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Take any religion, no matter what the tenets, women have always suffered. If religions are often at loggerheads about so many things, why do they all agree on controlling women?
Yes, despite all that, “yatra naryasto pujyante, ramante tatra devtah” or “our god gives women full rights to a fulfilling life, (of course, in accordance with his rule)” or other such variations – fact is, all religions have treated women badly. Some less, some more. Sometimes violently vicious, exploitative and sometimes through shame, honour and propriety.
Fact also is that religions have controlled men too – but the extent to which men have had the leeway to choose and also, get away is way higher than allowed/practiced in most religions.
Why so?
World religions originated in vastly different eras in far off continents across the world. Some spread through sword, some through sugar and some didn’t bother. They can’t agree if god is one or several, if god is a man (woman) or energy or a whisper in my ear. They can’t agree if the god resides in every stone or a specific stone or a wooden statuette. They can’t agree if I can marry once, four times or never at all. Heck, they can’t even agree if I can eat germs, cows or pigs or only curd rice. But, they all agree on one thing.
Women need to be controlled. That set, obviously they have to make examples of women that break ranks – how else will the control work?
Question is, why the religions that originated over thousands of year gaps across thousands of miles in different places, cultures, peoples, conditions with so much diversity in everything else converge on one thing – their treatment of women.
A wise man I know has an interesting perspective. It starts with a simple question.
Which religion would survive? The one that keeps having followers.
So, what would religions do? Try to increase the number of followers. Exactly like market share businesses.
And how to have more followers? Two ways: a) Conversion, and b) Reproduction. Conversion works for the ‘others’ – coerce, induce, indoctrinate. Reproduction works from the inside – and where does reproduction happen? You guessed it. Women’s bodies.
If the followers are products of religions, women’s bodies are the machines producing them. Obviously, you would want the machines to be under your control. (All those ‘machines grow brains then kill humans’ movies in Hollywood just show how much we fear machines getting independent). No wonder religions, clerics, men and everyone with power did their best to control ‘machines’.
And hence, the wise man says, all religions despite bitter, even violent disagreements on matters like the right length of the pajamas agree on one thing – women’s bodies need to be controlled.
Patriarchy directly follows from that, and with that, all else.
A version of this was first published here.
Image source: Flickr
IIMA. IIT KGP | Founder www.BodhiSutra.com | Author | Debut novel, The Jeera Packer | Bullethead | Bollywood junkie | Blogs at: http://www.yadavprashant.com | 2nd Dan Black Belt in Shito Ryu Karate | Beats bad guys for breakfast. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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