Today, I stumbled upon The Book of Eve by Constance Beresford-Howe. It has a really strong opening with a nice jab at the Eden eviction story:
It makes one wonder how many millions if not billions of women living under Abrahamic religions were diminished based on that story alone (and similar misogynistic myths and beliefs) in the past two millennia (and possibly for a few hundred years more still).
Manfred Hauke wrote a nice intro to mariology (e.g. marianismo, mariolatry) back in 1996. Excerpts (with my emphasis added):
Simone de Beauvoir [...] pointed out the contrast between the ancient goddesses and Mary as early as 1949; whereas the goddesses commanded autonomous power and utilized men for their own purposes, Mary is wholly the servant of God: "'I am the handmaid of the Lord.' For the first time in the history of mankind," writes Beauvoir, "a mother kneels before her son and acknowledges, of her own free will, her inferiority. The supreme victory of masculinity is consummated in Mariolatry: it signifies the rehabilitation of woman through the completeness of her defeat."
Daly now sharpens this critique [Beyond God the Father (1973)] and puts it in a wider systematic context: Mary is "a remnant of the ancient image of the Mother Goddess, enchained and subordinated in Christianity, as the 'Mother of God'." To this attempt to "domesticate" the mother goddess, Daly opposes a striving to bring together the divine and the feminine.
Today, I found an excellent website with thoughtful essays on various topics. One that struck a chord with me is Șolga's "Femeia care m-a ajutat să nu mai fiu prost", Here are his thoughts that happen to strike a deep truth vein both about what's going on in Romania, and elsewhere as well (e.g. the recent de-evolution of women rights in the US):
Astfel, în noua paradigmă a feminismului, femeia devine puternică, însă bărbatul involuează. Bieții de noi, bărbații prezentului, ne transformăm pe zi ce trece într-un fel de creatură slabă, neajutorată, neadaptată la cerințele societății, total rupți de realitate. Nu pricepem de ce femeile nu ne mai ascultă, de ce nu mai au nevoie de noi și mai ales cum își permit să ne trateze cu condescendență șamd.
Femeile au preluat puterea, iar bărbații fluieră a pagubă de pe margine, dar, pentru că nu suntem în stare să pricepem ce se întâmplă și pentru că am devenit tot mai leneși, noi, bărbații, am început să urâm femeile, dovedindu-ne inferioritatea.
I partially agree with the reversal in the first paragraph, but I think his diagnosis in the 2nd is flawed (overgeneralizing, ignoring the variability hypothesis and discounting incels, all hinting that in the global sex war, the male side is overrepresented by certain subgroups on some battle fronts).
Also, I do not agree with his pater familias solution in the least (which smells of toxic masculinity, mansplaining and a top-down solution to me), nor do I like that he does not point out that patriarchal religion is a big issue, but highlighting at least one of the main causes of renewed misogyny in our times is a step forward.
Something as simple as equal rights for men and women is still highly uneven and a work in progress in many countries, which highlights how far behind some are and also how easy it is to excuse unacceptable behavior and laws in more evolved countries by the sheer reason that they have a very low bar to cross (e.g. sexual mutilation, honor killings, forced marriage, overt legal discrimination).
There is a long road ahead for true sex equality across the globe, from the most overt misogynist cultures all the way to the liberated urban West with its smugness about its half-hearted and often insincere achievements (e.g. poor political representation, double moral standards, substandard and uneven child-rearing support, salary and pension inequity, undependable protection from abusers, patchy and barely enforced legal equity framework that allows for modern slavery to continue virtually unimpeded).
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