Wednesday, June 15, 2005

There Are No Holy Places and No Holy Hours


Last night we went to South Street with Hope to have dinner and shop for art supplies. On the way home, we began to talk about the girl who disappeared in Aruba. "Didn't she go off on her own with those guys?" asked Darvin? When we said, "Yes," he replied, "Well then she doesn't really deserve any sympathy. That was a REALLY stupid thing to do."

As we continued to talk, I could feel myself becoming angrier and angrier--this whole "blame the victim" mentality makes me insane. Yes, I KNOW that she was stupid to go off with three strange men--I would kill the girls myself if they did something that idiotic--but at the same time, it feels like everytime we do this--blame the woman for going off with someone, or for wearing certain clothes or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time--then we let the men off the hook for their behavior. It's as though we're saying, "Well, we understand that if presented with the temptation of a woman alone, it's of course understandable that you would rape and/or kill her." I know that's not what Darvin meant, but to me it feels that way. So we were in a fight for the rest of the evening.

I know that this is my issue, trying to resolve my little girl self who was in no way responsible for her molestation with my grown-up self who can provide her own protection and make her own good decisions. There's the little girl part of me who wants the world to be a good place where people do the right thing and don't hurt others. And there's the adult part of me who KNOWS that there's evil in the world and that you have to protect yourself from that.

"There are no holy places and no holy hours," reminds me that in the end, there's nothing sacred about any of us when we are faced with evil. Evil doesn't recognize life or the integrity of another person as sacred. In fact, it hates those things and seeks to destroy them. I can wish with all my little girl heart for life to be different, but it's not. That's a really depressing world view that I hate to have to adopt.  Posted by Hello

1 comment:

Brooks said...

Powerful.