Of Abortion and Women

Just imagine that those cuffs are made of coat-hangers and fear

 I have recently come to the assertion that one of the key aspects of fundamental Christian behavior (and often all patriarchal religions in general) is an inherent dislike for females; so much so that it has become a cultural facet of Christina life. Women are not to be trusted, or given power, especially over their own bodies. This belief is taken to the extreme in fundamental Islam, but that's another post. Women in Christian societies are not equal citizens, as indicated by their position in that society, and can be easily illustrated in American society. Women still earn only about 82% (granted, it's a significant increase from what it used to be, but only because of legislation) of what men do, and often because they are relegated to low-paying jobs in the service industry. This is well-known and has been discussed for decades, and is getting better. However, there are still several strong indicators for the supposed inferiority of women in our (mostly) Christian American culture.

The big one is the recent spate of legislation concerning the reproductive rights of females. Despite the complete lack of anything in the Bible regarding the immorality of abortion (though apologist do work hard at nit-picking verses to show that God theoretically disproves of abortions), Christians have gone to great lengths to make it as difficult as possible for women to control their pregnancies, even through rape. Some of these laws require invasive (and unnecessary)  procedures before an abortion will even be considered, and even banning before a women might even know she's pregnant. Not only is this a ridiculous and unconstitutional invasion of a woman's vagina rights, it's it's hypocritical and a huge double standard.
The Bible DOES specifically look down on men "wasting their seed" either through pulling-out or masturbation, but when is the last time you heard of a law that bans or restricts either one of those activities in America? Of course there have been things said about masturbation over the years, and a few sickening contraptions aimed to keep the penis at bay, but much of that thinking went away with the Victorian era. Men have been freed to do with their sexual organs as they please, as long as it's with a woman and she (mostly) consents, and no one can say anything as long as no one sees you. My Penis, My Decision.

The Christian capacity for denying women rights is not constricted to Catholicism and Evangelicalism, I see plenty of it right here in Utah, the center of Mormonism and the Mormon population. At BYU, women are constantly shamed, confronted, and turned in to the Honor Code office for dressing inappropriately, i.e. creating the potential for enthralling the male imagination. This is blatant sexual harassment. I have read and heard countless complaints from people who have seen or women who have been treated like scum for filling out a pair of pants a little too well, or wearing a skirt so disturbingly high that it reveals that salacious "dark hollow" at the--back of the knee. I suppose that these things are bound to happen when you put 30,000 sexually repressed students on the same campus, no matter their level of religious commitment. But the problems are much worse than simple sexual harassment. Rape has been a notorious problem near and on the campus, a problem that is often quietly swept under the rug; Honor Code violations are routinely ignored for male athletes unless it is made public, and women are generally treated as second-class citizens within the church structure as a whole. The wearing pants by women in church has caused scandal enough, but if you start talking about women having the priesthood, the rhetoric gets prickly.
The position of women in the LDS religion is somewhere below men and somewhere above eternal brood mare, granted that woman actually gets into A #1 heaven, the only place you can still be married and have eternal life with your husband--and all his other wives, while he can go off and make planets for you to populate with his other wives' children. Sounds like a good deal to me, but I'm male. Being male in the Mormon church means wielding the power and authority of the priesthood, the control of the organization, and eternal polygamy. Being a woman in the church means getting the right to marry a man in the church and have his children. Yippee.

Now, I wouldn't consider myself a women's-rights activist, but I do believe that a lot of lines have been crossed by the Christian philosophy concerning a woman's body. It seems to me that via the Christian world view, a woman's body is not their own, but rather an object or device for creating children to further God's glory, especially if that woman is poor, ethnic, or conservative. It appears that anything regarding sex is int he hands of a group of old white men and a couple bitter old biddies that don't want people to enjoy the freedom of sexuality, it's expression or ramifications. This is utterly wrong in every way I can imagine, and will eventually cause social stagnation or upheaval. Women need to be treated as equal citizens, and I don't care how much these pasty old misogynists don't like it.
 As for my own views on the subject of abortion: I do not advocate taking lightly such a difficult decision; however, it is not my body, therefore not my decision to make. It's that simple to me.