WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

Writing Women into Submission

Religious dogma, internalized oppression, and the abuse of women

Not heard, unseen, and disappeared (photo composed by author)

Whether inspired by a deity or the minds of men, the words, and the ideas those words conveyed resulting in the oppression of women, were memorialized in writing by men. All that would be required to make those words a guiding force in society was gaining subscribers who accepted them as true. Such subscribers would eventually come to be known as believers.

Once the number of believers grew to a significant size their beliefs would become known to all of humanity as a religion. Then, in a ridiculously short time on an astronomical scale, that religion was able to metastasize into various other forms of itself.

During this metastasizing process, some of the words and ideas from the originating parent religion would mutate into completely different words and ideas, while others would remain unchanged. Unfortunately, those words and ideas resulting in the oppression of women have remained resistant to change.

The first words either inspired by a deity or the minds of men (your choice) which could be used to justify the oppression of women can be found in the first book of the Jewish and Christian religions at Genesis chapter 2, verses 20–22, possibly written between 3,323 -3,523 years ago,

… but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. — The Oxford Annotated Bible (1962), Oxford University Press, Inc.

And from the Islamic religion at al-A‘raf 7, Ayat 189 (7:189 Quran), possibly written 1392 years ago,

It is He [Allah] who has created you from a single person [Adam] and He has created from him his wife [Hawwa (Eve)], in order that he might enjoy the pleasure of living with her. — Surah Al-A’raf Ayat 189 (7:189 Quran) With Tafsir — My Islam

Do these verses put women in a position of subservience (less than or underneath) to men and if so, were they written for that purpose? The answer is self-evident — of course they were. In the Judeo-Christian tradition women were created to be the “helpers” of men. In the Islamic tradition women were created for the “pleasure” of men. Beyond this, in both traditions the order of creation places women as second (an afterthought) in the process.

From these verses ensued the proliferation of religious dogma further defining women’s purpose and expected behavior in society as conceived and written by men — in some instances, translating the dogma into its cruelest and most perverse interpretation. Consider, for example, the following heartbreaking example:

Throughout this month, the Taliban have been apprehending Hazara girls and women in Western Kabul, Bamiyan, and Daikundi, citing non-compliance with the group’s strict code of hijab for women. The scale of this month-long campaign is extensive, and the number of women arrested and disappeared remains unknown. The Taliban, primarily a Pashtun ethno-religious group, exhibit behavior fueled by an extreme interpretation of religious texts and ethnic animosity towards the Hazaras, who predominantly follow the Shiite sect of Islam. — How to Act in the Face of Taliban Oppression: Choosing Silence, Complicity, or Resistance, Rustam Seerat, Jan 27, 2024, Published in Fourth Wave

In the United States, women’s right to have self-determination guide their choices over something as personal as their decision whether or not to have children is similarly threatened. With the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, an action conceived by men based solely on religious dogma, the following conditions now pertain:

• Women in states with restrictive laws face challenges accessing safe and legal abortion services.
• Poor women and teenagers are once again confronting the harsh choice between unsafe abortions or unwanted pregnancies.
• States are trying to pass laws restricting access to certain types of contraceptives.
• The uncertainty, emotional distress, and stigma associated with restricted abortion access negatively impact women’s sense of well-being and self-determination.
• Women have been jailed for having a miscarriage, despite the fact that miscarriage is the outcome of most pregnancies.

One question remaining to be answered is why has the religious dogma resulting in the abuse of women gone unaddressed century after century? I assert there are two answers to this question.

1. Fear of the oppressors can drive the oppressed into silence.
2. The oppression of women can become internalized.

While the first answer should be easily understandable, I believe the second answer requires clarification.

When the rules and standards of a society have been long accepted and therefore considered established, they are highly resistant to change. Even when such rules are grossly unfair to large segments of a society, challenging those rules can be problematic. For example, one method of limiting resistance is via casting those who would voice their displeasure or disagreement with the rules oppressing them as the creators of their own unhappiness. After all, if most of society accepts oppressive rules as legitimate, the problem must exist within those protesting against them.

This societal attitude has been expressed as “blaming the victim” first coined by psychologist William Ryan in his book of the same name, Blaming the Victim (1971), Pantheon Books. Nevertheless, when oppressive rules and standards are long standing and entrenched within a society, the reasons for their existence may become ambiguous to those oppressed by them and internalized as a problem within themselves. This phenomenon has been described as follows:

…internalized oppression may be conceptualized as a set of self-defeating cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors that were developed as one consistently experiences an oppressive environment. Further, internalized oppression may be conceptualized as a distorted view of oneself and of others that is a consequence of how one experiences his or her environment.
— What Is Internalized Oppression, and So What?, E. J. R. David and Annie O. Derthick, in Internalized Oppression the Psychology of Marginalized Groups (2013)

Finally, the oppression of women must be defeated by all women, since all women are the victims of oppression, and defeating oppression will require speaking truth to power despite the dangers involved (see Seerat ³). Defeating the oppression of women will also require men to abandon those words and ideas, no matter how long established, whose only purpose has been to subjugate into subservience the women they claim to love.

For more stories about the oppression of women, follow Fourth Wave. Have you got a story or poem that focuses on women or other disempowered groups? Submit to the Wave!