Big Question.
At times, I write about the bad old days. The days when women and children were treated like chattel and given no voices, no land, no vote. Beaten.Abused. Told what to wear, how to behave. Deprived of education and rights. All encouraged by the various religious despots pounding their important books, dictating laws offering forgiveness for transgressions - at a price of course.
And I bring up the hundreds of years of oppression and paedophilia, castrations and genital mutilations - and to bring it closer to home my mother's symphysiotomy - and the answer always comes back:
"Well, those were the old days, they didn't know better, we are more enlightened now," or some variant on this.
And I am flabbergasted.
So in the "good old days" these clerics and their male acolytes didn't know that when they raped and abused women and children that it was wrong? That when they burned witches and sent women to work free in laundries for life that it was truly evil? Women's suffering wasn't quite human, was that it? That banishing the bad seeds of unwanted pregnancies (unwanted by the male impregnators/rapists who remained anonymous, of course)to the dungeons of an orphanage was the RIGHT thing to do?
And tell me again how the ICH* approved of and condoned these horrific acts? After all he wrote The Good Book? Oh, only for men? Slaves and women and eunuchs are like animals and should be treated as such?
I don't think I'd care to be saved by such a misogynistic pedarest - however many times his stripes change according to the times and his interpreters, thanks. Why couldn't he do it right and respectful to begin with?
*Invisible Cosmic Housekeeper
"...when women and children were treated like chattel and given no voices, no land, no vote. Beaten. Abused. Told what to wear, how to behave. Deprived of education and rights."
ReplyDeleteMuslim/Islam, right?
Or
Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
I held my tongue as she told me, son
Fear is the heart of love, so I never went back
-Moe
It's almost unbelievable, isn't it -- the shit that went on -- and is still going on. I have led a blessed life; to me, this history is only stories, this present reality is only stories. I can hardly stand to know these things occur on this planet to people just like me. It's impossible not to be angry and sad about it, and feel helpless in the face of it.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather was a pastor who beat his wife and children and was mean as a junkyard dog. And I've known several who made him look like the soul of kindness. As far as I've been able to tell religion is the best way ever devised of keeping the poor from killing the rich, robbing the populace poor and rich, and shielding sexual perverts and sadists from justice.
ReplyDeleteOh, wow. This is such a great rant.
ReplyDelete(I grew up Catholic ....)
In India, it is not the religious establishment that is responsible as much as the patriarchal society. The more one reads about these stories, thanks to the very active media, the more one asks the same questions that you ask of ICH.
ReplyDelete