But I think it’s well worth questioning the associated idea that the spiritual is in some way better than the physical. This assumption is eloquently questioned in Dory Previn’s song “Mythical Kings and Iguanas”.

Moving on to a further remove from the word “bitch”, the elements of earth, water, air and fire are part of the astrologers’ conceptual framework. (Three zodiac signs are assigned to each element.) In this context, I have seen the feminine elements (water and earth) described as “negative” and the masculine ones (fire and air) as “positive”. Furthermore, the symbols for water and earth involve a downward pointing triangle, those for air and fire an upwards pointing one. Perhaps there’s no need for me to draw out the possible implications of this.

Does anyone else remember the bit in South Park the movie where the Mr Garrison sings the kids a song instructing them how to remedy their swearing? It has the line ‘Step 3 with bitch drop the t, because bich is latin for generosity’.

Probably to do with both a) the ‘prison’ meaning of the word and b) being a woman/feminised is one thing men don’t like to be called…

Ah yes. I find the whole issue of how gender differences have been presented completely fascinating: one of the implications for what you’re saying (and, indeed, for ‘bitch’ as a word) is that the Victorian idea of the Angel in the House was a complete reversal of everything that had gone before. I suppose it’s quite an obvious point, that, but it’s something that I, at any rate, never really thought to connect with the Medieval idea of women as dangerous sex-obsessed maniacs. The flip side is what happened to men, too – they stopped being fire and air and became penis-driven bundles of testosterone. Why?

Just something I picked up amongst information about witch-hunts…