I fully agree with you. I recently heard an argument about the draft and whether men who are drafted have control of their bodies in this scenario, which I had never considered. Have you heard that before?

Religion is partly about spirituality. And early on people realized that it could be used to justify why certain groups are more important. Chosen people, etc. And while women as a group naturally need more protection, rules got made like "a woman's place is in the home." I once heard that tolerance of ambiguity can explain a good amount of the liberal vs conservative split (20th century). It turns out there is a good number of people that need to force everything into the binary right and wrong buckets. And I think religion gives some of these people the "certainty" they are looking for when they navigate an intrinsically complicated world.