JESUS NATION SEX REBEL, mini-chapter 16

16. THE ROLE OF A FEMALE BELOVED

Eve knew it was dangerous for her to even think of her role as a Female in Jesusland. It was extremely Non-Sanctioned to recognize the fact that she still had some power over men, because she had the physical assets that they regarded as attractive. It was Non-Sanctioned to think that she could use this power on behalf of other Females, a beauty acting for plain Females, whose uninspiring looks damned them to utter powerlessness.

It was all Non-Sanctioned, because it was the role of a Female Beloved, no matter how pretty or independent-minded, to marry and bear children for her husband, and to obey him. The husband was the leader of the family; his wife was his servant; that was a crucial part of the Bureau of Behavior Design and Management Protocols, a rule first constituted by the Southern Baptists Convention that now applied to everyone.

And what was love in all this? Love was how men controlled women, because it came so easy to women. That’s why love was not a game, but a fight. It would be for her, anyway, as a Single Female.

The Bureau of Behavior Design and Management had always struggled with the Single Female Issue, which covered the time from when a woman left the home of her father to live in society -- to when a man chose her to get married.

The dangerous phase between daughter and wife. The time when she, Eve, had felt the most free. She would like to feel like that again, and wished young females the best of luck in enjoying this brief respite.

But the Men of the Gospel were moving towards keeping the Single Female in the home and under her father’s care until she caught the eye of a man. Perhaps, they thought, it was better for the father to find her a man among the sons of his friends. However, this would interfere with the Single Man’s right of looking for a Female of his own liking. That was the Single Female Issue in a nutshell: how to guarantee the freedom of Men without issuing a license to Females. The Dating Protocols were one way of dealing with this issue.

Every Female took her constrained position for granted, living happily and naturally in subjugation or, as the Men of the Gospel preferred to put it, in the care of their men.

But Eve did not. Here she was, wanting equality. Wanting to fight against the control of love. How did this come about? Maybe she never knew what she knew until she knew Rachel would have to defend herself in front of the Patriot Board because she was pregnant by a man who did not want to marry her.

That’s when it hit her – how unfair it all was.

What was it in her that spawned such a Non-Sanctioned Notion? The idea of fairness for Females was flat-out treason. A thought born in the darkness of her soul, which she struggled to defend before God, who was of course male. Her friendship with Rachel, and her natural inclination to stand by her friend, had turned her around in some fundamental way. She felt different: like some kind of gender outlaw. Maybe it gave her a purpose and a mission – to fight for women -- but she knew it was going to cost her, because already it made her feel like the loneliest female in the world. She was heading for a terrible struggle -- not only with men, but also with God.