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I hear this argument a lot, and it's one that I fell for myself, that religious men will take care of you.
First off, this isn't really true. A lot of Christian men are demons.
But I want to talk about the best case scenario - where the woman kills her own name, submits to her loving husband, has a bunch of kids, and dies shortly after he does, surrounded by grandkids, in loving, monogamous marriages.
I grew up around this. Most of the time, these marriages are beautiful.
But they're lies.
As a woman, you're expected to "submit" to a man BECAUSE he is male. That's slavery. Being given a new name is a practice of slavery.
Then, you have to tell your female children that the ultimate spiritual authority and source of everything good is male, and even in terms of religions, that could be seen as a lie. The oldest religion is Inana worship.
I don't WANT a husband who only doesn't cheat because he's scared of Hell. I want a spiritually open person to truly bond with me on a soul level, and not see me as an Eve compared to his Adam.
The universe is so much more than these rigid spiritual traps.
I don't want society to be phallic-worshipping robots.
I don't hate Christians. Some of the most loving, giving, kindest people I met are Christians. But they're also often male and white supremacists in a patronizing "help those who are racially and gender challenged," kind of way. Life doesn't need to be like that for us.
A man who doesn't believe in the divine feminine cannot truly BOND with a woman who he sees as inferior.
Church history of letting women be deaconesses can't wipe the blood from the goddess statues the Christians murdered people next to before taking down.
This is so on point. It infuriates me every single time when I think about pagan religions (atleast what's left of them) and how most of them were surprisingly gender-equal before the virtuous christians came to spread their misogynistic ass gospel. For example, viking women that died in childbirth were honored the same way as soldiers that died in battle, and were believed to go to the same afterlife as them (Valhalla or Fólkvangr). Available evidence also suggests that in my country's pagan societies women were not relegated solely to domestic roles; they had active roles in various aspects of life. Some archaeological evidence and folklore indicate that women held positions of spiritual significance, and the term "noita" (witch) had way more positive connotations since they were often women with a lot of knowledge and skills regarding healing and herblore, that were very respected members in the communities.
This might seem radical but this is the reason I'm against christianity (and abrahamic religions) as a whole, atleast in Northern Europe (I'm not going out of my way to bully actual christians here so dw). It's widespread popularity is solely based on genocide and oppression of indigenous societies, and it had actively prevented them from developing further due to it's initial authoritarian nature. Before christianity a lot of communities were progressive, but then they were forced and threatened to submit to some fairy tale book's woman-bad teachings or else they'd be killed. All of this also goes for Islam
What strikes me as odd in Christianity is that all the qualities they use to describe the awesomeness of Jesus are feminine traits: easy to forgive, abundance of love for everyone, acceptance of differences, lack of violence etc.
It’s enough for a man with those qualities to get glorified as the “son of God”. Meanwhile women are being treated like shit.
I feel this. Christianity places women beneath men, and so does every other serious religion I know of. That's incompatible with feminism.
However, I know there are plenty of otherwise right-thinking, pro-woman women who practice patriarchal religions, and I'm interested and open-minded toward their points of view. I'm just curious how they reconcile the fact that they worship gods who dont respect women. Do they just take the good parts of their relious teaching and disgard the bad parts? Is that worth it? Why not just have values and beliefs independent of the religion that doesnt respect you?
Makes me think of the saying: "Nothing hurts quite like Christian love"
I love when people praise Buddhism for its peaceful philosophy, but never mention the lack of women as monks.
I would rephrase this: You can not be blindly into patriarchal religions and still be pro female - same for your man.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: I don't think this black and white thinking is helpful, and I don't beleive in 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater.' This isn't a criticism of you personally OP, more so the black and wehite thinking in and of itself that is so prominent atm and destroying cohesion and nuanced thinking.
We ALL need frameworks, guidance and/or wisdom as we journey through life. Whether religious, philisophical &/or secular.
These frameworoks, and I include religion in this, come with good, bad, ugly, and middle.
Some of these frameworks demand blind faith/loyalty/allegiance and punish any kind of questioning, wheras others encourage, or at the very least allow for, questioning, exploration, and critical thought. Yes, even the patriarchal ones.
I've literally met some athiests who have been more dogmatic than some christians I've known. (Athiesm is a philosophy/framework all of it's own, too.)
I am currently exploring texts of one of these patriarchal religions and am finding tremendous beauty, wisdom, insight and richness within it. Every once in a while I'll read something I find quesitonable, and think - ah! this is why men are so dysfunctional/sexist/etc etc etc today, and that's a part of the text I either disregard, discard, or find new meaning in on a future read/investigation.
Anyway, this is just my opinion.
You can have a marrage/relationship/life with a happens-to-be-religious-man, where the woman doesn't kill her own name, is respected by her loving husband, has a bunch of kids, and dies shortly after he does, surrounded by grandkids, in loving, monogamous marriages.
High Value MEn are a very rare breed. They exist across all subsets of society, eve, occassionally, amongst religious men. Religion is largely abotu interetation and morality. A person's, a man's, true character can indeed be shaped by somerthing liek religion, however a high value man is a high value man and religion, omr whatever framework he chooses to use, will only bring out his high value traits. A LVM, well you could give that guy a million bucks and he would probably burn it at Vegas. If you get my point.
These men would have a stroke if only they knew the original Gnostics not only worshipped the divine feminine, but had female Priests and Bishops at the head of the church [not just little deaconesses, but Bishops], and were Sybilists, meaning they had female prophetesses in highest positions.
The original church was nothing whatsoever about women 'submitting to' or 'obeying' men!!! It was the exact opposite!!!
https://shorturl.at/efpPT
So much history has been lost, every thing we've been taught is a lie...
This is why I am militantly atheist and don't tolerate anything else in my life.
BTW, according to Christianism, Eve came out of Adam's ribs. Eve was a being that was born from Adam's body in order to take care of his loneliness. Christianism states that women are a succedanean product that came before what God made first. In fact, God made women as an afterthought. Never forget that.
I thought this is female dating strategy not atheist dating strategy? You can't be pro women if you refuse to recognise that belief in God, faith and a particular religion is an integral part of many women's identity and lives, whether you like that religion or not. It's not pro women to degrade religious women or to tell them to stop believing in their religion.
I'm a Muslim, because I believe in one God and because I believe that the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him is the messenger of God.