Postcard from Hell

Well, poppets, you know I don't usually allow anonymous comments in my combox. I get some lulus, as I'm sure you can imagine or have seen before I erased them. But sometimes I let one through, generally if it agrees with me,

I found this anonymous comment this morning, and it is both a lulu and it agrees with me. It fully acknowledges a fallen order in which women attach themselves to men who treat them badly.

Unfortunately, the letter-writer, whose bragging may just be a load of lies, admittedly, thinks this situation is wonderful. Imagine a virus discovering that it can invade people, take over their bodies and make them sick and die. Whoo-hoo!

The thing about the virus, though, is that once its host subject is dead, it dies too. Oh sure, its sibling and cousin viruses are still running amock through the community, but the virus in the dead person is dead, too. Not that it has a chance to consider this though because, though powerful, it doesn't have much of a brain.

Human beings do, however, have reason, and reason tells the reasonable man that attracting women so as to use and abuse them is really quite a shoddy hobby. Promiscuity does not wear down and tear at the souls of men quite as quickly as it does at women's, but I am told it does eventually catch up with them.

And it can, of course, hurt even those women such men decide are lovable human beings worth keeping around. Karen Blixen couldn't have children because her rat-bastard husband gave her a venereal disease. And God only knows how many women then and now get HPV, the one cause of cervical cancer, from their husbands' premarital sexual careers because although men carry it, they can't be tested for it.

So, do women somehow get hooked on rat-bastard behaviour? Yes. And women also--I know this will blow your minds--are much weaker than men, so when men hit us, we fall down. I know. Crazy, eh? And I don't see much of a difference between men exploiting women's emotional weakness to use us and men knocking us down. Both behaviours hurt. Both behaviours spit on the humanity of both women and men.

“Whenever man is responsible for offending a woman’s personal dignity and vocation, he acts contrary to his own personal dignity and his own vocation.” John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem


Here's the postcard from hell. You might as well see what we are dealing with. The writer's virus feeds on female attention, so I'm shutting the combox. If you want to vent, girls, send me a short email instead.


Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Too Nice?":

It's interesting long ago when in grad-school, I did a series of experiments where I dated a number of women and would treat some very well, others moderately well, and to some I was a rat-bastard to put it simply. Invariably, the ones I was the worst to, were the ones who would almost literally do anything to say with me.

After nailing that down I would transition from being the "rat-bastard" to being nice to her, to see interest wain - if I reverse trend it would improve a bit, but after the better part of two years, I learned that you can never be to much of a rat-bastard. It really is as simple as that - but if you are "nice" you can kiss your butt good-bye.

So before you rant and rave that it isn't true ladies - be honest since each of you can point to the guy that was "too nice" and how you fell hard for the guy that was the worst to you. You have no one to blame but yourselves. Guys aren't stupid - we learn. Some quicker than others.

So while I see the who PUA stuff as useless, there is a grain of truth in it, and while I would never say I'm anywhere near that - I always have several women in the wings, and some who are up and coming.

Heck, you can see it in the book women are so hot and bothered about these days. Men learn ladies, and some learn quickly. Personally, I love the system - I can do what I want, when I want, and always have women waiting for me to call and jump at the chance.

So gnash your teeth all you want - you reward men like me. And I than you for it...


Don't read Fifty Shades of Grey. Read Mulieris Dignitatem. And the Magnificat. Actually, that's my response to the postcard writer in his little hell. Let's all say it together, shall we? Really freak him out.

My soul magnifies the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
Because he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid;
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;
Because he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name;
And his mercy is from generation to generation
on those who fear him.
He has shown might with his arm,
He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and has exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of his mercy
Even as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

Amen.

Too Nice?

Poppets, I am a bit nervous about this particular subject. Such a can o' worms. Such a conflict between the world as it is and the world as it should be. I'd rather tell you about the party I went to on Saturday night. Apparently given very bad lighting, a dress she has to stick on with double-sided tape and the absence of her husband, your old auntie gets chatted up a lot. Of course I am way too advanced in holiness to think that was awesome, but actually it was pretty awesome. (Needless to say, Auntie mentioned Unkie when the conversation turned to "And why do you live in Edinburgh?")

Anyway, the party is still too fresh in local history for you to tell you all the amazing insights I gleaned, so I will hang it up in the cellars of my mind to be seasoned and preserved and just get on with the painful topic of niceness.

Can a nice guy be too nice?

Hitherto I have written about soi-disant "nice guys" who are actually passive-aggressive b*stards. They are easiest to spot in advice columns because they like to write letters like this: "Dear Abby, I'm a nice guy but I think I should't be because apparently all women like men who treat them badly."

Such "nice" guys lack self-knowledge, and men who lack self-knowledge are alarming. But to ignore Mr Seething "Nice Guy" and to move onto truly nice guys, is there such a thing as being "too nice"? And incidentally, by "too nice" I mean "too kind."

Frankly, I do not think men can be too kind. I think they can be boring, of course. But kindliness does not mean dullness, just as abrasiveness does not mean excitement. True kindliness includes kindliness to oneself, which is something that some men lack when they are dealing with women. Women tend not to respect men who do not respect themselves. However, putting women down is not exactly evidence of healthy self-respect.

Sorry to mention them again, but men who are involved in the pick-up artist movement believe in technique called "negging." "Negging" is paying a girl a backhanded compliment so as to stand out from all the men who pay her proper compliments and to knock her from her pedestal of self-confidence. The p.u. artist idea is that every real woman is longing for some guy to re-establish the proper order of creation in which the man is boss and the woman obeys him and thinks he is marvelous.

Yes, go ahead and make those gargling noises of disgust, but we have a eensy problem in that a lot of women are actually like that. Why do so many fourteen year old girls defy their parents to date some guy their parents despise? Why does such a girl want to please her boyfriend more than she wants to please her parents? Why do women do such stupid, shortsighted things "because I love him"? And why do I get so many letters from readers, Nice Catholic Girls who go to church and know the rules and want to live up to them, who admit to having slept with their boyfriends or now-ex-fiances? Okay, sure, they did it because they wanted to, but my hypothesis is that a big reason they wanted to was because they wanted to please those boyfriends and ex-fiances. They wanted to give that which wasn't really theirs to give yet.

Simone de Beauvoir was feminist royalty, but I read somewhere that she used to buy Jean-Paul Sartre fancy notebooks while she bought cheap notebooks for herself. She wouldn't marry her American lover Nelson Algren because she was so attached to Jean-Paul Sartre, who left control of his intellectual legacy to the mistress he adopted as his daughter. Jean-Paul never married Simone, of course. The whole "open relationship" was his idea, and apparently when he suggested it, he didn't think she'd agree. But she did and the upshot was that she spent her life as his high priestess, editing his work, and insisting on being buried in his grave despite the Algerian mistress-(ahem) "daughter," and it's all very depressing.

Saint Edith Stein wrote about both masculinity and femininity, noting that they were adversely affected by the Fall. Since the Fall, masculinity has had a tendency to tyrannize over women and femininity has had a tendency to let it. But nature, twisted after the Fall, is both healed and perfected by Grace, which is to say that the Incarnation ushered in a new order. This new order recognizes the truth revealed in Genesis that women are, as much as men, made in the image and likeness of God. Both Saint Edith and Blessed John Paul II underscore the dignity of Woman, offering Our Lady as the exemplar.

They don't put it like this, but Eve was a wimp, submitting to the snake, whereas Our Lady is a heroine, crushing the snake with her heel. Our Lady didn't listen to snakes but to God, and instead of falling for tricks, she responded to an invitation to become the Mother of God.

In light of this, I would say that to fall for negging and to admire men who push you around and to want to submit to them in whatever way to make them like or love you is to be in cahoots with the Fall and not to be in line with the Gospel.

Meanwhile, I haven't got a psych degree or anything like that--just my wee M.Div/STB--but I will go out on a limb and suggest that the women who are most likely to fall for guys who insult them are women who are emotionally unhealthy and who are so used to being insulted that they think it is normal. They might also be so lonely that they are amazed by and grateful for any masculine attention, no matter how negative. (I certainly know women like this.) But emotionally healthy women are irritated by men who insult them and will flee them for men who are honestly kind to them.

Update: I have just had a horrid memory of a woman who clearly loved the young man abusing her in public and so put up with it. The kicker is that the woman was the young man's mother. They were in front of my counter at one of my government jobs. I think the woman must have forgotten some essential paper, for the young man told his mother she was a waste of space. I snapped, "That's no way to speak to your mother" and the woman, whose head was bowed and who looked very ashamed, looked at me and then at him.

"Yes," she said. "That's no way to speak to your mother."

"Waste of space," muttered the young man rebelliously.

The woman gave an unhappy giggle.

Some women love men despite their bad behaviour. Not because. DESPITE.


Incidentally, my husband is one of the kindest men I know. And he is kind to everybody.

Most Vulnerable

Warning: Post contains discussion of sexual assault and trauma. Sexual assault survivors might wish to avoid it. Comments moderation is on.


The trial of a gang of men who groomed and raped underage girls in Manchester has concluded. The facts that all the men involved were South Asian, usually Pakistani, and that all the girls were white British have not gone unreported.

Possibly not hearing the horrifying implication of his remark, a South Asian man who spoke up against the rapists said, "Asian girls are not available to them so they look to Western girls."

Yeah, 13 year old Asian girls are not available to them. Neither should 13 year old European girls be.

But that's not what he meant. What he meant was what he said next: "They [these South Asian men] think they're [white British women are] easy. They think they're tarts just there to be used."

As the rapists were plying their young victims with vodka, obviously they didn't think they were THAT easy. But, again, that's not exactly what Mr Shafiq meant.

What he meant was that the kind of South Asian man who will rape 13 year old white girls with this pals thinks that white women are promiscuous sluts who don't deserve respect.

Sexual Revolution, meet Racist Misogyny.

"He won't respect you," said countless generations of Western parents, and then--quite rapidly, basically c. 1980--many Western parents stopped saying that. The simultaneous eruption of the Sexual and Feminist revolutions meant that men were supposed to respect women no matter what. And, indeed, countless Western men were delighted that countless Western women were no longer so prudent with their bodies and were willing to share without all the bother and responsibility of marriage. Or payment. And, to their credit, most Western men do seem to understand that they should at least look respectful of women, no matter what the women dress or act like.

The rest of the men in the world did not get the memo. And, hey, not all Westerners did either. I grew up in Toronto, and it was not exactly a secret that some Italian and Portuguese immigrants were yelling at their daughters not to dress and act like those "putanas, Canadian girls." They had left Italy or Portugal in the 1950s or 1960s, and so it never dawned on them that "Canadian girls" (i.e. Canadian girls of every ethnic group but theirs) in the 1980s were dressing and acting no differently than Italian and Portuguese girls back home.

Being a "white woman" and "one of those putanas, Canadian girls", I am not exactly a stranger to racist misogyny, the belief that women outside one's one racial or ethnic group are sluttier and less deserving of basic human kindness and respect than the women of one's own.

Women of every race have had to put up with this crap. I can only speak to my own experience as "a white girl", and I will tentatively add that "white girls" have the added burden of being easy targets for those who resent being fish-out-of-water in countries in which they were not born or in which their ancestors did not originate. We also--and believe me, this makes me ill--carry some kind of "status symbol" value, as women of colour quite justly, I think, resent.

Then there's the whole, disgusting "revenge against the men on the bodies of 'their' women" horror that is such a part of pogroms and war. Nobody tells me the worst, but I have heard some "Fleeing from the Russians" stories that made my hair stand on end.

But you aren't in war zones, dear readers, so let's just shudder and leave that aside. Let's look at our current circumstances: most of us reside in countries where men and women of different races and cultures live and work side-by-side. This includes Poland, although whoever said Edinburgh was the least multicultural capital city he ever saw, had never seen Warsaw.

Now, most women are by nature kind, motherly creatures who want to make strangers feel welcome. And in the West we have been told a million zillion times that we are equal in dignity to men and we have been treated more-or-less equal in dignity to men, so it doesn't often occur to us that strangers might not see us that way. For this reason, it is sometimes better to err on the side of reserve.

I have just erased an illustrative anecdote. Maybe I will publish it later.

It is very sad that what to you and me and most of the men we know is just a happy smile and basic friendliness is evidence of utter slutdom to other men, but that is the way it is. So look out.

Conversely, there are men who will interpret our natural modesty and womanly reserve as racial hatred for them and will say so. Now, this is one of the most important things I can tell you, so listen to your Auntie Seraphic when she says, Some men will say ANYTHING if they think it will get them sex. Really. Anything.

If you are trying to discourage a man's attentions and he says, "What, are you racist or something?", either scream at him, if that is your personality type, or leave. Leave at once. A Cameroonian refugee named Simon Mol managed to infect over a dozen Polish girls with HIV. Apparently this charmer used to tell Polish girls it proved they were racists if they didn't sleep with him. (Male Polish student, uneasily: "How is it that you know about Simon Mol?")

The irony of this is that it isn't prudent women who are racists; it is the men who wish to sexually exploit women who are often racists. Men who wish to sexually exploit women go after targets they think are easiest (i.e. most vulnerable) or somehow "deserve" or welcome it, which very often means "the Other." Think of the men who flock to Thailand in droves. Disgusting.

It is terribly difficult to talk about race, particularly when you are white and therefore belong to a supposedly "dominant" group, which is actually, in terms of the whole wide world, a small minority. In Edinburgh, remarks about female safety in light of South Asian racist misogyny take place on the walls of the ladies' toilets in pubs, the safest bulletin board of womankind.

It is also terribly difficult because one of the racist libels used by men to punish vulnerable men of different races is "They want to rape our women." This has been used as an excuse to beat, jail and kill innocent black men in the USA.

However, it is an unfortunate fact that sometimes men do target women for reasons that are as racial as they are sexual and violent, and it certainly doesn't help women to be ignorant of this. And it also doesn't help a woman to think that it is better to risk rape than to be called a racist by some jerk she barely knows or doesn't know at all.

I don't know if there really is any such thing as "race" or if it just a social construct. But I do know that men of any race are bigger and stronger than women, and if they wanted to, most of them could simply kill most of us with their bare hands.

They have been trained not to, of course, and they almost never want to. But the fact remains that they could. So at the end of the day, when all the gentility of civilization has been stripped away, what we have are two human beings, one of who could rape and kill the other just from sheer strength, even though God has always told him not to, just because he is a man and she is a woman.*

As far as I am concerned, this reality trumps every other consideration--race, handicap, age, whatever. If you feel threatened, cross the street. Get off the elevator. Get out of the cab. Leave the room. Lock the door. Yell. Trust your instincts and don't second guess because you are afraid of being called a racist.


*Update: There is some debate about whether or not a woman should physically fight a would-be rapist. The police officer who came to my high school to talk to us about it said to fight, bite, scratch, scream, pee on the man, do whatever necessary to discourage him. For the police officer the most important thing was that we were never dragged into a car. Once you were in the car, he said, you were dead.

My own thought is that rapists tend to go for those they think look most vulnerable, e.g. elderly women, women with Down Syndrome, teenage girls, the intoxicated, the quiet and shy, the fish-out-of-water. And therefore, in scary situations, it is good to be loud and rude and ready to bite, kick, scratch and slap. In a word, to look strong. But never hit a stranger except as a last and desperate resort. Your first priority should be to get away.

Update 2: The lid is certainly off Pandora's box now. Racist misogyny is simply not acceptable, and it is a crime or cowardice to put up with it.

"You're Not a Teenager, Are You?"

Darlingses. Sometimes I get an email that makes my head explode. It's not the writer who makes it explode--usually the writer is wonderfully sweet with a vulnerability that goes straight to my auntish heart. No--it is always the man she is writing about.

If you are a teenager, and you find yourself in a car with or across the table from an OLD MAN (and if you are a teenager every man over 21 is an old man) who is talking about his love life, and he says, with a bit of a smirk, "You're not a teenager, are you?", I want you to take a big breath, sit up straight and say "YES. Yes, I AM a teenager. And I have to call my mom now."

I cannot express how serious I am about this. There is nothing wrong or shameful about being a teenager. But there is something wrong and shameful about an OLD MAN saying "You're not a teenager, are you?" to an obviously much younger woman. He should feel ashamed, not you. And if I could, I would come right over there and kick his butt.

Very Bad Boyfriend of the Week

Poppets, I am busy studying for my "Life in the UK" exam. The details don't seem to have much to do with my life in the UK, but perhaps that proves I'm just not that integrated. (Shhhh!)

Anyway, that's the price I pay for marrying an exotic foreign person and living in his exotic foreign country as an exotic foreigner.

Meanwhile, here is a simply ghastly story about exotic foreigners to which I cannot resist linking, even though it probably is adding fuel to the strangely xenophobic why-are-there-so-many-Poles-in-the-UK meme. (Incidentally, the biggest migrant groups to the UK in the 1980s were Americans, Australians, South Africans and New Zealanders; see textbook.) Bonnie Prince Charlie was half-Polish, you know, and the Poles helped to win the Battle of Britain. Also, Poles in Poland are ordering my book in large quantities, so I am reflexively pro-Pole.

I do not know what to say about this story other than that this Marcin person seems like a very bad guy, much much worse than the general run of guys who live with their girlfriends for six years with no ring in sight. Although it is true that 25% of children in the UK live in a single-parent household (see textbook), it is not generally because their fathers have allegedly buried their mothers alive in the woods.

I hope you all appreciate that I linked to the Telegraph and not to the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail is considered a tabloid like the Sun, and the Telegraph is supposed to be a respectable paper.

Perhaps the part that makes my hair stand on end is that the boyfriend's excuse was that he was "bored" with his girlfriend. It makes my hair stand on end because it was probably true. Talk about your disposable (sexual) culture! Brr-rr-rr-rr!

The One Who Danced Away

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I just wanted to write and tell you how much I love your blog! I really, really wish I had found it a long time ago, when I could have used your advice the most. My close friend from college...recommended your blog to me quite some time ago, and I wish I had found it then! This may sound silly, but I didn't really understand blogs at the time, or what seraphicsingles was all about.

I read your post today about what it means to be a lady. You said you were surprised that people don't write in complaining about controlling men who try to make them fit their idea of what it means to be a lady. Well, I dated a man like that in college. He wanted me to always wear skirts, to behave in a certain way, and to not dance what he considered were "modern" and unladylike dances (such as swing).

At first, I hardly even noticed that I was losing my freedom. I honestly think I was with him because he reminded me of my father, who is also controlling and does not think highly of women. I think being with a controlling man who was judgmental and restricted my freedom felt familiar, and thus (in a way) comfortable.

After about a year, though, I began to rebel. He told me not to go to swing dancing practice, and I went anyway. I finally realized that he was controlling and that I could not live with a man like that for the rest of my life. As soon as I realized that, I broke up with him, and I felt so FREE. Of course, I was sorry to cause him pain, but I felt so happy about my life and my future when I was alone again.

I have seen unhappy marriages, and I know how terrible it can be to be tied to a man who does not love you for who you are. I thank God that He helped me realize in time that I could not spend my life with a man like that. It is so true that it is better to be alone than to be with the wrong man!

I got engaged about a month ago to a good man who I love and who loves and respects me. He would never try to control me or make me conform to a certain standard of womanhood. I know it is only through the grace of God that I did not marry a controlling man.

Thank you for writing that post today. I am sorry you had to go through that, but it is nice to know that you understand what it's like to be with a controlling man.

God bless you always,
Danced to Freedom


Ah, poppets. I love emails like this!

The Lady

I approach today's topic with dread because it slices very close to the bone. Also, I tried to have a light philosophical conversation on the topic the other day and it did not go well. A very old incision in my psyche began slowly to bleed.

Today's topic is "the lady."

We are all men and women, but from very early in human history we have separated men and women into categories. I suppose it is natural to do that; we put all creatures into categories. We have distinguished categories of angels. And it may even be helpful sometimes to continue to distinguish between different kinds of men and women: by nationality, for example, or by age. Other categories (class, sexual orientation) are not so helpful, for they not only distinguish but divide.

The terms "lady" and "gentleman" spring from class division. Bluntly stated, a lady was a woman whose father did not work with his hands, and a gentleman was a man who did not work with his hands. For the fine shades of who was or was not considered a lady in Britain in the early 19th century, read Jane Austen. Elizabeth Bennett was most definitely a lady because her father owned land and the family (more or less) kept up the standards expected of a landowner's daughters.

In republican America, Louisa May Alcott proudly rejected the class assumptions inherent in the word "lady": Jo March declares in Little Women that she believes in "men and women" not in "ladies and gentlemen." Her heroes and heroines are well-educated, highly moral folk who are willing to work for a living and hold their heads high among their richer relations and friends. Henry James, however, continued to use the expression "lady", although his "lady" of Portrait of a Lady was not the daughter of a landowner, but merely a woman of sterling character.

But who determines what a woman of sterling character is? No doubt this is a hotly debated smoking room topic to this very day. In the ancient world, a woman of sterling character was one whom nobody talked about by name: the mother of the Gracchi is known solely as "the mother of the Gracchi" for that very reason. In the modern world, a woman of sterling character was once one whose name appeared in the newspaper only when she was born, was married and died. In Christian circles, she was (or is) a woman who obeyed her husband or at very least never made him look like an ass in public.

I have my own ideas about what a woman of sterling character is, but they are not necessarily the same as the ideas I held when I was 21 and met a man with very pronounced ideas on the topic indeed. The man in question was absolutely sure I was "a lady" and took great pains to make sure I always was so.

Readers of this blog often write of their frustration and dread of controlling men utterly determined to get them into bed. So far I don't recall anyone writing in of her frustration and dread of a controlling man utterly determined to (A) make her conform to his ideal of The Lady and (B) make her marry him. It surprises me because most of the women who read this blog are young, traditional and/or religious, and it strikes me that a young, traditional and/or religious man is most likely to behave like that. He has it in his head what a Good Woman is (the opposite of "all those sluts out there"), and by God he's going to get her.

I have in a box somewhere a dozen letters in fine masculine script, written with an excellent pen, exhorting me to be a lady. They are very flattering, and they quite turned my twenty-something head. The mix of fulsome praise and roguish nagging would probably make me vomit today, but at the time it merely made me blush, shake my head and roll my eyes.

In the end it proved effective, and I found myself obeying a man who laid down an awful lot of rules. I was not allowed to wear blue jeans. Ladies did not wear blue jeans. I was not allowed to get fat. Ladies did not get fat. (NB Married people usually put on 10 pounds after they marry; I lost 20.) I was not allowed to walk the quiet, crime-free two blocks from the bus stop to my parents' house after dark. Ladies did not take risks. I had to wear elbow length gloves everywhere I went in broad daylight. Ladies did not get sunburnt. I had to carry a parasol for the same reason. (Yes, a parasol.) I was not allowed to use bad words, ever, even when I dropped something on my toe. Ladies did not use bad words.

He was twenty-three years old. I very much doubt he is like that now. At least, I hope not: when the worm turned, he suffered very much. And when the worm ran away, one of worm's pals gave her a pair of blue jeans. I look terrible in blue jeans now, but at the time they symbolized... What? Freedom? Self-determination.

B.A. says that a gentlemen is a man who never unintentionally gives offense. This means a man who is so aware of how his actions and demeanor affect others that he never makes a social mistake. He puts everyone at his or her ease unless, for some good reason, he needs to give someone a set-down.

I do not know what a lady is. I just know that the concept can be used as a whip to make a woman strive to turn into something she is not: a precious porcelain statue, an angel in human form, corporeal vanilla ice-cream. I am very uncomfortable with the term; I wish we could merely distinguish between good manners and bad.

And why bring all this up today? Because I know not only young women but young men read this blog and I know that some traditional young men--without first considering what John Paul II said in Dignitatem Mulieris--are working out their own anthropologies of The Lady.

At least, I think they are. Because the word cuts so close to the bone, I am not the best judge of what young men are doing when they talk about ladies or make pronouncements on female dress and behaviour. I told myself that the other day when, while walking down an ancient street with my husband and a young friend, the young friend suddenly turned to me and said, "I never imagined you would own a pair of blue jeans."

The knife of male expectation can cut both ways. Both women and men are hurt when men set up impossible standards of womanhood they glean not from Christianity or real life but from the prejudices and restrictions of a vanished age.

As I love to warn you all, some scars never heal.

***

Update: Welcome readers of The Crescat! Regular readers should know that Kat is giving away a copy of The Closet's All Mine, the American version of Anielskie Single/ Seraphic Singles. So if you are Single and can think of something you love about your Single state, toddle on over there and tell her what it is for a chance to win the prize.

Transgression Park

There's a new leisure centre in one of Edinburgh's most impoverished and crime-plagued neighbourhoods. It's called "Transgression Park", and so I am a little cheesed off.

In a neighbourhood where people suffer because of transgressions--against their health, against building codes, against property, against their bodies--it's rather insensitive to present transgression as this really cool thing. "Transgression" pretends to be about the bold and brave individual standing up to the "hypocrisies" of society (i.e. its virtues), but it usually plays out as the stronger lording it over the weaker, or the baser instincts of a person lording it over the better.

Is it too early in the morning to use words like "satanic?"

Anyway, I am thinking about both transgression and addiction today because I got another anonymous comment from a recovering (or recovered) female porn addict/reader about my attitude towards female porn addicts.

I can see that it must be pretty annoying for female porn addicts. First I ignore their existence (although, to be fair, I am a child of the 80s and I had no IDEA women got turned on by internet porn), and then I react with unfeigned horror and say how awful it all is. But I am glad to read that my reader has managed to quit her habit.

Of course, I still think it is a disgusting habit to get into, especially since you can draw a direct line from porn to the sexual abuse of adults, children and even babies. Thus, watching porn is not only a sin against purity but an outrageous crime against other people, including the poor benighted, drug-addled actors. But I'm not saying this to heap coals of fire on female former porn-watchers but to send a message to the vast majority of my readers who do not watch porn.

"Hmm...," says a hypothetic reader. "I'm curious. Should I click on this sexy link and find out what all the fuss is about? What would Auntie Seraphic say?"

Auntie Seraphic does not say "There, there. I understand what it is like to be young and curious." Auntie Seraphic says, in her most sarcastic tone, "Oh goodie! With a click of a mouse you too can participate in an industry that leads to child-rape! How very transgressive of you."

How responsible we are for our sins is an interesting philosophical and theological conversation. It is particularly interesting in cultures obsessed with children's "self-esteem." It is also interesting in a culture in which all bad habits are called "addictions", and apparently women are much quicker to call themselves "addicts" then men are. I wonder if this is because men-in-general are more reluctant to admit that they are powerless over something and women-in-general much more eager. If we are powerless over a habit, we can do what we like but can't be blamed!

But, at any rate, I do believe that free will can be damaged, either by abusive people, or by the possessor of the free will themselves. This is why I am rather more sympathetic to porn addicts who first came across porn when they were kids, thanks to neglectful or abusive adults, than I am to porn addicts who started logging on of their own free adult will.

I myself am not addicted to anything, although I suspect from my inordinate enjoyment of seeing that I have new email that I might have a problem with slot machines, where I ever to go near them. (Click, click.) I wonder from time to time if I might be addicted to blogging, but as a matter of fact I can go without blogging for extended periods of time. What I have are habits--both a reading habit and a writing habit--which I've had since I was six.

According to a local public health nurse, I probably overeat. This I count not as an addiction, of course, but as a bad habit. Bad habits are usually hard to break. I had to go to Italy to stop eating potato chips. That's how weak I am, alas.

My late grandmother was addicted to cigarettes, which she smoked from the ages of about 20 to about 70. She quit cold-turkey when she got double-pneumonia. Fear of death sometimes has that effect on the will.

Quitting smoking won't kill you, of course. Quitting very few bad habits kills you. The only one I can think of is quitting drinking if you are a really hard-case alcoholic. The sickest, most addicted alcoholics have to be given little measures of booze or they might go into severe withdrawal and die.

At least two guys I dated were alcoholics. The first alcoholic didn't know he was an alcoholic, and neither did I until I dated the second alcoholic and thought back. What I learned from the second alcoholic is that it is a really bad idea to date alcoholics. Not only are they powerless over their drinking, you can become powerless over your hated of their drinking. One of the saddest hours of my life was trying to find an Al-Anon meeting in the pouring rain, having been sent to the wrong church on the wrong night by someone on the Al-Anon hotline.

"Maybe she was drunk," said a not-so-helpful, but certainly witty friend.

It took me a long time to get over inordinate horror of alcoholism. I stopped seeing an alcoholic female friend for a few years because of it. And yet I kept discovering various crush objects were themselves alcoholics, albeit non-drinking ones. However, it may have been through friendships with non-drinking alcoholics that I got over knee-jerk co-dependency. When I realize friends are alcoholics, I think it is sad for them, but I don't go into a frenzy of grief. (As far as I know, I don't know any drinking alcoholics who drive, however. I don't think my tolerance extends that far. A bad habit or addiction that hurts only the doer is one thing; a bad habit or addiction--like watching porn or driving drunk--that by its very nature springs from or leads to the hurt of others is another.) I still say it is a very bad idea to date or marry a drinking alcoholic, however.

Co-Dependent No More and other works by Melodie Beattie also helped me. Melodie Beattie is a huge fan of Alcoholics Anonymous, and so am I. I think what I find most amazing about Alcoholics Anonymous are the 12 Steps, and what I think most amazing about the 12 Steps are the emphases on both powerlessness AND responsibility. The alcoholic has to both admit that she is powerless over alcohol AND she has to make amends to anyone who has been hurt by her drinking.

The humility of the self-confessed alcoholic touches my heart. Against the instincts of men-in-general, he admits to being powerless. Against the instincts of women-in-general, she accepts blame for what she has done.*

The humility of the addict (even years into recovery non-drinking alcoholics do not hide their stigmatic identity from themselves) is a beautiful thing. Humility is the opposite of pride. Love of transgression, I suspect, springs from pride. And pride is the very worst of the seven deadly sins.

*Women and guilt is a long conversation. So many women seem capable of blaming themselves for things that aren't their fault and then the next minute refusing blame for things that are their fault. Or we blame ourselves inordinately and get depressed instead of saying, "I did it. It was wrong. But it's in the past now, and I've made amends. I'm so much more than my sins, and I'll never do it again."

Beyond Single Ladies' Worst Nightmares

You know, I like to emphasize the positive. But sometimes a Single woman is treated so horribly, I am forced to contemplate Single Ladies' Worst Nightmares.

I bet you haven't yet had the one where you go to visit your aged parents for the weekend and gypsies move into your house. Well, voila.

Today feel free to share your worst Single Lady nightmare in the combox. It can be a projected Widow Lady nightmare, too, if that might apply.

What to Wear? What to Wear?

***Warning: This post may upset survivors of sexual assault. First it mentions rape and myths about rape, but then it talks about issues around women's clothing and how people judge us on our clothing. These are two separate issues, but you might find the juxtaposition unsettling.***

You will no doubt be unsurprised to hear that I will not be marching in Edinburgh's SlutWalk on June 18th. This is not because I am okay with rape--I hate rape.

I hate rape. I loathe rape. All civilized people loathe rape. Civilization has always loathed rape, which is why there have always been laws against it. These laws have needed to be expanded and nuanced, and they have been.

There are a number of myths about rape. One is that a woman is most likely to be raped by a stranger. She is not. She is much more likely to be raped by someone she knows. In fact, she is most likely to be raped as a minor by someone in her own family circle, e.g. Mom's boyfriend. That's horrible news, but that is the truth. And the next most likely scenario is that a woman is raped by her own boyfriend or husband. That's what the statistics say. Then there's acquaintance rape.

Therefore, the most important way in which a woman can protect herself from way is to stay away from really lousy guys. She doesn't date them. She doesn't marry them. She doesn't let them in the house or her apartment. She doesn't find herself alone with them. She doesn't drink with them. She doesn't assume that because a guy is her age, a young guy, that he is a safe guy to be around.

What women wear is really kind of beside the point, when it comes to rape. Wearing fishnet stockings and a tiny skirt is probably NOT going to attract a rapist, most of the time. Women singled out for rape might be wearing something modest. I know of a young woman who was kidnapped wearing her Catholic high school uniform. She was raped and murdered.

[Now I'm going to talk about clothes. If you are uncomfortable reading about "responsible dress" for women, you don't have to read on. It's okay to feel that way. Go read something fun. Father Z, for example!]

Sexy outfits will get you attention, however, and it may not be of a positive kind. You may find yourself having to talk to the kind of guy you would rather not talk to and having to turn down the kind of invitation you'd rather not get and hearing yourself called names you'd rather not be called. The problem with dressing provocatively, IMHO, is that it provokes. That's why it's called dressing provocatively.

Now this will boggle your minds but since the beginning of recorded history men have been on the lookout for women who will have sex with them without too much fuss. And for six thousand years they have been trying to figure out which women amongst all the other women those were. And, conveniently enough, the intentionally not-fussy women of every era figured a way to signal their lack of fussiness although until recently they normally wanted to be paid for it.

Clothes are not just protective shelter from the elements. Clothes are code--they're almost as readable as a tattoo. And if you get "I'm a moron" tattooed on yourself in the belief the Chinese characters really say "Jade Princess", don't be surprised if Chinese people giggle when they see you. If you dress like a hooker or a groupie, don't be surprised if some guy tries to find out if you act like one, too. Tell him to scram, sure, and scream your lungs out if he doesn't get the message, but don't be surprised if some two-bit lothario tries his luck.

In all the screaming and yelling about a Toronto cop who advised women to avoid dressing like "sluts", what strikes me most is that women were seriously upset that he used that word. And, hey, it's not a nice word. Twenty years ago girls in my high school didn't use that word. It was considered too bad a word to use. The closest I remember anyone getting was "putana." Yep. Such-and-such was so shocked when she saw So-and-so making out with This-or-that outside St. Something's Choir School, she declared that only a putana would do that.

So although we didn't use that word, we sure knew the concept, and we believed the concept. In short, we thought being a slut (or a putana) was a bad thing to be. And we didn't think it was just a lady who enjoyed sex, because we assumed married ladies--so free from worry about being called names or thrown out like used tissue--enjoyed sex. No. We definitely thought it was a woman who used her sexuality in a harmful way that hurt herself and society in the long run.

As we were not women who used our sexuality in harmful ways that hurt ourselves and society in the long run, we were not much interested in looking like them either. And, back in 1986, what we thought they looked like was Madonna the Rock Star. Not all rock stars looked like Madonna, and if you look at other stars back then, you will see them in big oversized shirts and men's fedoras. Our style icon was Molly Ringwald.

I feel about a million years old admitting that.

Anyway, suffice it to say that standards have changed, and although women are not walking around Ontario with their entire chests exposed, a right for which a lady named Gwen Jacobs marched topless (as captured by dozens of men with video cameras), women today seem to think it okay to dress in blatantly sexually provocative costumes. And there are American girls who have found it necessary to begin campaigns demanding fashionable clothing that is modest.

I am against rape, and I am also against women and men using their sexuality in harmful ways that hurt themselves and society. Promiscuity is a serious problem, leading to widespread disease, rampant abortion, a devaluation of marriage, a devaluation of human life, a devaluation of romantic love, a devaluation of any kind of love, and heaven knows what else. And the current definition of slut is "a promiscuous woman", except among gay men who use it to insult each other, as I heard one day in a Toronto church. (Long story.) So I am not taking part in anything called a SlutWalk.

I wrote up my thoughts on SlutWalk for my paper, the Catholic Register, and unsurprisingly it was critiqued. Suggest women ought to take some responsibility for what we wear, and people will have kittens. It is very hard to get across the point that rape is besides the point: women simply should not dress in clothes that send out the "I'm easy" code if they want to avoid negative ATTENTION. Not rape. ATTENTION. And not just attention. JUDGEMENT. How do you explain that to a 'Womyn's Studies' student?

If some women are furious that there are people in the world who think badly of promiscuity and think a slut is a bad thing to be, that that's just too bad. Promiscuity is bad. A slut--a promiscuous woman--is a bad thing to be. It's an insane thing to be, given the prevalence of sexual diseases and the severe emotional damage promiscuity can do to you. It's a selfish thing to be, given the damage promiscuity does to society.

Meanwhile, in response to the "football shirt/private property" argument, I wouldn't wear my Hibernians shirt anywhere in the entire city of Glasgow, just to be safe. It wouldn't be my fault if some idiot hit me in a pub, and it wouldn't be my fault if some idiot hit me in the street. But either way it would be careless of me to simply ignore the realities of living in a country where clothes+football+sectarianism can equal a split lip.

Update: You know, the whole premise of Snog, Marry and Avoid is that people judge you by your appearance.

Update 2: This is a topic that is really hard to get right. There are two issues going on. The first is rape and how it can be prevented. The second is "What does it mean to be a responsible, flourishing woman helping society to flourish?"

Rape is so horrible that it makes survivors extremely upset if they feel that they are being blamed in any way for their attack. I would never, ever blame a rape survivor. I have worked with rape survivors. Rape survivors--and women assaulted by priests--have told me their stories, and I honour their feelings and feel honoured that they shared them with me. Nobody is to blame for being raped or sexually assaulted.

It has been suggested that I write about the first topic, and I think I will after I consult with a professional in the field of rape prevention.

The second topic is the one that I am really writing about: how does a woman responsibly present herself in public? Can we even talk about it? Men don't wear codpieces any more; why do women wear push-up bras and tiny shirts?

And the problem with this post is the same problem with SlutWalk--how it brings the two topics too closely together. Do 'sluts' deserve to be raped? Absolutely not. Does a T-shirt reading FCUK or what some people call "F*** me shoes" (stilettos) or a necklace reading "Yes I Do" really invite a man violently assault a woman? No!

But, at the same time--or not at the same time, for to mention them at the same time frightens and upsets many people--we have a duty to determine if what we--men and women--wear helps society flourish or is part of that society's decline. And this is not just sexy clothes, I'm talking about. It's sloppy clothes to church, it's burkhas in Hyde Park, it's men wearing baseball caps indoors, it's men dressed in orange sashes marching through Catholic neighbourhoods, it's a man wearing a Celtics shirt to attract the attention of a man in a Rangers shirt. Quite apart and separate from the horror of rape--which rarely has anything to do with clothes--what we wear matters.

Update 3: Thanks to the reader who suggested ways I could improve this post.

The White Dress Thing

Whether or not you are a virgin is nobody's business but your own.

I am repeating myself again, but I do not care. The world is sick, and one of its sicknesses is harping on whether women are virgins or not. This topic is a source of endless sniggers, and when a young woman I know chose to wear a gold rather than a white dress to her wedding, one of her female guests sniggered away. She thought the bride was revealing something about her life history. Actually, the bride just liked gold.

My first husband (to new readers: I'm not a widow; I had a a Church annulment) was obsessed with the fact that I was a virgin. You have no idea how much I wish this were a topic that had never come up. I can't remember how it did, although in Catholic circles at the time we were encouraged to be out and proud virgins, especially to non-Catholics. Although I suppose back then it gave comfort to other women to know we weren't "the only ones," what this did was alert every virgin-hunter within earshot.

There are at least two kinds of virgin-hunters. The worst kind is the one who enjoys destroying innocence and thinks he is doing something clever by "being the first." Canada's most notorious sex killer was like that. The other kind is the man who is obsessed with marrying "a virgin". In my eyes, such a fellow is somewhat akin to the woman who wants to marry "a millionaire." Both are valuing a human being for some thing they possess, not for themselves alone.

Anyway, Husband the First was indeed obsessed with the fact that I was a virgin. He mentioned it often, and he was quite interested in our choice of my wedding dress. He enjoyed saying that I, unlike so many other women, "deserved" to wear a white wedding dress. I probably agreed with this sentiment although perhaps it crossed my mind even then that no woman should be forced to confess the state of her hymen on the most public day of her life. He flipped through wedding dress magazines avidly.

His little pet name for me was "my virgin bride," and he called me that for about a year after we married. I hated it. He called me the Parthenona, too, which is one of the names of Athena, celebrating her virginity. I grew to hate that, too. It drove me crazy that my chief value to this person I had married was that I had been a virgin when I did so. And it grew clearer every day that he was horrified by my other, rather more telling, qualities, e.g. courage.

We lived not far from a neighbourhood with a significant incest problem. Neither of us knew that, of course. I found out years later. In short, a village with a terrible incest problem had emigrated, almost en masse, to Canada, and the problem continued there. I mention this to hammer home an unpleasant reality: not all women have the choice of "being virgins" when they marry. Some are seduced by male relations and told it is normal, and some are flat-out raped. The whole notion of "consent" to sexual activity is one scary ball of wax. Let's just say there's a sliding scale. Female virginity is probably more often a historical accident than it is a daily, virtuous moral choice.

Anyway, back to the white dress. The white wedding dress was popularized by Queen Victoria. Before Victoria, everyone just wore her best dress to get married in. There was a superstition that you ought not to get married in green, but beyond that, I can't think of any other pre-Victoria colour rule. And somehow white, which in India (for example) is the colour of mourning, became the western colour of virginity.

From a Catholic perspective, this should seem surprising. Our Lady is most frequently represented by the colour BLUE and in countless paintings she can be found wearing gold and pink as well. But I suppose white = virginity may derive from a sense that white = cleanliness = purity. The alb (albus (L): white) is a sign of Christian baptism. And in some Christian countries, or Chrisitian countries around the Mediterranean, it was once customary to inspect the wedding couple's bridal sheets, to see if the bride had been a virgin or not. (Ignorance of the fact that virgins do not, in fact, always bleed on their wedding nights has probably led to the completely pointless ruinations--and even murders--of thousands of women.)

Today we think inspecting or displaying bloody sheets is absolutely barbaric, but we are doing the exact same thing when we look at a beaming bride in all of her expensive finery and think "Hm. Does she DESERVE to wear that white dress?" It is so mean-spirited it makes me gnash my teeth.

A wedding dress represents not her past but the bride's feelings about her wedding day. A gorgeous white gown says nothing about her private history (which is hers alone), and everything about how she feels about starting a new life with her husband. A white dress, like a christening garment, means a new start. It means hope. It means whatever the past was like, the future is a clean page.

I know this firsthand because I wore a white dress to my second wedding. (So far only one person has been rude enough to question this decision.) I wore it because I did not want the shadow of Mr Virginity-Obsessed to mar my wedding. I wore it because that awful first marriage had been declared by the Church invalid. I wore it because I wanted to look beautiful to my husband and to be a worthy symbol of the Bride of Christ, the Church.

As far as I was concerned, my wedding was about a wonderful second chance: a new life with a completely unexpected (and perfect-for-me) husband. My mother made my dress, and we found the silk in a closing sale, so it cost the princely, extravagant sum of $80. We used lace from my first communion veil for my bridal veil. It all meant so much to me, the bride, on so many levels.

Thus I was made very uncomfortable by a snide remark about the Duchess of Cambridge, who wore a white gown to her wedding yesterday. The Duchess, unlike the late Princess of Wales, did not experience a whirlwind romance with her groom, but a ten year friendship that was probably sexually consumated years ago. Although this is not consistent with Christian teachings about marriage and sexuality, it does give the (mostly nominally Christian) British public a hope that this marriage will be both lasting and an inspiration. The Duchess's white gown was not some claim about her past but a symbol of her--and Britain's--hopes for the future.

An Educated Catholic Woman

Although I have always been Catholic, I was a committed feminist from the age of 12 to 22. At the age of 22 I was thrown out of a Women's Day parade for carrying a sign reading "Pro-life is pro-woman." I was picked up by two muscular women with buzzcuts who identified themselves as abortion rights activists and dumped me on the side of the road. This was witnessed and duly recorded by student journalists, so it won me five minutes of moderate fame. But it did rather end my longing to hang onto and rehabilitate the word "feminist." And when I got to theology school I discovered that many women of colour had already abandoned the word and preferred to use the term "womanist." Me, I prefer to use the word "Catholic."

The Church is not given much credit by the world for the help and support and honour she has given women since her birthday at Pentecost. It goes unremarked that she has referred to herself in the feminine for millennia, and that there are just as many woman saints in the canon as there are men. There were were female Doctors of the Church long before there were female Doctors of Oxford University. (Update: I was wrong on this one; although of course St. Teresa of Avila was born before there were female D.Phils, there were no female Doctors of the Church named until 1970.) The love and respect of Ecclesia for one woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is called an attempt to force women to live up to an impossible ideal; nobody mentions those saints and teachers who hailed Our Lady as a model, not just for women, but for men.

Great male mystics like St. Bernard of Clairveaux have refered to their own souls as "she." Our Lord himself is described in one beautiful verse in Scripture as being like a hen who wishes to gather her chicks under her wings. Theologians have identified the feminine figure of "Wisdom" in the Wisdom texts of the Old Testament with Christ. Great women like Teresa of Avila and Dorothy Day have lived shining lives of Christian holiness in utter loyalty to the magisterium while asserting their God-given roles in society: Teresa as a foundress and writer; Dorothy as a lover of the poor and a partisan of peace.

It is therefore surprising that there are young Catholic men and married Catholic women who discourage young Catholic women from higher education. Women, no less than men, are rational beings. We are capable of intellectual advancement, which can go on all our lives. (An absolute dunce at philosophy at 22, I read Lonergan's Insight at 33 and got A+ on my term paper.)

Or is it surprising? The post-Boomer generations inherited a terrible social mess. The Boomers gave us mass divorce, mass desertion from the priesthood and semininaries, mass abortion, AIDS and heaven knows what else. Unsurprisingly, increasing numbers of young Catholics look at the gifts of the Sixties with a jaundiced eye. And the one of the biggest scapegoats is feminism.

As my anecdote should illustrate, feminism is not a love and respect for all women. It is an ideology. Christian feminists have examined some of its ideas and principles and worked out how they might be compatible with the Christian faith; unfortunately this sometimes means stretching out Christianity on a Procrustean bed.

However, the Woman Question is over a hundred years old, and theologians whose first loyalty is to Christ have examined it in the light of Christ. Such a theologian was John Paul II, whose Mulieris Dignitatem you must read after you finish this post.

Feminism purports to be about choice, and many a Christian woman has wished that she really did have a choice and could snap her fingers, marry a good man at 24, have five children, and stay at home with them, creating a wonderful dwelling place for the whole family, with delicious meals and clean laundry smelling of lavender, and yet still having energy to go out to a concert or film now and again with her husband. This was the privilege of the average Edinburgh labourer's wife in 1960, never mind richer women. Her life did not, I hasten to add, look like a Ralph Lauren advert: there was one heck of a lot more housework and one heck of a lot less money.

Many young people, their own families having been, perhaps, less than traditional, wish to reclaim the good they observe in the 1960 family structure, while, of course, rejecting the serious problems with domestic abuse. And as far as that goes, I think that is fine. If young women find Mr. Right at any age, and then retire from the rat race to keep house, raise children or chickens, or write all day long, I think that is marvellous. But I don't see why this should discourage women from learning all they can about anything that interests them, especially if it is theology.

My one caveat is to beware of wasting your life and substance in graduate school for the liberal arts. Many take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, dreaming of becoming a tenured professor at a time when the places for graduate students outnumber the vacancies for university professors. If you are actually brilliant--and I mean head and shoulders over everyone else in your year--or as stubborn and hardworking as a mule, and as insensitive to stings and pricks as a baking tin, then go right ahead. But if what you really want is to become an educated person, then get a library card for the best library in your city and read whatever you can. Many universities sell memberships in their libraries to non-university folk.

But I will say this. Once when I worked for a statistics gatherer, I had to do a survey on children's early education. It was a massive project, involving thousands of people. And one question I had to ask was "How much formal education did the mother have?" There was NO similar question for the fathers. The social scientists did not care how much education the father had. How much education the fathers had had much less (if any) effect on children's early education than the mothers' education did.

Not only is it important for women to be educated for their own sake and, I'd point out, to make them interesting companions for husbands in companionate marriages, it is important for the intellectual development of their children.

So the next time some stupider-than-average young fogey, or a nice lady so in love with motherhood that she can't see the value in everything else, tells you women don't need higher education, feel free to use any or all of the points in this post.

Now go read Mulieris Dignitatem, so you can quote it, too. It's long, so grab a coffee.

In the Path of a Speeding Freight Train

Can you ever save your girl friend from a really bad man?

This is one of the toughest questions in female friendship. And it has gotten me into all kinds of trouble. I once got into trouble because a much younger female friend confided in me that she was being pursued by a man who did not share her religious values, argued for atheism, and had been sexually active. She was very worried about this.

"Beware," I cried. "Beware!"

But then she went out with him anyway, and since they later moved in together, I assume they eventually slept together, and guess who she sent inexplicably harsh friendship-ending emails to? Yes, me. She even suggested I was racist, which was ridiculous as her boyfriend, like me, was white. From a psychological point of view, it was fascinating, but at the time I was heartbroken. They were said to be "engaged." Haven't heard if they ever got married. But I will always wonder if my young friend was so nasty to me because it was easier than being nasty to her real mother.

Then there was the friend whose supposedly religious boyfriend was pressuring her for sex, and the rest of our set was wailing over it. So I called her and left a message of support ("We've all been there!") on her answering machine, and got back a furious email. I was out of town, so there was no way of patching it up face-to-face, so I just left it. I was very embarrassed and hurt by her rejection.

Then there was another friend whose definitely non-religious boyfriend was pressuring her for sex, but she adored him, so she wouldn't break up with him. Once again our set wailed and wrung their hands. Some went to meet him. They hated him. They couldn't see what she saw in him. But the girl clung on. Me, I could hear the freight train coming.

"What if she sleeps with him?" texted one girl.

"You can't stop it," I texted back.

"I think they're getting married," texted the friend.

"In that case, it won't be so bad," I texted back.

"But we hate him."

"You don't have to marry him."

In some cases, women simply cannot see what other women see in their boyfriends. The best they can hope for it that the man isn't an out-and-out toad. An otherwise nice man brought up to assume that sex is always part of love and the way you show love is to use a condom might be astonished to discover that his Catholic girlfriend's Catholic girlfriends think he is Jack the Ripper.

Meanwhile, there are very few people who can sit down with a woman and say "The man you love is an out-and-out toad" without ruining their friendship. The problem is, those who can often love the woman so much, they are not willing to risk their relationships ending. Even mothers are afraid because mothers know that their daughters are going to run right back to their slavemasters and repeat what they say, either to complain about Mom or as a weak form of rebellion.

Girl: My mother says you shouldn't talk to me like that.

Boyfriend: Your mother is a complete bitch who hates me because I'm [not her ethnic/social group].

Girl: Oh, don't say that. My mother isn't bigoted.

Boyfriend: Oh, yeah, right, sure. I don't think you should see her so much. Every time you go home, it's the same thing. Nag, nag, nag. We always fight afterwards. Is that what you want?

The ironic thing is that girls often do listen to and obey their mothers. My parents' generation was brainwashed into thinking that whatever they told their children, their children would do the opposite. However, my generation was actually quite biddable, which is why there are a number of Catholic women my age still mouthing "Spirit of Vatican II" type stuff. Heck, when I was in high school in the 1980s, we were listening to The Beatles. We were doing the Twist to "Twist and Shout." We felt bad that we had missed the Sixties. In university we sat, openmouthed, at the feet of the Sixty-Eighters. In that case it is to gag, but it is true.

So I think mothers should not be so quick to abdicate their responsibilities to their daughters, and start talking about what a good man is like when the girls are still small. A good basic line to repeat once a month is "If a man ever hits you, you must leave at once." However, this isn't enough. I used to hope a man would hit me so I would have the strength to break up with him, which is definitely screwed up. So another good line is "If a man isn't willing to wait, he doesn't love you." Another is, "If a man tries to isolate you from your family and friends, he's a dangerous power freak." The idea is to drum these ideas into daughters' heads, so that when dodgy guys come around, the ideas will spring spontaneously into the forefront of the daughters' minds.

Sisters, I think, also have a responsibility to each other, although like mothers they are also frozen into silence by fear of losing the woman they love so much. Sisters need to say things like "Are you happy?" and "I don't think I hear happiness here" and "Personally, if a guy ever said that to me, I would walk, and he would never hear from me again." Little tiny sisters, and possibly nieces, would exude a lot of power. If only it could be harnessed! Ah for a four year old to say "I don't like [X]--he scares me" and then burst into tears. Ah...

Brothers! Why are brothers such an overlooked commodity today? Back in high school, Sister Wilfreda told us always to introduce our swains to our father and brothers because they would know if they were bad guys. Of course, fathers and brothers often think that good guys are NOT GOOD ENOUGH, so it is hard to find the golden mean here. There is also the danger that brothers sometimes get banged up for assault. Still, many a man has been scared sensible by the idea of big, angry brothers. Listen, you brothers out there, have you met your sisters' boyfriends yet? Do the boyfriends know you exist?

Then there are best friends. Best friends, too, are in a position to say the right thing at the right moment. Best friends have probably had fights and made up again, and so of all people they are the ones who might have the most confidence speaking their minds. It still is tricky, though. I am not denying that. Sometimes all you can do is say your piece, make sure the woman knows that you are loving her, not judging her, and then scrape her off the tracks when the train hits her. Painful? You bet.

Other friends, in my opinion--I'd love to be wrong, believe me--can't do much. I suppose that they can orchestrate casual conversations about abusive relationships and books they've read about psychological, verbal, and physical abuse. Good luck.

And then there are complete strangers. Complete strangers have absolutely nothing to lose by saying to a woman--when the bad boyfriend is nowhere around, e.g. the ladies' room--"Listen, I couldn't help overhearing what that man said to you. You don't deserve that, honey. There are nicer men out there." The shock of being addressed by such a complete stranger may drive the ideas right into the woman's foggy mind.

Also, complete strangers have nothing to lose by saying, "My, that's some black eye you've got there." Battered women go through life wearing dark glasses and heavy foundation and yet wonder why nobody notices that they are being battered. I notice. And if I can, I always say something about a woman's black eye. Now I pretend it's because I used to box. Really, if you work with the public, safe behind a desk or counter, it is so easy to casually respond to bruises and then end the conversation with, "You take care of yourself now."

I recommend that all women read up on the cycles of domestic violence and the different ways in which abusive men get women under their power. That way, if it ever happens to them, it won't hit them like a freight train. I will NEVER forget the moment I read a pamphlet on domestic violence--I got it at church--thinking I'd like to work with battered women, and realizing that most of the checklist described my current relationship. At the time, I just thought I was a bad person who didn't deserve the really smart man I always made so mad.

I don't have time to get into it all, but I will say something about isolation. As a friend, you want to make sure that your friend can always get in touch with you after she begins a serious-sounding relationship. Control-freak husbands and boyfriends consolidate their power by separating "their women" from the women's family and friends. Good husbands and boyfriends have no problem with their wives and girlfriends spending time with family and friends. In fact, they often welcome this and plot some serious guy time.

Oh, dear. It's so sad. I sprang into the world after high school graduation convinced that my generation was smarter and better than my parents' generation, and that we would never become alcoholics, battered wives, single mothers, etc., etc. How very wrong I was.