satoruvash

Matthew Chapman, journalist, screenwriter and director, said the following in his AAI (Atheist Alliance International) 2007 speech:

I think our efforts should focus more on women who are the prime victims of Religion, and perhaps in some Stockholm Syndrome effect, often form the most fervent advocates of the very thing that degrades them. I believe that in the end it will be women who will turn this around. This should be the final stage of feminism. For a feminist to still believe in God, is like a freed slave still living on the plantation.

Matthew Chapman speaks on the curious phenomenon where women are sometimes observed to be more passionate religious apologists than men. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an Atheist and ex-Muslim, addresses this issue at the conference as well. She notes that specifically in the patriarchal religion of Islam, where women have few rights and often victims of religiously motivated/justified abuse and/or murder, God is the only tool to available for manifesting their limited power.

It is a sad, hopeless, and destructive cycle, with women pitied against other women. They are encouraged not only to spy on each other’s actions, but also to inform the respective patriarchs about supposed transgressions as dictated in a novel by a sexually prudish and misogynist God. Transgressions, which offer raped women death in the form of ‘honour killings’ by means of a blade or by being doused in petrol and then set on fire. A religion that seeks to domesticate the female intellect through fear and the proliferation of ignorance by denying the right to be educated. An insular society, where knowledge of other ways of life where the gains of the feminist movement never reaches their awareness, and where isolation and punishment is so severe, not even family members can be trusted in doubts about God.

It is rather bleak in the Muslim world, where courageous women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali who dare to step out of the cycle, and speak out against injustice, must face a Fatwa.

The situation is not as dire in North America, yet religious influence makes it harder for a female to come out as an Atheist than a male. From a religious perspective, women are supposed to be the nurturers, who take their children to Sunday school and organize Church activities. It is very much a social endeavour and any female who strays is considered less of a mother and/or less of a woman.

In this context, Matthew Chapman’s message is very clear. For a feminist who fights against gender inequality and stereotypes, to still clutch to religion is to in essence, stop just shy of the final phase. With the undue respect bestowed on religion, the resistance to question God due to political correctness, and the misconception that a belief in that supposed entity is just as valid as disbelief . . . we have feminists living in plantations mainly because they are unknowingly relinquishing the right to look out the window and see their surroundings for what they really are. It is safe to assume that the majority of religious feminists, if they but allowed themselves to look out the window, would still refuse to leave the plantation.

This is the challenge we face as Atheists/Agnostics. To come out and speak out. To do so often and make our presence known enough to render such questioning and vocal/cyber advocacy common place.

This is, of course, for the sake of all humans and not just females. Although, it is prudent to note, the feminist movement is quite outspoken and powerful. If and when we reach a point of awareness on the acceptability of religious skepticism, they can be a very powerful ally.