The Treatment of Women!

--Right now I am listening to the book, Escape by Carolyn Jessop on CD.  It is making me think a lot about the roles of women.

--It is sickening to hear how women and girls are treated in polygamy.  I have always known it would be horrible, but it is worse than I could've imagined.  Women have absolutely NO rights in the FLDS polygamous world.

--Teenage girls are forced to marry men that are usually 30-40 years older than them.  Up until that time they are never allowed to be around boys unsupervised, and are never taught about sex.  So, on their wedding night they are essentially raped, and have no way of seeing it coming.

--Few women are allowed to get an education past high school, and their high school education is often very poor.

--I didn't realize how the many small children would end up being neglected, but it makes sense.  Jessop describes how in the family she was forced to marry into, the other wives neglected the 30 plus children because one wife was mentally ill (and not being treated for it), another was rejected by the husband so she would spend all day in her room, and the other wives were vying for the husband's attention.

--As I listen to this sickening hell that these women were subjected too, I started to think about the women in the muslim culture.  Especially, in the Middle East and Africa, but also here in the U.S. strict muslim families require women to be covered head to foot and they literally have no freedom and no rights.

--I will also admit that in some corners of Christian society, women don't have the freedom and rights that they deserve.  I look at how I've  lived over the past 40 years, and I realize that I lived according to rules that I thought were Biblical, but now I think were more man made to keep women submissive.

--I really like the title of Jessop's book, Escape, because it highlights that women have the right to escape from any situation that is infringing upon her freedom and rights.  It only took me 40 years to have the courage to say it.