nots merely amplifies the sheer ludicrousness of biblical-inspired misogyny.

Death Via Stoning

The hymen: a innocuous membrane in a woman's virginal, which really serves no other function than being a social indicator; a woman with an intact virginal is, categorically speaking, a virgin.

Since the dawn of human civilization, Man seems to harbor a deep fixation with virginity: Screwing a virgin on the wedding night is akin to animals spraying (with urine) on virgin territory. There is a sense of territorial ownership, no matter how bizarre and absurd that sounds, and religious dogmas (clearly, such chauvinistic nonsense can only be the work of sick, depraved men) merely reinforce what is already a male-ego issue: Women must invariably be the equivalent of vestal virgins on their nuptial nights. Failure to be one, it seems, may incur the wrath of religious authorities, as mandated by the good book:

If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl's virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father's house. You must purge the evil from among you.
-Deuteronomy 22:20-21:

Quite unfortunately for women, the hymen is not a indicator of sexual experience. The hymen is a notoriously weak membrane: Women who engage in sports, or have suffered from some physical trauma, are likely to suffer hymen tears that have little or nothing to do with engaging in actual sex.

The Submissive Woman

Now, you would think that the holy babble has something good to say about women.......well, you guessed it wrong.

Mandatory stoning of non-virgins and other stigmas aside, the role of women is unceremoniously spelled out in the bible: They must be submissive to their husbands, or any other male alter-ego in the family:

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.
-1 Corinthians 14:34

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.
-1 Timothy 2:11

Biblical Misogyny and the Everyday Christian

Judging by what is written in the bible, it is quite easy to understand why most Christian households are such oppressive environments for women: Women have no status in a heinously religious environment: Short of become an auto-bot version of a child bearing and child raising android, the average religious housewife has to submit to the every will and whim of a patriarchal husband.

Surely, in this time and age, we cannot depend on the holy babble to teach us what to do with regards to our attitude towards women. After all, stoning non-virgins to death isn't a very pretty sight (or anyone else for the matter, except maybe Falwell?).


"To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom."
-Susan B.Anthony