Newsflash: Patriarchy Still Bad for Everyone

PZ points to a tragic story about a man with a horribly disfiguring and life-restrictive tumor on his face, for which he has avoided treatment in large part because he is a Jehovah's Witness—and ergo is refusing procedures necessitating a blood transfusion (despite the fact that JW's do not universally embrace this doctrine).

PZ makes the obvious point about the callous recklessness of a religion recommending against life-saving procedures, but I'd also like to note that the indulgence of this man's adherence to a patriarchal religion has only been possible because of women (mother, sister) who have sacrificed themselves on his behalf. And it's interesting that the article notes he can't become independent because he is "unable to find work or a girlfriend," signaling the expectation of yet another woman to continue to afford him the dubious luxury of his beliefs at the expense of her own independence.

His mother did so willingly, in the sense that her religion told her to do it and so she did—but that is, after all, what she was told to do by the church elders, who naturally claim to be speaking on behalf of the Überpatriarch. It was via these earthly representatives of teh biggest daddy of all the daddies that she indoctrinated her son into his suffering—as well as her daughter, the patient's sister, now his primary caregiver since their mother's death, a woman who does not even share these beliefs but loves her brother.

In other words, another good example of how patriarchal institutions can screw everyone. Except, as ever, the patriarchs.

(And, no, I'm not saying that religion is inherently patriarchal, though organized religion, particularly associated with monotheism, almost always is.)