Sexuality & God

What has God got to do with sex? Sexuality has been treated with suspicion when not rejected altogether by religious authorities throughout the ages. ‘Primordial’ fears of the body, its functioning and sexuality have led to a rigorous control and even regulation of sexual activity. Sexuality has thus been socially constructed in, primarily, a negative way. Women’s bodies were often seen with disgust (and I assume it still happens in many quarters), with rabbis referring to the womb as ‘place of rot’, not to mention patristic misogyny. Women have been associated with sexuality and have come to represent ‘the body’ and thus despised, needing regulation. They have been kept at a distance from … anything really! From the ‘sacred’ so that it would not be ‘defiled’, from political and economic power and, of course, from the intellectual sphere.
Those who wielded power created a ‘space’ for women and endowed them with domesticity. The traditional female role was (and still is) a self-denying one, at the service of others. The regulation of sex has been vital part of this process of ‘putting women in their place’. (By the way, the rejection of homosexuality falls under this category for it represents a challenge to heteropatriarchy, the gendered structures of power).
It was oppression, but it was dressed up as tradition and tradition was mistaken for authenticity. What I most object to is the fact that religious authorities used God to justify their prejudice that women were something apart. They thus sanctified oppression.
Many still think in this way, that there are ‘natural’ gender characteristics, that women are best at nurturing, caring and bringing up children. This obsession with establishing difference comes up every now and then. I wonder why people are so afraid of freedom, of being able to shape their lives without complying with mythical gender (or other) stereotypes. Why are people so keen for society to decide who they are?
But God has to do with the body. After all, it is through our body that we relate to others and it is through relationships that we encounter God. Me thinks God is a feminist! :)