When you say modern what you mean is W.E.I.R.D. Historically, even in the West, people thought of themselves as members of a group first. The resurgence of populism throughout the World shows that they still do.
Is it solely a W.E.I.R.D. view that women have the same agency as men and are not commodities to be protected? If it is, I'd like to think we're all W.E.I.R.D. now.
Well historically yes. Sometimes women have more agency sometimes less but it only relatively recently they’ve had the same as men. Anyway I don’t see where you are getting “commodities” here. Women are mentioned because they have babies and men don’t. Without children to carry on the family dharma, female ancestors would be just as harmed as male ones.
Elsewhere Krishna Bhagavan offers everyone explicitly including women direct access to the embodied divinity — namely, Himself.
Women are mentioned as needing protection from being misled not just because they produce babies but because they are deemed incapable of protecting themselves from out-of-caste males, morally or physically.
> Elsewhere Krishna Bhagavan offers everyone explicitly including women direct access to the embodied divinity — namely, Himself.
Oh you mean the passage (chapter 9, verse 32) in which he lists that even those of lower birth: women, vaisyas and sudras have access to him? To be clear, this leaves only brahmin and kshatriya men in the those-not-of-lower-birth or dvija or twice-born ranks.
No you are reading to much into it. Adharma is the cause. Varnasankara is the effect and Hell for the Pitrs is a further consequence of that. Arjuna (this is his view remember) thinks fratricide is adharmic and the resulting destruction of the family will lead to bad consequences for everyone not just the women.
As for 9:32 no the Gita is not egalitarian (that’s W.E.I.R.D again) but Krishna Bhagavans’ formulation while upholding the old hierarchy, creates a new hierarchy on a different axis with a different set of winners and losers.
Incidentally, you are aware I hope that according to the Ashokavadana, a Buddha can only be born in a Brahmans or Kshatriya family.
