why are certain religions so sexually repressive, & oppressive?

we all know the horror stories of crimes against women in certain middle eastern nations. long traditions, in all nations and cultures, making women wear coverings, making women slaves and livestock, enforcing male dominance through archaic verse, denying sex to men and women, (in many sects), inferring that jesus arrived though no sex occurred, abstinence, enforced female circumcision, male circumcision, etc.

why do respectable southern baptists molest children, why do men kill their daughters for being sinners, why are women made to be subservient to men, why should sexuality be so taboo? what are the supposed lessons of adam and eve? what's so horrible about homosexuality? what is the supposed lesson of sodom and gomorrah?

george bush has murdered over 100,000 innocent people who did not attack us, and his seemingly christian supporters accept it, yet when bill clinton had an affair, sex was the focus of their outrage.
and the g.o.p. used sex as a political weapon against bill.

(yet they refuse to discuss jeff gannon the hypocrites)

why are so many religions so hung up on sexuality all the way up in here in the 21st century?

"...is that everytime you have sex it is a thrill" -- Garrison Keillor

... by men. The repression is a reflection of an almost atavistic patriarchal attitude that goes back to pre-historical tribal life. *sigh*

You can see it if you look: male gods (even when they claim god is unknowable, they know it has a penis), male officiators, and lots of stupid and inconvenient rules, mostly aimed at keeping women silent and out of the way.

Most of this horror show of patriarchy is so that men can own their offspring, something that's really impossible unless women are imprisoned. Once men finally figured out there was a connection between sex and childbirth, they've been driven to control it all.

It's really a pity they can't simply let go, to appreciate being able to guide the next generation without exercising the rights of ownership. So much of the misery of the human race comes from their need to dominate and control the uncontrollable.

Until male culture as a whole attacks this problem, we're stuck with oppression through religion and institutionalized abuse. Saying we'll raise our sons differently doesn't work, and hasn't for thousands of years. The world takes over, you see, and they become a part of male culture at puberty.

It's really their problem, not ours, and they will have to see it as a problem before they will become motivated to change it.

Having a penis doesn't put me in the same culture as George W. Bush, or Gandhi for that matter.

Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have their roots in nomadic pastoralism. Nomadic pastoral cultures tend to equate women and livestock with wealth, and assign male status on the basis of numbers of wives. Men are supposed to be strong and fierce; in some cultures they must kill before they are allowed to have sex. The reasons for this are pretty simple, though they are like the proverbial chicken and egg. People in general are investments in a herding economy, just like the animals they live on figuratively and literally. Pastoral bands survive in part by raiding their neighbors, killing as many men as possible, taking the livestock, and carrying off women to be their own wives.

Male sexual repression is supposed to make us better raiders. Female sexual repression is supposed to make them sounder property, i.e. not likely to be "alienated."

But before you go chalking up everything bad to nomadism and patriarchy, you should be aware that the mother-centered cults of the world are notorious for human sacrifice.

The mechanisms of control in the world, including religion and government, want maximum control. They want to be in your pants and in your blood. It's a personal choice to let them dominate you or to be free, at least within yourself, and it has nothing at all to do with a person's gender.

... is an excellent explanation for what's going on. The institutionalization of patriarchal ownership explains a lot.

Cheers.

To some extent it may be used to justify the line of paternity, but if it were for the sole reasons you stated, it seems that these males would advocate free sex only for males and abstinence only for females, as in our own western society where many men believe they should be "experienced" but the right girl to bring home to mother should be pure.

OTOH, women are the ones who suffer from the long term "consequences" of sex. Sex isn't quite the same as cheating on your diet and having some Hagan dass, sex leads to children, and in a society such as ours we can see the effects of irresponsible sex, ie: Teenage pregnances, single mothers, STD's etc. It's all too easy for the male, to whom sex is simply a short lived activity resulting in gratification to forget about the possible consequences to the woman who may have to face the results of a one night stand all alone nine months later.

And all this is in an "enlightened age" where birth control is easily available, but still all to often not used. Think about an age and society where these were not available.

Sex requires responsibility, Responsibility from both partners. Sex can all to easily have unintended results not only personally, but also to society.

When looked at in this light, many of these strictures appear to protect women as much as males.

... if you look at and read the entreaties of those who wish to maintain a patriarchal society, particularly through fundamentalist religions. :P

In a primitive community, controlling who you have sex with and for what reasons allows you to grow your socio-religio-politico power base and keep it loyal to your internal dogma. Hence, Jews only marry Jews, Christians only marry Christians, etc., even down to the schisms within each branch.

If you have fertile women running off with other fertile women or robust men not helping to produce more children as often as possible, a primitive culture views those people as not contributing adequately to the future of that community, and anything that isn't working on the future of the community is wasting current resources. So we make "moral" judgements about what people should and shouldn't do with their hoo-haws and weeners in an attempt to control the social fabric. It's SO 2000 years ago . . .

a male mammal thing?

I'll have you know we women call them "hoo hoos."

Now back to your regularly scheduled conversation.

;-)

now I know! Hoo-hoos it is. :hi:

But you're reminding me of a memory: I first saw a naked guy in some magazine when I was a kid and I remember being absolutely TERRIFIED by all that.....external junk.....he had. I remember thinking "what do they even CALL all that????"

:rofl:

with an old crazy old really old lady from the deep south and after several cups of her special "tea" (spiked very generously with "medicine" for her rheumy-teesm) she would start to story me 'bout her upbringin' as a proper young maiden in the deep south, and that is where I learned that there is a proppa suthan term for hoo hoo and it is called a paw paw patch.


There you go, now you know.
:smoke:

of establishing paternity. Since male heirs were oh-so-important, a direct blood line had to be assured. Since the only way they could check for that was virginity and male dominance of female sexuality it became incorporated into church dogma.

But I have a particular theory.

Back during the very early days of Christianity the Romans described the first sects as odd experential cults. Unlike Roman theology, which was more about an intellectualization of their cultural morality, the Christian sects focused on experiencing their god.

Reports of various rites from different sects, each designed to commune with god in a different way are conveyed by Roman historians. Extremes in all manners were displayed by the various sects. Bachanels, orgies, drugs, fasting, wine, physical exertion, self flagelation, and a host of other means of communing with god were spoken of.

Eventually certain sects overwhelmed other sects. More structured forms of worship were established. One of the problems of having a religion where everyone can commune with god is establishing heirarchy. If everyone can talk to god then what purpose do leaders serve. Thus the dominating sects began eliminating competing means of communion and restricting their own particular forms.

Thus the forms of oppositional sects became demonized, literally. The practices of these sects became associated with Satanic cults. Thus sex, drugs, and other forms of communion were associated with evil.

Meanwhile the forms of communion associated with the winning groups were toned down and restricted to the clergy. Their remnants still alive in the form of modern day communion and other esoteric practices of the clergy.

The thing is that most of these practices are now known to trigger various forms of neurological anamolies. Including momentary seperation of identity giving rise to the perception that ideas flowing through the brain are coming from an external source.

In practical terms relating to the social evolutionary development of religions, sex represents a threat to the control of the clergy and chief propogators of the belief. Sex is a very powerful emotional event. And as belief relies on emotions it can be overwhelmed by connections made during sex. If one's focus turns from the bliss of the intangible embrace of god to the very tangible embrace of carnal bliss then the church loses a powerful hook. And the powerful emotions involved in sex can further be harnassed to fuel guilt and other negative emotions if the concepts are front loaded in the person's psyche before becoming old enough to engage in such acts.

the one thing everyone enjoys the most, the thing that runs life itself on planet earth, a big no no.

that I subscribe to none of this sexually repressive shit. I believe in God, sure, but if you believe God created everything, you have to also believe he created sex. More than once, I've felt rather thankful for that particular gift. :D

(I think if you are talking about nowdays, among regular everyday super-religious folk, women who aren't sexually inhibited, women who are comfortable with who they are just flat-out scare those people. Insecurity, power, whatever.)

an excellent old movie called the Rain with Rita Hayworth who plays a whore in a south sea island.A fire breathing minister ( I don't remember who played that role) decides he was going to reform her at all costs.He pulls strings with the colonial administrators to stop the traffic to her apartment of sailors and others. She finally gives in and begs forgiveness from him.He then decides that he was going to redeem her soul by praying with her in her apartment everyday.After several weeks of this, she emerges one day, half naked and starts yelling at him for the hypocrite he is.Apparently the minister couldn't help it and got himslef a piece of a-s while he was praying! LOL! I have found that story a parable of our times.An excellent story written by a great novelist, W.Somerset Maugham.

In his Letters From Earth he wonders about the sanity of a people that imagine heaven without the single most wonderous thing humans can take part in.

That is an invention of the "terrorists". There is nothing in the Quran about 72 virgins. Its an invented ploy to add to the sense of heroism of those they are trying to convince to blow themself up.

exercising of control over the weak. Fear of death makes us seek refuge at those who tell us that they are in a position to banish that fear and promise us heaven when we die. Fear of diseases makes us seek refuge in the arms of people who say they have a direct pipeline to Gods who can heal us.

As for the control part, women, children and people we think are inferior to us are fair game for religious charlatans.Women have been especially vulnerable for ages because men in religious institutions have to battle their own sexual urges at the same time that they profess religious high ground above the fray. If they fail at it, as often happens, they can blame the women for arousing their primal instincts.This is the same strategy employed to make black people inferior as in slavery or Apartheid.When the gross immorality of making people slaves emerged, the victims were blamed for making white women aroused! That way two birds were killed with one stone, black men and white women.

Or to put it another way, the meme of sexual control helps a religion maintain its population.

If you look at both Catholicism and conservative forms of Islam, the various sexual rules boil down to this: "marry and have children with someone else who is a good believer, then raise those children in the religion to do the same." If you think about it, that is the ideal rule for propagating the religion. If believers were to start having sex outside the rules of the religion, that might both to questioning the religion's other rules and to them having children outside the religion, leading those children to be less religious or non-religious or differently religioned, and before you know it, both the number of believers and strength of belief is weakened.

An example of that is the more liberal forms of Judaism in the US. There is some concern in the US that Jews are marrying out of the religion in such numbers that the Jewish community is threatened, as the children no longer consider themselves Jewish. Compounding the trend is that the religion in its liberal forms has been almost intellectualized out of existence, in that its members don't believe in a god, and many stop practicing, and are Jewish only culturally.

Religions are sexually conservative because sexually conservative religions are better at raising the next generation of believers. It's meme evolution in action. The trick is for those of us who have escaped this mind-trap to help the next generation of believers to do the same.

:hippie:

But one theory is that during prehistoric times, people were unaware of male role in procreation, because women get pregnant and give birth, but we don't get pregnant every time we have sex. So when pre-scientific cultures imagined the creation of the world, they imagined a female deity giving birth. (Some theories posit that this "Goddess worship" also involved women being valued in a different way than men - - or that men were thought of as less valuable than women.)

Sometime during the development of urban cultures (but before the invention of writing), the male role in procreation and the relation between sex and pregnancy was "discovered" or the the male role in procreation became a key element in a religious movement. These early urban era cultures then began imagining creation as a female and a male deity (or a single deity who was both female and male) creating the world (not necessarily by having sex).

As pre-historic urban cultures developed further, some cultures developed a very aggressive theology about the male role in procreation, so much so that they sought to remove all traces of Goddess worship from their culture. There are a number of books detailing how the Bible was (theoretically) rewritten a number of times to erase traces of earlier Goddess worship (and female leadership in early Jewish culture), and how Greek mythology also shows traces of a male creation myth rewriting earlier female creation myths (Zeus gives birth in a number of weird ways, etc). Part of the "God worship" in these cultures was an elevation of all males, creating a culture where females were automatically kept out of positions of real power. As in any system where a group is kept out of power intentionally, the society developed a large number of laws and taboos designed to make that disenfranchisement seem natural ("God's will") rather than artificial (man made).

This may have had mundane political aspects to it (a group of male thugs trying to spin their power grab in a historically matriarchal culture) or it might just have been one of the earliest historical examples of the power religion has to transform culture, not necessarily for the better.

But this theory is a lot more complex than I've outlined...

the three monotheistic ones are. Could it be a chicken and egg question? Do the religions that are sexually repressive survive/thrive?

I can't help but wonder if women had a role in it too. If men are made to behave, women get stuck with the kids. Could there also be a disease component? Limit sex and you also limit sexually transmitted disease?

These questions all became irrelevant with the advent of birth control and cures for STDs and religion seemed to lose favor. Could this latest religious revival have anything to do with AIDS? They probably don't recognize it that way but could it be a matter of survival? How else do you get people to give up sex unless you promise something better like heaven? If sex is going to kill off your tribe you gotta stop it somehow.

the human instinct for sexuality is stronger. Religion is not about seeking answers to life's questions, but about the application of power. Long before the first politician advocated a better life for all by planting seeds and raising livestock rather than hunting and gathering, priests were interpreting natural phenomena to scare people into doing what they wanted them to do. At the command of the priests, people would give up their worldly wealth, would sacrifice their children, would wage war on their neighbors. But the instinct for sex will cause even the most devout to flaunt priestly rules. The spiritual experience of sexual union is more powerful than anything the priests or their gods can invent. And it's a fight the religions cannot win because it must be fought anew with every generation.