Individual patriarchs may indeed wriggle off the charge of woman-hating; the key to the gross inflictions laid on women in their names lies in the nature of the system itself. For a monotheism is not merely a religion—it is a relation of power. Any “One God” idea has a built-in notion of primacy and supremacy; that One God is god above all others and his adherents are supreme over all nonbelievers.
