Modern Day Slavery

There is a form of slavery that is still in full swing. It is a form which has been spoken out against quite publicly, written about about quite forcefully, and acted upon quite politically. Yet, it still exists due to partial ignorance of the full force and variety of its practice and due to the willingness of its slaves. What is is this wretched slavery that still exists worldwide? The slavemaster is the male hormone, and the slaves are women. It is a sad shame that so many females are brought up to willingly live in subconcious slavery. Many young girls in Asian cultures do not have a choice, they’re sold into sex rings as little children. Sub-cultures are built up around the male hormone’s enslavement of woman. You should check out Memoirs of a Geisha for an amazing glimpse into the way subcultures try to dignify such horrid realities.

 Religion is unfortunately one of the worst culprits of this slavery. Besides not speaking out for women’s rights in general, religion has typically degraded and detained women for centuries. Just look at the Islamic cultures in the Middle East. Judaism and Christianity are not immune either. The Jewish prayer book has a prayer in which men thank Yahweh that they are not a Gentile or a woman. It is only the more “liberal” churches in Christianity that typically allow female leadership. The Episcopalian church is going through an amazing upheaval due to their recent election of a woman to become a bishop. I personally think Jesus was a bit of a feminist, but his disciples unfortunately didn’t pick this up from him. They objected when Jesus allowed a woman, possibly a prostitute, to show affection towards him by washing his feet with perfume. Of course we don’t have record of him speaking out against prostitution, but there are some glimpses of his friendliness to women and his concern for them.

The thing that breaks my heart is that so many females are trained to subconciously submit to this slavery. The tremendous amount of capital spent annually on advertising slavery through the mediums of make up, clothing, modelling, fashion, etc. is disheartening. In religious circles girls are still prepared to be good wives first and foremost. Young females spend so much time agonizing over finding their slavemaster only to have their feminity crushed in faithful submission to their husbands. Now I don’t think that marriage is wrong, or husbands are by definition slavemasters, or that training for house management is necessarily bad. What I object to is that girls shouldn’t be taught first and foremost to be wives, they should be taught to be a Woman. As Simone de Beauvoir said, “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” They should be taught to cook and be organized and diligent for their own sake, as well as to be intelligent and courageous and aspiring. Should they happen to get married (and this I think can be a good thing too), they will be a dynamic partner in a symbiotic relationship of egalitarianism. Social funcion should not determine value. If females are not their husband’s equal partners in all aspects of humanity, then they will become his slave in regards to sexuality. We cannot be defined by our sexuality. It gains its definition from our humanity. And the idea of being “completed” by another is poetic bullshit! Women should be “matched” or “doubled” by their spouse. There is no deficiency that should be assumed to be inherent in persons. I think we are social beings and therefore function more fully in social settings, but no one should be deficient and inherently require another in any kind of ontological manner, especially not women. If anything, according to the second biblical creation account, it’s man that needed woman. God created man in need and gave woman the power of fullness. And according to the Fall story, woman was the decision maker, man was too dumb to speak up or do anything. Maybe the serpent approached the woman not because it thought it could deceive her, but because it knew who could hold a rational conversation.

There is much more that I have to say on the subject, and it will be a new category of this blog. I’ve made a new page too that will have favorite quotes I find as I read through some feminist literature. Having left a traditionally conservative, christian way of thinking, I now have more room in my mind to develop my thoughts in this realm. I am ashamed to some degree to have been asociated with such an anti-woman entity as organized religion. Hopefully one day religion will more fully and collectively wake up from this blindspot.