Bodycon wrote: ↑Sun Jan 02, 2022 5:24 pm
Yes, lets. If you read my original post, you will see that it was meant as a response to a post that did not make sense to me, hence non sense and even a sorry beforehand. I was shocked at your retort to me.
It sounds like I just took something written in the wrong context.
So then, let's get back to the topic at hand....
I want to add that I think humanity assigning gender to inanimate things can be considered a good thing....It's what makes life interesting, entertaining, and gives life extra value. Without our concepts of gender, we'd just be a punch of hunter-gatherer primates, grunting at each other, living to the ripe old age of 20.
Sorry Moon, this is nonsense. Gender assignation is nothing to do with gender, but is just a patronising expression. A car is a car, a door is a door etc. if it entertains you fair enough, but it doesn't make you any different to a chimpanzee. Any town or city will have 20odd year old's standing around conversing in grunts on any given day, so we have not come far, if at all......
Based on your response, I think the point my original comment was lost.
A car is a car, a door is a door etc.
Yes that is true, but that's not the point. People do indeed assign gendered characteristics to a wide variety of items, things, and sometimes even places. For example, nations (a place) are often referred to in the feminine. We
do assign gender to vehicles, machines, computers, etc. And the overall point I was trying to make is that over the last thousand years or so, we have created culture (in the west) based on the principles of masculine superiority and feminine beauty. As for how all this relates to the animal kingdom, well, I can't say for absolute certainty that animals do not experience and express gender, but all evidence seems to indicate that if they do, it is not in the same manner that humans do. Perhaps they do, but it's just something we can't understand as we are not the actual animals in question. I personally believe most wild animals live mostly out of instinct rather than refined cognitive ability. At least I've never known a wild animal to create a religion, ponder the universe, build a complex machine, or blast a giant phallic symbol into low orbit.
Organised religions are based around a pyramid of power with (insert your chosen god(s)) at the top, then the leaders (insert, pope, prophet, king etc.) and so on down to the proletariat. Based around male dominance, because in those times males were dominant, and all based around controlling populations.
You're looking at religion as a political machine. You are correct of course, however you're missing the underlying point of what religion is supposed to be and what it represents. Which is a subject that could fill a library, and I'd do it little justice to even try to explain it here, nor do I really understand most of it anyway.
Yes, it is true that for many, many people, religion is a business, or a at least a means to retain power. Indeed that is probably the driving force behind most modern major organized religions. But you're dismissing what religion means and what it is at its core. At its very heart, religion exist for humankind to help understand the universe around us. Early humans took notice of the movement of the stars, the migration habits of the wild animals, the changing of the seasons, and yes, the obvious differences between male and female humans. As the aeons passed by, we gradually formed societies, hierarchies, and religions to help us wrap our mind around the world we lived in, as well as to provide some order for these societies.
You can look at just about any religion and see references to the masculine and the feminine. We can dismiss these as religious gobbledygook, but we short change ourselves in doing so. We lose sight of a very important part of our humanity when we dismiss this. Gender and the masculine/feminine spectrum may not have been understood to ancient philosophers and religious leaders as it is today, but the seeds of such were well in the ground and starting to grow.
One matter that sticks out in my head in my Protestant upbringing is how "the church" has been considered the "Bride of Christ", so as to imply that "the church" (the people that make up the church) are along the feminine aspect, Christ is along the masculine aspect (and likely the kind of "masculine" that Carl would approve of), and finally the Godhead which modern Christians believe to be "God the Father", but in all actuality was likely an entity without gender in the old Hebrew tradition. [0] Some have taken this "the Church being the Bride of Christ" to signify how "the church",being composed of ordinary sinners and people trying to do right by God may be considered what they view to be "feminine", and that view is one of submission, silliness, prone to error and folly. Note however that I shouldn't be taken as an authority on the matter. The fact is that there are thousands upon thousands of interpretations of the Judea-Christian religion. There is also the belief that Christ represents the masculine and the Holy Spirit represents the Feminine, and the Godhead is clearly without gender, or rather may be whatever gender the worshipper needs at the moment, as indicated in stories such as "
The Shack" [1]. Finally, there are the hardnosed Christians that believe that every aspect of the Christian faith is hyper-masculine. We have a lot of those around here in Appalachia.
Now over the centuries, it's my
personal speculation that one of the reasons modern day Wicca, in addition to the old ways of "witchcraft" (as understood through the middle ages onward), was that a woman who was in command of her own life, free spirited, and didn't live her life for the pleasure of men was regarded as a "witch", and many were executed and/or tormented on account of it. Thus, overtime the witchcraft of centuries past become the modern feminist movement, and this old witchcraft (leading to newer modern day religious movements such as "Wicca") hatched out of this persecution and downplaying of anything feminine. The Witch was seen as powerful to the point of being Satanic, and an obvious threat to the patriarchy so carefully crafted by thousands of years of Abrahamic tradition.
This is not to say that all feminist are witches, or vice versa. But I am saying that if you were to ask many Christians in my region, feminist and witch go hand in hand.
There are other examples too, gender is widely explored in eastern traditions (or so I'm told), however I've not spent anywhere near as much time studying these traditions as those in my own region for obvious reasons.
Hinduism, the worlds oldest religion apparently has a lot to say about gender.
None of this gender / masculinity or religion is of any relevance to skirts, which simply went out of fashion for males, pushed by Victorian Social Etiquette and prudery. As clothes became cheaper even toddler boys were dressed in trousers. Where we are now, we can agree on. Men (for the most part) see skirts as womenswear and won't touch them.
The point is, I must disagree that none of this ties into skirts being feminine. Now you yourself may not see it as so, but as I told Carl, you two are already over the "hangup" of skirts being just a piece of fabric. You have to put yourself in the mind of the masses. Centuries ago, yes, men in various cultures did wear masculine skirts, tunics, robes, etc. But over the last 1000-1500 years, men have gravitated towards a more masculine dress including, but not limited to various forms of trousers, and women gravitated towards more feminine dresses, skirts, etc. As time progressed, these different styles of clothing evolved to a point where one is clearly for men and the other is clearly for women, and we built a society, again, based on Abrahamic patriarchy that reinforces this. It is only in the last couple of decades that men have at least had the freedom to wear feminine clothes without fear of arrest of physical harm, but I believe we still have a LOOOOOOONG way to go before the stigma of femininity goes away, and it is my opinion that skirts will never be fully accepted as mens wear until that stigma ceases.
So I hope I've helped shed more light on my line of thought, not to be mistaken as fact, again, just my ever-evolving understanding of the world in which I live.
Much Love,
-The Lunar[tic] Princess.
[0] See "
Old Testament Wisdom" by Manly Palmer Hall
[1] Good book by the way.
