Are Women Really Equal When It Comes To Scary Bugs?

I am woman, hear me roar-especially at bugs

I am all for equal opportunity for women.  After all, I am one.  And I’ve  personally experienced gender discrimination. So, having established that I am all for women’s liberation (I am woman, hear me roar, and all that), I do have to say that there is still one area in a man’s world where I truly believe no woman should dare to venture.  What might that area be, you ask?  Killing bugs.  Killing bugs is definitely not a job for a woman.  I pride myself on being a reasonably independent, self-sufficient, not easily rattled woman, but let a flying palmetto bug come after me and I scream like a bad actress in a B-horror movie.   Not only do I scream, but I also do the “icky-icky” dance and run for cover.  If my husband is around, he will usually come running to find out if I have just cut off my finger while chopping vegetables or been hacked by an ax murderer who came through the front door my husband failed to lock.  Nope, something much worse.

“What?” he’ll demand, upon arriving to slay whatever dragon accosted me.

“A bug!” I’ll reply in a quivering voice, bordering on hysteria.

At this he will roll his eyes, sigh, and ask, “Where?”

I’ll point in the general vicinity of the offending insect while hovering behind him for protection.

“I don’t like bugs any better than you do,” he’ll mutter.

“Yeah, but you’re a man.  It’s your job to kill the bugs.” At least I think that’s a rule. If not, it should be.

He will usually tough it out, although if the thing comes after him, all bets may be off.  There may be a little bit of male shrieking, which is not pretty.  But generally, he will manage to dispatch the terrorizing creature to the great septic tank in the sky with a shoe or rolled up newspaper or other handy bug-killing implement.

Me, I can’t step on a bug or hit it with a shoe.  First, it requires I get closer to the creature than I am comfortable being (not that there is any distance from a bug with which I am comfortable), and second, I can’t stand the crunching sound their little chitinous exoskeletons make when squashed.  I generally can’t swat them off a wall, either, as I usually miss and just make them more angry and more determined to “get” me.  Or they crawl into an inaccessible place and bide their time until I let down my guard.

Why did God create insects?

I often ask myself why God created bugs in the first place? Surely when He made all the creatures of the earth and declared them “good,” He wasn’t referring to bugs. As a biology major, I understand the importance of the ecosystem and the fact that insects serve a purpose. But I still can’t help but be creeped out by most of them. Plus, it seems to me, that in a number of Biblical references, insects were sent by God as a punishment. For example:

1. Exodus 8:24: And there came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and the houses of his servants and the land was laid waste because of the swarms of flies in all the land of Egypt.

2. Exodus 8:17-18: They did so; and Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff, and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats              through all the land of Egypt. The magicians tried with their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they could not; so there were gnats on man and beast.

3.  Psalm 78:46: He gave also their crops to the grasshopper. And the product of their labor to the locust.

4.  Matthew 6: 19-20: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,                   where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal.

5. Exodus 23:28: will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you.

There is even a verse that says God will summon his insects, which I find incredible. Who would want to summon insects?

Isaiah 7:18:  In that day the Lord will whistle for the fly that is in the remotest part of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

How does a liberated woman cope with bugs?

My stubborn mind still clings to thinking the creation of insects was anything but good, and I still do my best to avoid them or annihilate them regardless of what my logical brain says. So what, you may ask, do I do when confronted by a bug when my husband is not around?  That’s easy.  I spray it.  I can stand back from a safe distance and saturate half a room with toxic chemicals in the hope of the spray getting somewhere in the generally vicinity of the bug. It’s kind of like dropping a bomb on an entire city with the goal of wiping out one enemy without actually having to go hand-to-hand combat.  What if I don’t have bug spray?  It doesn’t matter.  I spray it with something—Windex, 409, oven cleaner, Endust—whatever.  Surely something in one of those products will kill it.  Plus, while I’m spraying, I can still scream and do the “icky-icky” dance, which, as we all know, is a requirement of any bug-female confrontation.

So, all you men out there, man up and rescue us swooning females from the terrifying insect population.  Otherwise, I warn you, I have Lysol Multi-Purpose cleaner and I’m not afraid to use it!