As she knelt on the cushion waiting for Sister Holle to arrive she just hoped that she had managed to impress on Kodachi just what sort of person was.
The Kuno girl could be a bit strange at times and Sister Holle was bound to misinterpret any sort of abnormal behavior as signs of sinful pervertedness.
Kodachi had only boasted that she 'knew that type' looking very confident and happy in her new dress.
Akane wished that she could feel that confident.
Ranma was looking forward to a short session as Sister Holle as it hopefully would help her went some of the accumulated frustration on her two prisoners.
She was prepared for every possible reaction from Kodachi except for the one she got. Respectful behavior and what turned out to be a preemptive attack disguised in polite inquisitiveness.
"Isn't the cross you wear the wrong way up?" She had asked lightly once the introductions were done.
Ranma looked down at herself. Was the long bit supposed to point up or down? It looked like she thought it was supposed to look.
On the basis of her father's teachings that you never admitted any weakness or mistakes unless forced to she assured Kodachi that the way she wore was exactly the way it was worn.
But that had actually only been an opening gambit of Kodachi's to put Sister Holle of balance to prepare her for her first salvo.
"I have heard that you have a very strong stance on moral issues and was wondering if you could explain me your church views on issues like the prince intention of establishing an harem? It does not sound very Christian to me," Kodachi wanted to know.
From the astonished look on Akane's face that contradiction had never occurred to her. It had not occurred to Ranma either but she was able to quickly come up with an answer.
"A common mistake," Ranma dismiss, "Having several wives is an old and cherished Christian tradition going back all the way to Lamech. The Bible tells us that great man have always deserved this right and that God approves of them having many wives. Esau, Jacob, Gideon, Moses were all great man before the Lord with more than one woman. And King David was said to have had at least 18 wives and concubines with Salomon holding the record of 1000 wives. Clearly under those precedents nobody can claim that it would be wrong or sinful for our own Prince to have as many wives as he desires."
Had Akane known that it was Ranma under that habit she would have been stunned at this explanation, but since she did not she just accepted it as making sense.
What Akane did not know and few others would have suspected was that Ranma whatever else he might have lacked in his education, had actually managed to acquire a good if somewhat idiosyncratic working knowledge on comparative theology during his training trip.
Genma had often taken advantage of the hospitality of temples, shrines, monasteries and other houses of religion during their travels. Most holy men had quickly recognized that Genma was a lost case, but they had at least tried to instill some of their teachings to young Ranma, before finally kicking the two out. As word had gotten around among the various temples Genma had to resort to ask at increasingly more obscure and fringe religious institutions for shelter.
Ranma had always been polite and attentive in the hopes of finding a good fighting technique among the useless bits of enlightenment. He had great respect for various groups of crazy kung-fu monks, but he had pretty much given up on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam which he in his selfstudy concluded were more or less the same. He had tried to find useful stuff by reading their holy books, but had given up after an unsuccessful attempt at smiting his father with the jaw-bone of an ass.
He normally would not have remembered any of the stuff he had read. Ranma's memory worked very erraticly enabling him to have near photographic recall of any fighting technique he had every witnessed while at the same time forgetting his best friends or even that he ever had a mother.
But Ranma's sub-consciousness had decided that he was having a fight with Kodachi at the moment and that his best weapons were obscure half remembered bits of information. A fact which selectively boosted his powers of recall.
But Kodachi was not as easily defeated. "I understand that this may be the view of some, but surely the Roman Catholic Church has an official policy prohibiting polygamy?"
Another aspect of Ranma's fighting skill came into play at this point, his creativity and ability to improvise.
"Well I am not Roman Catholic," she explained, "the papist with their false teachings schismed of the true church of Lichtenburg centuries ago, when they refused to acknowledge our prince's right to take a second wife."
"Oh, my bad then," Kodachi pretended to be sorry, "I should not have assumed. So this regulation applies just to the prince or to everyone?"
"Oh, every man can have has many women as he can afford." Ranma decided it only seemed fair that way.
"Only the men? That sounds rather unbalanced to me," Kodachi objected, "Some might even call it misogynistic and backwards if women are not granted the same rights as men."
"Nonsense," Ranma dismissed her accusations feigning being slightly insulted, "I will have you know that Lichtenburg is a very progressive country we have for example been allowing women to vote for almost a generation."
Kodachi seemed to accept this largely made up example as sufficient proof for the progressive nature of Lichtenburg but she still was not satisfied with everything
"Doesn't that lead to problems? Surely even in Lichtenburg people have as many sons as daughters," she asked pointing out the flaws in such an arrangement in a vicious attack on Ranma's carefully constructed social system.
"It's traditional," he retaliate.
He had not managed to absorb much of what little there was written in the Tendo family encyclopaedia volume IV [J-N] about Lichtenburg, but one part out of all the boring numbers and descriptions had caught Ranma's interest: apperantly the Lichtenburger were well known for traditionally being mercenaries. In any big war that had been fought anywhere in the world in the last dozen centuries there had been hired Lichtenburger warriors; quite often on both sides. Ranma could respect and remember such facts much better than numbers about tourism and cheese export.
"Lichtenburg is a nation of mercenaries", he only slightly exaggerated in making up an explanation that sounded believable to him, "The brave young men of our country have gone out to fight in other people's wars since ancient times. By the time the wars were over many had fallen, some decided to stay with whomever they had fought and some of those who actually returned brought home women with them from the exotic locations they had been."
"I see a one-to-one ratio would be difficult to maintain under these circumstances. And I guess it would explain a certain multi-ethnic makeup and multi-culturalism among the population with such a large influx of foreign people and foreign ideas." Kodachi mused more to herself then to the room at large.
Akane was still trying to keep up with the conversation and looked like she wondered whether she could dare to ask something without being accused of being a pervert. Muttered phrases like "spoils of war?" could be heard. However before she could work up the courage Kodachi was once again loudly addressing Sister Holle with her musings.
"I take it that the custom of wearing veils is one of the things that got imported to Lichtenburg from places like Arabia with those women?" Kodachi asked gesturing at the coarse fabric covering the lower half of her face.
Ranma saw no harm in admitting that this was indeed a possibility.
"I see. That clears up many of the questions I have had. thank you very much. If I might just ask just one other thing that I thought you might be able to explain to me?"
"Yes?" Ranma allowed warily.
"I have been told that you disapprove of certain types of behavior and dress on the grounds that they are provocative and sinful in a sexual way," Kodachi alluded without actually mentioning Severa's name, "does that not sit in opposition to your prince's habit of having his servants and prisoners dress in a certain ways that might by some outsider be considered as indecent?"
Ranma thought about that for a moment. As a loyal subject of the prince she could not very well accuse him of being a pervert. Ranma would quickly have to make up a definition of pervert that would make it possible to be outraged at Akane's behavior and Severa's alluded lifestyle but also enable her to be perfectly okay with whatever the prince did.
"When the prince makes his serving wenches dress in nothing very much, he does so that he can enjoy looking at their bodies — which is only his right and privilege as their lord. The objective is not to allow the servants to feel pleasure at showing off their bodies. In fact it would be practically sinful of them to actually enjoy wantonly exposing themselves like that. The only pleasure they should feel should be that of the knowledge that they are serving their lord." Ranma rationalized.
"So it depends on the context," Kodachi concluded, "The same sort of behavior that would be sinful for a women to indulge in alone would be acceptable if she did it for her husband or master."
"Exactly," Ranma agreed happy that she had understood it but not really liking the way Kodachi made it sound.
"So your primary objection to Mistress Severa's lifestyle is not what she is doing, but that she is doing it for herself." Kodachi gathered.
Ranma tried to angrily interrupt her at the mention of Severa's name to stay in previously established behavior for her character, but Kodachi continued loudly.
"If Severa was married or had a boyfriend and he told her to play with one of his other girls because he is the sort of guy who likes to watch it would be okay wouldn't it?" She argued. "This man would likely not even have to be in the same room at the time. Maybe he would just get off on knowing that she would be doing it."
"Now wait a minute young lady." Ranma tried to stop Kodachi's assault long enough for her to find any weak points in her reasoning, but the crazy gymnast was having none of it.
"You don't disapprove the acts themselves, but the fact that she is doing them just for herself. You condemn her for being her own woman and not submitting herself to a man," Kodachi ranted. "You hate her for being independent; for not depending on someone else to allow her to find pleasure and happiness."
Ranma watched helplessly as Kodachi word by word destroyed all the progress she had already made with Akane. Kodachi was destroying Sister Holle's authority and deconstructing the value system she needed to teach Akane about the dangers of calling someone a pervert. If this continued Akane would no longer fear the nun and her accusations and go back to her own smug self-righteousness. Kodachi was undoing all the hard work Ranma had done and there was no stopping her.
"But you yourself," Kodachi was still going strong, "are not married either, are you? Without a husband your own rules forbid you pursuing any sort of carnal pleasure. You can hardly begrudge other married women their pleasure, because it is not their fault. Any carnal pleasure they feel is only a byproduct of being good wives and obeying their husbands after all. But people like Severa they don't have the excuse. They get to experience the things that you are denied and you envy them for that. Is it not so?"
Ranma was shocked and Akane's whose eyes had gotten progressively bigger throughout Kodachi's speech gasped.
"You are jealous of Severa!" Kodachi accused. "If you are not allowed, she should not be either. If you have to forsaken all carnal pleasures to escape the dominion of menfolk, then so should she. Isn't that how you feel; jealousy and envy instead of disgust at her behavior. And might not the reason why you have not chosen to marry be the same that you feel so strongly about Severa's lifestyle? Because deep down you feel the same as her? Because deep down you wished you could be as courageous and open as her about it? Isn't it really yourself that you mean when you accuse others of being perverts?"
As Kodachi stopped to catch her breath Ranma frantically considered how to react to Kodachi's allegation.
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(Posted Thu, 09 Dec 2004 17:13)
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