THE RESURGENCE OF THE FEMALE VOICE

INTERPRETATIONS TO JUSTIFY MISOGYNY

Preamble: "The misogyny rooted in religious history, especially in Christianity, is based on biased interpretations of Genesis and the creation of the concept of sin by religious leaders."

 

Challenging centuries of misogyny

The term misogyny has been given many meanings: among other definitions, hatred, rejection, aversion, and contempt towards women by men. The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) defines it as “aversion to women.”

According to its etymology, it comes from two Greek words: “miseo” which means hatred and “gyne” which means woman; that is, hatred of women.

Misogyny has been studied in depth and has existed since ancient times. Famous and important figures in culture, philosophy, and science of those times were misogynists, and their hatred transcended for many decades and has been used by institutions to justify their existence. Thus, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Catholicism have shown misogynistic practices since their beginnings, having been influenced by these figures.

 The responsibility for misogyny lies with Christianity

The leaders of Christianity and Catholicism, in our era, have tried to disassociate themselves from their total responsibility in creating hatred towards women, asserting that the conditions of life and the consideration of women throughout history were due to various social, economic, ideological, cultural, and religious factors. This is a very subtle way of trying to share the exclusive blame of Christianity and Catholicism for the situation of inferiority and devaluation in which they have placed women since the 1st century AD, with the erroneous interpretation of Genesis, granting a “natural” supremacy of man and a difference in capacities.

Creation of sin to justify misogyny

History shows that the collective condemnation and disdain for women, generating misogyny, begins with Christianity, by giving a biased and untruthful interpretation of Genesis. To endorse this false interpretation, the prodigious mind of Irenaeus of Lyon, Bishop of Lyon (140-202 AD), elevated to the rank of Saint and declared Doctor of the Church “Doctor Unitatis” seventeen centuries later (01/21/2022), had the brilliant imagination to create the concept of Sin; the doctrine of the state of sin in which humanity is captive, as a consequence of the fall of man due to the disobedience of Eve, the sole culprit, for consuming the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

This state of sin would be transmitted to all humanity and would consist of the deprivation of holiness, original justice, and immortality, which according to Christianity, Adam and Eve possessed before eating the forbidden fruit.

It is notable that the biblical text (Old Testament) does not mention the word sin anywhere; it is mentioned many times in the New Testament, logically, to reinforce everything imagined by theologians and Church fathers before the existence of that New Testament.

Develop sin to reinforce misogyny

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) also developed the doctrine of Sin, justifying it in the teachings of Paul of Tarsus (Romans 5:12-21) and (Corinthians 15:21-22), asserting that “the sin of Adam induced by Eve had severe consequences for his descendants; first, because disobedience to the divine command would bring death, both spiritual and physical, thus neither Adam nor any of his descendants would be physically immortal; the image of God was totally corrupted, and any descendant was already born spiritually ‘dead.’”