We are painted with beautiful colors, aren't we? Whether it's the way the shadows accentuate our curves, the way the moonlight illuminates the angles of our ebony cheeks, the sheen of our long, black hair, or any variation you can think of, we are painted creatures who will lead you down the garden path, right to that tree, and make you eat that apple that's going to ruin everything. We can't help it.


I will tell you that this whole diary was provoked by this:

On a recent road trip, my husband and I stopped for lunch in a small rural town in the heart of the Bible Belt. Inside the restaurant, a teenage girl in an evening gown explained that she was the high school homecoming queen and that she would be in the parade that afternoon. A few minutes later, I saw the girl talking with her friends while holding her baby. That's how far we have fallen -- in a small rural town, in the heart of the Bible Belt, an unwed teen mother was elected homecoming queen. Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., Concerned Women for America

You see, "Dr." Crouse is one of the braintrust at the Concerned Women for America. It's part of the Beverly LaHaye Institute, and really, you shouldn't pay them no mind, except they have the ear of President Bush. He keeps sending one or other of their cohort to represent American women at various international meetings.

And here, in that paragraph above, Dr. Crouse and her husband journey to a small town and she, who proclaims herself a loving Christian, judges a teenager for being an unwed mother. And I keep thinking about what Dr. Crouse would prefer had been done with the teenager? Obviously, abortion was out of the question. So, really, what was next? Should she have been exiled from her community? Made to wear a red letter "W" for whore? Marched through the streets so people could throw rotten fruit at her? Or should she have been buried in dirt up to her neck and then stoned to death? Hanged by the neck until she was dead?

So, this is where this diary began. Thinking about the simple cruelty of the dismissal of a teenaged mother as being unworthy of being homecoming queen.

It stuck in my craw for days. It made me think about misogyny, about living in a world that is going backwards. About the rising of movements throughout the world that denigrate women. Not just fundamentalist movements. But in the rhetoric of our age. Women are the gateway to evil. And when I say 'gateway," I mean vagina. Slick, wet vaginas.

Woman is less qualified [than man] for moral behavior. For the woman contains more liquid than man, and it is a property of liquid to take things up easily and to hold unto them poorly. Liquids are easily moved, hence women are inconstant and curious. When a woman has relations with a man, she would like, as much as possible, to be lying with another man at the same time. Woman knows nothing about fidelity. Believe me, if you give her your trust, you will be disappointed. Trust an experience teacher. For this reason prudent men share their plans and actions least of all with their wives. Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. If I could say what I know about women, the world would be astonished ... Woman is strictly speaking not cleverer but slyer (more cunning) than man. Cleverness sounds like something good, slyness sounds like something evil. Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good.

Albertus Magnus

This diary has gone off-track so many times, it's a wonder you're reading anything at all. It's because I'm liquid, you see, I'm squishy, like a girl. My thoughts flow, seep, trickle their way toward my point. I do not think phallogocentrically. My points are not hard, impenetrable. And for those of you who have read the French feminist theorists, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, you know I'm playing a little bit. But I am. Playing. Reclaiming: Wetness. Penetrability. Slickness. Puddles.

You might say that quoting the Church Fathers as representative of the views of women is ... well ... unfair. But, can you honestly tell me that the views of women have changed all that much?

How about this one, for example?

Now I aint sayin she a gold digger (When I'm in Need)
But she aint messin wit no broke niggas (she steal me money)
Now I aint sayin she a gold digger (When I'm in Need)
but she aint messin wit no broke niggas (I gotta leave)
get down girl go head get down (I gotta leave)
get down girl go head get down (I gotta leave)
get down girl go head get down (I gotta leave)
get down girl go head

18 years, 18 years
She got one of yo kids got you for 18 years
I know somebody payin child support for one of his kids
His baby momma car, crib is bigger than his
You will see him on TV Any Given Sunday
Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai
She was spose to buy ya shorty tyco with ya money
She went to the doctor got lipo with ya money
She walkin around lookin like Michael with ya money
Shoulda got that insured, GEICO for ya moneeey(your money)
If you aint no punk holla We Want Prenupt
WE WANT PRENUPT!, Yeaah
It's something that you need to have
Cause when she leave yo ass she gone leave with half
18 years, 18 years
And on the 18th birthday he found out it wasn't his
Kanye West, "Golddigger"

Or this one?

"The American girl is well acquainted with her body's seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs -- and she shows all this and does not hide it." Sayyid Qutb, The America I Have Seen

That distrust of women and their bodies sort of cuts across the ages and culture, doesn't it?

I really, really want to understand what drives misogyny. I have my own theories, and I've written about them before, but I'd like to have a discussion, as honestly as we can, about what drives the fear/mistrust/hatred/denigration of women.

Humour me. 'Coz ya know, according to Aristotle I'm cold and wet...