About 400 years ago, gender was considered as nothing more than "what you're attracted too." A phrase we commonly used when discussing that era was "the time when women were women, and so were the men." The reason this phrase was so apt was because of the fashions and styles of the time, everyone wanted to wear lace and ruffles, the fancier and prettier, the better your status was. That meant that the men and women looked alike, so alike that if you accidentally slept with someone of the same gender, no one batted an eye.
That was also the time that religion had just began taking hold of the masses, a specific religious ideology actually, and people began to buy into the nonsense, people who couldn't afford the lace and ruffles. Now I am not one to deny a poor person their right to be jealous, I am always jealous of things other people have that I don't, however, what made this particular era so sinister was that this jealousy was used as a means to trick people into following a specific religion. This particular religion said it was "bad" or "evil" to be like everyone was at the time, giving the poor masses a false sense of superiority.
I am, of course, talking about the first of the christian religions. The odd thing was that it was not being "gay" or the cross-dressing that the religion stated as evil, at least not the part that the masses at that time were told about, they were told it was being wealthy or successful. But why tell them that? To keep the control, actually. The priests and religious leaders were all milking the poor people of their money, and status, just like all other eras, and all other religions.
The religious leaders did not stop there, to ensure that their power was secure they berated women holding any position of authority, undermining the authority of the queen, treason, essentially. To accomplish that the religious leaders had to convince the masses that women were inferior, incapable of making good decisions, and weaker. This was also to make the better dressed noblemen look weaker as well, they were, after all, dressing like women.
Throughout history this tactic is the most effective method of overturning a regime of any sort, paint the small group in power as something "evil" and the masses will agree, without realizing they are only giving that power to a different minority group, like preachers, for example. Ancient Egypt had a solution to this, though it was on intentional, their religious leaders were akin to political parties, each god representing an ideal. In turn, the party with the most willing followers was considered the will of the people, ultimately giving the people the real power.
The system is great, but as we have seen countless times, even today, it had the flaw of being too close to Anarchy to remain organized for long. However, the theocracies that we see in the more modern eras, and today, are worse because of the damage they do to the societies and cultures. Even today women are thought of as weaker, less capable, all because some preachers wanted to wrest power from one woman in the past.
This notion has been manipulated further by the modern religious leaders so that it attacks everyone who is not a straight, white, religious male. I use the word "white" because the notion of "race" has been decimated by too much misinformation, I will address that specific topic another time. This new trend of attacking anything that's different from what one person has labeled as acceptable has also corrupted the medical industry, financial industry, almost every government, and most of the cultures.
Ironically, even as we begin to open up, our cultures mend this damage caused by religious leaders, the progress is very slow. Mostly because we still allow the delusion that we call "religion" a free pass. Religion still has a free pass to do what it wants, people can still claim their beliefs trump even reality, allowing or even causing harm to others as a result. Today the medical industry will accept that the extremes exist, but continually ignore and deny the "in-betweens."
Now, I am not saying we should go out and jail, or worse, all religious people. That would make everyone else just like them. Instead we need to simply stop accepting their excuse of "it's my beliefs" and hold them accountable for all their actions, or inaction. We also should find treatment for those who are delusional enough to think their god talks to them directly, medical treatment, like how we treat all people who are delusional.
The trick is getting the professionals who do not have the same delusion to treat them.
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