BroadSnark

I read an interesting letter by Jim Davidson that got me thinking (HT to @BradSpangler and Diana Culda).  In a nutshell, the letter asserts that abortion is indeed homicide, but that it is justifiable homicide.  I’ll let you read the letter and ponder his arguments on your own time.  Because that’s not exactly what I want to write about.

Davidson’s letter got me thinking about the abortion controversy as a controversy over women having the power of death.  It got me thinking about the fact that women have the power over life and death.  And it got me thinking how a religious person might view that power.

So let’s say you are a man who has been brought up your entire life to believe you were the stronger, more powerful sex.  Let’s say you took for granted that your physical strength was an outward manifestation of that power.  If you believe in a strict gender binary.  If you believe in hierarchy.  If you believe that power is created and ordained by god.  Then wouldn’t the realization that your god gave women the power over life and death destroy your world?  Because wouldn’t that mean that god, having given women the power over life and death, intended for women to rule?

I don’t, of course, believe any of that.  But I do think it is fascinating.  It’s fascinating for the window it may provide into the fragile psyche of the male, anti-abortion zealot.  And it is fascinating for the window it provides into religion.  It so clearly shows religion to be about nothing more than deceiving women into believing that they were not given the powers of life or death.  It is not women, they claim, but god who creates life.  It is not women, but god who chooses whether or not a fetus survives.

Taken from that standpoint, patriarchal religion is just a cabal of men who got together to convince women that, rather than having the power over life and death, god gave them reproductive organs as a sign of their perpetual servitude (aka nurturing).  And it makes a lot more sense why so many anti-abortion extremists claim to be pro-life but support the death penalty and war.  It isn’t that they have a problem with death.  They just have a problem with women deciding who lives and dies.

So, if a religion’s fundamental purpose is to dis-empower women, then what point is there in trying to fight against the oppression of women from within the religion’s structure.  The Pope can’t cave in.  His entire purpose in life is to defend an elaborate structure that was built by men to give the illusion that they were given more power by god.  It was built so they could deceive themselves and anyone else who actually buys into their bullshit.

Which brings me to my question.  If the structure of patriarchy is built on the lies of religion, doesn’t that put the atheist “evangelizers”  on the front lines of the fight for women’s rights?