Conservative Religion: Denigrating Women

One of the most problematic features of conservative and fundamentalist religion is the degree to which it focuses on denigrating women and arguing against women's equality. This isn't because there is something less then "genuine" about these forms of religion — on the contrary, the inequality and subservient status of women is an unambiguous feature of traditional, orthodox religious systems. That's hardly surprising, given how it has been integral to all cultures. We should be surprised if traditional religion didn't try to preserve female inequality.

As it is, though, defenders of traditional religion are arguing against very strong trends towards equality and liberation for women all over the world. Believers seem to recognize this and I think that motivates their attempts to deny that they are seeking to denigrate women. They try to mask their position by insisting that they only want women to return to their "different" social status — a status that is not subservient or unequal, just "different" because that's what God and/or nature require. It's not a coincidence that "different but equal" is basically what racists argued for when defending racial segregation.

Denis Prager writes:

For most women – of course, not all – careers are not nearly as fulfilling as are a good marriage and family. ...Unless one believes that women and men are the same and therefore the same things bring them happiness, the feminist emphasis on career has been an obstacle to many women's happiness. As a rule, women derive most of their happiness from relationships, not from work. Men need both to be happy far more than women do.

Men's very identity is predicated on their answer to the question, "What do you do?" Whether fair or not – to either sex – virtually no woman's identity is dependent on what she does for a living. That is why, while both sexes suffer financially from the loss of a job, when men lose their jobs, they often also lose their self-worth as a man. The greater importance of work to men is also manifested in their willingness to work many more hours than women.

Source: World Net Daily

Denis Prager utilizes a popular straw man here: if you believe men and women are the same then maybe you can believe X (both are made happy by the same things, both have the same capabilities, etc.), but men and women are obviously different, so of course not-X (different things make them happy, they have different capabilities, etc.). There is no serious or rational argument here. Of course men and women are different; the question is, do those difference entail the sorts of conclusions which misogynists like Prager want to defend?

Consider this: "Unless one believes that blacks and whites are the same and therefore the same things bring them happiness, the African-American emphasis on going to college and getting white-collar jobs has been an obstacle to many African-Americans' happiness." Is that not obviously racist? Of course there are differences between black and white people, but this does not entail that black people would be happier with menial labor while all the more respected professional jobs are reserved for whites.

No less bigoted and offensive is the idea that the differences between men and women means that women should expect to be happiest staying home and cleaning up after men while the men are allowed to have lives and careers outside the home where they can earn more money, respect, and of course power.

That's what it is all about, isn't it? Power: the ability to have significant autonomy and control one's life. Men have always had it to a greater degree than women; feminism has sought to reverse this disparity and misogynists like Denis Prager are fighting against it.

To make things even worse for many women, not only are most women not finding their careers nearly as fulfilling as they had been led to expect, they rarely find the demands of home life lessened much. Now, many women experience double the pressure – having to succeed in jobs outside of the home and, as much as ever, inside the home.

The feminist promise that everything in their marriage will be 50-50 – each partner will do half the outside work, half the housework, and half the child rearing – has rarely panned out. Most men will work their tails off outside the home, but won't inside the home. Consequently, many working women either experience increased tension with their husband or increased pressure to succeed both outside the home and inside the home as mother, homemaker and wife.

It's true that many women experience a lot of pressure and Denis Prager's article starts out by citing a study that shows that women tend to be less happy than men. Prager's conclusion is that the reason for women being less happy is that they are seeking to find fulfilling careers outside the home rather than just staying home and keeping house. Then, he cites the above problem that caring for the home is not a job which men are shouldering equally.

Why didn't Prager consider the obvious conclusion that maybe women would be less unhappy if men took more responsibility for the home? Because men are the actors and women have to be subjects. Men can't be expected to accommodate themselves to the needs of women in their lives; instead, women must accommodate themselves by giving up any desire to develop a fulfilling career or acquire autonomous power over their own futures.

Misogyny isn't simply a matter of thinking that women are inferior, it's a hatred of women and women's equality — and in this case, the label seems quite appropriate. I don't think that there can be any clearer demonstration of hatred of women than saying that if women experience stress trying to have both a career and do all the house work, then problem is because women can't be happy having a career and must give that up in favor of cleaning the toilets and scrubbing the floors at home.

There are no secular arguments on behalf of such hatred of women. Of course, like so many Denis Prager doesn't try to offer any arguments — he just treats it as self-evident that women are inferior and undeserving of equality. Sometimes, though, it's made clearer that not only is the inferiority of women demanded by traditional women, but in fact attempting to liberate women from the shackles of traditional and religious misogyny is one of the "sins" of modern secularism. Consider the following from Vox Day:

As I have demonstrated in "The Irrational Atheist," religion is not a threat to any aspect of science: It does not threaten the knowledge base, it does not threaten the method and it does not threaten the profession. It never has.

But this is not to say there is not a genuine threat to all three aspects of science today. Unsurprisingly, it comes from the same force that is the primary threat to the survival of Western civilization: female equalitarianism. Flush with their success in decimating the collegiate sports programs of America, the equalitarians have now set their sights on applying the infamous Title IX quotas to science education, despite the fact that women already earn 57 percent of bachelor's degrees, 59 percent of master's degrees and a majority of doctorates. If successful in this effort, and initial signs indicate that they probably will be, in 30 years, academic science in America will be no more intellectually respectable or relevant than womyn's studies are today.

Because they are the intellectual driving force of humanity, men will be fine. ...It is written that "women ruin everything"; having destroyed the liberal arts, the classics and the pseudo-sciences, it is now abundantly clear that the more rigorous sciences are next on the equalitarians' destructive agenda.

Source: World Net Daily

Even if one agrees that women are equal and are underrepresented in the sciences, it's at least theoretically possible to argue that a proposed cure will not only fail to fix the problem, but might in fact cause more problems. It's plausible that setting quotas of any sort in the sciences, where merit and achievement have always been key, could harm science itself.

I'm not going to explore that argument, though, because that isn't Vox Day's position — his position is that the mere presence of more women in the science, however it is achieved, is what will damage science. Once again, we're not looking at anything less than a religiously-motivated hatred of women: the female human being is so awful that her presence in science ultimately harms sciences, and if there are to many females then science itself will be destroyed. Only men are good and worthy enough to have scientists.

A similar argument could easily have been offered by a white racist a few decades ago. If offered today, the bigotry of such a position would be unambiguous. I doubt that even World Net Daily would publish it, but they have no problem publishing the same bigotry against women. Why? Faith-based racism is no longer as acceptable as it once was; faith-based misogyny continues to be treated as proper.