My husband is back from the hospital (12th time this year. Argh.) So this Samhain night has been quiet.
So with the right stimulation, I'm off on flights of fancy.
Abortion rights, women's second class status in an Abraham based culture,gay hating - the whole war on women thing.
They all have a common theme. The one and only thing a human can do that a monotheistic god can never do is reproduce. Ever. Impotent. Childless for eternity.
The whole Jesus thing. He had to be half-human because God can't reproduce unless there is a human being involved. So God's mixed race 'son' isn't worshiped for intercession between humans and Impotent god. He's a way of rubbing 'God's' nose in the fact that He can't reproduce himself without going through a human.
Follow me under the orange dancing uterus.
All the wrath of God, vengeful god and jealous god projections of fundamentalists boils down to the fact that however powerful, God cannot reproduce himself. Women do it as part of their nature Eve's sin was to create life from herself.
Once men figured out they had something to do with reproduction, they began emasculating their gods. War is overtly masculine, but it does not result in reproducing life. It is its antithesis. Which is why the idea of women warriors is fascinating and repellent to insecure men. We do both.
Much of human history is the attempts of males to play god to the humans that did what god and man could not. Women. Misogyny is envy and lust to be god of something, anything.
If you unpack it, menstrual cycles are pretty basic. The ovarian follicle secretes an egg, which hardens, ruptures and drains through the cervix and vagina. This repeats every 28 days, unless penetrated by a sperm cell or until the ovaries no longer produce eggs. If it is penetrated by a sperm, it may begin to replicate. It may not. Pretty cut and dried. Nothing magical. No more of a living creature than a yeast infection. So, why should a blastula or zygote take priority over a living breathing human? Because birth control removes men's ownership of something god can't have.
Reproduction is the symbol of man's godhead and god's inability to make another of himself. I suspect men hate and abuse women not only out of rage that they do naturally what men and god can't, but also because they are the only sure way to make god jealous. "I can abuse and kill what you can't ever have. I am your better."
Non-reproductive sex suggests that god may not need progeny or might be female and reproductively capable herself. Heresy!! Monotheism don't need no stinking progeny...
Priestly celibacy is an imitation of an impotent god. So celibacy becomes a virtue, because it doesn't remind God of his failings. That buttresses the argument that priests fight the idea of uncontrolled sex because a male dominated, captive woman society gives them power over the one thing god can't have.. the possibility of reproducing yourself. God gets furious when you rub his virgin nose in his failings.
I mean, when you have to knock up a human to have a son, you are no different than all those other gods you condemn people for worshiping.
Except they have sex and reproduce.