I cried that night.
After all these years, I have come to realize the full extent to which that protection was intended. Although they believe they have become free, their reality is that they are in fact in the worst form of slavery their kind has ever endured. He meant to protect our kind from not only others, but our own selves. Because apparently, we cannot make the distinction between justice and objectification.
We watch a movie about a geisha. We witness how cruel she is treated. How narrow-minded and marriage-as-a-goal oriented her 'care'takers are. She is treated like an animal, being bred slowly, to the taste of those who came before her, and she is expected to go without a whimper. We watch. Removing ourselves from that historic reality. We think: She was oppressed.
In olde English times, the woman would take the man's last name because she was his property. He owned her. The same way he was able to sell her. Treat her like a pet. A naughty pet. We read and think: She was oppressed.
In our times, women groom their bodies in every way, and wear pieces of cloth that accentuate every curve and hide every (commercially) unwanted bump. Her hair must be glowing and thick. She must apply things to her face, to change her real femininity, into a monster, the modern white-faced geisha, the modern girdle-suffocated female property. At least women of the past knew something was awry. No. Modern women, along with being objectified, are also disillusioned to believe this objectification, with the same historic goal as attracting a suitor [or a one-night-stand], is actually liberation and freedom. Good job humans. You have consistently and without hindrance enslaved women and forced them to value their selves based solely on how they are physically presented.
God desires to not only protect us from these pressures, norms and expectations, but also from our own ignorant daze of believing this is how we must live, from feeling that being 'pretty' under the mainstream standard is what defines our worth.
I don't cover because I am preserving myself for my 'future husband.' Pardon me, but to __ with that. I am a soul in a vessel which will disintegrate into the earth, with the scum, with the dirt. God is the only One Who understands the value of women. He has decreed obligations for our own protection. For our own dignity. We are above the other meaningless values. We are above slavery to other humans, including slavery to ourselves. We are above the impossible standards set for us. The standards which they have numbed our hearts to believe we must reach.
I find it hard to see that humans are capable of justice. We have allowed the minute carnal aspect of our existence to become the main focus of our every momentum.
I see the sickness. I finally see the sickness. And to its full disastrous extents. And yet, I struggle to accept God's remedy.
God guide me, and all women, and men, to value each other as souls. As little breaths of God. Indeed, that is higher than any other honor.
