Religion is Stupid

On my list of best movies ever, only 1 out of 15 has a woman for a lead character. This bothers me a little. I think there are a couple of reasons for it:

1. I prefer movies with a little action or violence. Most of those have male leads
2. I prefer historically-rooted dramas, and most history is male-dominated
3. Most movies have male leads, period

Of the 507 movies I've seen, only 97 had female leads. Which brings me to this: while life for women in the developed world is better than it has been in all human history, the reality is that we still live in a male-dominated society. In my view this is enormously unfair.

The greatest tragedy of human history may be that it's taken millions of years for humans to adapt to the point where women, at least in the developed world, are no longer considered chattel. Humans have lived since Pangaea and it has taken until now for women to be valued by our society in the same way that males are. In fact, while many would say that today females are valued equally with males in the developed world, in the developing world there is an extant (and huge) value disparity between mean and women in the Muslim world (1.2 billion people), China (1.6 billion) and India (1.0 billion). Those three groups alone (who are largely mutually exclusive) comprise nearly 60% of the world's population. How is that possible?

I blame religion for this, which in many cases still teaches people that women aren't allowed to play a real leadership role in any religion, thereby reinforcing ridiculous notions that they're incompetent to lead. I'm sure most rural Chinese would say that female infanticide has been eradicated, and Muslims will say that women have a "special role" and are "equal in their own way", or some amount of ridiculous shit. I grew up in a religion that teaches the same sort of concepts but, of course, few that profess to believe it actually do. Special role my ass. In the end the men make all the decisions and the women are largely bystanders, taught to "flourish in their god-given role". What a disgrace.

I've read a lot of history and a fair amount of sociology. The best sociology book I've ever read is Robert Wright's The Moral Animal. The best history book I've read is Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. These works aren't specifically about gender bias but they provide some fascinating insights into the way societies have worked on a historical level, not just overall but specifically in regards to male-female relationships. One can only hope that the slow progress in gender equality we've made in the developed world the last 200 years or so will not only continue but will spread to other cultures as well. It would do the world a lot of good.