Etude 9 - The end comes full circle

Task: Translate a text into a "vocabulary," mentioned in Etude 1.

Random page turn in Augustine's Confessions led me to Book VIII.3. I hope I don't mangle him too badly. It won't resemble him at all, particularly if I try to infuse feminist rhetoric into it. If you are a radical enough feminist, perhaps you impose feminism onto everything, in a heavy-handed manner. (I mean this as observation, not criticism, because people usually impose their most passionate beliefs / thought systems onto everything, a lot more than they realize. I read Christian theology in almost everything.)

Excessive Fear

The soul sounds gender-neutral at first
Until you read it in context:
Book I calls women weak
Shadowing the rest with ominous male gaze.
Souls are male, then, taking pleasure
in the continual possession of women.

Men triumph, glory, rejoice in naval battle
But women too are tossed among tumults
Growing pale, sick in mind, unable to walk
Recovering forgotten at home.

Men seek ordinary pleasures by way of
Women's difficulty and discomfort--
the kind which comes upon them
unexpectedly and against their wills.

The evidence is everywhere,
simply crying out: "It is so."