CHAPTER 16, TEXT 7: Those who are demoniac do not know what is to be done and what is not to be done. Neither cleanliness nor proper behavior nor truth is found in them.
In this purport, Srila Prabhupad writes some very controversial statements about women. Let's jump right to them, shall we?
He writes, "Now, in the Manu-saṁhitā it is clearly stated that a woman should not be given freedom. That does not mean that women are to be kept as slaves, but they are like children."
Whoo boy.
There are often two ways to go with statements like these:
1) Reject the statements and declare Srila Prabhupad to be a backwards man who was raised in an archaic India and he is lost in ancient, inapplicable laws and espouses dangerous ideas,
or
2) Go fire-and-brimstone and declare that women should literally not be given freedom at all and Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a bane on human society.
So either reject these words or take them like fire.
There's a third option here: carefully consider these words with an open mind and reflective heart.
Prabhupad is quoting from an ancient scriptural guidebook, Manu-samhita, on the best ways for human society to function. Let's look for the kernel of truth here, and I find it in the statement "women are like children." Not that women are immature and infantilized. Women are simply more directed by emotions and are prone to make decisions based on those emotions - like children.
Look, I'm a woman and I have a Master's Degree and graduated with honors. I have job experience in education from various parts of the world and in several prestigious institutions. I could list quite a few other experiences on my resume that demonstrate that I am an intelligent, driven, successful woman.
And I speak with 100% understanding that yes, I resonate with the statement that "women are like children." How come? I am often overpowered by emotion. While I do not speak for all women, I know that there are women who resonate with this experience. I sometimes - oftentimes - want to make a [life] decision based on an emotion, but only when I check in with my husband does he get me to come to reason. As a whole, the masculine is driven by reason and logic, and this is what makes men - traditionally - more able to lead a household.
That said, for the Manu-samhita to state that women should not be given freedom is controversial indeed; surely millennia of abuse in the name of scripture has transpired in India based on this lawbook's verse.
Let's see what Prabhupad continues to say. He writes, "The demons have now neglected such injunctions, and they think that women should be given as much freedom as men. However, this has not improved the social condition of the world." Fascinating point. Ruth Bader Ginsberg championed for women to have all the same rights as men, from buying a home in her own name to having a credit card in her own name. Surely this is a step forward for society, right? That women have greater freedom?
But what was the goal of increasing a woman's capacity for freedom? To improve the social condition of the world. Prabhupad states here, though, that these increased freedoms have not improved the social condition of the world. This seems to go against modern understanding of the evolution of society. On objective scales, women are gradually getting paid just as much as men (census.gov), women are given positions to lead companies and organizations and women are even increasingly become religious leaders. How is this not an improvement on social conditions of the world?
Those points of improvement, though, are not actually social improvement, because proper social behavior, according to the Manu-samhita, is the healthy functioning of the family - marriage, children, and old age. How do we deal with these social conditions? Are we improving?
For the improvement of the family, the statistics show that we are not (census.gov). Households lead by women are double the rate of poverty compared to those lead by men or married-couple households. Almost a third of people on government assistance are women and children (lexingtonlaw.com) and almost two thirds of people on government assistance (Medicaid) are the elderly. This means that women, children, and elderly people are not being taken care of by their families, so the government must step in. If the government must step in, then according to the Manu-samhita, the family and social conditions are not improving.
What is interesting, though, is the ideal that Prabhupad points out: "Actually, a woman should be given protection at every stage of life. She should be given protection by the father in her younger days, by the husband in her youth, and by the grownup sons in her old age. This is proper social behavior according to the Manu-saṁhitā." The emphasis here is that a woman is given protection. If a woman is not given protection, she must a) be her own protection, which calls upon women to imbibe more masculine qualities in order to not be taken advantage of or b) if she is put into a vulnerable situation, such as getting pregnant or getting old, and a man is not there to protect her, the government must protect her. Government housing, government food stamps, government services.
The bigger problem, then, is that there seem to be a lack of men - fathers, husbands, or sons - to actually protect women. Women in society nowadays often grow up without a father or he's in and out. Often women don't get married or have a domestic partner, or maybe they get married and then get a divorce; either way, a steady, reliable husband isn't really there. And if a woman has a son, he often grows up without a father to model after, or even if the father is there and there's a nice family, there's little cultural support or expectation that he help his mother in her old age - hence the massive amount of elderly people on government assistance.
In this way, women are in a tough spot. They're supposed to be protected by men all their lives, but those men are not stepping up to the plate. What's a woman to do?
This confusion, this "not knowing of what is to be done or what is not to be done" is a trademark of "demoniac" civilization. Although Prabhupad is talking about women here, he is also talking about men. He is indirectly given men an instruction:
Be a protector.
Be the father, the husband, or the son that your daughter, wife, or mother needs. Be a man and protect her. She needs you, even though it may not seem so.
Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/16/7/
U.S. Census: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/09/payday-poverty-and-women.html#:~:text=Poverty%20Rate%20Declines%20for%20Women,not%20statistically%20different%20from%202017.
Welfare Statistics: https://www.lexingtonlaw.com/blog/finance/welfare-statistics.html
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