God’s Wicked Righteous Women

The Art of Defusing Fatal Female Charms

The most seductive women on Earth are not in Argentina or Sweden or Eden or Hollywood. God put them all in just one country and charged His devoted servants1 there to guard them well. 

Jeepers. What a hazardous task. Just a glimpse of one square inch of their flesh whetted a carnal lust no man could resist. The shimmer of a fingernail, the gleam of an eye would rob him of all control, forcing him to ravish her on the spot, which would mean his perdition, because God’s devoted servants knew: fornication was frowned upon. 

The best way to obey God’s command to protect the women, the servants realized, was to guard themselves from those women. A good idea how occurred to them right away. Cover each woman up in a blanket and provide a single hole in the thick fabric so she could look out with one eye to see where she was going. With nothing of the woman visible, no man could possibly be aroused by her unearthly charms. She would be safe. 

It was easier to get the women under those blankets than one might think. 

Long ago God informed a male person of that land that, because He had endowed the males with certain qualities, they were in charge of the females. This information spread rapidly among the males. God also assured his primary male person that the righteous ladies among their females would cheerfully accept this arrangement and be happy to do whatever the males told them to do as long as it did not violate God’s commandments, and wearing blankets definitely didn’t. If a female rebelled, God told the primary male that her husband should give her a talking to. If rebellion continued, God instructed that the husband should desert her in bed — a crippling punishment, evidently. If that didn’t work, God said the husband might beat her. If she then obeyed, the husband was not to transgress against her further, which hinted at the alternative: If the woman still did not obey, the beating might be repeated.

With all those women covered in blankets swarming the streets, the servants couldn’t tell who was doing what. 

But the women were righteous! On being told they were to cover themselves in blankets, the women covered themselves, which caused an unforeseen complication that God, in all His wisdom, had not mentioned all those centuries ago. 

Now this population of righteous, but alluring women had already been told that, for extra protection from evil and sin and temptation, they were forbidden to talk to a male who was not a relative or her husband. Nor was she allowed to look at a male who was not a relative or her husband. If she took a journey far from the sphere of domesticity and privacy zealously guarded by her husband — her home — she was to be escorted by a male who was either a relative or her husband. 

But now, with tens of thousands of women swarming the streets covered in blankets, the servants of God couldn’t tell who was doing what. With a blanket draped over her head, a woman could look wherever she wanted, at whomsoever she pleased, whisper to a forbidden man. Who would know? There might even be room for another person under that blanket. What about that?

But there was something more. 

Besides endowing these creatures with alluring bodies, God had apparently also given each one a brain. And she did stuff with it, like think and talk, and talk about what she thought. It was bad enough that they milled higgledy-piggledy in the towns and the villages and the cities concealed under their blankets. But they were out there bargaining for vegetables, chaperoning children, attending schools, working. And all the while a whole lot of talk went on, talking to all those other ladies, righteous ladies to be sure, but ladies all the same, who were talking to them. Information might possibly be exchanged, perspectives shared, opinions formed, perhaps wrong opinions. How were the servants of God to know? It was not a good thing. 

A solution to this unforeseen problem — God hadn’t really mentioned it — was drawn up forthwith. With dispatch, those righteously cloaked ladies congesting the streets were informed that they were forbidden to speak. That’s right, no talking. A woman’s voice, it was proclaimed, was part of her body, just as seductive, but a devastating lure because it could escape that blanket for just any male to hear. It would not do.

God’s servants were pleased with themselves. After all, God had given them the responsibility to safeguard the virtue of these women but hadn’t been all too clear about how. It was an especially tricky assignment because God’s commandments did not change throughout the centuries while everything else did. Yet, once again, they had managed to work out the details. 

With the greatest deference, the wives asked if their husbands could draw up a list of what they were allowed to do? It might help them, they hinted, be even more righteous.

To simplify their horrendous responsibility of making sure the women behaved, the servants of God decided to reduce women’s exposure to danger, which meant eliminating their presence in public. Accordingly, they prohibited females from attending school beyond the sixth grade, forbade them to hold jobs, shut down any businesses they might have, and required them to have a male relative as chaperone if they did step a foot outside the home. They also barred women from public parks and mixed-gender environments — if men were present, no woman could approach; if women were present and men appeared, the women had to leave.

A love of simple solutions caught fire among God’s servants. Soon they had published over a hundred edicts restricting women’s behavior until the women became quite confused. With the greatest deference, they asked if their husbands could draw up a list of what they were allowed to do? It might help them, they hinted, be even more righteous.

A most fortunate request! the servants of God thought. That meant they could skip over those hundred or more prohibitions they had kind of made up and just lay out what God’s commandments permitted women to do. The more they thought about it, the longer they hesitated. They gathered together to speak about this, and still they hesitated. The women were waiting for their answer, but God’s servants needed more time. What God allowed women to do wasn’t exactly what God’s servants wanted them doing, and what God’s servants wanted them doing wasn’t much and didn’t sound very nice. 

To give God’s commandments another look was out of the question. It would mean wiping out all those splendid conveniences they had come up with to keep their women pure with minimum effort on their part. After grave deliberation, they finally had their answer for the waiting women, and it was a doozy even for those righteous souls: The women were forbidden from wanting to know. Knowing would make them unclean, they were told, and the women already knew desire made them wicked. They were to pay strict attention to what they weren’t supposed to do. If they stuck to that, their welcome in the Hereafter as wicked women of righteousness was assured.


  1. Pursuant to God’s ineluctable wisdom, those servants were all male. ↩︎

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