Shenali D Waduge

 

Foreign governments need issues to send foot soldiers and need slogans to draw natives. These slogans are always initiated by Western Christian nations, their organizations and promoted through their media. Gender equality is a lucrative venture enabling setting up of NGOs, plenty of opportunities to tabulate research, channelling unquestionable funding and giving opportunity to amass public sentiment. Little do these activists question who denied gender equality for in ancient times all of the ancient civilizations treated women in higher esteem than the Church supervised empire rule, capitalist system that followed colonial rule & industrialization. These rights activists are no inventors of equality – they are perverting everything natural. Equality existed and was denied by the very nations that are today promoting equality and using these as carrot and stick methods via the UN and other global organizations upon the very nations whose equal status was removed and replaced. While many of these activists are turning their wrath to demonizing Buddhism why are they not questioning why the Pope is always a male?

 

How did inequality start?

Paul Reuman of the Rasmussen College says

 

my opinion is that it started with modern organized religion, such as Christianity or the Islamic religions, before these religions were established many societies worshiped women as the bringers of life and joy to man. At some point in time, the status of women and man reversed; this did not happen overnight”

 

He goes on to write

 Christian thinkers portrayed women as hindrances to men, who are vessels for evil and prevent man from working, studying and distract men from pursuing their relationship with God. early Christians went so far as to call women the door through which the devil enters and because women were not created by god but created from Adam’s rib women were inferior by virtue and this inferiority which makes Eve Adam’s temptress and leads to disaster (Emerson, 2006).”

 

He also adds

 

women in the Middle East and North Africa are denied some of the most basic human rights we take for granted.”

 

In Vedic culture, women have always been given the highest level of respect and freedom, as well as protection and safety.

 

In the third millennium B.C. the Sumerians accorded women a position which was almost equal to that of men. Women in ancient Egypt even had the same legal and economic rights as men – women could manage and dispose of private property, including: land. Women had the right to bring lawsuits against anyone in open court, and there was no gender-based bias against them. Women played a very integral role in the life of the Native American. They were more than just mothers of children. They were builders, warriors, farmers, and craftswomen. Their strength was essential to the survival of the tribes.

 

The place women held declined following foreign invaders who looked at women as objects of sexual enjoyment and exploitation, and as the spoils of war to be taken like a prize. Under Moghul rule women became further oppressed.

 

Mahatma Gandhi was to say the way we treat our women is an indicator of our barbarism”.

 

Abrahamic religions

Judaism in the first century had emerged from the oriental patriarchal tradition in which women were considered the property of men with no rights, no role in society except childbearing, and no education. With time Hellenism added and it was in the middle of this that Christianity emerged.  The primary duty of women in ancient Athens (Greece) was to marry and to bear legitimate children so that their family unit might continue. Plato’s writings limit women to traditional sex roles. Aristotle believed that inequality between men and women was based upon the law of nature (man superior – women inferior – role of women was obedience and silence) Now you can understand why women were kept in the shadows in classical Athens! According to Roman law women were under the complete control of the male head though they were allowed education and certain limited rights.

 

Women in the Old Testament were legally the property of men – before marriage a girl was the property of her father, after marriage she was the property of her husband. Inheritance passed from father to son. Men could initiate divorce at will. Women were bound in marital fidelity. Judaism adopted the strictest, most literal interpretations of the Torah. Women were not permitted to receive any education. Legally they were still considered the property of men. Their testimony was not accepted as evidence in court. Women were considered objects of property and spoils of war (today we have these very countries claiming rape is a genocide without accounting for the scores of women they raped as a policy)

 

The falsification and distortion of history by western writers can be seen in the depiction of Mary Magdalene, who has been portrayed by Christian writers as an adulteress and repentant whore. On the contrary we are now told all that was written about her are absolute lies. This is just like Christmas Day not being the birth of Jesus at all! What also needs to be made clear is that though Jesus had given equal status to women it was the Church that began denigrating women. Many denominations continue this sexist policy today by refusing leadership roles to all women.

 

Whatever rights women had under Roman Empire was gradually removed by the Christian emperors and the Bishops.

 

“What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman……I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children.”

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 to 1274 CE)

 

Let your women keep silence in churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
1 Corinthians 14:34, cf. 1 Corinthians 11:3-9 and 1 Timothy 2:11-12

 

The historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that women were more influential during the period of Jesus’ brief ministry than they were in the next thousand years of Christianity. These were all reversals of the ancient eastern civilizations and the status they gave to women.

 

How can any religion talk about equality when a woman cannot become a Pope! Before anyone jumps to refer to Buddha, let it be said that everyone and anyone can attain enlightenment – it is the will and the mind that a person has to develop. There are no restrictions or regulations, only guidelines. Besides Buddha cannot be compared to Pope. The Pope is only an appointee and if so why can’t there be a women Pope. Why are activists not demanding this?

 

There are enough of scholarly articles to showcase the high status held by women prior to the advent of Roman dictates, the Church, colonial adventures and industrialization wherein the whole world was turned upside down and the white west dictated how every sphere of life would function under their own terms and conditions.

 

Similarly there is many misconceptions on the Quran’s view of women. According to the Qur’an, a woman’s role on earth is not limited only to childbirth. Muslim societies have digressed to adopt conflicting traditions – some adopting to a very restrictive and overly conservative structure while others adopting a western-liberalized structure both of which do not follow original Islam.

 

Demonizing Buddhism

Every poya, readers like to read something virtuous about Buddhist philosophy, but Christian-ruled Sri Lanka’s press deems poya day a great opportunity to demonize Buddhism so they choose writers ever willing to do so. The recently concluded poya Daily News supplement was titled Spiritual realm knows no gender difference” by one K K S Perera. You will never find features on Christian or Islamic holidays questioning gender issues.

 

What we can conclude is that societies of ancient times which did not have representative power or rule of the sword or gun enjoyed freedoms and rights and there were no need for any rights activists or NGOs. Now with democracy, systems, law & order, judicial, legislative and other mechanisms there is still need for NGOs, civil society, human rights activists and so many other nomenclatures but people still do not have freedoms however the freedoms that are being demanded and given are those that create bigger issues.

 

On the one hand gender equality is being promoted and at the same time homosexuality, lesbian, transgender and what not are also being promoted to such bizarre levels that are confusing children. Men are marrying men, women are marrying women – so who is the dad and who is the mum? People are having children and then getting married, experiments are being done for men to have children, all kinds of bizarre experiments are taking place – no wonder children are having psychological problems or is that also part of a plan to add more customers to the pharmaceutical industry.

 

When all these dumb experiments are being practiced by the white race whose populations are dwindling and are likely to make them extinct they quickly lobby to introduce them to ever gullible third world former colonies and now these ‘trends’ are catching up and totally destroying the Eastern cultures as well.

 

A person can be inclined to be a homo/lesbian but do they need to make a show of it and make a spectacle of themselves in public, does it need to be on one’s curriculum vitae and do companies need to allocate employment for them, or does Parliament need to allocate seats for them? How is that there is a sudden spark in these gay numbers – is it not turning into a fad and a trend to be known as gay because media gives that impression? At the other spectrum you find the women’s rights demanding allocations and quotas because they are women while the same groups demand equal rights. Are we missing something here? If people are to be treated equally why should women be given allocations just because they are women?

WHAT HAVE WE ACTUALLY ACHIEVED IN THE END? WHERE HAVE WE DEVELOPED – SOCIALLY, CULTURALLY, ECONOMICALLY? WHEN NONE OF US ARE REALLY HAPPY!

 If nobody had money – we would all be rich”

 

Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things will come full circle, back to where they started. That’s revolution”

 

Russell Means

 

It is quite clear that these slogans are all frauds just to rally people and bloated to extremes in order for the Western nations to use through the UN to twist the third world nations to do their bidding. Thus the array of gender issues, rights, freedoms all being plugged into criteria that decides whether countries get loans/grants etc while the US is paying mercenaries in Syria who are raping and killing and carrying out the most horrendous crimes but both US, UK and NATO members project themselves as guardian angels of democracy, human rights and women’s rights. Only fools will fall for the lies and hypocrisies that prevail.

 We all need to return to the fundamentals and the basics without falling for all these liberal experiments introduced by thinktanks and promoted by hired lobbyists.

 

 Shenali D Waduge