The five million
Women in the southern Indian state of Kerala have formed a 620km (385-mile) human chain “in support of gender equality”, amid a row over access to a prominent Hindu temple.
The Sabarimala shrine was historically closed to women of “menstruating age” – defined as between 10 and 50.
Because they’re dirty? Because they can be impregnated? Both? Is there any difference?
It’s interesting, isn’t it, as an aspect of human nature, that the thing most humans probably value above all others, to wit the ability to keep the species going, the tribe going, the village going, the family going…is also the thing that is seen as dirty, disgusting, contaminating. Women are magical because they can make new people in their abdomens, but women are a taint because they can make new people in their abdomens. It’s a sacred thing women do, and it’s also a filthy polluted treacherous thing women do. Let’s be on the safe side and keep them out of everything.
India’s top court overturned the ban in September, but protesters have since attacked female visitors.
The “women’s wall” was organised by the state’s left-wing coalition government.
Officials told BBC Hindi’s Imran Qureshi that around five million women from various parts of Kerala had gathered across all national highways to form the chain, which stretched from the northern tip of Kasaragod to the southern end in Thiruvanthapuram.
Five million.
Five million.
That is some kind of organizing.
The Supreme Court decision to let women worship at the Sabarimala shrine came after a petition argued that the custom banning them violated gender equality.
But India’s ruling party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has argued that the ruling is an attack on Hindu values.
That’s another interesting thing about humans: the fact that the more fanatically a religion is held the more determinedly misogynist and oppressive to women it is. There is no fundamentalism that treats women as equals.
Hinduism regards menstruating women as unclean and bars them from participating in religious rituals – but most temples allow women to enter as long as they are not menstruating, rather than banning women in a broad age group from entering at all.
As if that’s an improvement. That menstruation that is considered unclean? It’s how we all got here. Every last damn one of us. It was our breakfast lunch and dinner while we gestated; without it we would have shriveled and died and been expelled. It should be worshipped, but god-botherers decide it’s ewwwwww yucky. “God” is a bratty little boy.
That’s incredible.
It is interesting. It’s also strong evidence against transgender ideology.
Women are feared and controlled because of their, our, bodies. Not our “gender”–gender signifiers are secondary, and variable, and often serve as markers of subordination and methods of control.
No doubt there is truth in some of the evo-psych explanations for the tendency of male humans to dominate and control female humans. By controlling our fertility, males increase their own reproductive fitness, yada yada–subjectively I bet there’s a dollop of envy at play.
I suspect that transgenderism has caught on as it has among lefty bros because it allows them to deny their fear of women and soothe their envy. Now that they can no longer openly oppose our reproductive freedom or call us inherently inferior, what’s left? Well, denial! They can jump on the bandwagon with the megaphone shouting “Sex isn’t a big deal, after all, see!? Men can be women if they believe they are! And any bitch who disagrees can go die in a fire, like her witchy fore
mothersgestators.”Random thoughts on this (some of these repeats of what I’ve read hear).
“Sisterhood is powerful” – OMG, what an example of that – 5 million strong in protest!
This is a protest about religion practice, so I’d assume that most of these women are religious. This reminds me of out often atheists wring their hands and shake their heads about how do they get these (stupid?) women to leave their churches. In my opinion, women stay in churches because of a kind of sisterhood that can be created there because of the social framework many religions provide.
I think the rabid misogyny of fundamental religious might be explained by the backlash effect.
If you’re not born into a sisterhood, it’s very difficult to join or create one.
We’re living through a massive social backlash against women and minorities. The batshitcraziness of some of the ‘left’ isn’t helping the defense of social progress, although I believe a lot of that is manufactured.
Evo-psych only goes so far. We’ll never know for sure how we got to where we are, and does that matter really, except for trying to plot how to get out of it?
As long as women are treated worse outside religion than they are within it, they will not leave religion.