26 Sins and Inhumanities Against Women
What Women Suffer in a Male Dominated Society
By Karen Tate
According to sociologists and psychologists, women enjoy a higher status in society and suffer fewer abuses when a feminine face of god or Goddess is the norm within their culture.
Recently I engaged a woman in conversation who said she didn’t care about patriarchy or women’s rights. Talking about it, she felt, was man-bashing and didn’t feel loving, besides, she explained, she was lucky enough to be born into an upper-middle class family and didn’t feel these issues were her issues. She had everything she needed. She got everything she wanted in life. In what felt like cognitive disconnect to me, she said she instead wanted to focus on love. Huh?
She is one of the lucky ones, even if she came off self absorbed and tone-deaf to the suffering of others and to the human rights issues being violated under the mantle of a male-dominated society. HOWEVER, I do think it important to stress, while A) we need to be aware and recognize the list below and B) we need to work against the forces that create this short list of suffering, inequality and oppression, we also have to C) spend time imagining and focusing on what we want instead, D) how we’re going to replace the institutions that create these problems and E) not be in fear of the forces that create these injustices. Those are five important steps.
For this newsletter (reposted sign up for newsletter here) we’ll address A, B & C…
Addressing A) How many challenges of sexism and misogyny do we turn a blind eye to, are unaware of or accept as normal?
1. Domestic violence and sexual abuse
2. Female genital mutilation (FGM) practices to insure girls are marriage material
3. Seventy percent of women retire in poverty after making less money and sometimes having to quit work to care for family
4. Due to the expectation we submit and obey male authority, women’s leadership is thwarted. While being the majority, there is less than 20% representation by women in Congress, Corporate America, Religious Institutions and Academia.
5. Women and children are at the margins of societies the world over suffering from the worst health care, education and human rights. Too few countries, including the U.S. have strong social safety nets.
6. White women are paid only 82 cents on the dollar, compared to men, and less if they are Hispanic or Black.
7. Bride burning and arranged marriages still exist.
8. Women may be shunned from families or seen to bring shame to their family if they have been raped or believed to have committed adultery. Tragic consequences for them can include being stoned to death.
9. Distorted view of women and sexuality resulting in obsessive and unhealthy pornography industry as well as radical men, called incels, who are involuntarily celibate and resent women’s rejection of their sexual advances.
10. Women are being duped by “New Feminism” that encourages submissiveness and dependence, rather than hard fought and won rights that liberate women.
11. Human trafficking, aka slavery and forced prostitution
12. Women are taught within religious institutions that grounds for divorce might be abandonment or adultery but not abuse.
13. Boy children are valued while female babies are still killed at birth in poor countries because they may cost the family an expensive marriage dowry later in life.
14. Sexuality is dirty and unclean and by association, so too are women, menstruation and female reproduction. Not associating sex with sacredness and instead associating sex with shame.
15. Women are still in danger of losing access to contraceptives and are quickly losing access to abortion and possibly even IVF practices. In some places travel for healthcare outside their home state is being criminalized.
16. A distorted view of beauty has millions of women with eating disorders and flocking to cosmetic surgeons rather than growing up knowing they are enough.
17. Women and attributes equated with the feminine consciousness, such as intuition, caring, sharing, generosity, justice, and equality, are seen as inferior to men with far reaching consequences for both genders.
18. Rape and sexual torture is used as a weapon of war.
19. Programming/conditioning of women to help perpetuate this list of sins rather than encouraging self-empowerment and a climate where women support women, equality and choices.
20. Republicans continue to refuse to pass pro-women legislation, including the Violence Against Women Act and Equal Pay for Equal Work legislation.
21. Women’s Inhumanity to Women* as patriarchy grooms women to internalize patriarchy and misogyny and distrust and compete with each other.
22. The belief that losing one’s virginity before marriage is a sin and/or leaves females as “damaged goods” with less marriage potential or a ruined reputation.
23. The idea wives are obligated to perform sex with their husbands, resulting in nonconsensual sex aka rape and unsatisfactory sexual relations throughout their marriage.
24. The belief that procreation is the reason for sexual activity, relegating pleasure to women and men as secondary or unnecessary.
25. Women in Islamic countries being forced to wear the hijab or burka.
26. As we have forgotten the value in the belief of the interconnectedness of all things, so too have we diminished the role of women as life-givers in the natural order of the universe.
And sadly the list goes on…
