In our patriarchal world, we are all taught - whether we like to think we are or not - that God, being male, values maleness much more than he values femaleness... that in order to propitiate God, women must propitiate men.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the patriarchal system that equates divinity with masculinity, suggesting that this belief undermines women's value and reinforces gender inequality.
Sonia Johnson's quote highlights the deep-seated beliefs in a patriarchal society where the divine is perceived as male, leading to the notion that women's worth is diminished in comparison to men's. This reflection calls attention to how religious and societal structures often compel women to seek validation through men, suggesting that the root of gender inequity is intertwined with spiritual and cultural perceptions of gender roles.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about gender roles in religious contexts.
There has been only one war fought literally worldwide, affecting every living thing, and that has been men's all-out, non-stop, millennia-long war against women, a war that not only continues to this moment without the slightest abatement but intensifies hourly.
Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.
England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity.
How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.
Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.
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