a women's month celebration

Last night, a celebration of "the woman" whoever she is or may turn out to be.  Every one did their bit of praise:  for the mother, the lover, the daughter...all of these faceless.  All, generic tags on the body.  One patron introduced her piece saying how, when she was young, she had always engaged in a battle of the sexes: the women better than men.  How the poem she was about to read was her epiphany:  proudly she read Hugo's "The Man and the Woman".  A long reading (but she was an art patron, excited in her own participation; and so she was let be) I suffered hearing.  A Catholic priest (also a patron) elevated a self-less old maid all alone on her deathbed.  Nobody said anything about cruelty.  

I would have wanted to do something on the body.  Strip it.  And make it talk about desire.  Make it say the things before it had taught itself self-censorship. 

But I couldn't, having had no idea the celebration was going to be that way.  Instead, I was there: a comic-tragedy.  

image from The Pillow Book