Women in Scripture

I notice that a common portrayal of women/female characters in religious stories is as a seductress. Is it possible that women are frequently portrayed as seductive because seduction was the only power that women had over men? Obviously, this isn’t true in all of these stories… many, if not most of the characters, have extraordinary abilities. Circe has the power to transform men into animals, for instance, and Morgan le Fay is a healer. Yet while these women have magical powers, it is probably true that most women in these societies lacked such extraordinary abilities… however, it might be true that women used seduction as a means of gaining control of certain situations, since women were typically deprived of most forms of control and choice. Although many men would have us believe that certain women simply have no control over their sexual desires, as Jason posits in the story about Medea, it seems to me that the underlying reality in many cases of seduction is that a woman was using what was possibly her only means of gaining control of a situation or manipulating a man into doing something that society prohibited her from doing herself. I would see these frequent themes of women as seductresses as a sign that these women were oppressed and had very little control over their own lives…

I also notice that women are also often portrayed as irrational, which makes me think of the way that many people go about arguing today. It’s easy for the person who has the upper hand in an argument (whether by deftly arguing or simply being backed by a larger/more powerful audience) to dismiss an opposing view as irrational, as if the person they are arguing with is too simple to really understand what the argument is “really” about. I hear a lot of that thrown out in abortion arguments, where the Pro-Life side will assume that the other person simply doesn’t see that there is a human life involved in the situation or the Pro-Choice person (often female) will just assume that a man shouldn’t be involved in the debate simply because he can’t understand what it is to be female. While both arguments might have merit, neither of them acknowledges the complexity of the issue when they simply dismiss the other argument as simple. It perhaps takes validity away from their own argument by making it seem as simple as “You’re not a Christian, so you can’t understand” or “you’re not a woman, so you can’t understand.” Perhaps it’s a tangent, but I was using it as an example… I believe it also applies to a lot of the ways that people argue (or don’t argue by dismissing the opposition as “irrational”).