She's pretty much spot on with everything she said. I realize that this kind of stuff happens everywhere, but it seems to be much worse in America, where we're supposedly so wealthy, so free, so "enlightened". There's lots of people who blame our violent movies and video games - but we can point to other Countries that have the exact same obsession - if not more of one, but have no where near the same level of sexual assault.
I guess if I had to decide where to point the finger - it would be at religion. Primarily (at least in the US) Christianity. The bible has so many examples of absolutely bizarre misogyny that it's hard to know where to start. Men with many wives who treated them as if they were cattle, women being stoned for crimes - when committed by a man - no one would have batted an eye at. The frequent suggestions that men are somehow superior, more holy. That they should be masters.
There are so very many different brands of Christianity here - and many different kinds of Christian. The most popular sort though, tends to come from a background in which the father and husband is basically the "head of household". You know, the only guy I really liked very much in the bible was Jesus - and when conservative Christians go about judging and condemning, they rarely tend to point to him as an example. Rather, they'll reference random quotes and passages in which some asshole a long time ago said something stupid - and the funny thing is, they think it's all righteous and holy because if it was in the bible - well, it must be!
Purportedly magic Jewish guy (who I thought was pretty cool) aside - if you want to know why men have this notion of entitlement, why the Patriarchy has such power and history, the bible would be a good place to start. So many generations of indoctrination, slavery and oppression - and it sure as hell wasn't just women that suffered. It was everyone but the rich. Which is kind of like how it is now. Yet somehow - even NOW, these very same notions, this very same random assortment of writings - seems to be upheld as the justification for all of the worst things about society, often perpetuated by people holding and/or quoting bibles.
I don't know. Maybe the problem isn't conservative christianity. Maybe it's human stupidity. Maybe it's wealth and greed. Maybe it's a combination of them all.
A good start, I think, would be if more fanatical Christians would begin to question whether things that were written many centuries ago and re-written and translated any number of times... are accurate, holy, or actually the word of God. When someone tells me to read the bible, I tell them they should read Harry Potter, it's much more entertaining.
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