Christianity fused fear of the flesh with fear of woman as Other.

Evidence

Christianity is what drapes woman anew with frightening prestige: one of the fears the rending of the unhappy consciousness takes for man is fear of the other sex. The Christian is separated from himself; the division of body and soul, of life and spirit, is consumed: original sin turns the body into the soul’s enemy; all carnal links appear bad. … Since woman never stopped being Other, of course, male and female are never reciprocally considered flesh: the flesh for the Christian male is the enemy Other and is not distinguished from woman. The temptations of the earth, sex, and the devil are incarnated in her. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 364

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how the Christian body/soul split lands on woman: body=evil and woman=body, so she incarnates sin.
• XREF: Connects to the Hegelian ‘unhappy consciousness’ Beauvoir draws on from Phenomenology of Spirit; also parallels later feminist readings of the body as enemy in Western monotheism. — connects to: The Madonna cult and witch persecutions are paired expressions of Christian contempt for woman — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 89; Christian doctrine enshrined the virgin birth to spare God the stain of female embodiment. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 365; Women channeled the ecstatic religious madness that patriarchy had displaced onto a male god — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 340
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’: Tertullian’s dressing-advice to women (‘always dress in mourning and rags’) is a foundational example of modesty-as-atonement rhetoric.

Broader Connections

• Women channeled the ecstatic religious madness that patriarchy had displaced onto a male god #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 340