Men are Human but so are Women

Slept through Song of Solomon last week so had to go back to it again today, except that all the children are here with me, arranged uncomfortably in my bed, kicking each other and fighting. Awkward, you might say. But I listened to it anyway. And then I popped over the Facebook and the top “story” (if ever there was a misnommer…that little floating cloud, 'new stories' or whatever it says, more than anything, makes me want to leave FB behind forever, nevertheless, I will hypocritically post this there) was a picture of a line of veiled chained girls being led by two angry veiled women off to be “married”. Everyone in black and gray. Everyone in bondage. Everywhere the threat of death. Except that clearly death might come as a mercy to some.

What a contrast from the scriptures and the young Shulammite running around looking for her lover. He looks for her, she looks for him, they are both desirous of each other. They both act and speak.

Read a couple of days ago that “honor” in Muslim culture is nearly always associated with men and “shame” always associated with women. I'm using scare quotes because it can't be that the true meanings of these words are in view here–shame, honor, marriage–we can't be talking about the true reality, but some horrible twisted copy of it. That men should prize their own sense of whatever it is so much that every woman is in boundage, the bondage of shame, that the bondage is enforced by other women–we've gone wholly away from true concepts. You have to know that all those Nigerian girls are being managed and veiled and proselytized and rubbed into the dust by other women hemmed in by men.

What a mess.

More later, when the children stop screaming.