Are Fraternities Breeding Grounds for Sexism and Voilence Again Women

Stories like the Virgin Nativity lack freely given female consent. Why don't they carp the states more?

Powerful gods and demi-gods impregnating man women—information technology's a common theme in the history of religion, and it'south more than a footling rapey.

Zeus comes to Danae in the course of a golden shower, cut "the knot of intact virginity" and leaving her pregnant with the Greek hero, Perseus.

Jupiter forcibly overcomes Europa by transforming himself into a white bull and abducting her. He imprisons her on the Isle of Crete, over fourth dimension fathering 3 children.

Hermes copulates with a shepherdess to produce Pan.

The legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus are conceived when the Roman god Mars impregnates Rea Silvia, a vestal virgin.

Helen of Troy, the rare female offspring of a god-homo mating, is produced when Zeus takes the form of a swan to get admission to Leda.

In some accounts Alexander the Groovy and the Emperor Augustus are sowed by gods in the grade of serpents, by Phoebus and Jupiter respectively.

Though the primeval Christians had a competing story, in the Gospel of Luke, the Virgin Mary gets pregnant when the spirit of the Lord comes upon her and the power of the Most High overshadows her.

The primeval accounts of Zoroaster'due south birth accept him born of a human male parent and mother, much like Jesus; but in later accounts his mother is pierced by a shaft of divine light.

The Hindu god Shiva has sexual practice with the human woman Madhura, who has come to worship him while his wife Parvati is away. Parvati turns Madhura into a frog, merely afterwards 12 years in a well she regains human form and gives nascency to Indrajit.

The Buddha's mother Maya finds herself significant after being entered from the side past a god in a dream.

The impregnation procedure may be a "ravishing" or seduction or, as in the cases of Buddha and Jesus, some kind of nonsexual procreative penetration. The story may come up from an Eastern or Western religious tradition, infidel or Christian. But these encounters betwixt beautiful young women and gods have ane thing in mutual. None of them has freely given female consent as a role of the narrative. (Luke's Mary assents after being not asked just told by a powerful supernatural being what is going to happen to her, and she responds with language emphasizing the ability differential. "Behold the bond-slave of the Lord: be it done to me  according to your discussion." L ane:38)

Who needs consent, freely given? If he's a god, she's got to want it, right?

Whether or not the delectable young matter puts up a protestation, whether or not seduction requires deception, whether or not the woman already has a husband or beloved, whether or not she is physically forced, the basic assumption is that the union between a god and a woman is overwhelming in an orgasmic way, not a bloody, caput-bashed-against-the-basis kind of way.

And later? Well, what woman wouldn't want to be significant with the son or daughter of a god? That is how the stories play out. In theLuke story, Mary later exults in the honor that has befallen her (50 1:46-55).

Underneath this remarkably enduring and widespread trope lie two assumptions that, in their almost primitive form, may trace their roots all the way back to evolutionary biological science.

The biology hypothesis, much oversimplified, goes something like this: Males and females of each species have instincts that maximize their genes in the adjacent generation. Amongst humans, females seek the highest quality sperm donors that they tin can attract. They maximize the quality and survival of their children past mating with high status, powerful males. Males, on the other hand, maximize the quality and quantity of their offspring past seeking young fertile females (with beauty signaling fertility), controlling some females and fending off other males while also spreading their seed around if they can get away with it.

Biology may be the starting betoken, simply over time, human impulses are embellished and institutionalized and fabricated sacred by civilisation and faith. The mythic trope of gods mating with human females embodies powerful cultural and religious beliefs about sexuality. Familiar stories of this type derive from male dominated societies, which means they legitimize male reproductive desires: Powerful men not only desire to command the valuable commodity of female fertility, they should. Gods ordain it and model it. And they prescribe punishments for those—particularly females—who violate the proper guild of things.

The miraculous formulation stories I listed may have roots in pre-history, in early religions centered on star worship and the agricultural bike, only they emerged in modern form during the Fe Age. By this time in history, most women were chattel. Like children, livestock and slaves, they were literally possessions of men, and their primary economic and spiritual value lay in their ability to produce purebred offspring of known lineage. The men at the pinnacle owned concubines and harems, and virgin females were counted amongst the spoils of state of war. (Encounter, for example, the Old Attestation story of the virgin Midianites in which Yahweh commands the Israelites to impale the used women but keep the virgin girls for themselves.)

It was also a time when gods picked favorites and meddled in the affairs of tribes and nations, and great men were born great. Small wonder, then, that and so many powerful men claimed powerful paternity. In the tradition of the aboriginal Hebrews, this took the grade of an obsession with lineage and pure, favored bloodlines. Writers of the Hebrew Bible trace the genealogy of King David dorsum to Abraham, for example, and the genealogy of Abraham to the offset man, Adam. In the Greek and Roman worlds, entitlement claims took the class of assigning supernatural paternity to public figures. The Christian tradition, somewhat awkwardly, tries to lay claim to both of these—tracing the lineage of Jesus through his father Joseph dorsum to King David, while simultaneously denying that he had a human begetter.

This is the context for the miraculous conception stories, and in this context, the consent of a woman is irrelevant. Within a gild that treats female sexuality as a male possession, the only consent that can be violated is the consent of a woman's possessor, the man with the rights to her reproductive capacity—typically her male parent, fiancé, or husband. Many Christians are surprised when told that nowhere in the Bible, either Old Attestation or New, does any author say that a woman'southward consent is necessary or even desirable before sex.

This omission is more than regrettable, it is tragic. Two thousand years afterwards Hebrew and Aramaic texts were assembled into the mod Jewish Bible, 1600 years after a Roman Cosmic committee voted books in and out of the Christian Bible, 1400 years afterward Muhammad wrote the Koran (which draws heavily on the moral framework of the Judeo-Christian tradition), we still struggle with the question of female consent. Our struggle is made immeasurably harder by the presence of ancient texts that have become modern idols—texts that put God'southward name on men's desires.

The most extreme instance may exist a document published past the Islamic State, outlining rules for the treatment of sexual slaves, rules drawn from the Koran. Closer to habitation for well-nigh Americans is the awkward merely widespread existence of Christian leaders who teach that a woman'due south glory is in childbearing, and that a adult female who fails to service her hubby whenever he desires is failing to serve God.

Simply even closer to abode for many is the shocking prevalence on college campuses and in society at big of sexual manipulation and compulsion perpetrated by males who otherwise seem morally intact. 1 can't help merely notice that a large number of high profile cases involve high status males: fraternity members, a famous actor, a radio host, small town football game stars and large league professional person athletes—men, in other words, who think they are gods. Convinced of their own deific qualities, information technology just follows that the object of their attentions has gotta desire information technology—and if she doesn't, well, that fine too, considering when a god wants a woman, consent isn't really part of the story.

——————–

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Quondam Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings , and the founder of world wide web.WisdomCommons.org .  Her articles most religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel.  Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com .

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Source: https://valerietarico.com/2014/12/16/its-not-rape-if-hes-a-god/

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