The ladies

Dorothy Sayers wrote a (biting, witty, unafraid) essay on the role of women in society titled The Human-Not-Quite-Human, first published in 1947.  It ended with these words:

“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross.  They had never known a man like this Man–there never has been such another.  A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious.  There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.”

I reread this a lot.  Because it strikes me as very true.