The fear of female sexuality is not a new phenomenon. It is a fear that is generally attached to the destabilizing effect an emancipated woman would have on the idea of male supremacy something men have strived since time immemorial to protect and prove to themselves and the whole human race!
To counter this problem religions have always been at the forefront in ensuring that women did not find a place out of their homes. The confines of the kitchen is where they have always thought to belong and nothing close to the social, economic or political arena which was a preserve for the men.
The fear that men have attached to women is seen in the way they have always treated women and ancient scholars such as Ali Ghazali a muslim scholar has described women as a blight on the earth and adds, their deception is awesome and their wickedness is contagious bad character and feeble minds are their predominant traits. To Ghazali these traits were a risk to the general society and the danger could only be controlled through seclusion and segregation of women from society.
In today's society we still find remnants of these fears in men enshrined in Islamic laws that tend to define the different gender roles of the sexes with women often taking on a quiet submissive position, the lowest on the social ladder with not much to say in the social discourse as they are generally treated as feeble minded and incapable of doing anything on their own that is why they need the constant suffocating presence of men in any transaction they are involved in .
Christianity is not innocent either in the way it has held the status of a woman in society. The bible has often than not held that women are to be submissive to their husbands who are their "masters":does this insinuate that slavery has been supported since time immemorial starting with the most basic unit of society, the family.
In the christian setting, the influence of this fear in men was expressed in a disconcerting effort to contain women in their "designated gendered roles" away from which, their acts were seen as an inversion of social order by women. The punishment metted against such women who went beyond what was expected of their roles as women was very atrocious for instance, there was burning of women such as those considered as witches or women suspected to be witches.
