Feminism at the Saudi Conference
Okay this is a joke.
Clerics need to “restore the dignity of women,” Juan Jose Tamayo, director of theology at Madrid’s Juan Carlos III university, told a roundtable on Thursday, July 17…”Women have been forgotten and marginalized in religions,” Tamayo said as reported by the AFP news agency. “They are organized hierarchically and patriarchically, excluding women in all fields of knowledge and religious matters.”
Yes indeed – and Juan José Tamayo is urging the Vatican to reverse its position on women in the church and allow them to become priests and bishops and popes, is he? He’s urging Muslim clerics to do the same? I don’t know, maybe he is, but since this conference was organized by the World Muslim League, it seems unlikely.
Ahmad Ibn Saifuddin, a Saudi professor of theology, agreed that women’s role had been misunderstood and that it was time to re-examine the issue. “Eve was born from Adam, so women and men are the same,” he said.
Um…no. Eve was born from Adam, so women are inferior to men – that’s how that goes. Jeez, you’d think a Saudi professor of theology would know that. Don’t the Saudis teach their professors of theology anything any more?
As OB said, “Eve was born from Adam” has been used for thousands of years to justify the subornation of women.
And every man ever since has been born from a woman, but we don’t hear much about that, do we?
Yeah, that was the one thing that struck me: “Eve was born from Adam”
Sigh.
Yes, it’s a joke. The truth of the matter is, what restoring the dignity of women means in that context is: (i) putting them back into modest clothing, preferably showing no skin at all; (ii) making sure that women are accompanied everywhere they go by men who are related appropriately to them, so that other men cannot abuse them; (iii) treat them with respect in those contexts, and abusing them (appropriately) in others.
There is one problem though. Even when women are covered from head to toe with black or even white cloth, men know what’s under there, and can think lewd thoughts. Perhaps religions could treat women like real people, not just as possible sexual objects, and then, perhaps, respect for women’s dignity would just happen, all on its own. It’s surprising what a different conceptual frame can do.
Y’know, I like feeling dignified, and I feel most dignified when I a) vote; b) sort out my financial affairs; c) open the door to my own flat; d) call up one my male friends and suggest a drink or cycle. All which things the patriarchy tried to prevent my kind doing in the past, the clerical patriarchy being the worst offenders.