quote:

---

Originally posted by Stargazer:
Religion is dominated by patriarchy. The two cannot be separated. Period.

---

So, here. In humanities and science. Why not?

I think, religion is irrelevant. I think blaming religion is a cop-out. How can something which has about as much substance as astrology, and completely metamorphic meaning based mostly in allegory, really have any real impact at all on anything?

[ 06 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

How can something which has about as much substance as astrology, and completely metamorphic meaning based mostly in allegory, really have any real impact at all on anything?

---

You might want to ask the heads of governments this question. Start with the US, then work your way to Saudi Arabia. Than get back to me when you have the answers.

While you're at it, you might also want to ask gays and lesbians, women who want abortion, proponents of the death penalty, god hates fags freaks and Anne Coulter what religion has to do with anything.

But again, at a young age you can't really interest yourself enough in a religion to examine other significant contributions that women may have made to the religion. But if the relative importance of women, other than as the bearers of children and temptresses, is significantly other than what I was perceiving, than why were my perception so?

Just to add, one of the reasons this point is important to discuss is that it is, after all, what we teach the children.

[ 06 November 2007: Message edited by: sknguy ]

Religion wasn't always male dominated. If you go back in our developement, there was a period where religion was matrifocal (not quite matriarchy, but it was focused on female dieties). Back in the time of the Great Mother, a good section of deity's were female. Though this was 10k - 6k BC.

The discovery of agriculture changed much of this... Previously both male and female provided the nessesities of life (gardening, foraging and hunting... between foraging and horticultural activities like gardening, some societies saw women produce most of the foodstuffs and this is where we see the Great Mother diety), but with the advent of the plow suddenly most food production was in the hands of a male (The 'darwinian' explaination for this is a much higher rate of miscarriage among women that worked the fields and it was in their advantage not to... Not sure if I entirely buy that, but sure. Guess it's important to point out lifespans rarely exceeded 30 years here). Due to the proficeincy of the plow, many men were freed up from farm duties to spread to different fields while females remained in the home with children. This was the first rise of patriarchy (take a look at the early philosophers of this time across many cultures... Lao Tzu, Socrates, Plato, Patanjali, Confucious, Gautama Buddha... All 6th century BC philosophers... All male). Nearly all gods pantheons of the time are heavily male dominated.

This remained (and strengthened with time) until the industrial revolution took hold. With the industrial times, the male traits that were strong in the Agrarian society became much less so as machines (not people) began doing the majoirty of the work. It is this period that we begin to see female minds enter the philisophical world and the flood of feminist writings that follow (Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the rights of Women in 1792 is one of the first and snowballing from there).

Most of today's religion stems from the Agrarian age where we were, perhaps as a step in our soceities evolution, Patriarchal with female and male roles very much segregated. So yes, as to the topic, it is very true that religion today holds strong to patriarchal values.

Just to source myself... Janet Chafetz is where alot of this info comes from. Female Revolt : Women's Movements in World and Historical Perspective (1986) and Gender Equity: An Integrated Theory of Stability and Change (1990).

The Greek Myths by Robert Graves is always a good read.

Way before 'time', we had astrology. Earth and Water were considered female, and Air and Fire were considered male. Time as we know it did not go in a straight line. It went around in circles, much as planets and life cycles do. Even now we say things like "I'll see you at the same time tomorrow". Technically, tomorrow is not the same time as today, but 3:00 is 3:00.

This makes sense, as the earth is where everything comes into life - associated with mother, and humans probably discovered very early that female cycles were closely associated with the moon. Noticing the tides went up and down with the moon definitely puts the moon with Cancer, a water sign.

Other planets were identified as female, such as Venus and Saturn (although Saturn can go back and forth). Male dominated systems will attach Kronos or Father Time to Saturn, but Saturn has also been the Queen.

The male planets were the Sun, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. (Back then we could only see 7 other planets as we had no telescopes)

So ancient forms of worship in a matriarchal society would concentrate on the moon and the earth. One society like this we have good evidence for is the Minoan civilization on the island now known as Crete.

At the beginning 'of time', the moon-worshipers curse the Sun. At the same time male-led marauders came from the East (Aryans it is said) and conquered societies and put them into the male-dominated mode that we know today.

What is significant is that there is very little (no?) writing generated by these matriarchal societies, or it has been almost completely destroyed. Perhaps the male marauders wanted to quickly establish the falsity that they were in charge before the beginning of linear time. Changing history is nothing new to students of it.

It is said that the first writing is the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians and Mayans, both male-dominated societies that also pursued agriculture, war, and human sacrifice, none of which probably appealed the matriarchal societies of yore. Indeed, being matriarchal, they probably wanted to promote life rather than enslave it.

Once someone writes something (a linear process) the idea of linear time would come up. "This was not written today. It was written some time ago." Not much of a leap to "This was written by the Ancients who were inspired by the Planets/God". Hours and days and weeks and months went around in cycles. But now we had to count years, and start time as we know it.

Being possessed of linear operators themselves (excuse the pun) males will want to establish things like writing and linear time. And of course, they will use these things to subjugate plants and animals (agriculture), conquered tribes (slavery and human sacrifice), and women (marriage).

Part of the reason little to no writing from 'matriarchal societies' (quoted as I've yet to find a true matriarchal society... Matrifocal perhaps) is because they existed prior to a written language (writing came through with Agrarian society, which is almost exclusively Patriarchal. All examples you've listed as far of Patriarchal civilizations are Agrarian societies.

quote:

---

Except for slavery and human sacrifice, things have not changed much in 12,000 years.

---

Is that ever a silly statement... Especially considering the time frame of the Greek examples you list don't go back much further than 2000.

I guess as an add-on:

quote:

---

The male planets were the Sun, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. (Back then we could only see 7 other planets as we had no telescopes)

---

The male/female nature of planets (personifying the stars) pre-dates greek culture by quite sometime and their 'male/female' status has nothing to do with Greek lore.

[ 06 November 2007: Message edited by: Noise ]