X. Protection or Repression?

Extract

A Christian saint, by martyrdom or the ‘long martyrdom’ of renunciation, could reject all that defined her as female: physical weakness, fertility, low resistance to desire, family-centred life. She could thus become an honorary man. Perpetua, a recent mother, dreamed that she was stripped for combat in the arena and found herself physically a man; for centuries before this, women had been praised (or denounced) for a ‘masculine mind’ displayed in good sense or vigorous action. It is not, for the twentieth century, an appealing idea. But the ancient world assumed that being female was worse than being male, though individual females might triumph over the disadvantages of their sex and use to the full their natural endowment of wisdom, courage, self-control, and piety.