Many birds and animals will torture one of their own to death if it happens to be different or deformed. And one of the most striking features of our not too distinguished history as a people is the constant victimization of one category of the human race by some other. The standard reasons all reduce to an inability to tolerate differences, and the familiar bases for discrimination have remained relatively constant down the years: color, race, creed and class. But the most ancient, persistent, and widespread and apparently the most difficult of all to dislodge, has been discrimination on grounds of gender. Sadly the worlds great religions are the ones who have played the central role in fostering this particular enslavement, which has left half of the human race disenfranchised for most of its history, and many of the major historical religious documents have to be classified as texts of gender oppression.