celestina, you might be interested in Woe to the Women- The Bible Tells Me So by Annie Laurie Gaylor.
Also, this site has some examples of sexist bible verses. It doesn’t give the text, unfortunately, but it shouldn’t be difficult to look them up.
Some of the examples are probably up to debate about context (cultural/historical, etc.) by knowledgable Dopers- so I will leave it to them. 
Err… not likely, given that it’s… you know… Paul.
You’d be able to find the passage if you weren’t a woman.
Men shouldn’t have long hair?
So, did anyone bother telling Jesus?
Naughty, naughty, jar. Always use the right case: Dom.
Wow. Look at all these responses! 
[giggle]
yojimbo, I want to show you something.
Schnitte, I looked at that passage: “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says.”
:innocent eyes: Well, if we must take this passage literally, it seems like it’s only referring to folks who’re inside the church building needing to be quiet. I don’t know why whoever wrote it thinks that women will make more noise than men in the church. That’s not realistic or accurate at all. Now we all know that fellas, when you get them together, can be quite rowdy, and it don’t make a bit of difference whether or not they’re inside the church building. And actually, it also seems as if this passage is saying that the women can’t speak on religious matters inside the church, but it doesn’t say a thing about them not talking about other things. I mean what if there was a fire or something in the building? They can’t call out: “Fire!” to try to save the so-called “saints’ house” and all those who dwell inside it? Wouldn’t that make god and whoever wrote this passage a little upset? What if someone stirs some dust up in the church, and that dust gets in a woman’s nose and makes her sneeze? Does that constitute talking in the church? What about praying and singing out loud? I mean folks do go to churches to pray and praise and worship the lord. How can women do that if they have to be quiet the whole time?
[giggle]
Mangetout, how do you know that “the weaker partner” in this instance isn’t the husband? :innocent eyes:
Sauron said:
Word. I respect your right to be a Christian and worship how you please, but yeah, ain’t too much critical thinking going on if folks are taking every word in the Bible literally. That’s what I find the most frightening thing to do. In the OP, I’m really concerned with the lack of critical thinking going on in this Biblical assertion that women are somehow inferior to men. It isn’t logical, and actually it is one of the things I find the most suspect about the Bible and its multiple translations by different folks with different agendas/perspectives/biases and so forth. How can anyone take literally a text that basically is a chronicle of some Jewish folks’ history–we can’t pin down who exactly wrote it or how accurate they were being in their writing–but that contradicts itself all over the place? 
istara said:
Amen. Preach it, sister! It actually is quite sad how the very folks that be quoting Jesus this and Jesus that missed the whole point. Hmphfff. I ain’t no Christian nor any other religion neither, but even I can see that *Jesus was on a mission to get folks to think critically about things, quit being hypocrites, be flexible, and be prepared to revise their thinking and actions as needed. *
Awww, Mayflower. I hope your little one got settled okay. Great interpretation of that text. Basically it’s saying that if you have more strength or more whatever, then along with that comes the responsibility not to abuse those gifts. Thanks for the extra passages too.
ouisey, sounds like Paul had a MAJOR inferiority complex on top of being crazy. I mean really what’s so threatening about women learning and teaching what they know? How does it make a man less of a man if a woman is afforded the same civil rights, respect, and opportunities as men? It seems to me that any man who builds himself and his self worth up on subjugating others is then less of a man.
Hey Loopus, thanks for the cite. Yeah, religion bores the bejesus out of me too. It’s just when I get slapped in the face with the illogic that springs from far too many for my comfort of the religious that I have to speak out. [sigh]
zev_steinhardt said:
Word. And women are still striving to undo that mess. [sigh]
RedFury, I’m an agnostic and fast becoming an atheist. The only thing I’m defending is critical thinking. Hell, I’m championing that stuff!
Wow. Fairblue, what great websites. Thank you. In posting them, you’ve done your share for fighting ignorance today.
celestina
I suspect that the ambiguity of that passage (enabling it to be read as ‘Husbands, as the weaker partner’) is a quirk of the English language, perhaps a Greek scholar could clarify…
But anyway, as others have said, biblical literalism is the problem here, not religion/faith; once a person goes down that road (and especially if he only dips into the verses that suit him), all kinds of unreasonable results can occur.
In my reading, Paul comes across as being a misogynistic control-freak, but in realising that, its possible to filter out the noise and still derive some useful stuff (if you’re a believer).
It’s my opinion that in terms of fundamental truth, all you can really extract from the Bible is the idea that men and women are different (And I’d love to participate in a debate about that if anyone wants to try to assert that they aren’t); everything else comes down to how those differences affect people in the world that people have constructed, how those differences have been viewed historically and what assumptions people have based on them; inequality is a construct, not a fundament.
All I meant to point out was that God is recorded as making an order suggesting that women are inferior. I didn’t mean to imply that the quoted passage actually said that they are, or that they couldn’t change their status.
Actually, I find the subject of religion quite facinating. When I said I don’t give a damn, I only meant that I don’t feel obliged to believe what regious texts say or obey religious laws and teachings.
Just didn’t want my opinion misrepresented.
Ya know what’s more fun? Read some early Christian writings, or some 16th-17th century English writings about the Church (yah, I’m calling you out, Milton! Ya bastid!) and you’ll get the impression that Eve was dispensable. That is, if Adam hadn’t caved and eaten the apple just because he couldn’t imagine life without Eve, things would’ve been okay. In the Christian sense, we wouldn’t have “fallen.” It’s like God would’ve come down, seen that Adam was still pristine, killed Eve, and said, “It’s alright, Adam, we’ll get you another one.”
In other words, Milton alludes that when Eve ate, only she was doomed. It wasn’t until strong manly Adam ate that the entire human race was doomed. Ick. Milton, you suck!
I knew my Brit Lit class would come in helpful someday!
Snicks
Right. It’s because women don’t contribute to the form of the offspring, so therefore, corruption can’t get passed down. (That’s right, kids…it’s time for sex-ed 16th century style)
[17th century Doctor of Medicine] You see, inside the male’s testicles, there is semen. These “seeds” contain a fully developed man or woman, but extremely small, and sessile. When a man impregnates a woman, one of these seeds go into her womb, where, like a plant seed in the soil, it will grow, until finally the woman gives birth. The female of the species, then, is the passive vessel in the process. Therefore, as you can see, while Eve’s disobedience was bad for her, Adam’s was of the greater consequence. [/17th century Doctor of Medicine]
Knowledge about pregnancy has obviously advanced in the past 400 years, and attitudes about the relationship between men and women have changed too. They’ve changed even more dramatically over the past 2000 years. The way I see it, when a Milton writes that Eve’s actions have no theological consequence, or Paul writes that a wife should be submissive to her husband, they’re not doing it because they have an inferiorty complex, or because they’re bigoted jerks. They’re simply stating truths that almost everyone in their society would agree with. If you asked Paul
He probably wouldn’t even understand the question, not because of some personal limitation or weakness of his society. Remember, too, this is the same Paul who stated that “There is no Jew or Gentile, no man or woman, no slave or free.”…that everyone has the same obligations in Christianity, and also the same Paul who, in most of his letters, sends warm greetings and praise to individual female Christians in the community he’s writing to, and not just to the men.
I hope 2000 years from now, if people read my writings, they’re more charitable than y’all seem to be being.
It explicitly states it in Revelation 22:22;)
For my sake this is exactly the type of woman I’m glad make up 90% of the population.
Yes.
OP: Um, where exactly in the Bible does it says that women are inferior to men?
Can you bench 285?
Why you heathen…you’ll burn in hell for that!
PS-Welcome to the dark side, you’ll like it here
Isn’t there a verse that said something like “Thou shalt not trust something that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die” or somesuch thing? 2nd Garrison’s maybe?
Just as a side note, that was the theologically progressive view at the time. I get the feeling that you wouldn’t have preferred the older, medeval view, which said that Adam was a pristine innocent, until tricked into eating the fruit by Eve as a seductive temptress.
Mangetout said:
[giggle] Yes, are there any Greek scholars in the house who could help clear this up?
Well, actually my beef is with the lack of critical thinking going on. It just makes my head hurt, I tell you. [sigh]
Yo, Loopus, that’s cool. Thanks for clarifying your perspective, hon. I sure didn’t mean to misrepresent what you said.
Captain Amazing, you’re right to point out that I’m viewing Paul from my 21st Century Westernized perspective and that that’s not really fair to him. But I can’t help it. His perspective on women, even if it reflected the norm and was sanctioned by the norm, was just as much illogical then as it is now. I’ll say again that my problem is with folks’ lack of critical thinking. I understand that I’m not being charitable towards Paul’s views and stuff, but I really don’t care because he’s just wrong. I just have a hard time wrapping my mind around the notion that he couldn’t understand someone questioning how he could be so illogical in his views about women. How could Paul or any other dude who lived then just think that half the human race was inferior? It doesn’t make any sense. How would they know if women are stupid or smart, if they don’t allow women to speak or interact with men in any kind of productive and meaningful way? And for folks now in the 21st century to buy into the overall negative mentality about women that Paul and his cronies had during his time is beyond frightening. [shudder]
vanilla, I read Revelation 22, but there was no verse 22 in my Bible. Revelation 22, however, is about the end of the world. What exactly are you referring to, hon? How does the end of the world relate to the Bible literally saying that women are inferior to men?
Xavier, [giggle], I once asked a huge fella–I don’t rightly know if he weighed 285 pounds–to sit down and be quiet, and he did it because he could see that I was upset with him. Does that count? :innocent eyes:
LOL!!! RedFury, it never occurred to me that you could read what I wrote the way you did. I suppose my championing critical thinking like I do would be equivalent to me championing hell and the devil and such like to some folks. Oh well. They’ll be alright. Thanks for welcoming me to the dark side.
Snickers, all I can say is that Milton’s ego far exceeds in size the chaotic void he mentions in Paradise Lost. [giggle]
I may just be thick over here or perhaps simply stupid (y’know, I am female and all – weak, stupid, whatever ;)) But… what do you mean?
For your sake? I’m not sure I’m catching on…
I mean what I said about love and respect in the sense that I can just love someone to death, but not respect them in the fact that I still think they are dumber than a bag of hair and lack ambition.
Who says Jesus had long hair? There weren’t any photographers in those times, after all. All we have are artisitic renderings and those cannot be relied on for historical accuracy. One thing we can be sure of is that Jesus looked like any other Jewish man of His day, otherwise Judas would not have had to identify Him for the Pharisees by kissing His cheek. He’d only have had to say, “Grab the long-haired one with the pasty complexion and the scrawny build.”
But Samson had long hair. And his strength went when a woman cut it. Go sister!
Samson was a Nazarite, a specially consecrated member of a sect, whose vows included not cutting their hair. Jesus was not a Nazarite, but a Nazarene (i.e. someone from Nazareth) - one suspects, though, that the similarity of the words (and the fact that some early Christians did take temporary Nazarite vows) might have misled some illustrators.
Incidentally, the religioustolerance.org website suggests that some of St Paul’s, err, more notable misogynistic utterances may be later additions by unauthorised hands. (No, I’m not a Biblical literalist. And I think that, if the text of the Bible really was preserved intact and unedited throughout history, that’d be a bigger miracle than anything in the Old Testament.)