Why Does Religion and Feminism Have To Be Enemies?

When people find out I am religious they often come up with all sorts of questions about how I can be progressive, feminist, etc. etc. and be religious. Truth is Religion is like anything else, while at its heart it has many messages mostly positive guides for us, it can be perverted to say anything. More to the point it can be changed to reflect the values we as a society have. It’s views on women are a perfect example. In Judaism it is very clear the preeminent place women have in our religion. It is through women that Judaism is passed. In other words according to the religion to be considered a Jew your mother must be Jewish. This is no accident, the Torah – old testament roughly… very roughly – is very explicit on the importance of life. Creating it, preserving it, and making sure we value it. So important is the role of creating life, that we honor women with being the sole means to pass Judaism because of their sacred role in creating life. While it takes men, in the end the true spiritual journey of nurturing and creating that life is Woman’s. The story I told from Parsha Shemot that the ability to name one of the most important figure in Jewish history is not given to Jewish parents but Pharoah’s daughter, the gift for saving Mose’s life. Such is the importance of life. So it is with so much dismay that I read about religious extremists attempts to call feminism anti-Christian. Sad and disgusting. But of course kings were always able to find people to fight against their Democratic right; the South had slaves fighting the North. There are those who are willing to fight to oppress themselves. It is just sad to see in this century. Via Feministing: ...But their post-conference press outreach reveals a more insidious message: If you love God, you have to hate feminism. A group of conservative Christian women is seeking 100,000 signatures on a "True Woman Manifesto" aimed at sparking a counter-revolution to the feminist movement of the 1960s. …The press release intrigued me, so I checked out their website and some of the panels. Perhaps the most telling was one talk, "You've Come a Long Way, Baby!", given by Mary Kassian. The short version: Patriarchy is fabulous, feminism is unnatural. Kassian is particularly fond of romanticizing the imaginary perfect world of Leave it to Beaver, suggesting that life back in the 1950s (before darned feminism came around) actually was like the show. Once married, a woman could normally count on her husband to financially support her and the children... Pornography and rape and homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual addiction, sexually transmitted diseases were uncommon and rarely encountered. …Kassian thinks that today's woman has lost her way, largely by...well, having rights. In the past decade, we've been inundated with the message that when it comes to relationships, women can hook up, be in a casual or long-term relationship, live common-law, get married or not, get married and then get divorced, get pregnant or abort the babies, sleep around, live with a guy or a girl, have sex with a guy or a girl, and participate in a whole assortment of immoral and perverted behavior as long as they are friends. In other words, woman makes her own rules and sets her own standards, and as long as she is nice, it really doesn't matter what she does. Who are you to judge? Um, yeah. Isn't that the point? Now, there's a lot more in this talk and others that I could pick apart, but I just wanted to focus on these points because it seems just wrong to me to suggest that a woman can't value her independence and the rights our foremothers fought for and also love God. Of course rape, incest, pornography, were all very common back then. As was racism, homophobia, many other ills. They were just covered up. Putting them into the light hasn’t created them, it has just identified them as problems so we could deal with them in the light of the day. Religion and Feminism go hand in hand because at the end of the day both call for seeing the humanity in every being because we are all created equally by G-d. At the heart of that message is the feminist lesson; a fight to make that true. RSS