virtually all societies. However, is it not the case that, while still in the womb, the default of all of generic man is female -- until, in some cases, a spurt of some hormone leads to the formation and birth of males. So, while Eve may have been taken from Adam's side, Adam would have been inchoately female, before bifurcating into his male sexuality. Initially, I was thinking along the lines of Christ's being cloned of the Virgin Mary, but I believe the cloned cell is, in the parlance of you boffins, as far as I can make out, 'front-loaded, with all that is necessary for development conserved within it. Is it then the case -- the medical profession must have terms to designate the respective stages of development, before and after the injection of the catalysing male hormone -- that the default, pre-catalysis female state of all of us is mirrored in the virginity of Mary, the Second Eve, as Catholic spiritual writers sometimes refer to her? It would be a nice consonance, wouldn't it? I'm sorry, but there is nothing in Scripture at all to support this wild idea! Personal opinion is fine, but beards were a part of God's original "very good" creation it would seem -- unless you are going to claim that beards are a result of the fall. "But it has also occurred to me that in their worldly abasement*, their kind of 'spare rib' anonymity, as part of our faith as well, women