Oh dear. I have been reading and writing about Psycho Single's autobiography. The blasted thing is that he was a good writer. The Psycho Single of the health club was not. I am left thinking, "You are a shameless, selfish whiner now"---I'm up to his 20th birthday--"and you'll be a cold-blooded killer in two years, but you can write, you little bast*rd."
He certainly has a phenomenal memory for names, games, places, dates, and his foreshadowing actually works. It's a moral struggle determining if it works because it works or because he stabbed or shot two dozen people. It's like the "Can I watch a Polanski film knowing what I know" issue on a GRAND SCALE.
I'm not saying the kid was a Polanski. (He's a good writer, not great. He definitely needed an editor and to drop some cliches, plus the manosphere garbage, but he had serious potential.) I'm saying that he could write, which is a rarer skill than you might think. The horrible and damnable irony is that the devil (my word, not his) told him the only way he could have value was to get a lot of money so as to attract girls If only he had stopped thinking about sex, money or himself for a moment to enjoy writing. He was good at it.
When bad people have talent, how do you talk about it? For this was a bad kid. This was a kid who cried to get what he wanted from his mother when he was seventeen years old and got it. And saw no shame in it when he wrote his autobiography.
This was a writer who could unstintingly admit that he was envious as a child, envious as a teen, envious as a young adult. He could admit that he was afraid of the dark. He could write about every time he cried, and that he cried every time a joyful time came to an end, and that visiting an even richer boy in France made him cry out against the injustice of the world, because this boy was so much richer than he, and had such cool friends, and so much sex. (But there would not have been any point sending him to El Salvador to count his blessings, for he was taken or sent to Morocco on occasion, and he despised it as a backwater instead of feeling fortunate not to be a poor kid there.)
But I will tell you what I hate even more than feeling conflicted over Psycho Killer's autobiography. It's seeing newspapers refer to him as "the virgin killer" as if they were making fun of him, not for being a killer but for being a virgin. This was the exact kind of anti-virgin sniggering that fuelled his hatred of the women who wouldn't give him sex and the men who "got" sex.
He was a spoiled selfish young man who wickedly stoked his hatred of the world until he was ready to begin killing as much of it as he could. He is not a poster child for modesty, to say the least. But since there is a major push against teenagers bullying teenagers with homosexual inclinations, how about a major push against anyone bullying people who are suspected of not having yet had sex? Bulling people because of their lack of sexual experience is a form of sexual harassment, and I'd like to see that written about more often!
Update: I am at the point where he is whining that HE is the half-white descendant of British aristocracy and this black guy he has met is the descendant of slaves, so he, not the black guy, deserved to lose his virginity to a white blonde girl. On the one hand, I want to throw up. On the other hand, this is the kind of honesty that makes for good writing. Damn it!
Update 2: I have finished reading the whole thing. He concludes that he is "the true victim in this" and "the good guy". Meanwhile, I have just noticed that my baby toe is cut and my foot is stained with blood. How did that happen without me noticing? That's how compelling the whole horrible story is.
Someone needs to write a Catholic blog for Single men. There has got to be someone to tell men like Psycho Single that the be-all and end-all of life is not attracting women.
Showing posts with label Bad Role Models. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bad Role Models. Show all posts
Monday, 26 May 2014
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Psycho Single Redux
What has happened in Santa Barbara California is horrible, and I feel terrible for the victims, their families and friends.
I suppose the first thing to say is that shootings by Single men motivated by frustration that they can't get girlfriends are rare. The last one I wrote about was the Health Club Shooter. And although the manosphere drips with bile, of course, I have very rarely been attacked online by bitter Single men. The only one I remember was Catholic and had decided I was a massive crypto-feminist man-hater, or something like that.
That said, the next time a somewhat bitter Single man tells me that the problem with women today is that we feel so ENTITLED, I may direct their attention to the latest Psycho Single. (I never name serial killers, and I wish nobody else did. That would remove one of their motives. The latest Psycho Single quite obviously planned out his posthumous fame.) Psycho Single felt so entitled, he described himself as the perfect guy. And, mixed-race himself, he went mad with envy and spite when he saw a dark-hued man with a pale-skinned woman.
Psycho Single read the manosphere, which sometimes encouraged him in his mingled desire for and hatred for women, but sometimes tried to slap him upside the head. Psycho Single was under the impression that since his looks, rich daddy and fancy car weren't enough, he would somehow have to make millions of dollars to get female attention. I wonder WHERE he got THIS idea.
I will not be put off with "he was just crazy" because I don't believe there is any such thing as "just crazy". Mental illness may interfere with freedom to make ethical choices, but it is not a free pass to hurt people. Anyway, if Psycho Single were that crazy, the phalanx of shrinks his parents hired would have caught it. And I'm assuming he would not have been legally able to purchase guns. Meanwhile, the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. As I myself was a virgin at 22, I feel perfectly sanguine about describing Psycho Single as not only a cold-blooded murderer but an outrageously selfish, self-obsessed whiner. Lots of people are virgins at 22, you jerk.
I am a relatively cynical married lady of 39++ who lives in Europe, and so although I myself am a practicing Catholic, I at first wondered why this rich youth did not just drive his fancy car to Santa Barbara's highest class version of the House of the Rising Sun. But my question was answered when I read that he did not want another female psychotherapist when his first moved away because paying a woman to listen to him "felt like prostitution." What unmitigated crap. What Psycho Single wanted was a woman who would listen to him for free, and sleep with him for free, and tell him he was marvelous for free. Paying professionals for help was not what he deserved.
There is also the irony that he looked down on prostitution but was quite okay with watching scenes of, and documentaries about, torture and then killing his roommates and random strangers. But I digress. This was not about sex but about wanting attention. Lots of attention. Lots and lots and lots of attention. And he thought girls OWED him attention because he was handsome (he thought) and had a rich father.
My guess is that there have always been men like this. The whole disgusting idea of doit de signeur comes to mind. Also coming to mind, as we have been talking about St. Maria Goretti recently, is the fact that Maria's mother was working for her attacker's father. Some boys just grow up thinking that they are better than others and therefore deserve more free stuff. And if they really don't get that women are people, people rather like themselves, they are going to see women (young, beautiful women, anyway) as free stuff they deserve, that the world owes them.
St. Maria's attacker was called Alessandro Serenelli, whom I do name, as Maria forgave him and after he got out of prison, he spent the rest of his life as a servant to the Capuchins. He wrote a testimony before he died. Here it is. Note my emphasis.
I suppose the first thing to say is that shootings by Single men motivated by frustration that they can't get girlfriends are rare. The last one I wrote about was the Health Club Shooter. And although the manosphere drips with bile, of course, I have very rarely been attacked online by bitter Single men. The only one I remember was Catholic and had decided I was a massive crypto-feminist man-hater, or something like that.
That said, the next time a somewhat bitter Single man tells me that the problem with women today is that we feel so ENTITLED, I may direct their attention to the latest Psycho Single. (I never name serial killers, and I wish nobody else did. That would remove one of their motives. The latest Psycho Single quite obviously planned out his posthumous fame.) Psycho Single felt so entitled, he described himself as the perfect guy. And, mixed-race himself, he went mad with envy and spite when he saw a dark-hued man with a pale-skinned woman.
Psycho Single read the manosphere, which sometimes encouraged him in his mingled desire for and hatred for women, but sometimes tried to slap him upside the head. Psycho Single was under the impression that since his looks, rich daddy and fancy car weren't enough, he would somehow have to make millions of dollars to get female attention. I wonder WHERE he got THIS idea.
I will not be put off with "he was just crazy" because I don't believe there is any such thing as "just crazy". Mental illness may interfere with freedom to make ethical choices, but it is not a free pass to hurt people. Anyway, if Psycho Single were that crazy, the phalanx of shrinks his parents hired would have caught it. And I'm assuming he would not have been legally able to purchase guns. Meanwhile, the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. As I myself was a virgin at 22, I feel perfectly sanguine about describing Psycho Single as not only a cold-blooded murderer but an outrageously selfish, self-obsessed whiner. Lots of people are virgins at 22, you jerk.
I am a relatively cynical married lady of 39++ who lives in Europe, and so although I myself am a practicing Catholic, I at first wondered why this rich youth did not just drive his fancy car to Santa Barbara's highest class version of the House of the Rising Sun. But my question was answered when I read that he did not want another female psychotherapist when his first moved away because paying a woman to listen to him "felt like prostitution." What unmitigated crap. What Psycho Single wanted was a woman who would listen to him for free, and sleep with him for free, and tell him he was marvelous for free. Paying professionals for help was not what he deserved.
There is also the irony that he looked down on prostitution but was quite okay with watching scenes of, and documentaries about, torture and then killing his roommates and random strangers. But I digress. This was not about sex but about wanting attention. Lots of attention. Lots and lots and lots of attention. And he thought girls OWED him attention because he was handsome (he thought) and had a rich father.
My guess is that there have always been men like this. The whole disgusting idea of doit de signeur comes to mind. Also coming to mind, as we have been talking about St. Maria Goretti recently, is the fact that Maria's mother was working for her attacker's father. Some boys just grow up thinking that they are better than others and therefore deserve more free stuff. And if they really don't get that women are people, people rather like themselves, they are going to see women (young, beautiful women, anyway) as free stuff they deserve, that the world owes them.
St. Maria's attacker was called Alessandro Serenelli, whom I do name, as Maria forgave him and after he got out of prison, he spent the rest of his life as a servant to the Capuchins. He wrote a testimony before he died. Here it is. Note my emphasis.
"I'm nearly 80 years old. I'm about to depart.
"Looking back at my past, I can see that in my early youth, I chose a bad path which led me to ruin myself.
"My behavior was influenced by print, mass-media and bad examples which are followed by the majority of young people without even thinking. And I did the same. I was not worried.
"There were a lot of generous and devoted people who surrounded me, but I paid no attention to them because a violent force blinded me and pushed me toward a wrong way of life.
"When I was 20 years-old, I committed a crime of passion. Now, that memory represents something horrible for me. Maria Goretti, now a Saint, was my good Angel, sent to me through Providence to guide and save me. I still have impressed upon my heart her words of rebuke and of pardon. She prayed for me, she interceded for her murderer. Thirty years of prison followed.
"If I had been of age, I would have spent all my life in prison. I accepted to be condemned because it was my own fault.
"Little Maria was really my light, my protectress; with her help, I behaved well during the 27 years of prison and tried to live honestly when I was again accepted among the members of society. The Brothers of St. Francis, Capuchins from Marche, welcomed me with angelic charity into their monastery as a brother, not as a servant. I've been living with their community for 24 years, and now I am serenely waiting to witness the vision of God, to hug my loved ones again, and to be next to my Guardian Angel and her dear mother, Assunta.
"I hope this letter that I wrote can teach others the happy lesson of avoiding evil and of always following the right path, like little children. I feel that religion with its precepts is not something we can live without, but rather it is the real comfort, the real strength in life and the only safe way in every circumstance, even the most painful ones of life."
Signature, Alessandro Serenelli
Monday, 17 February 2014
Scandal and Perseverance
I had a wonderful Toronto weekend! On Saturday night I met my poet pal Clara for beer, read parts of her rather occult (!) new book, and went dancing at a Goth club, which I had not done in a year. I got home after 2 AM but was up again by 9 AM so as to be driven by an old friend--my prom date, in fact!--to Solemn High Mass at the Toronto Oratorians' Holy Family Church.
I had not been at the Extraordinary Form (or TLM, for short) since I arrived in Canada, and it was like running water to the panting deer. There were three priests at the altar and a men's schola (including Dominicans) plus organ behind me in the organ loft, and it was positively mesmerizing. I began to think I should have gone to confession beforehand, la la la. Was there still a priest behind me in the box? Oh there was. Hmm.... La, la, la. A priest in the sanctuary began to sing the Epistle. Oh, so beautiful!
Aaaagh! Conscience pricked by beauty, I click-clicked down the side aisle to the box and cast myself on my knees in the compartment of the box with the green light. The last time I was in that box I was given a hard time for not going to confession often enough. However, I would admit this again at once to whichever priest addressed me from the middle. I am not good at confession; I lack a proper sense of sin. I am an arrogant worm. Wah! I suck.
And five minutes later I was out of the box, and the schola was still singing the gradual, and my soul was clean and happy, and Mass was AWESOME.
And during Mass I meditated on the subject of scandal, and now-married women who had lived with their boyfriends, and naturally don't want to be thought ill of for their sins (who does?), versus Single women who so terribly want to find love but dread that they will have to sin to do it.
The fact is that we are all sinners. This is not a world of people who sin very rarely because there are so few sins, and those who commit those few sins (like rape) are irredeemable monsters. This is a world of sinners who sin all the time because we are fallen, and there are so many sins, and the world encourages those sins, either by making sin look glamorous ("This cake is sinfully good!") or by insisting that sin is not sin at all. For example, making out with a guy whom you do not intend to marry is a sin, however serious or venal a sin that might be. Don't marry the man if you don't want to. But do go to confession.
This reminds me that I got an email recently from a guy who was invited by a girl--a NCG, he believed--to make out with her, and then shortly thereafter, she dumped him. She wanted more experience before she settled down, blah blah blah. He had been a perfect gentleman, being chaste and not initiating couch snogging sessions, which had worried this girl, even though she was not actually in love with our Eavesdropper. (Eavesdroppers, though Eavesdroppers, are still OUR Eavesdroppers.) Well, excuse me, but her suggestion that they make out, when her intentions proved not to be honourable, was sinful. She used our Eavesdropper for thrills, or made out with him as a kind of test drive, and that was bad behaviour. Not only did she owe him an apology, she owed one to our Lord and Saviour.
Incidentally, I know some readers think I am out to lunch on the doctrine of "making out is a sin" which is why I bring it up yet again. When I was twenty, I agonized over "How far can we go?" and no priest actually said. Life experience leads me to think "how far can we go" for Singles means a brief and chaste kiss-on-the-lips. And, yes, making out with an attractive man you have a crush on is one of the most intoxicating things on earth, sweeter than wine. But too bad. Fiancés (the REAL kind, with a wedding date) and husbands only. Meanwhile I know a girl who didn't kiss her fiancé on the lips until they were actually married. (His idea.)
And what dread punishment will fall upon you in this life if you make out regardless? Very likely--NOTHING. Zip. Zero. Nada. The problem with chastity education which harps on all the horrible things that can happen to you if you just go ahead and commit sexual sins is that the horrible things do not always happen. You go to college in fear and trembling for "the girls who do" and--surprise--they all seem happy and confident. Some of them are faking their happiness and confidence, of course, but others are not. Some of them are shallow, sure. But some of them are deep. Some of them ponder for a day or weeks or even months if they should sleep with their suitor Such-and-Such, and contemplate if he is "responsible" and take all "responsible" precautions, and initiate a sexual relationship with him, and eventually move in with him, and marry him five years later, maybe in church, and have his baby two years later. Everyone is happy, and nobody--certainly not me--doubts that this family is a pillar of the community and the hope of the future.
"Well!" our sheltered Catholic girl might think. "I have been lied to by my chastity educators! Sod this for a lark, I am getting drunk and letting nature take its course."
WHAM! She gets pregnant. Or an STD. Or a broken heart. Or PTSD after a string of badly-thought out sexual relationships leave her a wreck. Because too many sheltered Catholic girls are all-or-nothing kind of people, unlike their often more sensible if invincibly ignorant non-Catholic friends, who at least think very hard and discuss it with their mother or best friends before they jump in the sack, at least for their first sexual relationship. Because God allows bad things to happen to some and not to others. And this is why it is absolutely terrible for married-or-partnered women to reveal their sexual sins without a trace of remorse. They are a scandal to their weaker sisters, and by weaker I do not mean morally weaker, but the socially weaker vulnerable Single women.
Sin is not always punished in this life; there is this place called hell, or if that is too awful to contemplate right now, this place called Purgatory. Sure, there is sacramental confession, thanks be to God, but it only works if you are SORRY for your sins, and actually recognize that your sins are sins. So the repentant Magdalene weeping in the confessional may actually have the advantage over the blissfully ignorant and happy equivalent-to-married mother of three. And, as we read in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, feeling repentant for the sins that conceive your beloved out-of-wedlock children is a problem.
I'm not writing this to beat up on sexual sinners, especially as I am one myself, as I imagine so are most of you, if only in a venial way. Among my friends is a happy-go-lucky gay guy, and my imagination just does not go through THAT door. I don't "judge" him--though if he ever were to asked me what I thought of Sin X or Sin Y, I would certainly tell him--I just pray for him, the dear man.
No, I'm writing this to suggest that sexual sinners who, thanks to God's mercy, don't suffer any adverse affects in this life from our sins not spread this news to vulnerable, innocent, virgin women who are terribly, TERRIBLY tempted to give into their sexual desires, in part because sexual desire is one of the strongest forces on earth, and in part because they are told they will "never get a boyfriend" or "never get married" unless they do. Reflecting comfortably on sexual sin, past or present, from a position of social strength--e.g. a great, loving, marital relationship--is a scandal, a stumbling block, to Single women. It can really hurt them.
I had not been at the Extraordinary Form (or TLM, for short) since I arrived in Canada, and it was like running water to the panting deer. There were three priests at the altar and a men's schola (including Dominicans) plus organ behind me in the organ loft, and it was positively mesmerizing. I began to think I should have gone to confession beforehand, la la la. Was there still a priest behind me in the box? Oh there was. Hmm.... La, la, la. A priest in the sanctuary began to sing the Epistle. Oh, so beautiful!
Aaaagh! Conscience pricked by beauty, I click-clicked down the side aisle to the box and cast myself on my knees in the compartment of the box with the green light. The last time I was in that box I was given a hard time for not going to confession often enough. However, I would admit this again at once to whichever priest addressed me from the middle. I am not good at confession; I lack a proper sense of sin. I am an arrogant worm. Wah! I suck.
And five minutes later I was out of the box, and the schola was still singing the gradual, and my soul was clean and happy, and Mass was AWESOME.
And during Mass I meditated on the subject of scandal, and now-married women who had lived with their boyfriends, and naturally don't want to be thought ill of for their sins (who does?), versus Single women who so terribly want to find love but dread that they will have to sin to do it.
The fact is that we are all sinners. This is not a world of people who sin very rarely because there are so few sins, and those who commit those few sins (like rape) are irredeemable monsters. This is a world of sinners who sin all the time because we are fallen, and there are so many sins, and the world encourages those sins, either by making sin look glamorous ("This cake is sinfully good!") or by insisting that sin is not sin at all. For example, making out with a guy whom you do not intend to marry is a sin, however serious or venal a sin that might be. Don't marry the man if you don't want to. But do go to confession.
This reminds me that I got an email recently from a guy who was invited by a girl--a NCG, he believed--to make out with her, and then shortly thereafter, she dumped him. She wanted more experience before she settled down, blah blah blah. He had been a perfect gentleman, being chaste and not initiating couch snogging sessions, which had worried this girl, even though she was not actually in love with our Eavesdropper. (Eavesdroppers, though Eavesdroppers, are still OUR Eavesdroppers.) Well, excuse me, but her suggestion that they make out, when her intentions proved not to be honourable, was sinful. She used our Eavesdropper for thrills, or made out with him as a kind of test drive, and that was bad behaviour. Not only did she owe him an apology, she owed one to our Lord and Saviour.
Incidentally, I know some readers think I am out to lunch on the doctrine of "making out is a sin" which is why I bring it up yet again. When I was twenty, I agonized over "How far can we go?" and no priest actually said. Life experience leads me to think "how far can we go" for Singles means a brief and chaste kiss-on-the-lips. And, yes, making out with an attractive man you have a crush on is one of the most intoxicating things on earth, sweeter than wine. But too bad. Fiancés (the REAL kind, with a wedding date) and husbands only. Meanwhile I know a girl who didn't kiss her fiancé on the lips until they were actually married. (His idea.)
And what dread punishment will fall upon you in this life if you make out regardless? Very likely--NOTHING. Zip. Zero. Nada. The problem with chastity education which harps on all the horrible things that can happen to you if you just go ahead and commit sexual sins is that the horrible things do not always happen. You go to college in fear and trembling for "the girls who do" and--surprise--they all seem happy and confident. Some of them are faking their happiness and confidence, of course, but others are not. Some of them are shallow, sure. But some of them are deep. Some of them ponder for a day or weeks or even months if they should sleep with their suitor Such-and-Such, and contemplate if he is "responsible" and take all "responsible" precautions, and initiate a sexual relationship with him, and eventually move in with him, and marry him five years later, maybe in church, and have his baby two years later. Everyone is happy, and nobody--certainly not me--doubts that this family is a pillar of the community and the hope of the future.
"Well!" our sheltered Catholic girl might think. "I have been lied to by my chastity educators! Sod this for a lark, I am getting drunk and letting nature take its course."
WHAM! She gets pregnant. Or an STD. Or a broken heart. Or PTSD after a string of badly-thought out sexual relationships leave her a wreck. Because too many sheltered Catholic girls are all-or-nothing kind of people, unlike their often more sensible if invincibly ignorant non-Catholic friends, who at least think very hard and discuss it with their mother or best friends before they jump in the sack, at least for their first sexual relationship. Because God allows bad things to happen to some and not to others. And this is why it is absolutely terrible for married-or-partnered women to reveal their sexual sins without a trace of remorse. They are a scandal to their weaker sisters, and by weaker I do not mean morally weaker, but the socially weaker vulnerable Single women.
Sin is not always punished in this life; there is this place called hell, or if that is too awful to contemplate right now, this place called Purgatory. Sure, there is sacramental confession, thanks be to God, but it only works if you are SORRY for your sins, and actually recognize that your sins are sins. So the repentant Magdalene weeping in the confessional may actually have the advantage over the blissfully ignorant and happy equivalent-to-married mother of three. And, as we read in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, feeling repentant for the sins that conceive your beloved out-of-wedlock children is a problem.
I'm not writing this to beat up on sexual sinners, especially as I am one myself, as I imagine so are most of you, if only in a venial way. Among my friends is a happy-go-lucky gay guy, and my imagination just does not go through THAT door. I don't "judge" him--though if he ever were to asked me what I thought of Sin X or Sin Y, I would certainly tell him--I just pray for him, the dear man.
No, I'm writing this to suggest that sexual sinners who, thanks to God's mercy, don't suffer any adverse affects in this life from our sins not spread this news to vulnerable, innocent, virgin women who are terribly, TERRIBLY tempted to give into their sexual desires, in part because sexual desire is one of the strongest forces on earth, and in part because they are told they will "never get a boyfriend" or "never get married" unless they do. Reflecting comfortably on sexual sin, past or present, from a position of social strength--e.g. a great, loving, marital relationship--is a scandal, a stumbling block, to Single women. It can really hurt them.
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Going to Gdańsk
I leave for Gdańsk tomorrow, so of course I am pondering my death. I always ponder my death before I travel. Pondering your own death is a good, traditional Catholic thing to do. And it reminds you to update your will, as I did last week by ripping up a codicil. I am a terrific will-changer. Nobody will ever want to murder me for a legacy.
In the event of death, I will not leave you orphaned, for there are a number of women tilling in the Single Solidarity field. Some of them are readers, and prominent among you are the Orthogals. who blogister (my portmanteau of blog and minister, get it?) for Single women of the Eastern Christian persuasion, aka the GREEKS. There there's Christian Grace from The Evangelista. On a completely different, and not explicitly Catholic note, there's newcomer Postum Scriptum, who writes about all kinds of traddy and vintage stuff, like the lost art of letter-writing.
Then of course there are the Professional Writers for Singles who are farther afield and either taking money from the Catholic Dating Websites or are just better than me at marketing what I give for free. And I don't have a problem with that. Just because my conscience says "donations, speaker's fees and book sales only" doesn't mean that's what their consciences say. Occasionally my conscience does twinge a bit when I point to the balance of my student loan, but it just really refuses to get involved with Catholic Dating Websites. And, yes, I know they do some good.
Which reminds me. Somehow my name has been attached to the idea of dating websites because I did a fellow freelancer a favour by answering questions about internet dating and meeting B.A. online. But I did not meet B.A. through a dating website; I met him through my blog. Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers: it's not that journalists lie, it's that whoever makes up the headlines and the captions doesn't know how to, or just doesn't have time to, read the actual article.
***
I had insomnia last night after watching the Sherlock episode, "A Scandal in Belgravia." I don't often watch violent or suggestive stuff, and "A Scandal in Belgravia" was both. Also, I have a deep loathing of sexually sophisticated people who try to take advantage of sexual innocents, so I did not enjoy watching Irene Adler's attempts on Sherlock's virtue. Sherlock is an arrogant twit, but he does not use his intellectual prowess to bamboozle people into bed. The farthest he goes is to flirt mildly with poor Molly in the morgue so that she will let him see the latest corpse or what have you.
The writers depict Sherlock and his brother Mycroft as cold fish without feeling, and seem to say coldness is why Sherlock, at least, is largely proof against sexual temptation. But as a matter of fact, Sherlock is intensely loyal and protective of the few people who are intensely loyal and protective of him. It's a great plot device: when the writers need us to feel pity and fear, they put Watson in danger of certain death and Sherlock's blue eyes positively blaze with rage. In contrast, Watson's angry, jealous girlfriends, with whom he presumably, to quote him, "gets off", are just figures of fun.
Despite themselves, the writers have hammered home the idea that in itself sex means nothing next to chaste, self-sacrificing love. Still, I don't think they would go so far as to extol Sherlock's chastity as normal and another example of his formidable powers of reasoning. But I would.
There is a quality of mercy in Sherlock. As blunt and thoughtless as he can be, and as capable of throwing baddies out the window, he takes pity on people when he realizes that they seem to love him. And this is most unlike the kind of sociopath who punishes most those who seem to love him.
Because, to move from television to real life, there are indeed men who punish, rather than protect, those who love them because their victims love them. Perhaps there are women like that, too. But I have met at least two men like that. Their own mothers were afraid of them. And although only one of them actually said, "I enjoy making the people who love me suffer", the same was true of both.
These were not seedy gangsters. They did not have criminal records. These were mildly good-looking, charismatic, clever men with intellectual interests who attracted less intelligent but nicer men as loyal friends. Possibly one was much nicer when he was younger; the other was a sadist by 17, and by sadist I don't mean all that silly sexual game-playing so-called "sophisticated" people think so daring. I mean that even at seventeen he enjoyed making the people who loved him suffer agonies of mind and heart. I cannot for the life of me understand why, or if he could have been improved by psychiatric help. I wonder what a priest would have said to him; I wonder how often parish priests in comfortable countries have to look squarely at evil and see a soul in palpable danger of hell.
I am quite sure that as painful as it is, it is much better to love someone like that and to suffer innocently than to be someone like that and make innocents suffer. So if these were to be my last ever written words, I would want to say, not "Look out for someone like that" but "Don't be someone like that." Satan, handsome, clever, attractive, arrogant Satan, makes a lousy role model.
In the event of death, I will not leave you orphaned, for there are a number of women tilling in the Single Solidarity field. Some of them are readers, and prominent among you are the Orthogals. who blogister (my portmanteau of blog and minister, get it?) for Single women of the Eastern Christian persuasion, aka the GREEKS. There there's Christian Grace from The Evangelista. On a completely different, and not explicitly Catholic note, there's newcomer Postum Scriptum, who writes about all kinds of traddy and vintage stuff, like the lost art of letter-writing.
Then of course there are the Professional Writers for Singles who are farther afield and either taking money from the Catholic Dating Websites or are just better than me at marketing what I give for free. And I don't have a problem with that. Just because my conscience says "donations, speaker's fees and book sales only" doesn't mean that's what their consciences say. Occasionally my conscience does twinge a bit when I point to the balance of my student loan, but it just really refuses to get involved with Catholic Dating Websites. And, yes, I know they do some good.
Which reminds me. Somehow my name has been attached to the idea of dating websites because I did a fellow freelancer a favour by answering questions about internet dating and meeting B.A. online. But I did not meet B.A. through a dating website; I met him through my blog. Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers: it's not that journalists lie, it's that whoever makes up the headlines and the captions doesn't know how to, or just doesn't have time to, read the actual article.
***
I had insomnia last night after watching the Sherlock episode, "A Scandal in Belgravia." I don't often watch violent or suggestive stuff, and "A Scandal in Belgravia" was both. Also, I have a deep loathing of sexually sophisticated people who try to take advantage of sexual innocents, so I did not enjoy watching Irene Adler's attempts on Sherlock's virtue. Sherlock is an arrogant twit, but he does not use his intellectual prowess to bamboozle people into bed. The farthest he goes is to flirt mildly with poor Molly in the morgue so that she will let him see the latest corpse or what have you.
The writers depict Sherlock and his brother Mycroft as cold fish without feeling, and seem to say coldness is why Sherlock, at least, is largely proof against sexual temptation. But as a matter of fact, Sherlock is intensely loyal and protective of the few people who are intensely loyal and protective of him. It's a great plot device: when the writers need us to feel pity and fear, they put Watson in danger of certain death and Sherlock's blue eyes positively blaze with rage. In contrast, Watson's angry, jealous girlfriends, with whom he presumably, to quote him, "gets off", are just figures of fun.
Despite themselves, the writers have hammered home the idea that in itself sex means nothing next to chaste, self-sacrificing love. Still, I don't think they would go so far as to extol Sherlock's chastity as normal and another example of his formidable powers of reasoning. But I would.
There is a quality of mercy in Sherlock. As blunt and thoughtless as he can be, and as capable of throwing baddies out the window, he takes pity on people when he realizes that they seem to love him. And this is most unlike the kind of sociopath who punishes most those who seem to love him.
Because, to move from television to real life, there are indeed men who punish, rather than protect, those who love them because their victims love them. Perhaps there are women like that, too. But I have met at least two men like that. Their own mothers were afraid of them. And although only one of them actually said, "I enjoy making the people who love me suffer", the same was true of both.
These were not seedy gangsters. They did not have criminal records. These were mildly good-looking, charismatic, clever men with intellectual interests who attracted less intelligent but nicer men as loyal friends. Possibly one was much nicer when he was younger; the other was a sadist by 17, and by sadist I don't mean all that silly sexual game-playing so-called "sophisticated" people think so daring. I mean that even at seventeen he enjoyed making the people who loved him suffer agonies of mind and heart. I cannot for the life of me understand why, or if he could have been improved by psychiatric help. I wonder what a priest would have said to him; I wonder how often parish priests in comfortable countries have to look squarely at evil and see a soul in palpable danger of hell.
I am quite sure that as painful as it is, it is much better to love someone like that and to suffer innocently than to be someone like that and make innocents suffer. So if these were to be my last ever written words, I would want to say, not "Look out for someone like that" but "Don't be someone like that." Satan, handsome, clever, attractive, arrogant Satan, makes a lousy role model.
Thursday, 8 August 2013
Brilliant But Weird
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| How can I best exploit Seraphic's obvious crush on me? |
I'll tell you why it is. It is because Sherlock is brilliant but weird--which is to say, my type. As types go, it is not a good one to have. Brilliant men figure out your weaknesses relatively quickly, and weird ones behave in unexpected and often anti-social ways. How I wish my type was as simple as "bookish blond."
At this point you will naturally think, "But what of the delightful, funny and good Benedict Ambrose you have married, who protects you from any self-destructive desire on your part to get involved with brilliant but weird men?"
Yes, there is B.A., and thank heavens for him. However I am reasonably sure I fell in love with B.A. because he did such a good imitation of brilliant but weird. Naturally I had googled him, and a former student had said online that B.A. could take on ten wannabe philosophers at once and reduce them to ashes, so that meant brilliant. And then there was the constant playing of lute music, the manic grin and the proposing after ten days thing, which indicated weird. Also there was the photographic evidence that he spent his undergraduate days disguised as Lytton Strachey, a very weird person to resemble if you are as fond of women as B.A. is. And then there are the puns.
Yes, there is B.A., and thank heavens for him. However I am reasonably sure I fell in love with B.A. because he did such a good imitation of brilliant but weird. Naturally I had googled him, and a former student had said online that B.A. could take on ten wannabe philosophers at once and reduce them to ashes, so that meant brilliant. And then there was the constant playing of lute music, the manic grin and the proposing after ten days thing, which indicated weird. Also there was the photographic evidence that he spent his undergraduate days disguised as Lytton Strachey, a very weird person to resemble if you are as fond of women as B.A. is. And then there are the puns.
Someone or other decided that puns are the lowest form of humour, but each pun is a sort of simple riddle from which the hearer catches the double-meaning, notes how the pun overturns his expectations and reacts with laughs or groans. The pun creates a two-second carnival of nonsense. Brilliant but weird men are ringmasters in their own carnivals of nonsense.
Because he is addicted both to puns and to serious reading, Benedict Ambrose will never bore me. Last week we had one of our very rare screaming fights, and it was about the nation-state. I have certainly had screaming fights with boring boyfriends, but they were never about the nation-state or anything particularly interesting.
But happily B.A. is not actually weird. Brilliant but weird men don't usually have many friends, which I have discovered from dating brilliant but weird men, and B.A. has many friends. They tend to be clever, laugh at his puns and indulge in serious reading. Neither he nor his pals are sociopaths, which reminds me of an amusing exchange in "Sherlock" when a police officer calls Sherlock a psychopath, and Sherlock says "I'm not a psychopath, Anderson. I'm a high-functioning sociopath." I can't tell you how refreshing it was to hear one of them admit it. Serious catharsis here.
It was a great breakthrough to realize that I became interested in men only when they showed evidence of being brilliant and weird, and my spiritual director thought this knowledge would be a great protection, but actually it is as much a protection against brilliant-and-weird as the knowledge that you have the measles protects you against the measles. If you're attracted to weirdos, knowing that you're attracted to weirdos doesn't automatically stop you from being attracted to weirdos. However, I suppose the knowledge prompts you to make an emergency appointment with your spiritual director when you meet a new one.
I remember once only noticing a young man for the first time because he kept telling me I looked like a model. As I did not in the least look like a model, that was pretty weird. Also he had given up a brilliant career to become a male religious, and it is exceedingly weird for male religious to tell women we look like models. A young male religious telling a serious-minded female that she looks like a model is probably the psychological equivalent of a Pick Up Artist in a bar telling a glamour girl she looks like a dirty little snowflake. It's the shock value, and whether it is intended or unintended, it works on women like me.
It occurs to me, as I lie in bed writing, for writing is an even better pain-killer than reading, that my friend Lily would point out that I too am brilliant but weird, as if this had anything to do with anything. Sadly, I am not brilliant at anything that makes great pots of money; I am just a moderately good conversationalist who is great at editing academic papers on a variety of subjects in a way that makes them more comprehensible and less maddening for poor profs to read. I may be slightly weird, of course.
But I don't think any quality of weirdness has ever helped me attract a man; keeping it under wraps has been the best policy. When B.A. fell in love with me I was demurely clad in a sky-blue shift dress and pearls, my mad hair tied tightly in a bun and my tendency to make frank and abrupt remarks silenced by an awful head-cold. I often think how lucky it is that I came down with that terrible cold, and that I brought a dress and pearls with me to Scotland. You must always bring a nice dress whenever you travel to see people; you never know if you might not be invited to a dinner party.
Monday, 13 May 2013
Innocent Because Beautiful
The idea that the surviving Boston Bombing suspect must be innocent because he is "too beautiful" suggests that some girls take "not rooted in reality" to an extreme.
I have been pondering my high school days recently, and I am so glad that when I was a teenager, there were fewer ways to preserve evidence of the weird blips of one's juvenile brain. There was no texting, no tweeting, no blogging, no Facebook, no camera phones and very few tattoos for women. The worst you could do was write embarrassing letters, which could possibly be photocopied, but not sent to all the world with the touch of a button. To unburden one's teenage heart of its agonies and obsessions, one kept a diary. I still have all of mine, but if, in a storm of adolescent brain misfirings, I developed a crush on a suspected terrorist, no-one but me shall ever know.
I have been pondering my high school days recently, and I am so glad that when I was a teenager, there were fewer ways to preserve evidence of the weird blips of one's juvenile brain. There was no texting, no tweeting, no blogging, no Facebook, no camera phones and very few tattoos for women. The worst you could do was write embarrassing letters, which could possibly be photocopied, but not sent to all the world with the touch of a button. To unburden one's teenage heart of its agonies and obsessions, one kept a diary. I still have all of mine, but if, in a storm of adolescent brain misfirings, I developed a crush on a suspected terrorist, no-one but me shall ever know.
Friday, 26 April 2013
A Boy's House
I saw Ibsen's A Doll's House on the stage yesterday evening and feel wrung out. I had read the play and heard all about it in one or more of my university courses, but I had never seen it staged. I hadn't realized how incredibly offensive Torvald is. Of course, I had never been married when I studied the play.
The version I saw was set in Edwardian London, and it was only incidentally amusing that Edwardian London seems to have been populated by Scots. Torvald had been renamed Thomas and given the post of a Cabinet Minister. I'm not sure about renaming one of the most famously pompous husbands in world literature, but it made sense to put him in the Cabinet. I'm a little vague on the restrictions placed upon women who wanted to borrow money (essential to the plot) in Edwardian Britain, but I am willing to imagine they were not so different from those of Ibsen's Norway of 1879.
Ibsen was a genius, of course, and part of his genius was seeing things from women's point of view at a time when most men seemed psychologically incapable of doing that. Ibsen shook off any accusations (or praise) of feminism by saying that in Nora he was describing humanity. (Or so says wikipedia.) Well, good on Ibsen for noticing that a woman is a human being before she is anything else. One can imagine Ibsen listening to a man roguishly teasing his wife about how much of his money she must have spent on Christmas tree decorations and wondering how the wife must feel. ("If it were me," I imagine Ibsen imagining, "I would want to punch him.")
Torvald (or, in this version, Thomas) is exactly the kind of man who gives his wife a hard time about how much money she has spent on Christmas tree decorations. He has no clue that his wife is actually an extraordinary good saver because (for reasons of the plot) she cannot tell him this. And because she knows what she knows, she puts up with his tsk-tsking with very good grace.
In fact, Nora spends her marriage pretending to be something she is not and is assisted in this by Torvald, who is happy to strut about, talk down to her and say such things as "You have no idea how important I really am" and "I own you." It is very important to Torvald that his wife be a sexy simpleton, and loyal Nora does her best to look like one. And, indeed, she is indeed simple in some ways: you become what you do, after all. She believes her husband loves her--after all, he keeps telling her he does--and he certainly finds her sexually attractive, and she has a gift for pretending and hiding, so she copes. And if she couldn't cope, every women in her society would assure her that of course she's not as stupid as her husband makes her out to be.
I'm trying not to put plot spoilers in here, so I will just say that Nora's big mistake is taking Torvald at his own estimation. Their family friend Doctor Rank tells her that Torvald is just a little boy at heart, and I think this is true. There is something stunted about Torvald--instead of acting like an intelligent, adult man, he acts like a boy pretending to be a man: lording it over his wife in a pompous way while completely wrapped up in his own interests, his own problems, his own friends, his own desires, and his own importance. He is also, as we discover, childishly spiteful.
Men so often exasperate women that I have counselled before that when we feel deeply resentful of them, we should try to imagine what they were like as babies or little boys. This is a variation on the "Bless their little hearts" strategy, and it's meant to get us in touch with that compassionate part of us that is also our greatest strength: motherhood. No-one on earth has as much power, emotional or physical, than a mother over her child. And no doubt that is why men really hate it when the wrong women attempt to "mother" them.
Still, I suppose it is hard to see men your own age as boys, and it is frustrating to find yourself stuck with a boy when you would rather be with a man. One of the good things about getting older is that the men my own age have had more time to grow up. Another good thing is that I see twenty-somethings from a completely different perspective. It is easier to see and remember that under the protective shell of adult masculinity, many of them are still boys with a lot to learn. And it is easier to love them for it. Twenty-something girls want twenty-something boys to be great husband-and-boyfriend material. Forty-something women just want twenty-somethings to have good manners and be reasonably amusing. Thank heavens young men are usually attracted to young women; if they weren't cougars would corner the market.
Plot spoilers ahead:
Nora's tragedy was that she was not mature enough to forgive Torvald and accept him for the boy he still was. Her ultimate attitude was that of the teacher who flees the nastiest child in her classroom when the bell rings. Torvald's tragedy is that he did his utmost to treat Nora as a child, which prevented her from growing up enough to help him grow up. And as I once was Nora, I know what I'm talking about. The great mercy is that when I slammed the door, there weren't any real children on the other side of it.
The version I saw was set in Edwardian London, and it was only incidentally amusing that Edwardian London seems to have been populated by Scots. Torvald had been renamed Thomas and given the post of a Cabinet Minister. I'm not sure about renaming one of the most famously pompous husbands in world literature, but it made sense to put him in the Cabinet. I'm a little vague on the restrictions placed upon women who wanted to borrow money (essential to the plot) in Edwardian Britain, but I am willing to imagine they were not so different from those of Ibsen's Norway of 1879.
Ibsen was a genius, of course, and part of his genius was seeing things from women's point of view at a time when most men seemed psychologically incapable of doing that. Ibsen shook off any accusations (or praise) of feminism by saying that in Nora he was describing humanity. (Or so says wikipedia.) Well, good on Ibsen for noticing that a woman is a human being before she is anything else. One can imagine Ibsen listening to a man roguishly teasing his wife about how much of his money she must have spent on Christmas tree decorations and wondering how the wife must feel. ("If it were me," I imagine Ibsen imagining, "I would want to punch him.")
Torvald (or, in this version, Thomas) is exactly the kind of man who gives his wife a hard time about how much money she has spent on Christmas tree decorations. He has no clue that his wife is actually an extraordinary good saver because (for reasons of the plot) she cannot tell him this. And because she knows what she knows, she puts up with his tsk-tsking with very good grace.
In fact, Nora spends her marriage pretending to be something she is not and is assisted in this by Torvald, who is happy to strut about, talk down to her and say such things as "You have no idea how important I really am" and "I own you." It is very important to Torvald that his wife be a sexy simpleton, and loyal Nora does her best to look like one. And, indeed, she is indeed simple in some ways: you become what you do, after all. She believes her husband loves her--after all, he keeps telling her he does--and he certainly finds her sexually attractive, and she has a gift for pretending and hiding, so she copes. And if she couldn't cope, every women in her society would assure her that of course she's not as stupid as her husband makes her out to be.
I'm trying not to put plot spoilers in here, so I will just say that Nora's big mistake is taking Torvald at his own estimation. Their family friend Doctor Rank tells her that Torvald is just a little boy at heart, and I think this is true. There is something stunted about Torvald--instead of acting like an intelligent, adult man, he acts like a boy pretending to be a man: lording it over his wife in a pompous way while completely wrapped up in his own interests, his own problems, his own friends, his own desires, and his own importance. He is also, as we discover, childishly spiteful.
Men so often exasperate women that I have counselled before that when we feel deeply resentful of them, we should try to imagine what they were like as babies or little boys. This is a variation on the "Bless their little hearts" strategy, and it's meant to get us in touch with that compassionate part of us that is also our greatest strength: motherhood. No-one on earth has as much power, emotional or physical, than a mother over her child. And no doubt that is why men really hate it when the wrong women attempt to "mother" them.
Still, I suppose it is hard to see men your own age as boys, and it is frustrating to find yourself stuck with a boy when you would rather be with a man. One of the good things about getting older is that the men my own age have had more time to grow up. Another good thing is that I see twenty-somethings from a completely different perspective. It is easier to see and remember that under the protective shell of adult masculinity, many of them are still boys with a lot to learn. And it is easier to love them for it. Twenty-something girls want twenty-something boys to be great husband-and-boyfriend material. Forty-something women just want twenty-somethings to have good manners and be reasonably amusing. Thank heavens young men are usually attracted to young women; if they weren't cougars would corner the market.
Plot spoilers ahead:
Nora's tragedy was that she was not mature enough to forgive Torvald and accept him for the boy he still was. Her ultimate attitude was that of the teacher who flees the nastiest child in her classroom when the bell rings. Torvald's tragedy is that he did his utmost to treat Nora as a child, which prevented her from growing up enough to help him grow up. And as I once was Nora, I know what I'm talking about. The great mercy is that when I slammed the door, there weren't any real children on the other side of it.
Friday, 5 April 2013
College as Marriage Market
Andrew Cusack sent me this, as it was written by a friend of his at the New Criterion:
In 2008, when I was a college junior, I went home to New Jersey one weekend to visit my family—and almost immediately regretted it. My mother seemed more interested in my romantic life than my academic life: "Have you found a boyfriend yet?"
That reminds me of something my mother said when I was in college, and the result was my early divorce.
In 2008, when I was a college junior, I went home to New Jersey one weekend to visit my family—and almost immediately regretted it. My mother seemed more interested in my romantic life than my academic life: "Have you found a boyfriend yet?"
I dated a lot in college, which really means that I usually had a boyfriend. I was fun and at least outwardly cheerful, got involved with a few groups and causes on campus, spoke up in class, had zany hair, got noticed.
I was also intensely thoughtless, and had an idea at the time that the more boyfriends or admirers you had, the more successful you were as a woman. This is a really stupid idea, but that's the message I had taken on board, so I went out with guys way longer than I should have, for the sake of having fun, attentive boyfriends, and then broke up with them, sometimes rather abruptly. I looked Betty, but I acted Veronica.
I was also intensely thoughtless, and had an idea at the time that the more boyfriends or admirers you had, the more successful you were as a woman. This is a really stupid idea, but that's the message I had taken on board, so I went out with guys way longer than I should have, for the sake of having fun, attentive boyfriends, and then broke up with them, sometimes rather abruptly. I looked Betty, but I acted Veronica.
Not being entirely heartless, I felt rather bad about my "fickleness." I was frustrated both with myself and with the guys I went out with. How come I got bored so easily? How come I never met a guy I wanted to permanently commit to? And even though I took an extra year to complete, graduation was looming, and my mother had said it was easier to meet men in college than afterwards. She, of course, had married a brilliant PhD student she met as an undergrad.
I think I'll lightly skip over what happened next, for once. And--guess what? I discovered that there were still single men around after graduation. There were single men in grad school. There were single men at work. There were single men in parishes. There were single men all over the place. There was absolutely no reason for me to have dreaded my college graduation as the cut-off point after which there would be no more single men. (And for the record, I was better-looking at thirty than I was at twenty-four.)
What did make meeting good men more difficult, after college graduation, was being married (naturally) and then divorced because the experience of an unhappy marriage was the worst thing that had ever happened to me in my sheltered life, and it seriously messed with my head. The annulment procedure, though necessary, was for me traumatic.
I know a woman, a beautiful woman, who married a college boyfriend who was awful to her, and even before she got divorced or her annulment, met a wonderful man. They were friends, nothing more, because, of course, she was married. However, when she got her divorce and then her annulment, they were free to marry, and did. Now they have children.
When she told me her story I was grateful because until she did I was the only annulled woman of my generation I knew, and until then I didn't know anyone who knew firsthand what I had gone through. But at the same time I was hit with a wave of despair because it had worked out okay for her in the end. Even before she had escaped her agony, she had met the right man. Did God love her more than me? I feared so.
When she told me her story I was grateful because until she did I was the only annulled woman of my generation I knew, and until then I didn't know anyone who knew firsthand what I had gone through. But at the same time I was hit with a wave of despair because it had worked out okay for her in the end. Even before she had escaped her agony, she had met the right man. Did God love her more than me? I feared so.
This was foolish, and although it looks like I remarried too late to have children (the elephant in the Seraphic Singles room), I don't think God loves me any less than a woman who has children. Indeed, I think He may love me just as teensy-weensy bit more, for He sides with the poor, the ill, the widow, the orphan, the refugee and the barren, and He's just got a different job for me.
And part of that job is to tell the truth about Single Life, and the truth is that your college graduation is NOT NOT NOT your marital expiry date. God has a plan for you, and it may involve you marrying a college sweetheart, but it just as easily may not.
Sure, if you are inclined to early marriage, then you should be open to meeting guys at college and having "just a coffee" when asked, and giving a marriage-potential guy two more dates/chances before deciding if there's a spark. As soon as you know you just couldn't marry him, then let him know you don't see a future for the two of you. As Catholics or other Christians, we should be above having boyfriends just for the sake of having boyfriends. But please, for the sake of your future happiness, don't force yourself into commitments because you think there's something wrong with you if you don't feel committed by fourth year. Everyone is on a different schedule. As hard as it would have been, I was supposed to wait it out.Saturday, 2 March 2013
Another Glimpse into Hell
I want to get this over with as soon as possible. In short, a reader sent me a link into the black heart of the manosphere to read a post on seducing virgins. It was simply the most disgusting thing I have read for a very long time. It was like listening to the chuckling of demons.
My response was to thank God that, so far as I know, I know only decent men, good men who would never target, trick, hurt, exploit and discard young, inexperienced women and then brag about it online.
Your fellow reader thought someone should expose the tactics of these freaks, which work along the same lines as negging. Frankly, I don't even want to think about them, but I'll do it because it fills me with horror that such men exist and of course they get away with such things. One of the men in the combox claimed he was operating in Poland. He was amazed at how many 20 year old virgins there are in Poland. I hope he is caught by Polish guys and beaten within an inch of his life.
So here are the tactics. (I'm certainly not linking to the post!) By the way, I would like to remind you for about the twelfth time that you should not tell anyone except your mother, doctor, confessor (if necessary) and your fiance, if you have one, if you are a virgin or not. Do not bring it up in conversation with your female friends because there is a strong chance they will talk about it later, perhaps around male friends, who will tell their male friends...
The Demons' Tactics:
1. Express disappointment that the girl is a virgin. The freak author goes on and on to his victim about how he's only into "fun sex" and how sex with virgins is such a drag. (I assume this is to shock and confuse her if hitherto everyone has been telling her what a special thing virginity is. This is also to insult her and make her feel less valuable.)
2. Tease her about it. He says things like "How can you have lived twenty percent of your life without experiencing the greatest thing on earth?"
3. Tell her he would not want to have sex with a virgin. In a caring way, he tells his victims that they should find someone who will do it in a caring way. He simply doesn't want the responsibility, blah, blah, blah, blah.
4. Put up with the initial awkwardness and physical suffering of the girl as an investment in the (short-term) future. This was the most disgusting part, so be warned. In short, the demon disguised as a human being knows perfectly well that sex is a learned skill. It is not necessarily enjoyable the first time or the second. However, said the DDAHB, if you plan to keep the girl around for at least a month, after the boredom and the hassle of early sex you will be able to get her to do all kinds of sex acts that more experienced women wouldn't do because she is too inexperienced to know what is normal. She will be eager to please, etc., etc.
The reader sent me to this post because guys have tried these tactics on her, although at the time she did not know they were tactics. She says she would have been devastated if she had succumbed to them and read this post later, so I hope anyone who has succumbed to these things and is feeling wretched will now go and talk to a good friend or good priest about it.
The reader also wanted to know what I would say to this post, so here is what I have to say.
1. "Game" tactics work on some women and not on others, and this doesn't seem to have anything to do with how smart, educated, religious, high-earning, kindly or beautiful they are. Some women fall for them, and others do not. End of.
I believe they work because they are confusing. They mess with a woman's expectations so that her brain scurries around trying to sort everything out and putting everything back into order, as in Tetris. Lots of women got almost addicted to Tetris.
It is confusing and unsettling when a guy talks casually and flippantly about such a personal thing as a girl's virginity. It is confusing and unsettling when a guy says it is a bad thing a guy should run from, not a precious thing he (like Don Giovanni) covets or (like a man who loves you) honours. It is confusing and unsettling when a man tells you he's a bad guy, not a good guy, because would a really bad guy tell you that he was a bad guy?
Yes. A bad guy will tell you anything to get laid. ANYTHING. Anything they think will work, and thanks to Game and the internet, the kind of men who think women are living sex dolls share their miserable store of magic words.
3. And this is one of the reasons why I am adamant that teenagers and young women should not tell anyone other than your mothers, your doctors, your confessors (if necessary) and your fiances (should you have one) that you are still virgins. The subject should just not come up. Ever. If the subject does come up in casual conversation, you should consider keeping the guy who brought it up at arm's length.
I realize that by saying this I am standing up against a lot of professional chastity educators, purity rings, and the whole "I'm a Virgin and Proud" movement. Yes. I think they are moronic. If you put your head over a parapet, expect it to be shot at. It's okay one thing for married old toughies like me to be attacked; it's another for inexperienced, innocent and sweet teenage and twenty-something girls who just want to be loved. Old married ladies have a lot of armour; young Single girls, not so much.
4. You should also--this was mentioned at Seraphapalooza--keep away from occasions for sin. A cute funny guy whom you still like and think is cool and funny even after he has told you he would never have sex with a virgin because he prefers "fun sex" is a walking occasion for sin.
As we are all sexual beings, we all have to be humble. No matter how good and pure others tell us we are, we are all subject to sexual temptation, and the reason why we are not tempted, if we aren't, is not because we are all that and a bag of chips but because a serious occasion for sin hasn't arrived yet. So when one does, get out of there.
5. Meanwhile, don't chase men. Game tactics are all about a man chasing a woman while pretending not to, creating just enough interest so that the woman, craving his approval, will chase him. If you train yourself not to chase men, not to pick up the phone, not to send him the text, you will be safer from the tactics of the demons of the post I hope soon to expunge from my memory.
At theology school we were warned against seeing demons in human beings. However, community standards rule that I can't use bad language. And believe me, whoever the guys on that post are, Satan is definitely calling the shots in their lives.
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Questions from Seraphapalooza
On Saturday evening I met four readers in a cafe near a corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets in Toronto and we had a good chat. (Then I rushed off to a dance club on Queen Street West!) I asked the girls what they thought I should write about in future posts, and here are the questions they proposed:
1. How do you avoid the bad guys?
2. If you can't avoid the bad guys, how do you avoid being sucked in by them?
3. How can you help your friends deal with the bad guys they've been sucked in by?
4. How can you help fellow Single friends overcome their negativity?
5. How can you prevent "pity parties" or derail them?
6. Boundary issues: how many details of a romantic relationships should a woman be sharing with her friends?
7. How can Catholic girls understand that just being Catholic doesn't mean we don't need to avoid occasions for sin?
8. The carelessness of girls around a guy they say is "like a brother."
9. The horrors of the self-proclaimed "Nice Guy."
10. How to deal with guys who keep contacting you, but never ask you out?
11. How to deal with guys from other cultures, whose behaviour is very confusing.
12. Should Catholics date non-Catholics?
These are all interesting questions, and I will post about 2-12 in the future. For the moment I will address the question of avoiding "Bad Guys."
1. How do you avoid the bad guys?
First of all, there is more bad behaviour than there are bad guys. Of course, there are some egregiously bad guys out there, but there are also a lot of good guys who are merely immature, moderately selfish, clumsy, thoughtless, loud, over-opinionated, aggressive and chippy. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine if a guy is a bad guy or merely a good guy who would be improved if someone dumped a bucket of water on his head.
I recommend that, instead of being worried about meeting men who are "bad guys", you make a promise to yourself never to be silent in the face of bad behaviour. Instead of worrying about rejecting people, promise to yourself that you will reject bad behaviour. If your boyfriend embarrasses you in front of your friends, tell him that hurt you and you expect an apology. Don't contact him again until he apologizes. If a man stands you up or cancels a date without a good reason, tell him you are hurt by his lack of respect for you, and don't contact him again until he apologizes.
Good men apologize for hurting people. Bad men don't. Bad men hurt you and then tell you it was your fault because you made him hurt you. If some guy tells you he hurt you because you made him hurt you, walk out of the room. Never contact him again.
Second, don't chase after exciting, charismatic men. If you chase an exciting, charismatic man, you will just be one of the crowd of women who chase after him. Meanwhile, the only real way to tell if a guy is "that into you" is to wait until he contacts you, if he does. You can chat to him, and smile at him, and touch his arm, and invite him to your parties, but that's it. Any chasing behaviour and he may figure you're his to accept, reject, supply him with baked goods, write his essays, etc.
It hurts me to say this, but if you chase a bad guy, you're at least partly responsible for the misery that ensues. If you don't chase any guys, then you are not going to chase a bad guy. Chat. Smile. Touch arm. Invite to parties. End of.
Third, be very careful about the people with whom you associate. If you are a prison lay chaplain then, yes, you are going to associate with felons. But otherwise there is absolutely no reason for you to associate with criminals. If you hang out with girls who hang out with abusive or criminal men, then you are going to come into contact with those men and possibly their friends, too.
Fourth, always carry cab fare at night. If you go to a party and realize you are uncomfortable with what the men are saying or what people are doing, get out. Call a cab. Go home. Phone or email a friend when you get there. Vent your dismay.
Fifth, some girls stick with a bad guy because of their sexual sins, however small those sexual sins may look to a married lady of 39+. There are girls who promise themselves they will only ever kiss one man in all their lives, and that man will be their husband. Therefore, having kissed a bad guy, they think they must stay with him forever or lose their cherished image of themselves as Pure.
Cherubs. Cherubs. Cherubs. Cherubs. The wonderful thing about a personal life is that it is personal. You don't have to tell anyone about it, ever, if you don't want to. You don't owe anyone but yourself and God a thorough investigation of all the things you have done in your life. And everyone makes mistakes. Everyone over sixteen has done, said or thought things they would not want reported in the papers. (St. Maria Goretti was twelve.)
If you are ashamed of whatever it is that you have done with Mr Not-So-Great, thenditch him explain to him why the relationship must change or end and go to confession. You are not damaged goods; you are a person. So never, ever, ever put up with a guy's bad behaviour and abuse just because you did whatever it was. No, you shouldn't have. Now stop. Your penance should be three Hail Marys, not endless months of mental anguish.
Sixth, it is normal to feel happy and safe in a romantic relationship. If you are in a romantic relationship and you do not feel happy and safe most of the time, something is seriously wrong. You may have read in storybooks that it is exciting and romantic for a man to have tirades and break things because he is jealous, but actually it is simultaneously frightening and boring. There are authentic ways for men to show that they care about you, and overwhelming jealousy is not one of them.
Seventh, not all non-virgin guys are bad guys. Some are, of course. But most are not. Sexual experience does not = bad. Lack of respect for you and other women = bad. The fact that a guy had sex with a past girlfriend does not mean that he is an evil, wicked, depraved despoiler of womankind. It means that he is a typical man of the 21st century, perhaps spoiled and weak, but perhaps not.
I agree that it is better and safer to hang out with men who have not been sexually active before marriage or, if they have been, don't like to talk about it and have a lot of respect for people who firmly believe that sex is just for marriage. Perhaps they feel the same way themselves now, or always did, but messed up.
Personally, I feel that a granola-eating, serial-monogamous lefty who thinks there was nothing wrong with sleeping with his girlfriends because it was consensual and they were fond of each other is safer than a man who uses prostitutes or p*rn or one-night-stands. The granola-eater at least associates sex with respect, affection and relationships; the guy who uses prostitutes or p*rn or one-night-stands associates sex with whatever is going on inside his head, which is mightily messed up.
Of course, you are probably more likely to have "The Talk" with Mr Granola than with Mr Humanae Vitae. The only appropriate response from either is "I respect your decision". Mr Granola is less likely to call you after this declaration of respect, not because he is a Bad Guy, but because he is Mr Granola and in his universe "sex is a healthy and essential part of dating." The important thing is that he did not pressure you or make you feel terrible. If he did, he is indeed a Bad Guy and must be told off royally. The same goes for Mr Humanae Vitae if he does such things, the lousy hypocrite. And he is more culpable than Mr Granola if he doesn't call after "The Talk" because he knows better.
1. How do you avoid the bad guys?
2. If you can't avoid the bad guys, how do you avoid being sucked in by them?
3. How can you help your friends deal with the bad guys they've been sucked in by?
4. How can you help fellow Single friends overcome their negativity?
5. How can you prevent "pity parties" or derail them?
6. Boundary issues: how many details of a romantic relationships should a woman be sharing with her friends?
7. How can Catholic girls understand that just being Catholic doesn't mean we don't need to avoid occasions for sin?
8. The carelessness of girls around a guy they say is "like a brother."
9. The horrors of the self-proclaimed "Nice Guy."
10. How to deal with guys who keep contacting you, but never ask you out?
11. How to deal with guys from other cultures, whose behaviour is very confusing.
12. Should Catholics date non-Catholics?
These are all interesting questions, and I will post about 2-12 in the future. For the moment I will address the question of avoiding "Bad Guys."
1. How do you avoid the bad guys?
First of all, there is more bad behaviour than there are bad guys. Of course, there are some egregiously bad guys out there, but there are also a lot of good guys who are merely immature, moderately selfish, clumsy, thoughtless, loud, over-opinionated, aggressive and chippy. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine if a guy is a bad guy or merely a good guy who would be improved if someone dumped a bucket of water on his head.
I recommend that, instead of being worried about meeting men who are "bad guys", you make a promise to yourself never to be silent in the face of bad behaviour. Instead of worrying about rejecting people, promise to yourself that you will reject bad behaviour. If your boyfriend embarrasses you in front of your friends, tell him that hurt you and you expect an apology. Don't contact him again until he apologizes. If a man stands you up or cancels a date without a good reason, tell him you are hurt by his lack of respect for you, and don't contact him again until he apologizes.
Good men apologize for hurting people. Bad men don't. Bad men hurt you and then tell you it was your fault because you made him hurt you. If some guy tells you he hurt you because you made him hurt you, walk out of the room. Never contact him again.
Second, don't chase after exciting, charismatic men. If you chase an exciting, charismatic man, you will just be one of the crowd of women who chase after him. Meanwhile, the only real way to tell if a guy is "that into you" is to wait until he contacts you, if he does. You can chat to him, and smile at him, and touch his arm, and invite him to your parties, but that's it. Any chasing behaviour and he may figure you're his to accept, reject, supply him with baked goods, write his essays, etc.
It hurts me to say this, but if you chase a bad guy, you're at least partly responsible for the misery that ensues. If you don't chase any guys, then you are not going to chase a bad guy. Chat. Smile. Touch arm. Invite to parties. End of.
Third, be very careful about the people with whom you associate. If you are a prison lay chaplain then, yes, you are going to associate with felons. But otherwise there is absolutely no reason for you to associate with criminals. If you hang out with girls who hang out with abusive or criminal men, then you are going to come into contact with those men and possibly their friends, too.
Fourth, always carry cab fare at night. If you go to a party and realize you are uncomfortable with what the men are saying or what people are doing, get out. Call a cab. Go home. Phone or email a friend when you get there. Vent your dismay.
Fifth, some girls stick with a bad guy because of their sexual sins, however small those sexual sins may look to a married lady of 39+. There are girls who promise themselves they will only ever kiss one man in all their lives, and that man will be their husband. Therefore, having kissed a bad guy, they think they must stay with him forever or lose their cherished image of themselves as Pure.
Cherubs. Cherubs. Cherubs. Cherubs. The wonderful thing about a personal life is that it is personal. You don't have to tell anyone about it, ever, if you don't want to. You don't owe anyone but yourself and God a thorough investigation of all the things you have done in your life. And everyone makes mistakes. Everyone over sixteen has done, said or thought things they would not want reported in the papers. (St. Maria Goretti was twelve.)
If you are ashamed of whatever it is that you have done with Mr Not-So-Great, then
Sixth, it is normal to feel happy and safe in a romantic relationship. If you are in a romantic relationship and you do not feel happy and safe most of the time, something is seriously wrong. You may have read in storybooks that it is exciting and romantic for a man to have tirades and break things because he is jealous, but actually it is simultaneously frightening and boring. There are authentic ways for men to show that they care about you, and overwhelming jealousy is not one of them.
Seventh, not all non-virgin guys are bad guys. Some are, of course. But most are not. Sexual experience does not = bad. Lack of respect for you and other women = bad. The fact that a guy had sex with a past girlfriend does not mean that he is an evil, wicked, depraved despoiler of womankind. It means that he is a typical man of the 21st century, perhaps spoiled and weak, but perhaps not.
I agree that it is better and safer to hang out with men who have not been sexually active before marriage or, if they have been, don't like to talk about it and have a lot of respect for people who firmly believe that sex is just for marriage. Perhaps they feel the same way themselves now, or always did, but messed up.
Personally, I feel that a granola-eating, serial-monogamous lefty who thinks there was nothing wrong with sleeping with his girlfriends because it was consensual and they were fond of each other is safer than a man who uses prostitutes or p*rn or one-night-stands. The granola-eater at least associates sex with respect, affection and relationships; the guy who uses prostitutes or p*rn or one-night-stands associates sex with whatever is going on inside his head, which is mightily messed up.
Of course, you are probably more likely to have "The Talk" with Mr Granola than with Mr Humanae Vitae. The only appropriate response from either is "I respect your decision". Mr Granola is less likely to call you after this declaration of respect, not because he is a Bad Guy, but because he is Mr Granola and in his universe "sex is a healthy and essential part of dating." The important thing is that he did not pressure you or make you feel terrible. If he did, he is indeed a Bad Guy and must be told off royally. The same goes for Mr Humanae Vitae if he does such things, the lousy hypocrite. And he is more culpable than Mr Granola if he doesn't call after "The Talk" because he knows better.
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Why Do Girls Give In?
There is an excellent article in the UK Catholic Herald this week about p*rnogr*phy. The Herald piece is in part a reaction to the following article in the UK Telegraph, which I want to discuss, but I will warn you that some of the remarks in the combox under the Telegraph article are vile.
It’s not often that I unleash my inner Mary Whitehouse, but the way young girls today are expected to conform to a hideous porn culture makes me want to don a pair of glasses with upswept frames and get myself one of those battleaxe perms. A friend’s daughter recently started at a highly regarded boarding school. When her mother asked how she was enjoying the mixed-sex environment, the girl said quietly: “You have to give the boys oral sex or they get cross.” Reeling with shock, the mum protested that her darling daughter did not have to do anything of the sort. “Oh yes you do,” replied the girl. “And you have to shave down there or the boys don’t like it.”
Mary Whitehouse was an EnglishCatholic Anglican lady who campaigned against the onslaught of racy conversations and shows over the airwaves in the wake of 1963. She was widely mocked. At the same time she was campaigning, however, an unknown number of pop culture celebrities in Britain were using and abusing teenage girls and children.
I don't know if Mary Whitehouse said anything about the generations of sexual abuse in boys' boarding schools by bigger boys of smaller boys. It's something all men who went to boarding school knew about, and yet they went on to send their own sons to boarding school. And now that women know about this, too, I am amazed that anyone would send their daughters into a co-ed boarding school. What on earth did they think would happen?
It strikes me that there is a bigger problem here than p*rn, no matter how big a problem p*rn may be. The problem is that teenage boys are demanding oral sex from teenage girls, and teenage girls are actually supplying it. Teenage boys are demanding that teenage girls wax their pudenda, and teenage girls are doing it. So much for the feminist revolution--and incidentally, it is illegal for children in Britain to have sex until they are sixteen. Why, I ask, do the girls have no spine?
"So what if the boys get cross?" I would ask this girl if she were my daughter, which she would never be as I would never send my teenage daughter to a co-ed secondary school except as a last resort. "I mean, SO WHAT?"
In prison, if there were such things as co-ed prisons in the UK, which thank heavens there are not, a girl might worry. If she didn't come across with sexual favours once actually illegal, so disgusting and against women's dignity they were believed to be, well, maybe something even worse might happen to her. But we don't put women into the same prisons as men because we are not stupid. As a society, we don't hate women quite that much.
So it comes as a nasty shock to discover that the threat of violence hangs over girls in the co-ed schools of the UK, even if that threat is merely "The boys get cross."
As it is illegal for children under 16 to have sex, one solution is to remind children of this every once in awhile and remind them all that soliciting a child under 16 for sex is also illegal. Very rarely does anyone throw the book at a fornicating Romeo-and-Juliet puppy-love pair, but maybe it is time to begin. At very least something more must be done to protect girls whose parents are naive enough to send them to live under inadequate supervision with a hundred or more teenage boys. Teaching them to value sexual abstinence without apology or embarrassment would be a good start.
It’s not often that I unleash my inner Mary Whitehouse, but the way young girls today are expected to conform to a hideous porn culture makes me want to don a pair of glasses with upswept frames and get myself one of those battleaxe perms. A friend’s daughter recently started at a highly regarded boarding school. When her mother asked how she was enjoying the mixed-sex environment, the girl said quietly: “You have to give the boys oral sex or they get cross.” Reeling with shock, the mum protested that her darling daughter did not have to do anything of the sort. “Oh yes you do,” replied the girl. “And you have to shave down there or the boys don’t like it.”
Mary Whitehouse was an English
I don't know if Mary Whitehouse said anything about the generations of sexual abuse in boys' boarding schools by bigger boys of smaller boys. It's something all men who went to boarding school knew about, and yet they went on to send their own sons to boarding school. And now that women know about this, too, I am amazed that anyone would send their daughters into a co-ed boarding school. What on earth did they think would happen?
It strikes me that there is a bigger problem here than p*rn, no matter how big a problem p*rn may be. The problem is that teenage boys are demanding oral sex from teenage girls, and teenage girls are actually supplying it. Teenage boys are demanding that teenage girls wax their pudenda, and teenage girls are doing it. So much for the feminist revolution--and incidentally, it is illegal for children in Britain to have sex until they are sixteen. Why, I ask, do the girls have no spine?
"So what if the boys get cross?" I would ask this girl if she were my daughter, which she would never be as I would never send my teenage daughter to a co-ed secondary school except as a last resort. "I mean, SO WHAT?"
In prison, if there were such things as co-ed prisons in the UK, which thank heavens there are not, a girl might worry. If she didn't come across with sexual favours once actually illegal, so disgusting and against women's dignity they were believed to be, well, maybe something even worse might happen to her. But we don't put women into the same prisons as men because we are not stupid. As a society, we don't hate women quite that much.
So it comes as a nasty shock to discover that the threat of violence hangs over girls in the co-ed schools of the UK, even if that threat is merely "The boys get cross."
As it is illegal for children under 16 to have sex, one solution is to remind children of this every once in awhile and remind them all that soliciting a child under 16 for sex is also illegal. Very rarely does anyone throw the book at a fornicating Romeo-and-Juliet puppy-love pair, but maybe it is time to begin. At very least something more must be done to protect girls whose parents are naive enough to send them to live under inadequate supervision with a hundred or more teenage boys. Teaching them to value sexual abstinence without apology or embarrassment would be a good start.
Thursday, 24 January 2013
The Appalling Strangeness of Top 40
Working from home is a particularly isolating activity when you live in the middle of eighty acres of woods and parkland. The grounds of the Historical House are surrounded by a stone wall of enough Historical importance that it was not knocked down in front of the parcels of land no longer belonging to the Historical House. Across a busy street from the far end of that wall is my fitness club, and that is where I get my dose of pop culture.
The treadmill faces three televisions, each showing its own station, and I always take the treadmill in front of the television showing MTV because I associate elevated heartbeat with music. Also, I miss dance clubs. I really miss dance clubs. To be precise, I really miss dance clubs that played trance and at least the occasional Goth anthem and The Killers, which I suppose means I miss Toronto's Velvet Underground. Why do not any of my Edinburgh friends like dance clubs? (She gently bangs her head on her desk.) Some of them are really young. What is this mania for proper partner dancing?
But I digress. For 35 minutes at a time, I watch MTV and hope it won't be too violent or too boring or so distasteful I will be less eager to go to the gym. (I haven't bought my MP3 player yet.) Above all, I hope the music will really be dance music and not boring ballads apparently about riding horses through a grimy American housing project or about rescuing one's girlfriend from a burning building before falling to one's death. I confess to being fond of the video in which ducks massacre a gang, although it does not pass my mental danceability test.
Thirty-five minutes of MTV 2-3 times a week has cleared up some mysteries while introducing others. First of all, Britney Spears still has a career, and indeed her "Scream and Shout" video is number one. She looks pretty good, and there's nothing like recovering from a highly public breakdown to turn a pretty singer-dancer into a gay icon. There seems to be no plot in the video, so I like it very much. I don't even mind that Britney drops half her verbs.
Second, I now know who Justin Bieber is--beyond a former resident of Ontario--and I have a clue to his appeal. The "Beauty and a Beat" video is hilariously manipulative, for Justin is shot from the point of view of the female viewer, whom he is apparently leading to an amazing party while declaring his undying love, etc. But his outstretched arm is usually in the shot, and I ask myself what irresponsible jerk gave a twelve year old that tattoo? However, I would dance to that song in a club, so all is forgiven, except that disturbing line in "Baby" about buying the straying girlfriend anything she wants. The idea of boys trying to buy girls' affections with stuff makes me cross.
Third, an overweight Single woman with dark red hair and a sharp, mean face can sometimes star in music videos. Unfortunately, her choices seem limited to a terrible daily grind at a cubicle in a soulless grey carpeted office and a holiday in the Bahamas where, in her dreams, she behaves with bestial lust and greed.
Sadly, I do not remember the name of the song, which was printed in very tiny letters on the screen, although it seems to be highly ironic, for a gentle female voice promises to make our Single heroine feel better or give her the feeling she wants. And I am confused by the intentions of the director. Are we supposed to feel sorry for this woman, or are we supposed to laugh at her? Are we supposed to identify with her frustration at work, and with her psychiatrist, whose answer to her misery is more pills, but not with her outrageous sexual behaviour? Does the director love her or hate her? The implied ending of the video made me very uncomfortable indeed.
There are many overweight, unhappy, plain women in the world. This is the first time I have seen one (a white one, anyway) star in an MTV video. At first I was delighted, for it seemed to show the reality of Single adult female life in the modern world: the alarm clock, the stupid office suits and spike heels so unsuited to heavy women, the endless piles of paperwork, the mortgage, sometimes the shrink and, alas, the pills. But I was very disappointed at the proposed solutions. And, indeed, the video makes the woman look ridiculous at the one fantasy activity I thought might really help her feel better: aerobics class.
Update: Some of last night's comments have disappeared. So sorry to Alisha and anyone else who left a comment. I approved them, but I don't know where they went!
The treadmill faces three televisions, each showing its own station, and I always take the treadmill in front of the television showing MTV because I associate elevated heartbeat with music. Also, I miss dance clubs. I really miss dance clubs. To be precise, I really miss dance clubs that played trance and at least the occasional Goth anthem and The Killers, which I suppose means I miss Toronto's Velvet Underground. Why do not any of my Edinburgh friends like dance clubs? (She gently bangs her head on her desk.) Some of them are really young. What is this mania for proper partner dancing?
But I digress. For 35 minutes at a time, I watch MTV and hope it won't be too violent or too boring or so distasteful I will be less eager to go to the gym. (I haven't bought my MP3 player yet.) Above all, I hope the music will really be dance music and not boring ballads apparently about riding horses through a grimy American housing project or about rescuing one's girlfriend from a burning building before falling to one's death. I confess to being fond of the video in which ducks massacre a gang, although it does not pass my mental danceability test.
Thirty-five minutes of MTV 2-3 times a week has cleared up some mysteries while introducing others. First of all, Britney Spears still has a career, and indeed her "Scream and Shout" video is number one. She looks pretty good, and there's nothing like recovering from a highly public breakdown to turn a pretty singer-dancer into a gay icon. There seems to be no plot in the video, so I like it very much. I don't even mind that Britney drops half her verbs.
Second, I now know who Justin Bieber is--beyond a former resident of Ontario--and I have a clue to his appeal. The "Beauty and a Beat" video is hilariously manipulative, for Justin is shot from the point of view of the female viewer, whom he is apparently leading to an amazing party while declaring his undying love, etc. But his outstretched arm is usually in the shot, and I ask myself what irresponsible jerk gave a twelve year old that tattoo? However, I would dance to that song in a club, so all is forgiven, except that disturbing line in "Baby" about buying the straying girlfriend anything she wants. The idea of boys trying to buy girls' affections with stuff makes me cross.
Third, an overweight Single woman with dark red hair and a sharp, mean face can sometimes star in music videos. Unfortunately, her choices seem limited to a terrible daily grind at a cubicle in a soulless grey carpeted office and a holiday in the Bahamas where, in her dreams, she behaves with bestial lust and greed.
Sadly, I do not remember the name of the song, which was printed in very tiny letters on the screen, although it seems to be highly ironic, for a gentle female voice promises to make our Single heroine feel better or give her the feeling she wants. And I am confused by the intentions of the director. Are we supposed to feel sorry for this woman, or are we supposed to laugh at her? Are we supposed to identify with her frustration at work, and with her psychiatrist, whose answer to her misery is more pills, but not with her outrageous sexual behaviour? Does the director love her or hate her? The implied ending of the video made me very uncomfortable indeed.
There are many overweight, unhappy, plain women in the world. This is the first time I have seen one (a white one, anyway) star in an MTV video. At first I was delighted, for it seemed to show the reality of Single adult female life in the modern world: the alarm clock, the stupid office suits and spike heels so unsuited to heavy women, the endless piles of paperwork, the mortgage, sometimes the shrink and, alas, the pills. But I was very disappointed at the proposed solutions. And, indeed, the video makes the woman look ridiculous at the one fantasy activity I thought might really help her feel better: aerobics class.
Update: Some of last night's comments have disappeared. So sorry to Alisha and anyone else who left a comment. I approved them, but I don't know where they went!
Friday, 4 January 2013
Bad Spiritual Mothers
Every once in a while I think it necessary to remind everyone that I'm just a lady with an M.Div., a book and a computer. I have zero teaching authority, and I could be wrong on a lot of stuff. I can't think of anything in particular at the moment, but I admit the possibility. And this is why when you are particularly enthusiastic about anything I write, you should discuss it with your roommates or your mother or your favourite aunt, so they can point out any problems.
Long before I turned 39+, I gave considerable thought to what kind of Older Woman I wanted to be. In the society I grew up in, there seemed to be a clear dividing line between Younger Woman and Older Woman which nobody really wanted to cross, particularly if they were in the Arts. This dividing line was often called FORTY. Nobody wanted to turn forty, but nobody wanted to die either, and if you don't die first, you turn forty (or 39+). That's just how it is. No more ingenue roles for you. If you are a Shakespearean actress (which I once wanted to be), you can't play Juliet or Ophelia anymore. You have to play Lady Capulet or Queen Gertrude or Lady Macbeth.
But that's one of the wonderful things about Shakespeare: he acknowledged the existence of Older Women and if anything found them more interesting characters than younger women. It is not really a tragedy when directors stop asking you to play Juliet and ask you to play Lady Macbeth instead. Lady Macbeth is one of the great female baddies of all time: "All the PERFUMES of ARABIA will not sweeten THIS LITTLE HAND!!!"
Of course, you do not want to be a baddie in real life. And you particularly do not want to be a corrupting influence on the Young because that is the exact opposite of what Older Women are supposed to be. We are supposed to model and encourage the best in you, not use you as sops to our overwhelming egos or live our misspent youths again vicariously through you or use you as pawns in our academic-political-theological games. It can be a temptation, though, as you may have noticed in an Older Woman or two. I sure did when I was a Young Woman.
But I have a lot of sympathy for Wicked Older Women, in part because of the insane prejudice in society against older women, against which Wicked Older Women are at war and may even be partly blamed for their excesses. This is often explored in literature, and so I will now present my list of Bad Spiritual Mothers in Art.
I warn you that there is a whiff of the glamour of evil around these women, but hopefully their deeds are horrendous enough to blot that out. I also warn you that there are mild plot spoilers for Dangerous Liaisons, Great Expectations, The Graduate, The Portrait of a Lady and Anna Karenina.
1. The Marquise de Merteuil. The Marquise de Merteuil is the villianess at the dark heart of Les Liaisons Dangereux, and she was played brilliantly by Glenn Close in the 1988 film. Bored by the do-nothing existence of women of the French aristocracy, she enjoys manipulating everyone around her, seducing men and destroying reputations, all while appearing to be an upstanding, moral woman. Her argument on wanting to be revenged on men for the patriarchy falls rather flat since she does much more damage to fellow women. Plus ca change...
2. Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham is a character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. She was jilted at the altar by a fortune-hunter and never gets over it. For example, she keeps the wedding breakfast on the table and wears her wedding dress ever after. I hope she was a neat eater. So bitter is she, that she adopts a pretty little girl and brings her up to be a selfish, soulless man-trap, so as to get revenge upon men. Although this is not very nice for the hero of the novel, it is of course much worse for the poor girl.
3. Mrs Robinson. Mrs Robinson is the villianess of the film The Graduate. She got pregnant as an undergrad and married the baby's father, who did rather well financially but became rather boring. Mrs R temporarily staves off boredom by seducing the recent college grad son of friends. Well, she gets him into bed anyway. It's not like he falls in love with her. No, instead he falls in love with her daughter, which annoys Mrs R very much. I suspect she lacks a sense of humour, and as evil goes she is quite pathetic next to Madame de Merteuil.
4. Madame Merle. Madame Merle is a character in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady. She is a beautiful, charismatic woman who is stuck on a very manipulative and corrupt man and quite willing to sacrifice the interests of younger women to his interests. One of the interesting things about Wicked Older Women is how blase they can be about their love interests marrying someone else, so long as it fits in with their long-range plans.
5. Countess Vronsky. I have not read Anna Karenina, so my acquaintance with Vronsky's mother is limited to the 2012 film. In the film it is quite obvious that Anna Karenina would not have given Vronsky the time of day if Countess Vronsky hadn't put the idea of having an affair into her innocent head. Countess Vronsky reminds me quite a lot of the Sexual Revolution: first she talks up inchastity as a wonderful adventure that one would regret not having and then she sneers at its victims. The scene in which she gives her son a piece of her mind for actually loving Anna is classic.
Incidentally, there was a rather unfilial spark between Vronsky and his mother (played by Olivia Williams) that makes more sense now that I know Olivia Williams is the same age as the actor's wife.
I don't include Potiphar's Wife, as she is in the Bible, and might have been Joseph's age anyway, and represents the religious man's worst nightmare. Nor do I include poor Phaedra of Hippolytus, who suffered more from bad luck, treachery and Hippolytus's misogyny than from sin.
The stories of Potiphar's Wife and Phaedra are very sad for women, playing as they do to men's fear of being falsely accused of, and punished for, rape, which has made it difficult for women to seek justice when we are raped, and also makes us resented objects of fear, which makes us more vulnerable to attack.
And that is the thing about Bad Spiritual Mothers. It is up to you, not any young man terrified of female sexuality--as Hippolytus was and as Joseph is too often depicted, to decide if an older woman is a good spiritual mother for you or not. (But here's a hint: if she tells you that the Church's teachings on sexuality are just "man-made rules" there is room for doubt.)
Long before I turned 39+, I gave considerable thought to what kind of Older Woman I wanted to be. In the society I grew up in, there seemed to be a clear dividing line between Younger Woman and Older Woman which nobody really wanted to cross, particularly if they were in the Arts. This dividing line was often called FORTY. Nobody wanted to turn forty, but nobody wanted to die either, and if you don't die first, you turn forty (or 39+). That's just how it is. No more ingenue roles for you. If you are a Shakespearean actress (which I once wanted to be), you can't play Juliet or Ophelia anymore. You have to play Lady Capulet or Queen Gertrude or Lady Macbeth.
But that's one of the wonderful things about Shakespeare: he acknowledged the existence of Older Women and if anything found them more interesting characters than younger women. It is not really a tragedy when directors stop asking you to play Juliet and ask you to play Lady Macbeth instead. Lady Macbeth is one of the great female baddies of all time: "All the PERFUMES of ARABIA will not sweeten THIS LITTLE HAND!!!"
Of course, you do not want to be a baddie in real life. And you particularly do not want to be a corrupting influence on the Young because that is the exact opposite of what Older Women are supposed to be. We are supposed to model and encourage the best in you, not use you as sops to our overwhelming egos or live our misspent youths again vicariously through you or use you as pawns in our academic-political-theological games. It can be a temptation, though, as you may have noticed in an Older Woman or two. I sure did when I was a Young Woman.
But I have a lot of sympathy for Wicked Older Women, in part because of the insane prejudice in society against older women, against which Wicked Older Women are at war and may even be partly blamed for their excesses. This is often explored in literature, and so I will now present my list of Bad Spiritual Mothers in Art.
I warn you that there is a whiff of the glamour of evil around these women, but hopefully their deeds are horrendous enough to blot that out. I also warn you that there are mild plot spoilers for Dangerous Liaisons, Great Expectations, The Graduate, The Portrait of a Lady and Anna Karenina.
1. The Marquise de Merteuil. The Marquise de Merteuil is the villianess at the dark heart of Les Liaisons Dangereux, and she was played brilliantly by Glenn Close in the 1988 film. Bored by the do-nothing existence of women of the French aristocracy, she enjoys manipulating everyone around her, seducing men and destroying reputations, all while appearing to be an upstanding, moral woman. Her argument on wanting to be revenged on men for the patriarchy falls rather flat since she does much more damage to fellow women. Plus ca change...
2. Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham is a character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. She was jilted at the altar by a fortune-hunter and never gets over it. For example, she keeps the wedding breakfast on the table and wears her wedding dress ever after. I hope she was a neat eater. So bitter is she, that she adopts a pretty little girl and brings her up to be a selfish, soulless man-trap, so as to get revenge upon men. Although this is not very nice for the hero of the novel, it is of course much worse for the poor girl.
3. Mrs Robinson. Mrs Robinson is the villianess of the film The Graduate. She got pregnant as an undergrad and married the baby's father, who did rather well financially but became rather boring. Mrs R temporarily staves off boredom by seducing the recent college grad son of friends. Well, she gets him into bed anyway. It's not like he falls in love with her. No, instead he falls in love with her daughter, which annoys Mrs R very much. I suspect she lacks a sense of humour, and as evil goes she is quite pathetic next to Madame de Merteuil.
4. Madame Merle. Madame Merle is a character in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady. She is a beautiful, charismatic woman who is stuck on a very manipulative and corrupt man and quite willing to sacrifice the interests of younger women to his interests. One of the interesting things about Wicked Older Women is how blase they can be about their love interests marrying someone else, so long as it fits in with their long-range plans.
5. Countess Vronsky. I have not read Anna Karenina, so my acquaintance with Vronsky's mother is limited to the 2012 film. In the film it is quite obvious that Anna Karenina would not have given Vronsky the time of day if Countess Vronsky hadn't put the idea of having an affair into her innocent head. Countess Vronsky reminds me quite a lot of the Sexual Revolution: first she talks up inchastity as a wonderful adventure that one would regret not having and then she sneers at its victims. The scene in which she gives her son a piece of her mind for actually loving Anna is classic.
Incidentally, there was a rather unfilial spark between Vronsky and his mother (played by Olivia Williams) that makes more sense now that I know Olivia Williams is the same age as the actor's wife.
I don't include Potiphar's Wife, as she is in the Bible, and might have been Joseph's age anyway, and represents the religious man's worst nightmare. Nor do I include poor Phaedra of Hippolytus, who suffered more from bad luck, treachery and Hippolytus's misogyny than from sin.
The stories of Potiphar's Wife and Phaedra are very sad for women, playing as they do to men's fear of being falsely accused of, and punished for, rape, which has made it difficult for women to seek justice when we are raped, and also makes us resented objects of fear, which makes us more vulnerable to attack.
And that is the thing about Bad Spiritual Mothers. It is up to you, not any young man terrified of female sexuality--as Hippolytus was and as Joseph is too often depicted, to decide if an older woman is a good spiritual mother for you or not. (But here's a hint: if she tells you that the Church's teachings on sexuality are just "man-made rules" there is room for doubt.)
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Anna Karenina
Update: If you don't know the story already, there are plot spoilers ahead.
Yesterday I went with three Single girlfriends to see the new Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley, on the big screen.
I am so glad I did not see Anna Karenina with any male friend. So glad. Soooooooo glaaaad! I would have died of embarrassment forty-five times, each death more painful than the last.
I have not read the book, so all my remarks are confined to what Tom Stoppard left of it for this film which, I should say, was a fantastic adaptation. It was deliciously classic--the clothes!---and sharply contemporary and original at the same time. It was enthralling and devastating. My writer-painter buddy and looked at each other afterwards in the Ladies' with dazed, stricken eyes.
"If that doesn't teach us to be good, nothing will," I said.
And looking just at the film, I say that it is a film about marriage and married people. So it can be embarrassing for a married woman to watch with Single friends, rather in the way it is embarrassing to watch Sex and the City with innocent 19 year olds. This may be because married women can see Anna Karenina from the inside, so to speak, and know what the problems with the Karenin marriage were, and know why Anna would behave so stupidly, and also--shock, horror--why society had to ostracize Anna.
Somewhere or other online I came across one of you freaking out because someone suggested that married people know more about marriage than Single people, but this is in fact true, in the same way that an Olympian knows more about the Olympics than you do, even if your parents were Olympians and you watch them every four years. It is a big, life-changing, psychologically serious deal, quite apart from whether you love your spouse or not.
Love does not make your husband your husband. What makes your husband your husband is two acts (yours and his) of free will, a public declaration and the recognition of society that your husband is your husband. It is more than a personal, private arrangement, and this is not me saying what I think marriage should be, but what marriage actually is. So when Anna tells Karenin, her husband, that "Vronsky is my husband now", she is simply not rooted in reality.
It is really such a devastating story because [in the film] none of the principal characters are wicked or even that annoying. Karenin is a very good, very dignified man. Anna is a loving mother who wants to be good, but after her fatal decision, discovers that she increasingly can't be. (Her passions slip more and more out of her control, as the film brilliantly depicts.) Vronsky, to my great surprise, actually loves Anna. Anna's philandering brother is funny and full of life.
If there is a baddie, it is Vronksy's mother, who thinks it a delightful thing to have affairs as long as they aren't too obvious or taken too seriously. How angry she is when her son takes his affair with Anna seriously. Hypocrisy may be the tribute vice pays to virtue, but virtue is infinitely superior.
Hypocrisy, though, is better than total social meltdown, and that is what Anna seems to want. Anna doesn't just want to love Vronsky; she wants to rub everyone's nose in it. (Everyone's, that is, except her son's.) Anna thinks making plain her passionate love is more important than her husband's peace, her husband's standing in the community, the feelings of her community--which, incidentally, accords her infinitely more privilege than it does, say, the serfs, and her relationship with God.
"I'm damned anyway," says Anna, and yet is wounded when people treat her like the damned. After all, who is she hurting? Oh, yes. Her husband. To a certain extent her son. The feelings of her society. And you.
I don't want to chuck stones at Anna. She married at 18 to someone she didn't love but presumably found impressive, as Minister Karenin is quite obviously impressive, and must have been a terribly good catch. It is unlikely either Anna or her husband had any idea of the importance of eros in the married life when they entered into it, or Anna would not have had her head turned by Vronsky. So I feel awfully bad for Anna.
But I think you can draw a straight line from Anna's behaviour to current Western society, where my readers note that Yes, we now can vote now, yes, we now are equal to men in law, but we now wonder if we can get married if we don't put out first. Sex is no longer for marriage, but something to be indulged for its own sake, either in the throes of romantic passion, or for fun.
And if we don't go along with this, if we want to be as virtuous and cherished as Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya (Kitty), we are thought of as anti-sex and mean or crazy. Outside conservative religious circles, there no longer seems to be a distinction, sexually speaking, between wife-material (like Kitty) and escaped brothel-workers (like Masha).
All those women being nasty to Anna in the film were trying to keep the social order at a time when even aristocratic women had very few rights at all. If married women felt it okay to leave their husbands and children, and run about Russia openly with their lovers, and respectable people opened their doors to them (thereby siding with them against the innocent husband) where would it end?
Unfortunately, I think we have all experienced where it has ended--for the moment. I don't think we have yet hit bottom, although Western civilization--inextricably dependent upon keeping the passions under the guidance of reason--seems ever closer to throwing itself under a train.
Thursday, 30 August 2012
A Hate Story
Warning: The article I link to may distress you if you are sensitive, have had an abrtn or a miscarriage, are pregnant, having problems conceiving, have given birth, or are an observant Jew.
I came across this story thanks to Andrea Mrozek at ProWomanProLife. It's "well-written," but the author seems completely lacking in self-awareness. For example, she doesn't indicate that she knows how much she despises her ex-boyfriend. The story is so shocking, I noticed only when I read it a second time.
Here's an experiment. Go through the article and note every time she says something disparaging about the man with whom she "created" ("creation" is her word) a baby. ("Baby" is also her word.) It makes me wonder if he suspected that she despised him when they were together.
There are two victims in the story. One is the living being ("a Jewish embryo") who was killed during Passover. One is "Josh."
I am hanging onto a hope that the story is fictional. Meanwhile, I am not looking for comments about the baby, who (if the story is non-fiction) is dead now, and hopefully died very quickly, at a very early stage, without much pain or any fear. I want your thoughts on the author and Josh.
If you are an observant Jew, and you can bear to talk about this story, I would be interested to know what you think of the author's juxtaposition of Jewish religious traditions and imagery with her, um, surgical procedure.
I know men will find this story shocking and distressing, too, but girls only in the combox, please.
I came across this story thanks to Andrea Mrozek at ProWomanProLife. It's "well-written," but the author seems completely lacking in self-awareness. For example, she doesn't indicate that she knows how much she despises her ex-boyfriend. The story is so shocking, I noticed only when I read it a second time.
Here's an experiment. Go through the article and note every time she says something disparaging about the man with whom she "created" ("creation" is her word) a baby. ("Baby" is also her word.) It makes me wonder if he suspected that she despised him when they were together.
There are two victims in the story. One is the living being ("a Jewish embryo") who was killed during Passover. One is "Josh."
I am hanging onto a hope that the story is fictional. Meanwhile, I am not looking for comments about the baby, who (if the story is non-fiction) is dead now, and hopefully died very quickly, at a very early stage, without much pain or any fear. I want your thoughts on the author and Josh.
If you are an observant Jew, and you can bear to talk about this story, I would be interested to know what you think of the author's juxtaposition of Jewish religious traditions and imagery with her, um, surgical procedure.
I know men will find this story shocking and distressing, too, but girls only in the combox, please.
Saturday, 18 August 2012
TV is a Big, Fat Liar
Married life seems to involve a lot of TV-watching. After a long day of preserving his nation's heritage and fostering its intellectual and artistic advance, B.A. comes home and flops down before the telly. Incidentally, he says I may go to night school if I want to. I said, "That's not the point. I see you only in the evenings."
On the other hand, mostly in the evenings I see him watching the telly, ha ha ha. Night school!
Anyway, I watch more TV than I did when I was Single. When I was Single I either didn't have a TV or I lived with my parents, and I hated their shows. They seemed to watch a lot of shows with yelling and screaming and bad things happening to bad people and good people finding their mangled corpses at the crime scene. I could just stomach Bones but not Buffy. Definitely not Buffy. House was okay.
Many American shows make it over to the UK. Among them are The Big Bang Theory, which I like, and Two Broke Girls, which I loathe.
I like The Big Bang Theory because it is about scientists, and it makes math and science seem cool and adventurous while poking gentle fun at boyish obsessions with comic books and sci-fi shows. Dr. Sheldon Cooper is a great comic character, and as far as I can determine, he is celibate. Okay, his celibacy is presented as a facet of his weirdness, but at least someone on TV is not obsessed with sex.
Two Broke Girls is obsessed with sex, and in a particularly nasty way. A week ago, it featured the protagonists being crudely propositioned by two Orthodox Jewish boys at a bar mitzvah party. (The boys even throw money at them. It is suddenly okay again to portray Jews like this?) Last night it featured at least three one night stands and, if I get this right, Alex having sex with a prison guard as a bribe so Caroline will be allowed to visit her imprisoned father. Ha, ha.
Alex doesn't believe in love, as she tells the "one night stand" who recognizes her at the prison. She doesn't recognize him; he has her face tattooed to his chest. Alex is supposed to be super-cool, the practical, straight-talking one. But, actually, women who don't believe in love and have a lot of one-night stands aren't cool or practical. Their behaviour is dangerous, physically and mentally unhealthy and not worthy of emulation.
Nobody can tell me that "it's just TV" so I shouldn't worry about this. But Sex & the City was also just TV, and I have seen young women in Edinburgh, four abreast, striding tipsily along as if to invisible choirs singing "Here Come the Girls...", as drunk on Girl Power as they were on vodka.
I've seen Scotswoman of two generations thronging in Paisley airport on their way to hen parties in Ibizia wearing tiny outfits, T-shirts proclaiming their sexual availability, and...um....phallic accessories. They did not get their fashion sense from either John Calvin or Alexander McCall Smith.
And when the dumped, furious English girl on a documentary about English girls in Ibizia said, "Women should have sex just like men," she was quoting Sex & the City, Season 1, Episode 1. Where she got her subsequent expression, "pump and dump", I haven't the slightest idea, although if I were her mother I would be ashamed.
Actually, I don't have to be her mother. I am ashamed that women now say things like that on television. Call me retro, but I think it is one of Woman's earthly tasks to keep men at least somewhat civilized, and how is that possible when legions of women are acting like complete barbarians themselves? Chaste women used to sneer and isolate unchaste women for a reason, and that reason was that unchaste women were (and are) a serious threat to social order. Not just THE social order, which admittedly might be a terribly unjust one, but SOCIAL ORDER itself.*
Okay, so maybe chaste women took things too far. After all, Our Lord did go and talk to that polyandrous woman who was all by herself at the well. Of course, he was not showing by this that polyandry was okay, but that He loves everyone and calls whomever He calls to follow Him.
Polyandry (or serial monogamy, as it is misleadingly called) is not okay. One night stands are not okay. They're not funny. They're sad. They're dangerous. The more men a woman has sex with, the more likely she is to contract HPV, a very common, sexually transmitted virus which male carriers cannot be tested for, which can destroy your fertility and which is the cause of cervical cancer.
Condoms do not seem to protect against HPV, which is no doubt why health authorities are so interested in innoculating 15 year olds against it. And why all women who have been sexually active should have Pap smears every two years or so.
I find it terribly ironic that the cancer Samantha in Sex & the City came down with was breast cancer. She was haunted by the thought that it may have been caused by her rampant promiscuity, so she is vastly relieved to find a nun in her oncologist's waiting room. Sex does not result in cancer, is what we are told. But, actually, it can.
Alex supposedly so cool; Sheldon is supposedly a freak. But I know who I'd rather be. The more Alex indulges her libido, the less happy she is likely to be. To be happy, all Sheldon has to do is stare at a mathematical equation. Now that's cool.
*And, yes, so are unchaste men, and it is a hallmark of the suspension of civility, i.e. war, when large numbers of men just start looting and raping or queuing outside brothels.
On the other hand, mostly in the evenings I see him watching the telly, ha ha ha. Night school!
Anyway, I watch more TV than I did when I was Single. When I was Single I either didn't have a TV or I lived with my parents, and I hated their shows. They seemed to watch a lot of shows with yelling and screaming and bad things happening to bad people and good people finding their mangled corpses at the crime scene. I could just stomach Bones but not Buffy. Definitely not Buffy. House was okay.
Many American shows make it over to the UK. Among them are The Big Bang Theory, which I like, and Two Broke Girls, which I loathe.
I like The Big Bang Theory because it is about scientists, and it makes math and science seem cool and adventurous while poking gentle fun at boyish obsessions with comic books and sci-fi shows. Dr. Sheldon Cooper is a great comic character, and as far as I can determine, he is celibate. Okay, his celibacy is presented as a facet of his weirdness, but at least someone on TV is not obsessed with sex.
Two Broke Girls is obsessed with sex, and in a particularly nasty way. A week ago, it featured the protagonists being crudely propositioned by two Orthodox Jewish boys at a bar mitzvah party. (The boys even throw money at them. It is suddenly okay again to portray Jews like this?) Last night it featured at least three one night stands and, if I get this right, Alex having sex with a prison guard as a bribe so Caroline will be allowed to visit her imprisoned father. Ha, ha.
Alex doesn't believe in love, as she tells the "one night stand" who recognizes her at the prison. She doesn't recognize him; he has her face tattooed to his chest. Alex is supposed to be super-cool, the practical, straight-talking one. But, actually, women who don't believe in love and have a lot of one-night stands aren't cool or practical. Their behaviour is dangerous, physically and mentally unhealthy and not worthy of emulation.
Nobody can tell me that "it's just TV" so I shouldn't worry about this. But Sex & the City was also just TV, and I have seen young women in Edinburgh, four abreast, striding tipsily along as if to invisible choirs singing "Here Come the Girls...", as drunk on Girl Power as they were on vodka.
I've seen Scotswoman of two generations thronging in Paisley airport on their way to hen parties in Ibizia wearing tiny outfits, T-shirts proclaiming their sexual availability, and...um....phallic accessories. They did not get their fashion sense from either John Calvin or Alexander McCall Smith.
And when the dumped, furious English girl on a documentary about English girls in Ibizia said, "Women should have sex just like men," she was quoting Sex & the City, Season 1, Episode 1. Where she got her subsequent expression, "pump and dump", I haven't the slightest idea, although if I were her mother I would be ashamed.
Actually, I don't have to be her mother. I am ashamed that women now say things like that on television. Call me retro, but I think it is one of Woman's earthly tasks to keep men at least somewhat civilized, and how is that possible when legions of women are acting like complete barbarians themselves? Chaste women used to sneer and isolate unchaste women for a reason, and that reason was that unchaste women were (and are) a serious threat to social order. Not just THE social order, which admittedly might be a terribly unjust one, but SOCIAL ORDER itself.*
Okay, so maybe chaste women took things too far. After all, Our Lord did go and talk to that polyandrous woman who was all by herself at the well. Of course, he was not showing by this that polyandry was okay, but that He loves everyone and calls whomever He calls to follow Him.
Polyandry (or serial monogamy, as it is misleadingly called) is not okay. One night stands are not okay. They're not funny. They're sad. They're dangerous. The more men a woman has sex with, the more likely she is to contract HPV, a very common, sexually transmitted virus which male carriers cannot be tested for, which can destroy your fertility and which is the cause of cervical cancer.
Condoms do not seem to protect against HPV, which is no doubt why health authorities are so interested in innoculating 15 year olds against it. And why all women who have been sexually active should have Pap smears every two years or so.
I find it terribly ironic that the cancer Samantha in Sex & the City came down with was breast cancer. She was haunted by the thought that it may have been caused by her rampant promiscuity, so she is vastly relieved to find a nun in her oncologist's waiting room. Sex does not result in cancer, is what we are told. But, actually, it can.
Alex supposedly so cool; Sheldon is supposedly a freak. But I know who I'd rather be. The more Alex indulges her libido, the less happy she is likely to be. To be happy, all Sheldon has to do is stare at a mathematical equation. Now that's cool.
*And, yes, so are unchaste men, and it is a hallmark of the suspension of civility, i.e. war, when large numbers of men just start looting and raping or queuing outside brothels.
Monday, 6 August 2012
A Change in Attitude
By the time I was 27, I was an angry little camper, people. I remember telling Shrink darling how much I hated men. Shrinkie thought this meant I had a problem with my father and my brothers. I told her that no, I hated all men EXCEPT my father and my brothers. This did not fly with what Shrinkie learned at shrink school, but it was true. Well, almost true. I didn't hate my boxing coach. I adored my boxing coach, who was a hoot, and I think fondly of him to this day.
So why did poor little Seraphic (age 27) hate (most) men so much, eh? Could it have anything to do with the row of Andrea Dworkin books on the shelf in her bachelor apartment? Maybe. But it probably had more to do with 17 years of disappointment with male behaviour.
Dwelling on disappointment with male behaviour goes against my philosophy of Seraphic Singleness, so I will be brief.
First, I had the really bad luck of being in a toxic elementary school environment. Two or three of the boys in my class were sexually precocious (why?) and from about the fifth grade on (which means from when they were ten) they were the model for many of the other boys in my class. I read a lot, so I knew that our faith disapproved of ten year old boys making out with girls behind the school, and was shocked that they and their chosen girls did.
But that was innocent compared to what followed as we all got older, which was sexualized name-calling and, not to put too fine a point on it, sexual attacks. A number of girls were deemed worthy of groping, including mass gropings; oddly, these were the "popular" girls. Fortunately for me, I was not popular. (The paradox of good fortune in not being popular still blows my mind.)
Classically, I didn't say anything to anyone about all this until my sister reached fifth grade, and then I went to see the (male) principal.
Second, the (male) principal said, "Boys will be boys" and "It's all part of growing up."
(In contrast to the principal was the school custodian who actually caught one of the boys with his hands up one of the girls' tops, and he was outraged. He grabbed the malefactor--definitely not the worst offender--and, shouting, roughly led him off to the feckless principal. How sad that our custodian caught him in Grade 8, not Grade 5.)
Third, my (male) Grade 7 teacher made sexist little jokes about girls all the time and blamed us girls for the boys' bad behaviour towards us.
It was about then that I learned about feminism and started to read feminist stuff, which confused me because although feminists were so sensible about some things, they really hated the Pope and Catholicism in general. Whenever a feminist journo mentioned JP 2 she sounded like a lunatic.
(In contrast to my sexist Grade 7 teacher was Stan the Bus Driver. I cannot remember Stan ever saying anything pro-woman in general, but just the memory of Stan brings back safe and happy feelings. Possibly Stan was really good at suppressing bullies on the bus. Hmm. I see that the two most stellar men of my elementary school were the janitor and the bus driver, not the teachers or principal.)
Graduating from elementary school and going to to all-girls high school brought a welcome relief from witnessing the sexual violence of children. However, adolescence brought all the disappointments of unrequited love, which I suffered probably every day. And I do mean every day. In fact, I think I had a crush on someone from the ages of seven to twenty-five without a day's rest. But it was the worst in high school.
I did rather better, socially speaking, in university where, I now realize, I was a heartbreaking menace, the rose-stem chomping bane of Nice Catholic Boys (well, a few of them anyway). But, unfortunately for him and me, I married Mr Protestant Totally Wrong, and that was a total nightmare and led to being divorced at 27, reading Andrea Dworkin and weeping on Shrinkie's couch.
I forget what train of thought led to this exercise, which I wrote about in My Book, but one day when I was sitting about being angry at men, and simultaneously attracted to men, which is definitely hard on the brain, I wrote out a list of everything bad I believed about men. And then beside all the bad things, I wrote the exact opposite, e.g. "Most men would rape if they could get away with it."/"Most men are horrified by rape, and in fact men have enacted laws against it."
And looking at my list, I realized that the opposite list was probably more true than the first list. And when I made that leap of faith, I stopped hating men.
If you are a Lesbian separatist, your life will still be made poorer by hating men, but at least it will be consistent. But if you are an ordinary woman like most women, a woman who wants to get married to a man and is open to having male children, hating men is going to seriously mess you up.
I understand why it is easy to hate men. All you have to do is read the crime pages or see yet another photo of a missing child on a milk container or read an account of the civil wars in Yugoslavia or hear about what happened to your great-aunt when the Russians invaded in 1945. All you have to do is hold a friend's hand as she cries because that man she had a crush on for so long used her and tossed her aside like a tissue. All you have to do is think about what bad stuff has happened to you. Soooooo easy to hate men. So tempting. But a seriously bad idea.
It is a seriously bad idea because if you get into the mental habit of hating men--and I know you might have very compelling reasons for doing so--you are not going to be able to see good men or the good in men who sometimes annoy you. The bad stuff will get blown way out of proportion. And so will the stuff that other women find only moderately annoying.
Benedict Ambrose and I almost blew it the first day we met. I tumbled off the bus from London, exhausted and jet-lagged. I demanded a meat pie and a pint of ale. So B.A. led me out of the bus station to a nearby pub. On the way there, I saw a man emerge from an alley with a bloody nose. I stopped to rummage in my handbag for a package of tissues. B.A., however, put his hand on my back and propelled me into the pub.
Now, I happen to hate pushy male behaviour. I like having the door opened for me, but I don't like being pushed through it. I like country dancing, but thanks to Mr Totally Wrong, I loathe being pushed and pulled around a dance floor.* So I was inclined to think that B.A. was One of THOSE Guys. But then, probably thanks to the Holy Spirit, I decided to trust that B.A. had a good reason for his masterful hand-on-the-back routine. And actually he did because B.A. knew, as exhausted I did not, that Mr Bloody Nose was in the middle of a street fight.**
It would have been so easy, though, were I still in the habit of finding wrong in whatever odd thing men did, just to sit in the pub resenting B.A. for his masterly behaviour. And indeed if I wanted to I could now mentally list all the annoying male stuff B.A. does, and that our males friends do, and sift through any evidence that they might not really like women, and then ponder the crap some Catholic men write about women on the internet, and the fact that I was once a rising star of my theology school and now couldn't take up the collection at Mass without causing mass hysteria. In short, I could make myself miserable and mentally and spiritually cut myself off from men.
And I don't want to do that because, all together now, men are the caffeine in the cappuccino of life. Sure, you can live without them, to a certain extent--Christian women don't want to live without Our Lord who was, scandal to the post-Christian feminist theologians, a man as well as God--but do you really want to?
And if you don't want to live without men, you must seriously ask yourself if you are giving off vibes that say that you do.
Note: Changing your fundamental philosophical/emotional orientation towards men-in-general does not mean ignoring the evils that follow upon fallen masculinity and fallen femininity. It means refusing to let them to dominate your life in any way, including mentally. It means refusing to hate people,no matter what as much as you are able. (I edited this because in fact I hate rapists. And I mean rapists, not seducers. Seducers are not my favourite people in the universe, but at them I merely sneer. Rapists I hate. I am nowhere near a level of spirituality where I can love the rapist and hate his rape. Uh uh.) It means neither pessimism nor optimism but caritas.
*Obviously I still have mental work to do so that I can stop thinking partner dancing is somehow connected with male tyranny. Thousands upon thousands of men and women just enjoy partner dancing without thinking of it as men pushing women around. Possibly I should pay Alisha $60 an hour for pro-dancing psychotherapy.
**When in doubt about male behaviour that troubles or confuses you, ASK. You can always begin with a neutral, friendly, "Out of curiosity, why did you...?" Listen carefully to the answer. Deduct points for "It was your fault" if it clearly wasn't. Actually, I think I am going to ask men friends pay me a fine of 10 p every time they tell me something is my fault. It will be like a swear jar.
So why did poor little Seraphic (age 27) hate (most) men so much, eh? Could it have anything to do with the row of Andrea Dworkin books on the shelf in her bachelor apartment? Maybe. But it probably had more to do with 17 years of disappointment with male behaviour.
Dwelling on disappointment with male behaviour goes against my philosophy of Seraphic Singleness, so I will be brief.
First, I had the really bad luck of being in a toxic elementary school environment. Two or three of the boys in my class were sexually precocious (why?) and from about the fifth grade on (which means from when they were ten) they were the model for many of the other boys in my class. I read a lot, so I knew that our faith disapproved of ten year old boys making out with girls behind the school, and was shocked that they and their chosen girls did.
But that was innocent compared to what followed as we all got older, which was sexualized name-calling and, not to put too fine a point on it, sexual attacks. A number of girls were deemed worthy of groping, including mass gropings; oddly, these were the "popular" girls. Fortunately for me, I was not popular. (The paradox of good fortune in not being popular still blows my mind.)
Classically, I didn't say anything to anyone about all this until my sister reached fifth grade, and then I went to see the (male) principal.
Second, the (male) principal said, "Boys will be boys" and "It's all part of growing up."
(In contrast to the principal was the school custodian who actually caught one of the boys with his hands up one of the girls' tops, and he was outraged. He grabbed the malefactor--definitely not the worst offender--and, shouting, roughly led him off to the feckless principal. How sad that our custodian caught him in Grade 8, not Grade 5.)
Third, my (male) Grade 7 teacher made sexist little jokes about girls all the time and blamed us girls for the boys' bad behaviour towards us.
It was about then that I learned about feminism and started to read feminist stuff, which confused me because although feminists were so sensible about some things, they really hated the Pope and Catholicism in general. Whenever a feminist journo mentioned JP 2 she sounded like a lunatic.
(In contrast to my sexist Grade 7 teacher was Stan the Bus Driver. I cannot remember Stan ever saying anything pro-woman in general, but just the memory of Stan brings back safe and happy feelings. Possibly Stan was really good at suppressing bullies on the bus. Hmm. I see that the two most stellar men of my elementary school were the janitor and the bus driver, not the teachers or principal.)
Graduating from elementary school and going to to all-girls high school brought a welcome relief from witnessing the sexual violence of children. However, adolescence brought all the disappointments of unrequited love, which I suffered probably every day. And I do mean every day. In fact, I think I had a crush on someone from the ages of seven to twenty-five without a day's rest. But it was the worst in high school.
I did rather better, socially speaking, in university where, I now realize, I was a heartbreaking menace, the rose-stem chomping bane of Nice Catholic Boys (well, a few of them anyway). But, unfortunately for him and me, I married Mr Protestant Totally Wrong, and that was a total nightmare and led to being divorced at 27, reading Andrea Dworkin and weeping on Shrinkie's couch.
I forget what train of thought led to this exercise, which I wrote about in My Book, but one day when I was sitting about being angry at men, and simultaneously attracted to men, which is definitely hard on the brain, I wrote out a list of everything bad I believed about men. And then beside all the bad things, I wrote the exact opposite, e.g. "Most men would rape if they could get away with it."/"Most men are horrified by rape, and in fact men have enacted laws against it."
And looking at my list, I realized that the opposite list was probably more true than the first list. And when I made that leap of faith, I stopped hating men.
If you are a Lesbian separatist, your life will still be made poorer by hating men, but at least it will be consistent. But if you are an ordinary woman like most women, a woman who wants to get married to a man and is open to having male children, hating men is going to seriously mess you up.
I understand why it is easy to hate men. All you have to do is read the crime pages or see yet another photo of a missing child on a milk container or read an account of the civil wars in Yugoslavia or hear about what happened to your great-aunt when the Russians invaded in 1945. All you have to do is hold a friend's hand as she cries because that man she had a crush on for so long used her and tossed her aside like a tissue. All you have to do is think about what bad stuff has happened to you. Soooooo easy to hate men. So tempting. But a seriously bad idea.
It is a seriously bad idea because if you get into the mental habit of hating men--and I know you might have very compelling reasons for doing so--you are not going to be able to see good men or the good in men who sometimes annoy you. The bad stuff will get blown way out of proportion. And so will the stuff that other women find only moderately annoying.
Benedict Ambrose and I almost blew it the first day we met. I tumbled off the bus from London, exhausted and jet-lagged. I demanded a meat pie and a pint of ale. So B.A. led me out of the bus station to a nearby pub. On the way there, I saw a man emerge from an alley with a bloody nose. I stopped to rummage in my handbag for a package of tissues. B.A., however, put his hand on my back and propelled me into the pub.
Now, I happen to hate pushy male behaviour. I like having the door opened for me, but I don't like being pushed through it. I like country dancing, but thanks to Mr Totally Wrong, I loathe being pushed and pulled around a dance floor.* So I was inclined to think that B.A. was One of THOSE Guys. But then, probably thanks to the Holy Spirit, I decided to trust that B.A. had a good reason for his masterful hand-on-the-back routine. And actually he did because B.A. knew, as exhausted I did not, that Mr Bloody Nose was in the middle of a street fight.**
It would have been so easy, though, were I still in the habit of finding wrong in whatever odd thing men did, just to sit in the pub resenting B.A. for his masterly behaviour. And indeed if I wanted to I could now mentally list all the annoying male stuff B.A. does, and that our males friends do, and sift through any evidence that they might not really like women, and then ponder the crap some Catholic men write about women on the internet, and the fact that I was once a rising star of my theology school and now couldn't take up the collection at Mass without causing mass hysteria. In short, I could make myself miserable and mentally and spiritually cut myself off from men.
And I don't want to do that because, all together now, men are the caffeine in the cappuccino of life. Sure, you can live without them, to a certain extent--Christian women don't want to live without Our Lord who was, scandal to the post-Christian feminist theologians, a man as well as God--but do you really want to?
And if you don't want to live without men, you must seriously ask yourself if you are giving off vibes that say that you do.
Note: Changing your fundamental philosophical/emotional orientation towards men-in-general does not mean ignoring the evils that follow upon fallen masculinity and fallen femininity. It means refusing to let them to dominate your life in any way, including mentally. It means refusing to hate people,
*Obviously I still have mental work to do so that I can stop thinking partner dancing is somehow connected with male tyranny. Thousands upon thousands of men and women just enjoy partner dancing without thinking of it as men pushing women around. Possibly I should pay Alisha $60 an hour for pro-dancing psychotherapy.
**When in doubt about male behaviour that troubles or confuses you, ASK. You can always begin with a neutral, friendly, "Out of curiosity, why did you...?" Listen carefully to the answer. Deduct points for "It was your fault" if it clearly wasn't. Actually, I think I am going to ask men friends pay me a fine of 10 p every time they tell me something is my fault. It will be like a swear jar.
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