Open letter to Anne Boleyn

Dear Anne Boleyn,

Is it the August full moon and the retrograde Mercury?
Or is that you are having the same effect on me that you had on everyone that ever came close to you?
I can't get you out of my mind and today I don't feel like writing like I usually do.

I saw a play about you at the Globe. It’s an Elizabethan theatre built during your daughter's reign. You should be so proud, she was amazing. They named a whole age after her; it was a Golden Age for England.

I’m writing to let you know that very little has changed since you’ve been gone.

In this century women think they are liberated but they are not really. We wear trousers and have jobs and drink and fall about the place like lowly men but when it comes to sex, society is put off by women who have an appetite for it. They are still called whores. It is often more delicately put, I grant you.

You used it to advance. Your daughter Queen Elizabeth “withheld” it to be respected. Did you know that? They called her the Virgin Queen.
When King Henry VIII fell in love with you in 1526, you refused to sleep with him for nearly seven years while negotiations with the Pope went on to secure the annulment of his marriage to Queen Catherine.

How did you do it red-blooded Anne? You didn’t really fancy King Henry the oaf did you? Was it the throne you fancied?
I understand. A person must always make the best of life and advance accordingly if the opportunity arises. Love is not always found, it sometimes grows in the most unlikely places.

There are still many myths about female sexuality. I’ve often been informed by men that our kind don’t like sex that much.
And the age old tale about the male instinct to hunt is still around. What is left for them to hunt and conquer? Women apparently.

It’s not very sexy is it? It makes me feel like a stag that's about to get its head cut off and hung over a fireplace. I think you know better than anyone what I mean.
Where are all these unwilling women that give it up like damsels in distress to the hunter-gatherer male? I’ve never met any yet all the men I know insist they have.

Little Elizabeth was brought up to believe that she had something that everybody wanted, the disciplined withholding of which could bring her power and respect.
There was more at stake for little Elizabeth. She got to rule England. Maybe she was the exception as she literally sat on a fortune. What’s my prize for pretending to be someone’s trophy?
Is it “The fool” that will think me his conquest?

There is a woman in Iran called Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtianithat who has been sentenced to death by stoning and the charges are: Adultery (although the incident occurred after the death of her husband) and plotting her husband’s murder (she has retracted her confession to this crime, claiming it was made under duress).
Exactly the same as the charges that had you convicted and beheaded. 1536 is not that different to 2010 after all is it? Same scenario, different time and part of the globe.

Can you see beyond the ages Anne? Do we ever understand that we are born and shaped by the same society? Do we ever stop expecting to be different and accept each other as equals?

Can you break your silence and let me know?