Women in a Man's World

I rarely stray to the pages of the popular press - the dangers of glimpses of female flesh in unsavoury ways is too great, especially on the side of the Daily Mail sidebar.

But those godly men who have not just followed the link above will no doubt, like me, prefer to read the Telegraph. Despite its Catholic tendencies, this is still the most godly, in my opinion, of the newspapers - safe from the godless atheism of the Guardian and the Independent, but without the moral cesspittery of the mid-range tabloids. Just the occasional outbreak of attractive, young, but essentially chaste women getting their A-level results every August.

And today while browsing the online pages of the Telegraph I came across this sage article from Andrew M Brown on women judo-players.  I should stress this is the Andrew M Brown who has sensible views on the place of women, and not the Andrew Brown of the Guardian who is so pally with Eileen, the self-styled Archdruid in the Great House. But no, I am talking about the complementarian Mr Andrew M Brown of the Telegraph.

What sense Mr Brown is writing! Surely women should not be indulging in vulgar street-fighting - especially of an Oriental type that may actually be a cover for the Zen or Confucian philosophies. Why are there no Olympic cooking competitions? Surely a test of culinary ability would be a challenging competition? How can women's pugilistic encounters be considered "progress"?

Consider the Women's (why have we abandoned the genteel term ladies' or even the friendly girls'?) Road Race. 250km on bicycles - how can this work for those without an inbuilt geographical sensitivity? Surely there would be the danger of getting overtaken every time one of these women stopped to ask for directions?

Likewise the horse events - are you aware that women are expected to compete on equal terms with men? How are they supposed to do this while riding side-saddle? And in a similar vein - do we really allow young women to risk their head for heights in the pole vault? A delicately-nurtured young lady could have a fit of the vapours and require smelling salts or (chaste and appropriate) laying-on of hands.

Then consider the women's throwing events - could this not be adapted to be a throwing event for the young men the women are best able to charm into throwing for them? And the mixed kayak event could have a young man ferrying his Lady Fair downstream in safety, without the danger she might get her hair wet. Likewise the water jump in the Steeplechase would be greatly improved if young men were prepared to carry the athletes across the water, rather than them risk falling in, getting their fit young bodies wet within those tight costumes until...

I am sorry. I do not know what happened there for a moment. A loss of control, perhaps. The Good Book gives a list of the types of events that would be more suitable for women, and they can be found in Proverbs 31. Can I suggest a Godly Olympics would include:

• The 1,500m wool-seeking
• Spinning the yarn
• Long-distance food-gathering
• Who can get up earliest?
• Vine-planting 
• Alms-giving
• Tapestry Weaving (with points given for productivity and artistic interpretation)
• Girdle-selling.

Now that would be an Olympics worth watching!