If you see this link to the rates of "Religousity In Europe" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Europe (Sorry don't know how to do the nice blue link- eeeek!) Now I travelled through around 28 countries in Europe by myself a couple of years ago as a 21 year old lone female. Whether is is purely coincidence or not, my level for personal safety seemed to be inversely proportionate the percentage of god belief on that list. I had the most trouble in Greece, there were large gatherings of men (approx.300) outside my hotel in Athens at some type of "men only" market. I was leered at constantly (and I made sure I wore modest clothes despite the 40C heat wave) and I was routinely stalked everytime I left my hotel. I couple of times I had to break into a sprint. I affectionately called it "running the gauntlet". It got worse as I travelled closer to Turkey. I also had a few sticky situations in Italy where men tried to lure me away from public places (how stupid did they think I was?). As a general rule I found the more religious a country was, the more I had to deal with leering men and the feeling I was a piece of meat. Now in contrast I felt the safest in Helsinki, Finland ( I walked around at night by myself with no problems) and also in the Netherlands which coincidently has a roaring sex trade.

The major difference between the religious countries and the less religious countries was not if they had a sex industry or not and not if less or more of the population had sex. Every country has a sex industry and in every country people are having sex regardless of the religious statistics. The major difference can be seen in the attitudes towards women and whether they are respected as individuals and as sexual beings. I don't think anybody would disagree that there is a glaring double standard when it comes the socially acceptable sexual activities of men and women in almost all countries. It appears to be socially acceptable for men to be sexually aggressive but unacceptable for woman to even contemplate sex in some places. In searching for the origin of this gross disproportion I would point my finger squarely at religion. Ebon has presented countless examples on DA of religion outrightly presenting women as inferior to men. It was there right from the start with original sin. I sometimes feel that as a female I am viewed in a religious context as nothing more than a womb that somehow grew legs and learned how to talk. Womens sexuality has long been used as a tool to control and degrade them. How many times have you heard the word "slut" or "whore" used in reference to a man? The influence of religion, even in western countries, effects women every day. The attitudes stem from religion but have managed to pervade society and are ingrained to such an extent that non-relious people often don't even realise. I would bet there are many men in western society that believe that women should not have "too many sexual partners" and that men can "play the field" but could not tell you why. The view of women as property or as lesser than men impacts upon the health, safety and propsperity of women all around the world every day. Whether it is a rape victim that gets cross examined about her sexual history or behaviour, a woman in the middle east accused of having an affair that gets stoned to death or a woman in an office that gets passed over for a promotion because their boss thinks a man would do a better job I believe religion is to blame.

Is it any coincidence that the most socially progressive countries, for example those in Scandinavia, are also the least religious? Somehow I think not.

I beg your forgiveness for having trespassed upon your time as I have.

You owe no apologies. I'm most definitely not the smartest person on board here, and I figured it out. Sometimes we all fail to see the nose on our faces.

And, how to account for the insensitivity?

Why God, in his Perfection, made us that way. Any real atheist would know that.

One of the subtexts, for me, of the subject matter of your article above, is the Madonna/Whore set of archetypes that are alive and well in Catholic countries - two of which I have some experience of. There is a permissiveness towards men having it off with "bad" girls whenever they need to, but a requirement that they marry "good" girls - putting "bad" girls pretty much outside of the marriage market. This is not as marked as in previous eras, but the striking thing, that still persists, is the difficulty for a woman to move from being a "bad" girl to being a "good" (ie marriagable) girl. Whereas in former times, any type of pre-marital sex would have disqualified you, nowadays a bit of pre-marital serial monogamy is usually ok, but there is still a line, somewhere between that and prostitution that marks off the really "bad" girls.

Comparing this with your experience in Morocco, Sarah, it seemed that one difference between Muslim culture (as you experienced it) and Catholic culture, is that there did not seem to be any such thing as a "good" girl, in the view of the men you dealt with, just an "owned" girl.

I beg your forgiveness for having trespassed upon your time as I have. I hope this clears things up. Thanks so much.

I hope I speak for many when I say you definitely have not trespassed anywhere. Ebonmuse invited your piece and it has attracted much interest and comment. Just because the structure of your argument has come under critiscism doesn't mean the conclusion isn't correct or that many of the critics don't agree with you. As you said earlier we can be a "tough crowd". Personally I found it interesting that several commentors who would use your assumtions about the evils of religion if debating a theist on this site, have played devils advocate with you. This is healthy. If Ebon extends another invitation please do not be put off accepting.

"And, how to account for the insensitivity? It is in our nature? Or, can we rise above? What is holding us back?

I think religion is holding us back."

This is the only party of the essay you need to read to truly get Sarah's point. The sex trade is just an interesting story that can be used to get to this point; that our inhumanity can be justified through religion. We can choose to ignore those who our holy text tells us are sinners and when we do so, we hide behind a shield of 'religious morality'.

I believe Sarah's point was that in order to become more 'human' we need to find our morality amongst humans, not the 'divine'.

Though I cannot speak from experience, having never set foot inside a church or been affiliated in any way shape or form with a religion, I am fairly certain many different churches go out of their way to 'help those less fortunate'

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong Sarah!!

What is the patriarchy, you ask? "Patriarchy, which invisibly persists as the world’s most popular social order, is a really bad scene based on an oppressive paradigm fetishizing dominance and submission. Benefits in this culture of domination are accrued according to a rigid hierarchy at the top of which are rich honky adult males and at the bottom of which are poor female children of color. Within this hierarchy, women, regardless of race or any other status markers, constitute a sub-human sex class." - Twisty Faster, of IBTP

I would like to point out that just because religions may say they are against extra-marital sex it doesn't mean they actually are against extra-marital sex. They are against extra-marital sex for some women. This is to ensure that there is both a pool of marriageable "good girls" and also a pool of "bad girls" for men to use, because boys will be boys. Why am I having to explain these very simple concepts? Go educate yourselves.

A description of some act of brutality, which I have expressed an interest in witnessing, and which I do witness.

Tremendous feelings of guilt over having participated in this brutality, even if only as a witness, which precipitate a great deal of reflection on my part. The remainder of the piece is my thought process as I grapple with my guilt and the inhumanity of so many human beings.

I think religion is a source of tremendous inhumanity in the world. It creates an us / them tribal mentality. Anyone outside of the tribe is subhuman. The survival of the tribe is predicated on the control of female sexuality. It promotes lawlessness and misogyny and immorality. It is inherently hypocritical. And, in my opinion, no one suffers more from this divinely ordained inhumanity than women.

How do I know this? I rely upon my experience growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, as well as my experiences working/studying/traveling as a human rights activist.

That's it. That's exactly what it was meant to convey.

When I blamed religion for the lack of care human beings show one another, as well as humanity's lack of development as a whole, I will admit that I should have included all forms of tribalism, including their respective dogmas. But, as a commenter mentioned above, religion is probably the most vile form, given its claims of divine authority and impunity, and its fear and loathing of female sexuality in hyperbole. Not to mention the fact that this is clearly an anti-religion opinion piece, and I don't feel any need to extend any equal time to other idiocies.

The comments above seemed to center on the complaint that I am unable to prove that the sex industry would not exist if religion did not exist. Or, that I did not even attempt to show how religion foments an atmosphere conducive to the creation / support of a brutal sex industry (although I don't think this is much of a stretch).

I hope I've made it clear that such was not my point.

If you just didn't like the structure of the piece -- well, oh well. It was deliberate. I was happy with it. I hadn't intended for it to be such a hindrance to comprehensibility, obviously. I will say that I don't enjoy hand holding, but Proustian opacity is not desirable in an article meant to be persuasive either.

The last prong of the criticisms seemed to fall along the lines of, "You can't show that religion makes anyone do anything bad - there are so many other factors in play. How do you know that we wouldn't be just as bad off without religion? Why don't you blame atheism or Buddhism or capitalism or socialism for immorality and lawlessness and misogyny? So many people do good things in the name of religion."

I have to admit that I find this last criticism more than a little surprising on a blog that espouses atheism and decries religion. It smacks a great deal of an argument believers make – the whole "moral vacuum" stance. Like I mentioned above, if you see religion as completely benign, why bother arguing against it or espousing atheism?

I think many atheists are content to engage in atheism as a polite intellectual exercise, which makes them feel good about themselves. If they argue against religion at all, they take the stance that religion is untrue.

There is another group that argues that religion is hypocritical – that religion has no claims to any moral superiority over any other dogma or atheism. The we don’t need religion to be good folks.

I argue, and others do as well, of course, that religion is an obstacle to morality, an obstacle to rule of law, an obstacle to human rights, and an obstacle to humanity’s development, including its scientific and technological development. And, especially, an obstacle to women being recognized as full human beings with inherent dignity and full autonomy.

There are many atheists who don’t want to go that far. I think a good number of them fear being labeled as cultural imperialists.

Are there other obstacles as well? Sure there are – plenty, but few others are as insidious and pernicious and prevalent as religion.

I think there is much evidence to support this claim – much of which I mentioned above. But, as I also mentioned above, absent that control experiment Yahweh failed to provide, I don’t know exactly what our society would look like without religion. I can’t prove to you that we will all treat each other fabulously sans religion. I do know that things aren’t going so swimmingly with religion, and I sure would like to get the obstacle of religion out of the way, so that we can at least try to build a better world.

I would never support criminalizing religion. I support both freedom of and from religion. I would never impose my views upon anyone else. But, I will voice them. That’s why I think this website, and so many others like it, are so important.

I beg your forgiveness for having trespassed upon your time as I have. I hope this clears things up. Thanks so much.

But this article never says that the sailors were religious.......

Correct. But I think Sarah was trying to say that religion's influence, since religion does indeed have enormous influence over all society, plays at least a small part in the sailors' actions; whether they are religious or not is mostly irrelevant.

That's what I took away from her essay, anyway.

.....So it is a HUGE leap to go from "sailors go 'hooker hunting'" to "churches encouraged them to do that."

Gotta disagree, for reasons stated above. Religion's influence in society is alive and well far beyond the confines of the local church. Everyone here should know that.

I would agree that there are religions and religious traditions that subjugate women, but not in a way that perpetuates the sex trade. Abrahamic faiths all tell their followers that a woman is less than a man. I agree that these faiths pose an obstacle to equality between the sexes and people with differing sexual preferences, but I do not think it an obstacle to helping the women who suffer in the sex trade. I have already brought up the ease of finding evidence to support my view that churches actually do some good, but I feel that I should elaborate. These churches aren't merely taking streetwalkers in and telling them they just need to love Jesus more and they will be saved from their life of sin - they are taking them off the streets, giving them shelter, food, psychological help, and providing opportunities for them to get jobs or go back to school. They aren't trying to simply rid the streets of prostitutes so they don't have to see them, they are trying to solve the problems in the lives of these women that cause them to be out on the street in the first place.

The claim I believe you are trying to make, and feel free to correct me here, is that people use their religion as a means to shield themselves from people who want to attack them for their misogyny. Actually allowing a misogynist to simply defend his views as religious is in fact a way to earn himself carte blanche for feeling as he likes on this topic, but it seems that you are going too far with this claim. You would not suggest that bullet proof vests cause people to rob banks, even though they can help individual bank robbers perform individual bank robberies. Nor would you blame bunkers the world over for antisemitism just because the bunkers on Normandy beach aided the Nazis. Furthermore, just like people in bunkers aren't all Nazis, not everyone outside of a bunker is not a Nazi, and this is the thrust of my argument. Misogyny - like racism, homophobia, and other kinds of bigotry - are artifacts of outdated ways of thinking, but ones that do not get their start in religion; rather, some religions, having been spawned within cultures that supported these bigotries, share these cultural opinions.

People around the world are misogynistic and this isn't a new thing. I would wager it predates religion by thousands of years. We can see evidence of misogyny around the world, existing in areas well before any Abrahamic faith was present. If we take a look into the history of Japanese and Chinese cultures we can see very strong evidence for this. If a man owed a debt to another man which he could not repay, the owed party could instead take his wife or daughter and force them to work in a brothel in order to repay their husband's/father's debt. The subjugation of women did not end there, a wife was expected to wait on her husband hand and foot, going way beyond cooking and cleaning: women were expect to serve their husbands' every whim, waiting on him to finish his meal before they could begin their own. Women in this culture were not under any such strong faith, though - people had local gods that they paid worship to, but were not the zealous dogmatists that are present in Abrahamic faiths. Still, women were seen as possessions, and prostitutes were held in even less regard.

For the same reasons you have provided to blame the suffering of women in the sex trade on religion, religion could be said to be at fault for racism as well. All throughout history, groups claiming religious virtue have committed all kinds of heinous acts of racism in the name of their gods. Here we are today and people of many races still struggle for equality, but great strides have been made in the way of making people see that everyone is human just like them. Religions today offer the same sort of rationalizations to commit these acts as they did in the past, but their prevalence has decreased. The very same people who lynched blacks in the south while claiming divine justice still exist today, and are still just as racist as they were then, having managed to use their religion to shield their minds from the advance of reason. But like it or not, reason is entrenching itself in the minds of their children, and their children's children, and will continue to do so as long as there is an open dialogue about the topic.

Yes people use their religion as a shield to spare them from criticism for their bigotry, but that is not the fault of the shield and just like those who used it to protect their racist bigotry, those who use it to protect their misogynistic bigotry can only protect themselves, not the bigotry itself.

It isn't much of a stretch to take that constant admonition to the next level and start laughing at prostitutes, is it?

But this article never says that the sailors were religious. For all we know the sailors were non-religious and laughing at the prostitutes. Had the author said "these sailors all regularly attended a church that degraded prostitutes" then I would see the connection between religions looking down on heathens and the sailors looking down on/taking sick amusement from the suffering of prostitutes. Unless the author knows the sailors' religious leanings, we can't blame their callous attitude on churches encouraging them to look down on outsiders. We don't even know if these sailors went to church at all. We don't even know if they are theists or atheists. So it is a HUGE leap to go from "sailors go 'hooker hunting'" to "churches encouraged them to do that." If we knew that they went to churches that encouraged this, then there wouldn't be this unreasonable leap. I guess my point here is that the author needs to explain the connection; because I don't see it presently.
Not to mention that I doubt that a church encourages 'hooker hunting.' I took 'hooker hunting' to mean that the sailor(s) wanted to purchase the services of prostitutes. Did they merely look at prostitutes or did some of them buy sex acts? 'Hooker hunting' seems to be the kind of thing that a church would condemn. Are we sure that a church somehow urged them on to do this?
We can say that the (mostly religious) people of Naples should be showing some empathy rather than disregard for the prostitutes. Their religious leanings apparently don't give them any more empathy than the sailors showed. We could rightfully complain against their religious leanings for that failure of empathy. But that doesn't count for the US sailors because we don't know their religious leanings.

As a human rights activist, I am sometimes awestruck by the absence of humanity in humans. And, how to account for the insensitivity? It is in our nature? Or, can we rise above? What is holding us back?

And then gave a possible answer, based on experiences in her JW upbringing:

I think religion is holding us back. It is all too easy to view human beings as unworthy of your sympathy and care if you think of them as the damned and filthy heathen hordes shunned by your Almighty.

Religious leaders all over the world like to look down their noses and tell all us heathens how shunned we are, while simultaneously reminding their followers how righteous they all are. It isn't much of a stretch to take that constant admonition to the next level and start laughing at prostitutes, is it?