prophetic (2)

I don't generally like to throw around the term misogyny, because my own experience with gender discrimination was much more about men not understanding and not valuing women's experiences, usually unconsciously and usually a result of ignorance. It felt like...an uphill battle, to be sure, but not an impossible one.  But in the Bible, it does not seem like an understatement to talk about hatred of women.

The word of the Lord came to me:
“Son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds. Their ways before me were like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity.
So I poured out my wrath upon them for the blood that they had shed in the land, for the idols with which they had defiled it...." Ezekiel 36,16-18

The metaphor continues, it's lovely. Ezekiel, dude, the most offensive thing you can think of is a woman menstruating?? It's a natural bodily function! She can't do anything about it!

Our book takes a moment to note that this is, indeed, sexist, and further, that this isn't the only place where Ezekiel shows himself to be a raging misogynist. The author theorizes that as part the Babylonian exile, the traditional male-dominated power structures had been dismantled, and women may have held positions of more-than-usual power in the exiled communities, "which then in turn led to overreactions like these on the male side." Um...I suppose this is the same argument that says white anxiety about Obama led to the election of Trump. Maybe true but also NOT OKAY.

The trouble is, if this was the reigning view of women, then I think we can be pretty sure that women's opinions and perspectives did not make it into the Bible. What would it look like if they had? What are we going to use as a corrective?