麻豆社

This is the time of year when newspapers and magazines run their most memorable images of the last 12 months, and I was very struck by the number one choice of a particular collection of 2021 photos.

It was of a young woman prostrate on the floor, surrounded by police, two of them gripping her arms behind her back. She was looking up at the camera, her Covid mask making it seem as if she was not only bound but gagged too. The photo doesn鈥檛 tell the story as to why this had happened. But it conveyed a vulnerability made all the more poignant because she was held like this at a vigil for brutally murdered Sarah Everard, where she and others were demonstrating at the risks of violence all women face.

However much women have sought and gained equality, their physical strength compared to men鈥檚 remains a source of inequality and vulnerability. It often makes them targets of those who seek to intimidate and manipulate. But when they courageously bear witness to the violence and abuse done to them, whether by men or even other women, it is all the more powerful. After the Ghislaine Maxwell trial which focused on the abuse done to young girls by Jeffrey Epstein, one New York prosecuting lawyer this week paid tribute to the women who, as he put it, stepped out of the shadows and into the courtroom to give evidence.

When I turned to my new diary for 2022 I noticed that in the next few weeks, the Catholic Church鈥檚 calendar of feast days includes five that honour women who also spoke up, even though they faced violence for doing so. Prisca, Agnes, Agatha, Apollonia, and Honorine were all young when they became Christians, a choice for which they were victimized and put to death by the rulers of the Roman Empire.

The stories of them all are disturbing, not only for the torture they endured before their martyrdom but also the extent to which their honouring in Christianity is bound up with the extreme violence they endured. Many paintings of these saints also luridly highlight their torture.

At first sight, it might seem that this religion, run for so many generations by men, has a disturbing focus on stories of young women and violence. But these tales can be interpreted in another different way.

They also show these young women鈥檚 commitment, passion, and courageous rejection of what their society, including their families, stood for as they chose instead to follow Christ鈥檚 message of peace and justice. Even 2,000 years ago, these women would not be cowed by violence. They would speak up, and yes, emerge from the shadows.

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