#and they say this religion is degrading and oppressing women

[0nyancat0]

My take on “radical feminism” that nobody asked for

I myself consider myself leaning very into radical feminism but I see that terf ideologies seem to get mixed in more often than not (wanna make it clear I support trans rights)

1. A lot of rad fems think that all heterosexual sex is rape which is such an insane thing to do and implies that women do not have the power or capacity to consent to heterosexual sex

2. I do agree that we as woman will never find liberation through sex or sex work however rad fems do not realize that a lot of women fall into sex work and can not simply quit, I do not support the sex work industry but I support sex workers

3. To me it seems a lot of white women have overshadowed the movement and only mention woc when it’s used as an aha! moment against men and not with the intention of actually helping

4. Extreme transphobia, the main idea is that trans women rape women’s body’s and appropriating the body, my conflict with this is women are not their bodies and trans women have always felt like women since birth is the biological aspect that’s the problem

5. A lot of rad fems think a women choosing a certain lifestyle or religion is oppressive which again perpetuates the idea that women can not make a choice without a man or patriarchal idea being involved or a sense of brain washing

I think a lot of rad fems have lost sense of the movement and more times than often make themselves appear victim like and in a constant state of martyrdom, yes we women have suffered and continue to suffer and be oppressed but we can not let this weight break us down and make us point fingers at people (trans women and women who choose religion or certain life styles) who are not the root cause of our suffering

Please let me know your thoughts

Edit

⭐️Some people seem to be confused about this but i was born a woman and will always be a woman, it’s so crazy how other women will try to degrade me as if they were men for disagreeing with them or seeing things differently, i do not like liberal feminism and i never have, and i do not like to label my belief system and prefer to make a more individual standpoint than community⭐️

Another edit lol

⭐️I have never claimed to be a rad fem or that I know everything about rad feminism because I don’t, and that was the purpose of this post, it’s really crazy how people will say they want to educate and liberate women while yelling and degrading me for simply not agreeing with them and proceed to do the same things men do, you are no better than a man, I’ve come to realize that this community strayed from its original purpose and roots and has been taken over by people who want to put in their own two cents and opinion, this community or at least a good portion of it seems like a very miserable community, I have meet a lot of rad fems who have common sense and realize that hate will get them nowhere and being rude to me won’t achieve anything, on the other hand majority of rad fems I’ve meet have misconstrued the movement from what I’ve read and put feelings over facts, I won’t interact to hate and only to genuine discussions ⭐️

[agp-terf-ally]

No, I am not being a troll

As my url states, I have autogynephilia and by common definition I am transfem/TIM, but I also support radical feminism generally and its stance on trans people specifically (I know that a lot of you consider "TERF" a slur, but I picked it as more open, because a lot of people here are trying to make radical feminism trans-inclusive by removing sex-based oppression from it).

Why do I believe in sex-based oppression?

Because it obviously exists and you can see it in how transmasculine people are treated

Because it's the only meaningful explanation of emergence of patriarchy

Because sex of trans people still affects our lives and everyone recognizes it

I went through a brief period of detransition because of severe doubts, and it made me realize that attempts at describing patriarchy as "gender-based oppression" fail to address cases of detransitioners

My stance on trans people

(This has gotten long, but TL/DR: sex and gender are different, and both are valid in different contexts)

I don't think that trans people are purposefully being predatory and inherently wicked, don't come at me with this thing.

I don't think that gender identity is innate the way sexuality is, I do believe that it's constructed, but I don't think that it's not real altogether. It's real the same way ethnicity or religion are - there is nothing in your brain that makes you Swede or Catholic, but this identity has meaning to people and affects their lives. And I don't mean masculinity/femininity by it, I have masculine female friends who I am not trying to trans, and GNC trans people are real.

Some people are trans because of life-long physical dysphoria, some because they detest social expectations, some internalize homophobic or sexist stereotypes, some do it because of AGP/AHE (which is not some dirty perversion), some have culturally-specific reasons, and much more. Obviously, different groups of trans people have different needs, and some of them wouldn't be trans in different societies or won't be in the futue, but they are trans now and that's something you can't dismiss.

However, one's gender identity doesn't erase your sex (though a lot of trans people tend to emphasize with people of their gender rather than sex), and doesn't make you entitled to be included in someone's sexuality. Sexuality is about body as much as it's about personality, and it's bodies that we have innate attraction to. Existence of trans people and especially medically transitioning ones does complicate categorization, because some people may be only attracted to men in daily lives but also wouldn't mind transmasc partner who is on T but didn't have SRS, some would dislike even fully operated partner because other features or even because of their AGAB (and it's fine), and some people may have no preference in bodies but strong preference in gender identity, and so on. But in the end of the day, for a lot of people it's either birth sex that matters or they are bisexual, and it's completely fine.

This attitude is especially gross when it comes to gay people, because on top of trans people simply not being attractive to them it provokes their trauma response.

Why do I call myself AGP?

This is complicated and some of it is just for edginess.

But also I recognize that my physical dysphoria is pretty insignificant and incomplete, and I can't even prove that it won't go away. That's why I decided to not transition.

When I say AGP I mean that I feel a thrill when I think of myself as a girl etc. I don't get hard from it and don't enjoy being degraded for femininity, as transphobic caricatures say, but I think that foundation of my AGP is at least partially in attraction to women.

It also highlights the fact that I am probably not a "true transsexual" or otherwise absolutely inborn woman, and I accept it. Whatever.

Some additional information:

My chosen name is Belle

This blog exists as my attempt to build bridges from transfem side (transmascs both do it themselves and some cis women reach out to them) and to provide insights both about lives of transfems and views of radical feminists to anyone who asks

I am into women, but I don't call myself a lesbian because it feels like too much of an intrusion. I won't describe my sexuality further here, but asks are open

DNI: misogynists, homophobes, racists (including antisemites and zionists)

If you feel uncomfortable about me - just block me, I won't feel bad

I admit being male, but I still dislike it. It's always fine to point how being socialized as a boy or being perceived as male changes my social life, and I recognize sexual dimorphism in reasonable (i.e. real) terms, but I would like you to not go out of your way to trigger my dysphoria. Thank you

[nayatarot777]

Father God & Mother Gaia ~ Men Throughout History Have Disregarded Half of Source Consciousness/Energy

I find it fascinating how the fragile egos of men throughout history have twisted what the idea of “source” is, amongst religion. They’ve conveniently only recognised the masculine half of source as the only source that there is (hence why all abrahamic Gods are ONLY masculine energies within their religious text). But yet they also taught people that their masculine-only version of God is source in its entirety. That God is whole (holy). But how can God be whole without his other half? How can their version of the whole source ONLY be a masculine energy? Because they want to equal themselves as human masculines with the source consciousness?

It’s a fact that there’s duality in everything. Without one end of the spectrum, there can’t be the other. Without negative, you can’t have positive. Without bad, you can’t have good. Without the feminine, you can’t have the masculine. So why has the feminine side of source (which I believe is Mother Gaia) been ignored and eradicated from mainstream belief systems so easily? How can a masculine procreate by himself without a feminine? Father God & Mother Gaia are the PARENTS of creation. But, again, men throughout history have conveniently ignored the mother and only acknowledged the father in religion as a way to feel like they’re the superior energy (as masculines). Even going as far as demonising the feminine embodiments of God. But there’s no such thing. Father God and Mother Gaia make a whole, so how in tf are they only worshipping half of source while pretending like they’re worshipping the entirety of source? Only to simultaneously abuse, oppress, and degrade the physical embodiment (women/females) of the feminine side of source, on this physical planet? Men are the physical embodiment of the masculine side of source, but for some reason, their human egos decided to develop a superiority complex and oppress the physical embodiment of the feminine. While pretending to respect source? How tf are you “respecting” source while you abuse, oppress, and degrade half of source itself?

This is what has made prayer so difficult for me. I want to address Father God, but I never do in my prayers because it feels like my addressee list is incomplete, if that makes sense. This is why. I usually just say “source” but that doesn’t feel enough for me. It feels too removed from me sometimes. I want to be able to feel what’s similar to a human connection with source but just seeing it as the source of energy of creation doesn’t allow that. And I know that a lot of people struggle with the same thing. Instead of praying only to “Father God”, try praying to “Father God & Mother Gaia”. As if they’re parents who you can speak to, instead of the skewed religious version of God as a tyrannical biblical Father. That version of God is the projection of weak-ass male ego over centuries. You don’t have to subscribe to that version of God that has been twisted and lied about. And hopefully, this is how many of us can heal our religious trauma.

For my people who are into astrology, who have chiron and/or lilith in the 9th house, this particularly could be healing for you.

Just something to think about.

[ultramaga]

When feminists were important, they would rant about how oppressed women were because they had to make themselves pretty to be attractive to men.

Nowadays, we see the f'ists still vilifying men, but rubbing oil into titties to get the money from men, men who are fooled into thinking that they have some chance of a relationship.

I have known quite a few women go down the ethot path, and only one who remained a genuine person. The rest just see men as wallets, to be seduced and used.

I don't give a shit about sex work in the abstract, but at least there a little honesty can exist, and, rarely, real connections can form.

If someone upfront offers sex for money, I can respect that even though I think it is sad. I would much rather see a world where men and women shared pleasure instead of faking desire. Where the pleasure was part of other communication.

But that is not going to be happening today, and maybe never.

Still, you know what will vanish?

The ethot. Ai is getting better and better. I would say maybe five to ten years at most, and ai ethots will overwhelm the market, all run by a few sweaty men running huge server farms and occasionally pretending to be horny women - or just rebooting when all else fails.

There's already ai waifus out there. Crude, and I think only used for a joke, but they will get better.

And the culture that uses them will implode, and be replaced. The future belongs to those who have children, and grandchildren, and so on, and all these barriers to real communication we are installing will just mean that the religious fanatics will remain whilst we fade like dying pixels on a depowered monitor.

The feminists fantasized that Christians would force women to wear hijab, be submissive, have babies. But that was always a part of the enemy of Christians. The one religion the feminists promoted.

And feminists always pushed hatred towards male sexuality on the grounds that it degraded women, that it doesn't care about their pleasure, that it is pedophilia...

All the while a religion that ticked those boxes was let in the gates, and given privileges in law. You can be arrested for even saying the founder had sex with his wife, even though it is a statement of fact.

Feminists legalized pedophilia and the degradation of women and girls. That's the exact opposite of what they should have done.

And all the while they sabotaged genuinely healthy relationships between women and men, and made love harder and harder to find.

I look around, and I see so many lonely men and women, and the pathetic thing of Tumblr is it is stuffed full of lonely, thirsty women who obsess about men out of their reach, and despise every man on their level, and even criminalise approaches - then complain that they don't receive any.

Emma Watson famously changed UK law to make male sexual approach a crime - then claimed UK lads were wimpz because they stopped approaching her, and flew to America for cock.

Leaving behind UK women bewildered that men no longer dared - except for the worst, of course. The members of the religion feminists promoted were quite happy to sample the "uncovered meat".

[lovewhatyoufindbeautiful]

Men have...

Killed female babies femicide - left to die, drowning, burying, throwing in water

Forced wives to partake in killing their daughter or FGM

Attacked/Killed women for rejecting them

Beaten us

Muzzled us for talking

Exiled/killed for taking leadership roles or speaking up

Burned us at the stake

Pressured us to modify our bodies

Kept us from modifying our hair and bodies

Shamed our bodies

Encouraged unrealistic body proportions

Raped young babies and young girls (church and domestically)

Molested and rape their relatives

Kidnapped young babies and girls from their families

Sold their own daughters for money

Sold females into sex slavery

Rounded up "comfort women" for [Japanese] army and forced to be sex slaves

Shearing, punishment, tarring of women who slept with enemies (true or not true/or for survival)

Forced us into marriage

Married children

Impregnated us without consent

Sterilize us without consent

Left us after impregnating us

Denied us education

Harrass us in school

Sexually harrassed us at work

Catcalled us in public

Denied us the right to vote

Force fed us

Beat us for protesting

given us male guardians who dictate our lives

Not allowed us bank accounts

Not allowed us cars and driving licences

Not allowed us to cut our hair short

Not allowed us to hold a job

Not allowed us to ride trains

Exploited our slave factory labor

Exploited our slave plantation labor

Not given us maternity leave

Denied us healthcare/birth control

Restrict and dictate our clothes

Bred [black] women like cattle

Stolen our ideas

Discredited/invalidate women and what we say/our expertise

Punished us for their shortcomings

Serially murdered us

Degrade us to sexual objects in music, films, ads

Normalize us as the victims/receiving end of torture for arousal and entertainment

Deny us our heritage

Put us in huts while we menustrate

Drug us and intentionally intoxicate us in order to prey on us more easily

Let rapists and women-beaters/killers off with no or little consequences

criminalized our sexuality

Groped us in public places

Limited our creative outlets

Filmed us as voyeurs in private spaces

Made Death/rape threats

Used exposure of nude photos as threats to silence women

Thrown acid in our faces in order to disfigure our faces enough to ruin us for life

Honor killings

Created and forcibly spread 3 major religions globally that oppress us

Brainwashed us into worshiping and never questioning the male entity

Confined us to houses

Scalped and drained of blood

Gang rape/train rape us

Wear our skin

Cut off our breasts

Used drills in our vaginas as forms of torture

Shave our hair if we didn't wear a veil/hijab

Arrest us for not wearing hijab

Harassed or killed for not wearing hijab/ covering

Bound our toes under our feet to appear smaller

Strangled and then masturbated on

Not allow abortions, even when we're dying

Require husbands permission for getting tubes tied

Harassing and bombing womens healthcare access

Slaughter our families

Place value and our worth on our virginity and hymens

Take our virginity and leave us so that we can't marry

Bride kidnapping

Imprisoned us for being smart, silly, horny, or liking to read

Raped and impregnated mentally and physically impaired women

Deny female inmates period products

Deny female inmates doctors/We give birth in jail cells

Kidnapped women and forced them to be suicide bombers

Group attacks on women (molesting and kill)

Falsely accuse smart women of being witches/burn us alive at the stake

Assassinate women rights activists/women in positions of power

Shoot us in broad daylight while going to school

Attack us for going to school

Take us out of school/force us to quit

Punched for not undressing for sex fast enough

Invalidate marital rape

Inject us with needles while in clubs - HIV or other drugs

Drug our drinks in order to rape us

Hide, destroy, invalidate divine feminine figures

Barred us from eating/dining alone

Fire us from work when they find out we're pregnant

Demonized our curiosity

Corrections officers sold keys to female inmates cells to violent male inmates and let them rape them

Massacre young children in schools

OVERTURNED ROE V WADE 6/24/22

symphysiotomy*

Attacked while going to the bathroom (could wear certain headscarves to show which women had more value and shouldn't be attacked)

Taliban have barred Afghan women from attending school

Gaslit our memory of how we've been abused

Rape or moleste us while performing surgery on us

[automatismoateo]

You know what, I'm done. I am done treating religious people who cant connect the dots with respect, civility and like they're on the same level of argument/validity in their ideas. via /r/atheism

You know what, I'm done. I am done treating religious people who cant connect the dots with respect, civility and like they're on the same level of argument/validity in their ideas.

I've had it.

We have given religious people so fucking much ground and space to believe in whatever the fuck they want to believe, and society has paid dearly for it.

Rampant transphobia, rampant homophobia, destruction of women's rights and autonomy, Rampant degradation of people's freedoms and the division of religion from law, the oppression of hundreds of peoples and destruction of cultures.

This is the result of constantly giving in and letting people get with preaching religious ideas and shielding them from criticism. We love to tear people down for dozens of other things, but the moment it involves an ethereal sky creature, suddenly we cant call them stupid for it.

What do we call an adult who believes in voices that talk to them that arent there? Delusional. Psychotic.

So why do we suddenly say "thats valid" when someone says "thank you jesus for helping me."

Some how Easter Bunny and Santa Claus aren't real and we can make fun of an adult for believing in such dumb things. But you point out that god didnt make humans and the earth and OH MY THATS TOO OFFENSIVE.

Give me a fucking break.

Gloves off, Treat religious beliefs as what they are: Stupidity.

The fact of the matter is if you do any meaningful research into the history of religion in humanity, you come to a conclusion that gods were always based on the imagination of what humans could think up at the time to explain something they didnt understand.

That ALONE should be enough to make someone realize that their own god cant and does not exist. It's such a TINY leap of logic to make. It's so small. "Their gods didn't exist... oh, wait, that means mine doesnt as well..."

But then you involve the concept of science and there is ZERO provable evidence what so ever for any ethereal beings.

Not one singular shred of evidence or place exists where a deity can exist.

That one takes a lot more research but something as simple as the existence of your smart phone and the science required to make such a thing work, is more than enough data to disprove the concept of a god.

It is so crucially simple. The most basic things we learn in middle and highschool in the USA, Japan, Germany/Austria/France and so many others directly contradict the claims and existences of any deity.

Did god make humans? Nope we evolved. Did God make the earth? Nope it came out of an accretion disc. Did god make the light? Nope that comes from a giant burning explosion 93mil miles away we call a Star. Did god make the universe? Nope. There is no point in place or time that we know of now where any deity can be integrated in to the point of creation.

No evidence supports the involvement of a deity in anything humans ever made a deity for.

This is not some big brain decades of research and 140IQ+ realization.

It's realization so simple my 13 year old brain figured it out almost 2 decades ago. Even then it was incredibly easy to understand that gods don't exist and cannot exist. It is not hard to understand that the concept of a deity defies the most simple concepts of physics and cannot exist.

If someone cannot connect what are simple dots, to come to the conclusion that gods don't exist from what is ridiculously accessible information, it's time we start calling it what it is:

Stupidity.

I am done giving religious people any ground. If you believe in gods, you're an idiot. It's that simple.

Submitted December 05, 2022 at 12:23PM by LMGDiVa (From Reddit https://ift.tt/J6XQkMz)

[b-lessings]

" Islam tells men to honor women and women to honor themselves. "

[nocapesdahling]

Appraisal

King!Helmut Zemo x F! Reader

My Masterlist

Dark Fic

Summary: King Helmut Zemo rules all, his reign absolute and unchallenged. When men bearing his livery steal you from your home with no regard for your mother’s screams or your attempts to fight back, you know there will be no escape. Not from him.

Rating: M (18+) (Minors DNI Please)

Warnings/Tags: Dub-con/Non-con Touching; Soft! Dark Zemo; Medieval King! Zemo; Dominant! Zemo; Naive! Reader; Innocent! Reader; dry humping; Power imbalance; Implied age difference — everyone is an adult; Coercion; Degradation; Mentions of blood; A couple of mentions of religion and attending Church; One instance of blasphemy if you squint; Period typical attitudes towards virginity, sex, and women; Mentions of cockwarming; ring kink? Whatever it’s called, this fic has it.

Word Count: 2.7k

A/N: This is my first dark fic, and also the closest I’ve ever gotten to smut. The idea of King! Zemo has been hanging out in my head for awhile, but I didn’t plan for a dark fic with him. However, this idea came to me in the middle of the night and once I started writing it I couldn’t stop. I know this is outside the realm of my usual fics, so I’d love to hear what you think. 

This fic is 18+. Please heed the rating and warnings above. Your media consumption is your own responsibility, and please consume with care. 

The guards, knights that were supposed to be chivalrous to and protective of the innocent, had not been gentle when they deposited you on the floor of the throne room at the foot of King Helmut’s throne. The room was oppressive in its silence, empty except for you, the king, and whatever guards lingered in the hidden places you couldn’t discern at first glance. Your harsh breathing interrupted the stillness as you watched motes of dust swirl through the purple light streaming through the windows onto the pristine white floor. Your bleary eyes lingered on a moth flying upwards through the air as jealousy filled you. You did not know why you were here, but knew that there was no escape. Not for you. There were no wings that could carry you away from this place.

“Come closer, girl.” The king’s deep voice commanded, his sophisticated accent curling around the words. There was no doubt that he was used to giving orders and having them obeyed. Without question.

You went to push yourself up off the floor from where you’d fallen, willing your legs to stop shaking. You’d almost made it to standing upright before his voice interrupted the silence, mocking your attempts at propriety.

“Did I say you could rise?”

Oh, he was cruel. Crueler than the stories made him out to be.

Your legs gave out and you held in the instinctive cry of pain by biting your tongue. You had learned a harsh lesson today. Knights and kings were not as they were in stories and songs. They were men, neither paragons of virtue nor exempt from the faults and cruelties that plagued anyone living. In fact, they seemed to be bursting with them. Shadows swam beneath their armor and velvet, leaving only holes where their hearts should be.

“It would be best not to keep me waiting.”

It was obvious what he wanted and while it was degrading to crawl towards the throne, he was the king. Your King.

You pushed yourself onto your hands and knees, and made your way forward. The gown you’d put on that morning was hampering your movements as torn as it was, but you continued on slowly — trying to ignore the fact that parts of your body, which were not fit for the eyes of anyone but your husband, were exposed to the world through the rips in your gown and chemise. Bare before his eyes.

He was the king, and he must be obeyed.

You tried to comfort yourself with the knowledge that after he ascended to the throne, King Helmut had reinstituted the practice of the Right of the First Night and took advantage of it often; he had seen many women’s bodies before, and there was a high probability that he would have seen all of you on your wedding night regardless. It did not comfort you as much as you'd hoped it would.

He may be king, but your body was one of the few things in this world that until marriage you had considered your own. You now realized that was an illusion at best. It looked like all you’d have left after this was your mind. Maybe, not even that.

Your bloody handprints marred the white floor of the throne room, staining it with your imperfections. A hope filled you that maybe he wouldn’t notice as you came into sight of the steps up to the throne. Your knees ached as you began to pull yourself up them, hands gripping the white stone. Your mother would say that it was a sign that you didn’t go to Church often enough. That there was nothing there to protect you. Nothing built by kneeling to pray daily at your bedside or weekly in Church, no layer of protection on your knees and no God.

There was only one god here. A god made flesh, Your King.

You came into sight of his polished black boots and stopped crawling. Closer to his throne, the feel of his eyes on you was overwhelming. The weight of them made everything feel heavier. Another burden for you to bear.

“What have I said about keeping me waiting?”

After a brief moment of hesitation, you crawled across the dais until you were almost nose to toe with his boots before he spoke again. “Look at me.”

You didn’t want to. You didn’t want to see a monster looking out of the face of the ruler of your country.

Yet you knew there would be consequences if he had to ask twice. You began to raise your gaze from the floor, taking in his boots which were speckled with tiny droplets of blood that no cleaning could remove. Then his black trousers and plum colored doublet as he lounged on his throne. King Helmut was wearing his customary coat that he was never seen without; the fur framed his face, which you tried to avoid looking at for as long as possible by slowing the pace of your perusal. You closed your eyes and breathed in before resuming the upward movement of your gaze, taking in his well groomed beard, the freckles and moles on his face, and his parted brown hair.

His dark silver crown, which was crusted with reddish purple gems, rested on his head and looked as though it weighed nothing — uneasiness was not an emotion that someone like King Helmut experienced. Many said that the gems were filled with the blood of his enemies and those foolish enough to cross him. Out of all the stories, that one now seemed the most true.

You saved his eyes for last, finally meeting them after holding in your amazement that he was allowing your prolonged perusal of His Person. They were a deep dark brown, and you only had a moment to take in their overwhelming emptiness before he raised an eyebrow at you and smirked.

“Have you finished? You know I have taken eyes for less.”

You nodded, trembling and still not daring to speak or stand in front of him.

“Good, then you won’t mind if I look my fill.” His voice made what would have been a request from someone else an order as he beckoned two fingers in a come hither gesture.

You pushed yourself off the floor with effort, leaving dirt and bloody handprints behind. You wiped what was left of the blood on your gown and hoped the rest was dry. You dared not bloody the king. At least the pristine throne room would show some sign of your presence before all was wiped clean. After he did whatever he wished to you, there would be evidence at the foot of his throne — he would have to look at the remnants of you.

As you stood in front of him, knees shaking and attempting to hold up the ripped pieces of the front of your bodice and gown, he made the come hither gesture again lazily.

You took two small steps forward in between his legs, every step a trial, before stopping in confusion. You couldn’t come any closer. There was nowhere to go. You made eye contact with him again, having been looking at his nose in an attempt to avoid those dark eyes, to see cruel amusement.

He spread his legs further, and patted his lap. Your eyes closed in mortification as you realized what he wanted. With difficulty, you attempted to sit on the throne and situate yourself facing him. He didn’t help you, only smirking when you almost fell backwards. When it seemed like it would happen again, his large hand settled on your back and caught you. Its warmth was a sheer contrast to the coldness of this man.

Your King, you reminded yourself.

He moved his hands to grip your hips and pulled you forward so you were situated face to face on his throne. You squirmed on his lap, uncomfortable. This was the closest you had ever been to a man.

As you did so, you felt something hard under you and froze, your mother’s lessons on what to expect on the wedding night and the small glimpses you’d seen of animals coming back to you. You focused your eyes on the king’s chest as you tried to pull away. His grip on your hips wouldn’t allow that and he chuckled as he pulled you down further onto his lap. Separated only by his trousers and your skirts, the heat and feel of him was impossible to ignore.

“See what your display did to me, you crawling to me across the floor of my throne room. At my command.” When he finished, he thrust up against you as if for emphasis.

You’d done this? But how? Your mother hadn’t gone into that much detail. Whatever you’d done, you wanted to make sure that you never did it again.

“Now, let me look at you.”

His hand touched your bare flesh for the first time, grasping your chin and forcing your eyes up from his chest. His sword calluses were rough against your face. Yet with a surprising gentleness, the king tilted your face from side to side, running his ringed fingers over your cheekbones and jaw. His thumb brushed over your lips, making you gasp. As your mouth opened, for a moment it looked as though he was appraising your teeth.

He moved his hands down your neck and shoulders, caressing your arms through your gown before cupping your breasts and weighing them in his large hands. You couldn’t help but rub your thighs together, unsure what that feeling was inside you and unintentionally rocking against him with your movement which only seemed to make it worse. You ached for something that you couldn't name.

The smirk he shot you this time was full of satisfaction as he pushed his hips up against you again before holding you still. He slid his hands under your loosened bodice and rubbed your nipples through your thin chemise with his elegant fingers, making you gasp and arch your back. Pushing yourself further into his grasp. The king pinched your nipples and chuckled at the involuntary moan that escaped you. You’d never made a noise like that before.

“So responsive, my dear. That will serve you well here.”

You focused your eyes on the wall out of discomfort and embarrassment as he gave your breasts one last squeeze before running his hands down your sides and bringing them to rest on your waist.

He made a noise of contemplation before speaking, “Look at you, writhing on my lap. I think I’ll have to keep you here while I hold court. And with your gown, no one will know that I’m inside you. I’ll keep you full of me for hours.” His roughened voice made it sound like a promise, though he seemed to be musing almost to himself as he moved his hands down to feel your hips.

You were glad that he didn’t act as though he wanted an answer because while you had a vague idea of what he was talking about, he couldn’t mean that? Could he? Disregarding those thoughts because you must have misheard him, — you must have, there was no other alternative —you bit your lip as you tried to ignore what he was doing to you.

He was the king, and he was within his rights. Wasn’t he?

As he caressed your hips before beginning to bring his hands lower to what he could grip of your legs through the gown, it struck you all at once what this reminded you of — your father assessing a horse that he planned to buy at the market.

The king was treating you the same. Evaluating your worth.

He stopped moving for a moment before all at once he clutched your skirts and began to pull them up. Forgetting yourself, you tried to push them back down. That was too much surely, even for the king.

But a thought ran through your head, if he was assessing your value, then it only made sense that he wanted to see all of you. Including parts of your body no man had seen.

His hands clasped yours in a tight grip and he paused. His voice as he spoke was menacing, “Look at me.” He waited till you did. “Put your hands on my shoulders and don’t move them.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” You placed them underneath the fur of his coat with tentative slowness, grasping his broad shoulders. As you did, his scent seemed to fill the air, released from his garments. Citrus, wood, and spices. It lingered in your nose. You wished it was not so pleasant. He should smell like blood and death, not the neighbor’s orange tree that you used to climb as a child.

“That’s it. There’s a good girl.”

He resumed pulling up your skirts, lingering to caress what he could reach of your ankles and calves — his rings cold against your skin.

When he spoke, his voice was filled with a calculated nonchalance as he traced a circle on your now exposed knee. He could have been talking about the weather or the latest harvest. “Do you know why you’re here? “

You shook your head, trying not to move against the bulge in his trousers that had somehow gotten larger. You wished he would let you move away from him, but that was not to be. Every so often, he would shift his hips and push his hardness up against you as though to remind you of its existence. As if you could forget.

“Your father displeased me, and I demanded recompense. And do you know what he offered?”

You breathed out and closed your eyes in realization. It explained your father’s absence that morning.

He had reached your thighs as he continued to pull your skirts up with agonizing slowness. “That’s right, dear. I knew you had a brain in that head of yours. You.” He began to push your chemise up all the way, which would expose you completely to his gaze. You reared backwards in surprise, almost falling off the throne.

He paused, his hand gripping your thigh to hold you in place. He tsked at you and shook his head before letting out a low chuckle. “Hmm, I thought you were a good girl. Not a naughty one.”

When you didn’t respond, holding yourself still under his strong grip and wondering whether or not you would have bruises tomorrow in the shape of his fingers or in the outline of his rings, he continued. “You shouldn’t have done that, not when I was inclined to move slowly. I can tell you’re innocent, my darling, but I’m losing patience.”

You held yourself still, afraid of what he might do. He was the king. And you had disobeyed him.

“Undress. Let me see what is now mine by restitution.”

The words bounced around your brain, again and again. His deep voice echoing in your ears.

Undress. Let me see what is now mine.

What is now mine.

Mine.

You didn’t do anything. You couldn’t, frozen in place. Your hands had fallen to rest on the crushed velvet covering his chest, your nails digging into the fabric.

“Do not make me repeat myself.” His thumb brushed over your lips almost affectionately before he grasped your face without warning, rings digging into your jaw. His eyes burned you with their coldness. “You wouldn’t want to be punished on your first day as mine, now would you?”

You shook your head.

“I did not think so. Your King has asked you something. And what do you do when ordered by Your King?”

You swallowed as you shifted backwards on his lap and began to loosen the last remaining laces of your bodice. “Obey, Your Majesty.”

“Yes, you obey. Without question. With haste. Obedience will reward you and disobedience…” He paused and tilted his head in contemplation as he surveyed your body. “Well with the way you’re going, you will find out soon enough. Now take off your clothes. I will not ask you again.”

You tried to keep your voice steady as you answered in the only way you knew he would accept, “Yes, my king.”

Likes, comments, and reblogs are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

A/N: Well then, so what did everyone think? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

My Masterlist

[menalez]

who is spreading the lie that white feminists gatekeep rights away from brown women? in america black men kept women from voting rights to begin with.

“White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women’s suffrage.” - Carrie Chapman Catt

“What will we and our daughters suffer if these degraded black men are allowed to have the rights that would make them even worse than our Saxon fathers?” - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!” - Anna Howard Shaw

“I do not want to see a negro man walk to the polls and vote on who should handle my tax money, while I myself cannot vote at all…When there is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue—-if it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from the ravening human beasts—-then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary.” - Rebecca Ann Latimer Felton.

“The enfranchisement of women would insure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained, for upon unquestioned authority it is stated that in every southern State but one there are more educated women than all the illiterate voters, white and black, native and foreign, combined. As you probably know, of all the women in the South who can read and write, ten out of every eleven are white. When it comes to the proportion of property between the races, that of the white outweighs that of the black immeasurably.” - Belle Kearney

“Alien illiterates rule our cities today; the saloon is their palace, and the toddy stick their scepter. The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt.” - Carrie Chapman Catt

“It is positively unsafe to allow young white women to walk alone on the highway, or to be left at home without male protectors. The brutal lust of the half-civilized gorillas seems to be in-flamed to madness —for five lynchings took place in Georgia for the crime of rape in the week preceding my address at Tybee.” - Rebecca Ann Latimer Felton

yessss queen lets keep dismissing white women's racism as somehow on men of colour. men of colour aren't the only people who have oppressed woc, white women & white men were doing it too.

[ms-hells-bells]

i'm against religion in general, but i really like looking at cases of women's rights within various religions, and i'm pleasantly surprised to find that sikhism is (in theory) based in sexual equality. the creator of the sikh religion (guru nanak) and other major gurus that followed stated that the souls of women and men are equal, women are not impure, women deserve literacy and education and other rights, and condemned actions like menstruation taboo, forced veiling, female infanticide, sex and work slavery of girls, the dowry system, and the practice of burning widows on pyres with their deceased husbands. many gurus also discouraged followers of sikhism from associating positively with people and groups that degraded and dehumanised women, and in fact, having any sort of friendly relationship with those who practice, encourage, or support female infanticide is forbidden.

and they were saying this stuff since the 1400's! and because of this, sikh women are overrepresented in high education, higher careers, medicine, academia, etc. in india. of course, in PRACTICE, living in a highly patriarchal society, sikh men still oppress and devalue women, but it was just pretty cool to read about it, especially when back then, the dominant religion there was and is hinduism, so the creation of sikhism and pretty revolutionary viewpoints for that time pushing through is nice to read.

[feministstruggle]

The Role of Patriarchal Religion in the Global Oppression of Women and Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine

Feminist Forum March 26th 11-1 PST on Zoom Get your tickets now on Eventbrite! Have you ever wondered why women have become so devalued and debased that we are degraded routinely as pornographic images, driven into prostitution, sold as property, coerced into child marriages, our bodies violated and mutilated, our right to bodily sovereignty and self-determination threatened or non-existent?  Has it always been this way?  Is prostitution “the oldest profession”?  Have we always been told we must be pure and virginal while men are allowed sexual license and even excused for rape?  Or have we been systematically groomed to be subservient and obedient, taught that our only choice is between Madonna or whore, that we are to blame for the “fall from grace”, intimidated and silenced by belief systems that teach us we are inferior, and punished severely when we defy these messages? Most people believe that there has always been patriarchy, that women have always been treated like sex objects and chattel, blamed for men’s violent behavior, disrespected, dispossessed, disregarded, and treated like lesser humans unworthy of equality since the dawn of time.  This is not the case.  Once there was a Goddess, and things were different. Join us for an examination of the role patriarchal religion has played, and continues to play, in the subjugation and oppression of the female sex.  As the U.S. veers toward becoming more and more a patriarchal theocracy, it is time that we gather our courage and finally look this beast in the eye.  And it is high time for women to reclaim our birthright:  the Mother Goddess.  Featured speakers: Max Dashu: 

Max Dashu founded the Suppressed Histories Archives in 1970 to research women’s heritages in the global cultural record and make them visible. She uses images to teach about matricultures, ceremony, medicine women, witches, female rebels and untamable women, as well as patriarchy, conquest, and systems of domination. She is the author of Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, a forthcoming book on women in Hellenic mythography and patriarchy, and two videos: Women’s Power in Global Perspective, and Woman Shaman: the Ancients. Her current course is Matricultural Eyes via Teachable. See more photo essays at https://www.facebook.com/Suppressed-Histories-Archives-333661528320/photos Ava Park:

Ava cares about only one thing: nourishing the primal power of Woman to guide the world to goodness. Ava is the founder of The Museum of Woman, revealing the hidden history of Woman from the Paleolithic to the present through the stories and statues of Goddesses, Queens and Wisewomen; the founder of The Goddess Temple of Orange County, the women’s spiritual circle of The Museum of Woman; and the author of The Queen Teachings for Women with Ava, © helping women access their Four Powers of Woman, © Maiden, Mother, Queen and Wisewoman, with emphasis on the Powers of the Queen Archetype, the most denied, dismissed and demonized of the female archetypes. When the Queen shows up in Woman, patriarchy melts.  Enjoy her inspiring YouTube videos on her channels: Museum of Woman, Goddess Temple of Orange County and Queen Coach. Nina Paley: 

  Nina Paley is the creator of the award-winning animated musical feature films Sita Sings the Blues and Seder-Masochism.  Seder-Masochism is a film loosely following a traditional Passover Seder and events from the Book of Exodus, retold by Moses, Aharon, the Angel of Death, Jesus, and the director’s own father. But there’s another side to this story: that of the Goddess, humankind’s original deity. Seder-Masochism resurrects the Great Mother in a tragic struggle against the forces of Patriarchy.  She also has written a book, The Seder Masochism: A Haggadah and Anti-Haggadah.  Her newest project is Apocalypse Animated, illustrating the Book of Revelation. Ms. Paley has been deplatformed, banned, and blacklisted for saying penises are male. Carol A. Bouldin, LMFT Carol has worked in the mental health field with individuals, groups, and families in a variety of settings including inpatient, outpatient, corrections, substance abuse, and private practice, specializing in women abused as children. She is a longtime feminist and utilizes a feminist therapy approach in her work with women. Carol has done research on Christian orthodoxy, attitudes towards women, shame, and rightwing authoritarianism,and is interested in the psychological impact of patriarchal religion on women and girls. Role of Patriarchal Religion in the Global Oppression of Women Resource List Read the full article

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 433

THE MAIN FACTORS IN THE SPREAD OF ISLAM: Part 2

A. J. Arberry has also pointed out that the reason for the spread of Islam is Islam itself and its religious values. (Aspects of Islamic Civilization, p.12)

He writes:

‘The rapidity of the spread of Islam, noticeably through extensive provinces which had long been Christian, is a crucial fact of history. The sublime rhetoric of the Qur’an, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy…and the urgency of the simple message carried, holds the key to the mystery of one of the greatest catalysms in the history of religion. When all military, political and economic factors have been exhausted, the religious impulse must still be recognized as the most vital and enduring.’

Brockelman, who is usually very unsympathetic and partial, also recognizes the religious values of Islam as the main factor for the spread of Islam (History of the Islamic Peoples, p.37). Rosenthal makes his point as follows: ‘The more important factor for the spread of Islam is the religious Law of Islam (Shari‘a, which is an inclusive, all-embracing, all-comprehensive way of thinking and living) which was designed to cover all manifestations of life.’ (Political Thought in Medieval Islam, p.21).

Besides many other reasons which are responsible for the spread of Islam, it is the exemplary life-style and unceasing efforts of individual Muslims to transmit the message of Islam throughout the world which lie at the root of the conquest of hearts by Islam. Islamic universalism is closely associated with the principle of ‘amr bi’l-ma’ruf (enjoining the good) for Islam is to be spread by Muslims by means of ‘amr bi’l-ma’ruf. This principle seeks to convey the message of Islam to all human beings in the world and to establish a model Islamic community on a worldwide basis. The Islamic community is introduced by the Qur’an as a model community: We have made of you an Ummah justly balanced, that you might be witnesses (models) for the peoples, and the Messenger has been a witness for you (2.143). A Muslim or the Muslim community as a whole thus has a goal to achieve. This is the spread of Islam, conveying the truth to the remotest corner of the world, the eradication of oppression and tyranny and the establishment of justice all over the world. This requires the Muslim to live an exemplary life, and thus the moral and the ethical values of Islam have usually played an important part in the spread of Islam. Here follow the impressions of the influence of Islamic ethics on black Africans of a Western writer of the nineteenth century:

‘As to the effects of Islam when first embraced by a Negro tribe, can there, when viewed as a whole, be any reasonable doubt? Polytheism disappears almost instantaneously; sorcery, with its attendant evils, gradually dies away; human sacrifice becomes a thing of the past. The general moral elevation is most marked; the natives begin for the first time in their history to dress, and that neatly. Squalid filth is replaced by some approach to personal cleanliness; hospitality becomes a religious duty; drunkenness, instead of the rule becomes a comparatively rare exception chastity is looked upon as one of the highest, and becomes, in fact, one of the commoner virtues. It is idleness that henceforward degrades, and industry that elevates, instead of the reverse. Offences are henceforward measured by a written code instead of the arbitrary caprice of a chieftain–a step, as everyone will admit, of vast importance in the progress of a tribe. The Mosque gives an idea of architecture at all events higher than any the Negro has yet had. A thirst for literature is created and that for works of science and philosophy as well as for the commentaries on the Qur’an.’ (Quoted from Waitz by B. Smith, Muhammad and Muhammadanism, pp.42-43)

The tolerance of Islam is another factor in the spread of Islam. Toynbee praises this tolerance towards the People of the Book after comparing it with the attitude of the Christians towards Muslims and Jews in their lands. (A Historian’s Approach to Religion, p.246). T. Link attributes the spread of Islam to the credibility of its principles together with its tolerance, persuasion and other kinds of attractions (A History of Religion). Makarios, Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch in the seventeenth century, compared the harsh treatment received by the Russians of the Orthodox Church at the hands of the Roman Catholic Poles with the tolerant attitude towards Orthodox Christians shown by the Ottoman Government and prayed for the Sultans (T. Link, A History of Religion).

This is not the only example of preference by the followers of the religions for Muslim rule over that of their own co-religionist. The Orthodox Christians of Byzantium openly expressed their preference for the Ottoman turban in Istanbul to the hats of the Catholic cardinals. Elisee Reclus, the French traveller of the nineteenth century, wrote that the Muslim Turk allowed all the followers of different religions to perform their religious duties and rituals, and that the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Sultan were more free to live their own lives than the Christians who lived in the lands under the rule of any rival Christian sect (Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, vol. 9). Popescu Ciocanel pays tribute to the Muslim Turks by stating that it was luck for the Romanian people that they lived under the government of the Turks rather than the domination of the Russians and Austrians. Otherwise, he points out, ‘no trace of the Romanian nation would have remained,’ (La Crise de l’Orient).

The Muslims’ attitude towards the people they conquered is quite clear in the instructions given by the rightly-guided Caliphs: ‘Always keep fear of God in your mind; remember that you cannot afford to do anything without His grace. Do not forget that Islam is a mission of peace and love. Keep the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) before you as a model of bravery and piety. Do not destroy fruit-trees nor fertile fields in your paths. Be just, and spare the feelings of the vanquished. Respect all religious persons who live in hermitages or convents and spare their edifices. Do not kill civilians. Do not outrage the chastity of women and the honour of the conquered. Do not harm old people and children. Do not accept any gifts from the civil population of any place. Do not billet your soldiers or officers in the houses of civilians. Do not forget to perform your daily prayers. Fear God. Remember that death will inevitably come to every one of you some time or other, even if you are thousands of miles away from a battlefield; therefore be always ready to face death.’ (Andrew Miller, Church History; Ali lbn Abi Talib, Nahj al-Balagha)

A historical episode which Balazouri, a famous Muslim historian, relates, tells about how pleased the native peoples were with their Muslim conquerors is of great significance

When Heraclius massed his troops against the Muslims, and the Muslims heard that they were coming to meet them, they refunded the inhabitants of Hims the tribute they had taken from them, saying: ‘We are too busy to support and protect you. Take care of yourselves.’ But the people of Hims replied: ‘We like your rule and justice far better than the state of oppression and tyranny in which we were. The army of Heraclius we shall indeed, with your help, repulse from the city.’ The Jews rose and said: ‘We swear by the Torah, no governor of Heraclius shall enter the city of Hims unless we are first vanquished and exhausted.’ Saying this, they closed the gates of the city and guarded them. The inhabitants of other cities–Christians and Jews–that had capitulated did the same. When by God’s help the unbelievers were defeated and Muslims won, they opened the gates of their cities, went out with singers and players of music, and paid the tribute (Futuh al-Buldan).

To sum up, although most Western writers, under the instigation of biased Orientalists of the Church, have alleged that Islam spread by the force of the sword, the spread of Islam was because of its religious content and values, and ‘its power of appeal and ability to meet the spiritual and material needs of people adhering to cultures totally alien to their Muslim conquerors’, together with some other factors. Some of these factors are the tolerance which Islam showed to people of other religions, the absence of ecclesiastic orders and hierarchy in Islam, mental freedom and absolute justice which Islam envisages and has exercised throughout the centuries, the ethical values it propagates, and Islamic humanitarianism, universalism and brotherhood, and its inclusiveness. Sufi activities, the moral superiority of Muslim tradesmen, the principle of ‘enjoining the good’, and Islamic dynamism and the magnificence of the Islamic civilization contributed of their own to the spread of Islam.

The main religious qualities which attracted people to Islam were:

(i) the simplicity of the theological doctrines of Islam based on the Divine Unity;

(ii) rationalism of the Islamic teachings;

(iii) the complete harmony of the Islamic ideals and values with human conscience;

(iv) the inclusiveness and comprehensives of Islam, covering all aspects of physical, mental, and spiritual life of individuals and societies, hence the harmony of religion and life which it established;

(v) the lack of formalism and mediation;

(vi) the vividness, dynamism and resilience of the Islamic theology, and its creativity and universalism, and its compatibility with established scientific facts;

(vii) the cohesion and harmony of the Islamic principles, and

(viii) the shortcomings of other theological systems.

[alightwhendarknessfell]

As a Jewish person I’ll say it, few hate Jewish women more than Jewish men do. Our culture oppresses us because of a fear of the sexuality and autonomy of Jewish women. Lilith in a lot of way represents that. She represents a literal demonization of the sexuality and equality of Jewish women. The weird fixation goyim have with Lilith has always been weird to me, more so that Juliet is on Instagram saying “Lilith is___” and none of what she’s presenting is historically or religiously accurate, I get it’s a persona for her but I feel like she could have picked literally any other female name and avoided bastardizing something that comes from and exists in a culture she’s not familiar with.

So do you have an issue with Lilith being used by feminists as a symbol of feminism? Or Pagans/witches using Lilith in their religion/beliefs? The character of Lilith has been used by many different groups to represent the idea of female liberation from men or similar meanings. Biblical characters have been used by different religions, cults, cultures, etc. for centuries. As I said, obviously there are certain religions that use certain characters more so than others and all of them originated from somewhere but to claim that only one religion can lay claim to a certain biblical character is not okay in my opinion. 

There is a big problem in a lot of monotheistic religions with men suppressing and hating women and using religion to degrade them. In fact, it’s one of the main issues I have with Judeo-Christian religions. Therefore I am in favor of turning religious characters used against women into symbols of female empowerment. That is what Juliet is using it for, whether or not she portrays it as 100% historically accurate or uses her own interpretation is her prerogative.  

[alexsmitposts]

The Nasty Truth About America’s Love Affair with Narcissism and Self Pity

Column: Society Region: USA in the World

📷There is a saying, “the crazy people have taken over the asylum.” They did that in the United States in 2016, a nation ruled by grifters, petty criminals and the delusional.The sane and decent became the “silent majority” as the not just America but the world learned that the darkness of the American soul depicted so often by Hollywood is not fiction at all and that a reality TV actor had tapped into a cesspit of sewage that has seeped into every American community.Then came 2020.By sheer luck along and, yes, the votes of 81 million Americans lucky enough to survive voter suppression and intimidation financed by a worldwide organized crime cartel, the insane are now out of power.The new “captain’’ of America’s “ship of state” may well, however, have something on his hands worse than the Titanic. The Titanic had the courtesy to actually sink while America, under this analogy, drifts lifelessly along.Extremism is big money in America, climate denialism, race hatred, social discord and civil war, hate is both a product and an addiction.It is also one of America’s biggest businesses. There would be no social media, no Google, no news organizations, no underbelly of device driven ecstasy, without fear and hate being marketed like cigarettes and CBD gummies.Roots of America’s Politics of Fear and Hate 2.0American extremism is not the result of poverty or oppression. It originates among the privileged, the “haves” who adhere to insane beliefs driven by boredom and generalized dissatisfaction at lives the rest of the word would envy, overpaid jobs, gas guzzling cars and trucks and fast food laden with fats and poisonous additives.If you asked many millions of Americans to define “reality,” their brains would grind to a halt. Reality is based, not on experience or observation but on “beliefs” and strongly held “opinions” which are invariably those scripted for them.Beliefs and opinions untested by the feedback loop of life has created a generation of Americans who are, essentially, living in a video game. This makes Qanon a AI program.Collective delusion has become the norm for many, and by “many” we mean up to 150 million lost souls, caught in an RPG game or, for some, a “first person shooter.”What does it make those who play? But then we have seen all this before, just without a population softened up to this degree by chaos theory conditioning. Some background:The Roots of Fascist AmericaIn 1940, Adolf Hitler was Time Magazine’s man of the year. The parents and grandparents of Trump’s supporters, following Huey Long, Gerald L.K. Smith, Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh sought to establish a “whites only” America based on the German model with carefully selected military leaders run by Wall Street pulling the strings.There is something magical, even today, about being “white folks.” That magic originated in the 18th and 19th centuries with the “Sturm and Drang” movement. Extremes of emotion and subjectivity were exalted above rationalism.Childish temper tantrums became a philosophy and eventually a political movement.The movement, which failed in Europe, found fertile ground in the United States in a society that increasingly defined itself though ritualized slavery and degradation and oppression of “coloured races.”This was a society built on the genocide that wiped out millions of indigenous peoples with the survivors now living on “reservations.”Imagine land where nothing grows, and no one could live. This is an “Indian reservation.” From time-to-time oil is found or minerals or there is a need to build a pipeline. Then even the worst land on earth is taken away.This was done in South Africa. It was done in Rhodesia. It used to be called “colonialism.”By the 20th century there were no indigenous people left to imprison. America then turned to warring against the freed slaves and millions of “undesirable” European immigrants, Catholics and Jews in particular.Curiously, this war was centered on banking issues, blocking trade unions, sustaining child labor and controlling farm prices. This created the alignments that

exist today, the strong tie between Wall Street and homegrown extremism built of bigotry and race hatred.You see, too many of the undesirables that fled autocratic Europe found that the long hand of international banking that maintained serfdom for millions, even in supposedly advanced Western Europe, had institutionalized the same in the United States under the guise of representative democracy.Leading the way was the resurgent Ku Klux Klan.By the 1920s national membership was estimated at over 8 million. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a dozen other northern and western states were governed by Klan controlled politicians who used the state militias and National Guard as a private army and local police as armed enforcers.Behind it all, the banks that brought Hitler to power and the American corporations that made millions financing Nazi Germany’s war machine, General Motors, Dupont-Remington, Lockheed, Alcoa and General Motors.Even Hitler Would Cringe…The new American revolution, driven by Donald Trump and his televangelist backers, is the result of as social anthropologists note, generations being allowed to live the life of spoiled children, steeped in narcissism and self-pity.The events of January 6, 2020 and how it tied to many American religious leaders has emptied churches across the US, with millions finding themselves humiliated with having followed “false prophets” in support of hatred and tyranny. From Salon:“…these religious figures (Trump’s powerful televangelist backers) and the institutions they led (have become) hyper-political, the outward mission (has)seemed to be almost exclusively in service of oppressing others. The religious right is not nearly as interested in feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless as much as using religion as an all-purpose excuse to abuse women and LGBTQ people. In an age of growing wealth inequalities, with more and more Americans living hand-to-mouth, many visible religious authorities were using their power to support politicians and laws to take health care access from women and fight against marriage between same-sex couples. And then Donald Trump happened.Trump was a thrice-married chronic adulterer who routinely exposed how ignorant he was of religion, and who reportedly — and let’s face it, obviously — made fun of religious leaders behind their backs. But religious right leaders did not care. They continually pumped Trump up like he was the second coming, showily praying over him and extorting their followers to have faith in a man who literally could not have better conformed to the prophecies of the Antichrist. It was comically over the top, how extensively Christian right leaders exposed themselves as motivated by power, not faith.”Jerry Falwell Jr., who introduced Donald Trump to America’s evangelical Christians, is himself an enigmatic figure.Falwell is typical of America’s religious leaders and stories such as this, from Fox News, are daily fodder for Americans:“Jerry Falwell Jr. allegedly played games with his wife Becki where they’d rank Liberty University students, they most wanted to have sex with, according to one pupil who claimed to have been intimate with Becki.The ex-student — who claims Becki initiated oral sex with him 10 years ago — told Politico that she bragged about playing the sex-ranking game while walking around the Virginia campus with her evangelical-leader husband.‘Her and Jerry would eye people down on campus,’ the former student of the conservative school told the outlet.Social Engineering Through PandemicAnyone who really lives in America will make this perfectly clear, this country has turned into a lunatic asylum. Our previous president told us COVID was a hoax, allowed over 40,000 from China enter the US while the threat of COVID was well known and turned his back while, today’s figure, 570,264 Americans died. Experts now cite that Trump was personally responsible for over 400,000 of those deaths. He is quite simply a mass murderer.Do remember that only 900 died in Australia. Canada lost 23,000. 35 died in Vietnam. 440 died in

Cuba.One might wonder how a Hitleresque figure such as Donald Trump could have millions of followers while the legal mechanisms in the US are amassing evidence for both criminal and civil prosecutions which quite probably will never come to bear.Groundhog Day, an Unending NightmareLet me tell you how I began my morning. As a journalist and intelligence briefer, I review incoming material, both open source and private intel. The big story overnight involves a revelation on a religious talk show involving theories on COVID 19 and vaccines.The show is by Jim Bakker, an important religious leader and political advisor. In 1989, Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison for mail and wire fraud but served on 5 of those years. He has stolen tens of million of dollars from his congregation to support a wild and lavish lifestyle of utter debauchery.In this area, he is typical of America’s evangelical Christian leaders.The guest on Bakker’s show was Steve Quayle. I know Quayle as an advisor to President George ‘W’ Bush on Middle East affairs. I know of no qualifications for this post.I do know of Quayle. After 9/11 he approached my staff in Amman, Jordan offering them generous payments to “launder” otherwise sourceless intelligence on Iraq into the Bush White House to justify an American invasion of that nation.Two million people died, maybe many more, due to fake US intelligence on Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.Groundhog Day TwoLet us take the clock back a few years. I remember traveling to Kentucky, then and still a very backward area of the country, in 1956 to visit relatives. This was a presidential election year, and my father was working for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate that was opposing Dwight Eisenhower.Even I, at a fairly young age, was flabbergasted at the dinner table discussion that day as my “hillbilly” relatives expounded on their political opinions and version of historical fact. This is how they laid it out:We should support “Ike” because he killed Hitler personally after storming Berlin. They described a sword fight. What they described reminded me of the death of the Sheriff of Nottingham played by Basil Rathbone in the 1938 film Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn. They then went out to describe how the US beat both Russia and Germany who were at war with the US. It seems Russia did not fight Hitler at all but was actually Germany’s ally. My father, a reasonably educated person and longtime friend of Russia, found this somewhat disturbing. Next, we heard about how “godless communists” were going to take away our freedoms and destroy our standard of living. I might remind you that my relatives in Hazard, Kentucky had no electricity or plumbing. One of my cousins lived in an abandoned car parked in a slag field.During that trip, we visited my grandfather, a retired coal miner. He lived in a shack covered with tar paper along a railroad track. I loved my grandfather.Life Lessons Do not Come Over the InternetOver the next 60 plus years, I had shared tea with farmers in Vietnam, military veterans living in a small shack in the Khyber Pass and everything from heads of state to struggling farmers all over Africa and the Middle East. None would have guessed that there are Americans that live in not just utter poverty but steeped not only in delusional ignorance but far worse than that.A current obsession with American “conservatives” is the fear of being overrun with transexuals, who, according to many, represent a threat to our freedoms. I have never met a transsexual. From what I understand, up to 10,000 currently serve in America’s armed forces.Back during the 1960s when I served with a Marine combat unit in Vietnam, we probably had no transexuals, only gay or “homosexual” Marines and Navy. Absolutely nothing was thought of it as these individuals invariably served with honor and courage.They existed in significant numbers.Today aging “conservatives” who avoided military service in Vietnam continually harp about saving the rest of us from “homosexuals in the military.”Voting and

“Jim Crow”Let us take another look at efforts by the Hitleresque racists and bigots to save the rest of us from ourselves, against our will of course. In Georgia, the legislature recently passed a law that makes it a felony to offer water to someone waiting in line to vote.Water is an issue because, in Georgia and many GOP (Trump’s party) run states, polling places in areas where people of color vote have been closed causing day long lines. In 2020, volunteers offered food and water to those who would otherwise have either collapsed or left without voting. Now offering food and water can lead to being executed by racist police, quite literally, or spending 5 years in prison.In 2020, voters in many key urban areas were threatened by armed neo-Nazi militias or openly threated in emails from Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, organizations deemed terrorist in Canada and now citied by the US Department of Justice as trying to overthrow the US government.In January, during a US Senate runoff election in Georgia, 364,000 voters were challenged by the GOP in Georgia as “illegal.” All of them were African American. All 364,000 were qualified to vote and their votes were eventually counted, giving Georgia two Democratic US Senators.The Federal Elections Commission is now investigating that this effort to rig the Georgia senate elections was secretly financed by illegal contributions from members of organized crime.Groundhog Day ThreeI live in a rural and primarily Republican area. I parked my car less than 30 feet from the door of a polling place, a local church, and voted in less than 3 minutes with no lines or ID check.In order to limit mail voting, Trump ordered mail sorting machines destroyed with sledgehammers and over 40,000 mailboxes picked up and junked as scrap metal. Mail service in many cities simply ended. One letter I sent to Washington DC from Michigan took 45 days to arrive.Hundreds of millions of pieces of mail, starting in late September 2020 simply disappeared, not just votes but government checks, Christmas presents and medications from pharmacies sent to Veterans.All of this was not just publicly known, things are far worse than that. Those who so many decades ago believed the United States fought Russia in World War Two, would raise children and grandchildren with no respect for human rights, no understanding of democracy, no ethical norms nor any remote understanding of right or wrong.This is the reality for those living in America, a reality that those who watch America from afar through the distorted lens of Google Corporation and the press, can never fathom.Ah, but things are so much worse than that. It is not just having spent 4 years with a president who told us you could cure covid by drinking bleach or eating flashlights. It gets worse.Groundhog Day FourA few days ago, former Trump advisor Cirsten Welcon claimed that President Biden had been paid billions of dollars by China to let them test their newest “weather weapons” on Texas. Power outages there, now attributed to corrupt backroom deals by Republican politicians, led to many deaths and considerable suffering.Little did any of us know of the role of the magic Chinese weather machines.In another vignette, it has been a years since Trump advisor and televangelist Kenneth Copeland stood before a television audience raving like a lunatic. He then pursed his lips and blew at the television camera, the “wind of god” which he claimed destroyed COVID forever.This effort by Reverend Copeland, who has millions of followers and a vast financial empire, led President Trump to announce that COVID 19 was going to disappear.ConclusionSome would like to believe that the institutionalized insanity of America’s right is restricted to the “Untermensch” substrata of rural poor whites. However, for decades now, the most radicalized and extremist elements of America’s society, the most ignorant, the most warlike yet cowardly, have gained control of the US military through service academies which espouse their conspiracy theories.With the onset of Trump, they gained much

more than a foothold in American politics, they now control many states “lock, stock and barrel,” and are involved in not just voter suppression but a general quashing of human rights and free speech.The door to this turn of events began well into the 19th century. Laws, still on the books, are now being employed against Donald Trump, from CNN:The Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump that cites a little-known federal statute that was first passed after the Civil War.The complaint, filed Tuesday by Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, accuses Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers of violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. The lawsuit accuses them of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election.These same extremist elements and calling them “extremist” insults al Qaeda and ISIS (banned in Russia) who are moderate in their beliefs and practices in comparison. These statements might sound extreme in themselves were it not for so many Americans, religious and military leaders, members of government and business leaders calling for wholesale murder of their political opponents citing their personal communication with a non-corporeal authority they said is “god.”Americans hear this all day every day, the emails are unending, TV networks like Fox, OAN or Newsmax say little else, and that message is carried not just through media but lawn signs dotting the countryside.Hundreds of thousands of American homes are festooned with paraphernalia espousing murder of public officials and their families. Americans see it every day driving to work. What they ask themselves when they see things like this is how many others hold these beliefs but keep it to themselves?What if academics wrote papers on the issues, we discuss here? What if the BBC produced a documentary? Would things get better? The problem dates back not just generations but centuries.It is not a moral problem; it is not a political problem. It is one of degeneracy. At some point we may be required to reassess our definition of sentience.

[agameforgoodchristians]

Altar Sex (Amos 2:8) [A Guest Card Talk]

Note: this Guest Card Talk is connected to our other card talk on the Book of Amos.

“The closest I ever came to having sex was right after prayer.”

For many young adults, this observation would serve as a catalyst for a more active prayer life, but for us pious young men at a Christian college, this advice from a graduating senior served as a warning. Intimacy is risky and dangerous and, if you’re not careful, you’ll end up in the wrong holy of holies.

Recent examinations of Christianity’s approach to sexuality have been rather damning with their criticism and deconstruction, from extensive exposes on various church-related sexual abuse scandals, to full-throated takedowns of “evangelical purity culture.” Even the patron saint of courtship, Joshua Harris, has kissed “kissing dating goodbye” goodbye.

But despite Christianity’s well-published and long-running anxiety about all things sex, historical records seem to indicate that few religious traditions are exempt from such tension. The sacred and the sexual may be uncomfortable bedfellows, but they sure can’t be accused of not trying. Long before Augustine began ruminating about the sinful superpowers of semen, fertility cults from Baal to Dionysus were planting their seeds in every known religion. Even texts found within the Hebrew Scriptures - such as Song of Songs - have been known to arouse more than pious hearts.

Which brings us to Amos, the lonely shepherd of Tekoa. In Amos 6:1-7, the prophet makes explicit reference to a marzeah, a cultic ritual attested to widely throughout the Fertile Crescent and beyond. While the origins of the term remain a mystery, widespread attestation across cultures paints a rather consistent picture of marzeahs as cultic festivals that centered on feasting and drinking, sexual lasciviousness, and were often connected to funerary rites. Sort of like an ancient Mardi Gras.

The word itself only appears twice in the Hebrew Scriptures—also in Jeremiah 16:5, with possible allusions in Ezekiel 8:7-13 and Isaiah 28:1-6—but also seems to influence Amos’ earlier criticisms of the northern kingdom of Israel in Amos 2:6-8:

Thus says the Lord:

“For three transgressions of Israel, and, for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals - those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted; a man and his father go in to the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned; they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.”

There is certainly a temptation here to clutch our pearls at the mere mention of the mingling of altar pieces and body parts. At first blush, Amos’ denunciations wouldn’t seem out of place at a True Love Waits rally. In fact, this passage may even be listed as a Scripture reference on a youth lock-in “covenant agreement.”

Curiously, however, Amos does not seem to condemn such celebrations on their own merits. Rather, Amos’ concerns are primarily with the desecrating division that has devolved religious practice into social exploitation. The ritual has not only superseded the ethical, but been financed by the unethical. In short, the perpetrators have developed a “celebration of discipline” that divorces love of God from love of neighbor (well, some neighbors), a concern most famously expressed in his diatribe against such an unholy division in Amos 5.

Unlike standard prophetic polemics against pagan religious practice, Amos turns his tirade toward Jewish observances specifically endorsed by the Law - festivals (specifically, the hagim prescribed in Exodus 23:15-16), burnt offerings, grain offerings, and fellowship offerings (as prescribed in Leviticus 1-3), and even music. Of particular note is the way the relationship of these ritual practices and acts of justice are structured in relationship to each other. At the foot of Sinai, Moses follows up God’s Greatest Hits (the “10 Commandments”) with a variety of B-sides and album filler material about compensation for knocked-out teeth and singed thorn bushes. Following an extended rumination on property rights, Moses then delivers a robust set of commandments that some Bibles helpfully label as “Social Responsibility” or “Laws of Justice and Mercy,” focusing on the treatment of widows, orphans and aliens, including words that should sound awfully familiar to anyone paying attention to Amos:

“If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.” (Exodus 22:25-27)

Then, and only then, does Moses finally get around to some brief directives on ritual celebrations. For Moses - followed closely here by Amos—the priority is clear: Justice First. Ritual Second. No Justice, No Peace (Offering). In contrast, Amos only finds people who have become experts in ritual and flunked the final exam of righteousness.

Taken collectively, Amos’ striking denunciations of Israelite practices in chapters 2-6 point directly toward a wealthy class whose conspicuous religious consumption was made possible only through exploitation (which, not surprisingly, appears to have been an attribute of marzeahs in other cultures, as well). In addition to the detailed criticisms listed in 2:6-8 and 6:1-7, notice also the following accusations leveled by Amos:

“They do not know how to do right . . . who hoard plunder and loot in their fortresses.” (3:10)

“You women who oppress the poor and crush the needy / and say to your husbands, ‘Bring us some drinks!’” (4:1)

“You trample on the poor / and force him to give you grain.” (5:11)

As one notable prophet would later observe, the house of prayer had been turned into a den of robbers.

The Kentucky poet Wendell Berry has consistently lamented the way Christianity has divorced spiritual and material realities, reflecting a lively Gnosticism-by-another-name habitating inside America’s pulpits and pews. Most memorable perhaps is the following sentiment expressed in “How to be a Poet”:

“There are no unsacred places; There are only sacred places And desecrated places.”

Just a wee bit south of Berry, another Appalachian poet was learning this truth in her own characteristically eccentric way. In the tiny Tennessee community of Caton’s Chapel, a young Dolly Parton found “God, music, and sex” coexisting in a small abandoned country church that offered both spiritual and sexual resonance to the developing saint. Between the walls adorned with hand drawn testimonies of youthful sexual escapades and the discarded keys and strings that gave birth to sacred melodies, Parton recalls, she “broke through some sort of spirit wall and found God,” even as she simultaneously experienced an epiphany of sexuality and self-identity. Perhaps taking Berry a step further, Parton offers her witness that even seemingly desecrated places can be sites of sacral revelation.

And none of this would surprise Amos.

Amos does not fear that the sacred has been tainted by the sexual. On the contrary, recognizing the sacredness of both the dwelling of God’s name and the abode of God’s image, what raises the prophet’s ire is that both have been desecrated by the diminishment of the flesh. In the degrading of bodies through exploitation, economic indifference, and greed, Amos writes, what should be a holy celebration has been transformed into a parade of unrighteousness.

To blend the vision of Berry, Parton, and Amos, we might say:

There are no desecrated places; Only sacred people, And desecrated people.

Dave McNeely is the Coordinator for the Faith & Justice Scholars Program and an Adjunct Religion Professor at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City. He is a licensed Baptist minister who spent a decade in youth ministry, and has an undergraduate degree in Religion (Greek minor) from Carson-Newman, an M.Div. with specialization in Christian Education from Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, and additional study in Justice and Peace Studies at Iliff School of Theology. He was a contributor to A Game for Good Christian’s anthology This Present Former Glory and recently co-authored his first book, Chad and Dave Read the Bible, Vol. 1: The Christmas Story.

[islam-for-girls]

BEFORE the time of The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), women were hardly seen as human. Women in general were seen as objects and were treated carelessly.

In Ancient Greece terms such as ‘chattels’ (possessions of men) and ‘gynes’ (bearers of children), were derogatory names given to woman. Seen as only sexual items, women were treated with no bodily, emotional or spiritual respect. They were not given the right to deal in legal matters, deal with money, war or show any form of intellect. According to various sources, in various cultures women were not allowed to attain inheritance as only men were entitled to it.

5000 years ago, prostitution was widespread. Females were conceived as ‘glamorous but empty’; they were seen to have no intelligence and no personality. Their bodily modesty was disregarded as they were forced to be sexual slaves, they were objects of gratification. All strengths of a woman, their wills, their life-aims, their personality and their modesty were seen as meaningless. They were forced unwillingly to be the sexual items of the men who falsely and wrongly nominated themselves as their masters.

As Christianity developed it considered complete abstinence from sex as the ideal. Churches started revelations concerning ‘anti-sex’ and ‘anti-woman’ to complete this notion. A virgin daughter was unfairly ‘given’ a higher place in heaven than her mother, because her mother had sex in order to bear her. In Christianity nuns are considered holy and closer to God, but are still not given their humanly rights. Nuns are forbidden to own any material object, and are forbidden to have sexual relations and therefore cannot express love without feeling shame (www.benedictinenuns.org.uk). In the Catholic religion, divorce was seen as unholy trapping women in abusive and horrible marriages (en.m.wikipedia.org)

“There is no need for us to mention the situation of women in Greek, Persian or Jewish society, but even Christian societies had a bad attitude towards women. The theologians even gathered at the Council of Macon to discuss whether a woman was merely a body or a body with a soul. They thought it most likely that women did not have a soul that could be saved, and they made an exception only in the case of Saint Mary (as), Mother of Jesus (as)

The French held a conference in 586 CE to discuss whether women had souls or not, and if they had souls, were these souls animal or human? In the end, they decided that they were human, but they were created to serve men only! During the time of Henry VIII, the English Parliament issued a decree forbidding women to read the New Testament because they were regarded as impure. Until 1805, English law allowed a man to sell his wife, and set a wife’s price at six pennies.” (http://islamqa.info/en/70042)

With the coming of Islam, Islam decreed elevation of the status of woman

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) had witnessed the oppression of women and acted against the oppression evident with Hadith. Many Quranic verses from God Almighty were revealed in the purpose of protecting woman and uplifting their status; showing them equal to men. In Islam we are defined as being human, not a gender:

“So know that there is no god save Allah, ask forgiveness for your sins and for the believing men and the believing women. Allah knows well your moving and your place of rest.”

(47:19)

“…Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you…”

(49:13)

“To whomever, male or female, does good deeds and has faith, We shall give a good life and reward them according to the best of their actions.”

(16:97)

“And they (women) have rights similar (to those of their husbands) over them to what is reasonable, but men have a degree (of responsibility) over them. And Allah is All-Mighty, All-Wise”

(2:228)

“and live with them honourably”

(4:19)

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said:

“I urge you to treat women well.”

(al-Bukhaari, 331; Muslim, 1468.)

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said:

“The best of you is the one who is best to his wife, and I am the best of you to my wives.”

(al-Tirmidhi, 3895; Ibn Maajah, 1977; classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi)

In Islam, women are empowered to search for knowledge and intelligence. Women are seen as humans. Men and women are equal in their rights!

“It is only those who have knowledge among His servants that fear Allah.”

(35:28)

“And say: My Lord increase me in knowledge.”

(20:114)

It was narrated from Anas bin Malik that the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) said:

“Seeking knowledge is a duty upon every Muslim…”

(Sunan Ibn Majah)

In Islam women are allowed to take witness to legal documents

“…And get two witnesses out of your own men. And if there are not two men (available), then a man and two women, such as you agree for witnesses, so that if one of them (two women) errs, the other can remind her…”

(2:282)

Islam allows women to choose their spouses so that they are not forced into an unwanted marriage

It was narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (pbuh) said:

“No previously-married woman should be married off without being consulted and no virgin should be married off without asking her permission.”

They said:

“O Messenger of Allah, what is her permission?”

He said:

“If she remains silent.”

(al-Bukhaari, 4843; Muslim, 1419)

Islam elevates the mother by saying the child’s Heaven (be they a son or daughter) is under her feet

“Stay with her for Paradise is beneath her feet.”

(Saheeh Sunan Ibn Maajah)

Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) said:

A man came to the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) and said:

“O Messenger of Allah, who is most deserving of my good company?”

He said:

“Your mother.”

He said:

“Then who?”

He said:

“Your mother.”

He said:

“Then who?”

He said:

“Your mother.”

He said:

“Then who?”

He said:

“Then your father.”

Islam elevates the status of daughters

The Prophet (pbuh) said:

“Whoever takes care of two girls until they reach adulthood, he and I will come like this on the Day of Resurrection,” and he held his fingers together.

(Muslim, 2631)

Ibn Maajah (3669) narrated that ‘Uqbah ibn ‘Aamir (may Allaah be pleased with him) said:

I heard the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) say:

“Whoever has three daughters and is patient towards them, and feeds them, gives them to drink and clothes them from his riches, they will be a shield for him from the Fire on the Day of Resurrection.”

(Classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh Ibn Maajah)

Islam protects a woman’s modesty with Hijab, and forces the man to look at her inwardly at her religion, personality, intelligence, emotions and her soul; rather than just look at her body like a material object ♥

Hijab overrules any notion that a man can use a woman who wears Hijab in prostitution or in any degrading manner; Hijab is a sign of strength and protection. Hijab is a sign of the Mercy God has on women ♥ The Believing women in Islam ♥

And even then, Hijab is not forced on the Muslim women; “there is no compulsion in religion” Quran (2:256) ♥ she does it out of her own desire and empowerment to be devote to her God.

Islam allows women to receive inheritance and even go to war if necessary and under threat. Islam is peace and freedom.

(other sources: Tutorial Letter MGG2602, Department of Social Work, UNISA)