Three Strikes–You’re Female
I finished re-reading Sarah Dessen’s Dreamland, and I’ve been reading Crompton & Kessner’s Saving Beauty From The Beast. Both center on an issue that doesn’t get much airtime–”domestic” violence against teen girls by their boyfriends. Since the Princess is heading into preteenhood (I know it’s not a word) I want to know all I can about the warning signs, not from inside this dynamic, (I pretty much have those down after a bunch of bad relationships and therapy) but as a parent.
I don’t know why we think high school is insulated from (gender-based) violence. We’re shown every day that it’s not. I’m not talking about gangs at school or hazing, both violent in their own right. I’m talking about the daily warfare, the daily risk you run by having mammaries and female organs in this society. We’re soaked in that danger literally from the time we’re born.
This isn’t a feminist rant. This is a parent’s rant. I had boyfriends who beat me up and stalked me in high school. I’m not sure my parents ever grasped the nature of the problem. Of course I had punches I had to roll with at home, too. I was disposable.
Sometimes I get so sick of being At Risk just because I have ovaries. The world is full of peril, and a lot of men in America, though sweet and nice enough, don’t understand the pressure of being literally under attack and/or seen as worthless/second class from the moment you’re born, because you’re born female. (It’s like the first strike against you, and God help you if you’re also brown-skinned or poor, too. Those are strikes two and three.) And the worst thing is, this is so implicit, it’s taken for granted that girls are virgins until they’re whores, that marriage is the highest good, that a girl has to belong to someone, that a boy can stalk the crap out of her and it’s “love” worthy of a pop song or movie. (My essay in Nothing But Red, originally titled Rape As A Property Crime and ending up as Half Of Humanity Is Worth Less Than A Chair, is all about this, so I’ll just Move On now. Because the next subject ties in. Let’s move on.)
I hate to point this out, but I was covering the fundamentalist polygamist Mormons years ago for StoryHunters. It’s no secret that these middle-aged, male religious-cult leaders have been providing themselves with teenage harems. It’s what middle-aged male religious-cult-leading bigots DO. I’m sure that’s a major attraction for becoming a middle-aged religious-cult-leading bigot.
It took long enough for someone to do something about it. But the press coverage…dear sweet Mother Mary in a jumped-up chariot-driven sidecar.
Here’s a little memo to the press: Will you guys stop f!cking going on about the hairstyles and dresses those women are forced to wear and start talking about WHY THIS WAS ALLOWED TO GO ON, ON AMERICAN SOIL, FOR YEARS AND YEARS? There are infant graveyards. Thousands of teenage boys thrown out so the older men can get clutches of young wives. Malnutrition. Child sexual abuse. Murder.
And the MSM is fixated on the goddamn hairstyles. I.e., “this doesn’t really matter, because it’s happening to women.”
God.
Yes. Damn right I’m angry. We all should be angry over this one. When a guy “marries” four or five teenagers and gets them knocked up, he’s a bigamist. And guilty of statutory rape. Why should his “religion” exempt him from the law against rape, statutory rape, and child abuse? I mean, I’m all for a dialogue between the people and the law, since the law is the servant of the people. I’m just not for child abuse being sanctioned or overlooked by the law. Which is essentially what we’ve got, with these fundie Mormon polygynist asshats.
I might feel a little bit different if the women could have several husbands each. But then, you know, if that happened, the cult probably would have never gotten off the ground or had a blind eye turned to it.
And the press is fixated on their hairstyles. Not to mention an HBO show glamorizing this sort of thing. Because if it deals with rape and oppression, it must be chic! Women don’t really mind! Hell, they like it! It’s on TV!
I’d better stop before some jerkwad thinks those last four sentences aren’t sarcasm. Or before I blow a blood vessel. Whichever comes first.
Jesus-please-us. This is why I stopped doing the religion-news blogging. I was in serious danger of having a coronary. And, you know, I started getting work elsewhere. But that’s another story.
Related posts:
