# Why wasn't Jesus a woman?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 31, 2003, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908 "2003-12-31T06:17:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2004, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/21 "2004-01-02T06:10:23Z")
Because we wouldn’t have the fish and loaves tale. Instead, it would have been a three-hour drama of going to the store, in all those crowds, where they didn’t have what she wanted so she had to go somewhere else where there happened to be some nice stuff on sale so picked up a few things and then bumped into an old friend who wanted an opinion on something she’d seen and then they both noticed a sale in this fancy clothes store and then forgot the original purpose so had to go back to the store but it was closed by then so . . . all those 5,00 died of starvation.
But the new slacks were a great deal!!!
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### Author:  [@Dostromin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dostromin)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2004, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/22 "2004-01-02T06:15:06Z")
Obviously it is because men are better than women.
But in all seriousness, the Bible tells us that Jesus was the first born son of God, which, in my mind, would make it weird if he were born a female.
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### Author:  [@Dostromin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dostromin)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2004, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/23 "2004-01-02T06:20:43Z")
> [@](#):
>
> _Originally posted by Milum \*
> **Oh but** Jesus_\* _was_ a woman.
>
> **Jesus** was and is the personification of the female spirit that was born of the family unit and , through **Jesus** , moved into the greater community of man - World Culture.
>
> **Jesus** brought but one message and that message was **Love**.
>
> And up until recently the female of our kind embodied this sacred creed most perfectly. \*\*
That’s almost as bad as saying that a man who enjoys cooking or decorating is a homosexual. Expressed personality traits do not determine gender.
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### Author:  [@hroeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hroeder)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2004, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/24 "2004-01-02T15:56:27Z")
First: all of the answer detailing how much more important men were in ancient times are just plain silly. Goddess. Lots of them. From just about every culture. Including Astarte, from the same region as Christ. (Greece was also so very very far away, and those Roman conquerors were just a totally Male God society! Venus my ass.)
More seriously: The story of Christ must also stand the test of certain symbolic constructs that are ancient in origin. Alif has always been masculine. Beth feminine. Even today Elizabeth is a woman’s name.
Oh it’s just so hard to deal with these things when my dictionary has no vowels.
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### Author:  [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2004, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/25 "2004-01-02T16:43:43Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by monica \*
> **Why wasn’t Jesus born as a woman?**
Um…because he was born a man?
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2004, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/26 "2004-01-06T12:36:47Z")
Of course, for the Shakers the _Second Coming of Christ_ was a woman, Mother Ann Lee of 18-century England. Her doctrine was that since Christ was a man the first time around, for completion he had to become female on the rebound. Unfortunately for the Shakers, Mother Ann Lee came up with the total celibacy requirement which made them all extinct as the dodo.
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### Author:  [@crookeddope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crookeddope)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2016, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/27 "2016-05-28T16:51:36Z")
The amount of ignorance in this post is overwhelming. There are no Biblical or Bible “times”, we are always within the timeline of the Bible. Believe in it or not, we will always face the same reality come the time of our physical death.
Believe in the boogyman or the spaghetti monster, see if they save you from oblivion. Jesus was a man simply because men have things women do not have, and vise versa. However, what women have isn’t governance or authority. Can you imagine a world run by women??? That would be a nightmare. Maybe that’s what hell is, lol.
I digress, I strongly suggest you put away your biases and try to understand history, anthropology, philosophy,theology etc. etc. to be able to have the knowledge of deciphering the mess you’ve came up with all in your own head.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2016, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/28 "2016-05-28T17:01:46Z")
Praise the Lord! This thread has risen from the dead!
Welcome to SDMB **crookeddope**. I can see from your post you will an interesting biblical time here.
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### Author:  [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2016, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/29 "2016-05-28T17:12:44Z")
> [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](#):
>
> She would have been a non-person to begin with, solely by virtue of her possessing the wrong set of gonads, and she would have been ignored at best, locked up at worst.
Jesus, even as a man, was ignored by the great majority of Jews, managing to gather only a small number of followers. As a woman he couldn’t have done much worse. If it were not for Paul extending the mission to embrace Gentiles Jesus would have been long forgotten by now.
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2016, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/30 "2016-05-28T17:25:52Z")
Mary was a virgin when she became pregnant with Jesus, right. So she must have reproduced by parthenogenesis. Parthenogenic offspring are always female. Which means that Jesus actually was female, but pretended to be male. Which means that Jesus was :gasp: transgender…
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/31 "2016-05-28T18:01:41Z")
> [@dtilque](#):
>
> Mary was a virgin when she became pregnant with Jesus, right. So she must have reproduced by parthenogenesis.
And that’s why we call him “Jesus H Christ”. H is for “haploid”.
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### Author:  [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2016, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/32 "2016-05-28T18:13:06Z")
This thread deserves [a proper comment from Tim Minchin](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY1jSWy4Eck).
But, seriously, the eucharist? Where they drink the blood of Christ? Umm, eww. (Unless you are into that sort of thing.)
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2016, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/33 "2016-05-28T18:20:26Z")
> [@Kobal2](#):
>
> And that’s why we call him “Jesus H Christ”. H is for “haploid”.
That’s an old joke which Cecil references in [this column](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/30/why-do-folks-say-jesus-h-christ).
But parthenogenic vertebrates have some kind of mechanism for restoring chromosomes to being diploid. Otherwise they would run out of chromosomes trying to make generation 3.
BTW, I’m not the first to suggest Jesus was transgender. There was a recent [HuffPo blog](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suzanne-dewitt-hall/jesus-the-first-transgend_b_10006134.html) that made a similar argument. I was not aware of this at the time I made my post.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2016, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-jesus-a-woman/221908/34 "2016-05-28T18:26:47Z")
Enough.
Die zombie, die!
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