Edinburgh in Safety

I seem to have lost a day. I want to refer to the day I flew back from Canada as yesterday, but apparently it was the day before yesterday.  Well, on February 15, I wandered about my parents' spacious, high-ceilinged, non-attic home moaning, "Two weeks is not enough. I don't want to go back to Scotland. I want to stay with you guys"

"We need you," said my father, "but [Benedict Ambrose] needs you more."

As B.A. had told me of a healthy supper that consisted of pork pies chopped up on a bed of salad leaves, I had to agree. So off I went to Scotland. B.A. met my train from Glasgow and we went straight to the Brew Lab for brunch. The excellence of the cappuccino, plus the merry face of B.A., reconciled me to the end of my holiday. And when I returned to the Historical House, I discovered that the kitchen was tidy, that the endless miles of carpet were hoovered, that there were bright tulips in the sitting-room and that B.A. had got me a very pretty Valentine's Day present. I have to admit that I have a very nice husband.

Someone asked me today about the safety of the area around Edinburgh's Haymarket railway station, and I have to admit that when I think about railway stations in other parts of Europe, Haymarket is a virtual paradise. However, as I have witnessed (if not always experienced) a dozen anti-social acts in Edinburgh, I do have a few safety tips for visitors and newbies.

1. If you are a tourist, stay in the tourist zone. Do not go out into the peripheries (e.g. Newcraighall). If you really want to go to Portobello Beach by bus, take a book so that it is hard for anyone mischievous to catch your eye. Make sure the book is in English. Most Edinburghers are kindly people, equally able to mind their own business as they are exchange pleasant remarks in a witty fashion  and, above all, willing to accept that other people aren't exactly like them. But others are not. The fact that you are in any way different enrages some people, and these people tend to live in the peripheries. Because they hate their circumstances themselves, they assume that you are judging them, which is a capital crime. (N.B. Talking to strangers is a trait of Scots throughout Scotland's Central Belt.)

2. Avoid large groups of noisy (and therefore drunk) people, be they male or female or both, on the street, bus or train. If, however, this is impossible (e.g. on the train), do not betray an ounce of hostility or judgement. Smiling tolerance and witty comebacks is the way to go. Keep your distance, but never ignore the cheerful remark of a drunk Scot on a train. Respond cheerfully. If attacked by children, however, feel free to scold them. In the approved tourist areas, all the adults will be on your side. On the peripheries, most adults will be on your side, even if you are foreign. See #1.

Yesterday a presumably sober young Scot addressed B.A. and I on the train while he scooped caramel-chocolate spread onto chocolate chip cookies. He informed us of the greatness of his feast. I said, "A short life but a merry." He made some non-committal reply and that was the end of it. In hindsight, that was a bit judgey, but my banter skills were rusty and it was the first thing that came to mind. I point this out merely to underscore the willingness of Scots to address strangers and their assumption that strangers have the politeness to answer them. Not answering at all is considered aggressive. 

I will never forget how B.A. dealt so beautifully and cleverly with a drunk on the bus. This guy was opening drinking from the neck of a bottle of wine. He also had an audience of chippy class warriors delighted that their drunk acquaintance was ragging a man wearing a tie. (It was a Sunday and we were returning home from church.) B.A. matched him witticism for witticism, deftly introducing working-class Scots vocabulary from his childhood into the conversation. Thus, he won over the crowd and the drunk.

Lord, this city can be exhausting.

3. You know nothing about football (soccer), unless you really are interested in football, in which case your team is never a Scottish one, and you don't care about it THAT much. This is particularly important if you are male between the ages of 6 and 50. One of my more frightening trips by train involved a group of feisty Glasgow boys trying to get up an argument with my youngest--and Scottish-looking--brother about football. When they discovered he was Canadian and knew only about ice-hockey, they decided to leave him alone. 

4. If you think a stranger's behaviour is intolerable, disgusting, a scandal to their innocent children, etc., be sure to tell them that--if you have a black belt in karate. If you don't have a black belt in karate, don't tell them. See #1.

5. Keep your voice down in public. Americans and Canadians are intolerably loud. Really. I used to think it was just Americans, but Canadians also speak uncomfortably loudly in public. It is seriously annoying to British people and me. If you talk too loudly and too long in a non-Scottish accent, you risk some aggravated Scot telling you to shut up. This has happened even to B.A., for he is frequently mistaken for English. 

6. If you are female and you walk into a pub alone, a man will start talking to you. The danger is not that he will magically seduce you. The danger is that he will bore you to death. 

7. Some Scottish accents are really difficult to understand, which is rather a problem when you need to make a quick and witty comeback or just prove that you are a polite, non-hostile individual or understand what your taxi cab driver just said. Therefore, I recommend that you watch Trainspotting (Update: fast-forwarding through the sex scenes*), The Legend of Barney Thomson and any other films featuring unabashedly strong Scottish accents beforehand, so as to educate your ear. These films will scare the heck out of you, of course. See #1.

8. Never take a mini-cab. If you get into a car driven by a stranger, make sure it is a proper black taxi cab that you have called for or found at a taxi rank. (You can't always depend on flagging down a cab on the street. Your best bet is to find a taxi rank.) There is a kind of man to be found throughout the UK who thinks white women, or any women out after dark alone, deserve whatever they get--from insults to rape--especially if these women are drunk. Unfortunately, some of these men become Uber drivers.

One of the most bizarre and uncomfortable British problems nobody "nice" likes to talk about is the "all white women are sluts" libel to be found in certain (but not all) immigrant communities in the UK. This is not a big problem in Edinburgh, where the number one threat to safety is a drunk offended ethnic Scot of either sex, but it is something to keep in the back of your mind, especially when encountering other foreign (especially England-born) tourists and/or students. 

9. Do not be drunk in public alone, especially if you are female. This is good advice for the whole world, actually. 

10. Compared to the rest of Europe, Edinburgh's railway stations are paradise.

Update 1: True confession: I haven't seen all of Trainspotting because I hate violent films. I've read the book.  Reader Juliana says there are sex scenes, and I don't remember sex scenes in the book. The language will indeed be bad. The language of the peripheries is bad. (The language on British TV is bad, too.) Since you are going to avoid the peripheries, maybe you should avoid Trainspotting and find the Inspector Rebus TV series instead. The point is to see Scottish films in which the accent hasn't been watered down for foreign distribution. You want Scottish films to which producers have had to add sub-titles. The drawback is that such films are usually, er, dark. Local Hero is safe for children, but unfortunately the protagonist is American, so it's not the best for ear-training.

Update 2: More on Aggressive Friendliness. One of the most extreme forms of aggressive friendliness is being handed a beer by a group of happy drunks on their way between Glasgow or Motherwell and Edinburgh. Naturally women should not accept drinks from strangers ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE OPEN. Have an excuse ready so you can turn down the drink with grace. In general, Glaswegians are more aggressively friendly than Edinburgher. Thus, Glaswegians often think Edinburghers are stuck-up snobs, and Edinburghers often think Glaswegians are overfamiliar, vulgar or crazy. If you are from New York or Boston, all this Scottish bonhomerie may delight you, of course.

Crazy "Trads" and Professional Selfies

Warning: frank thought about p*rn*graphers' interest in dress for Catholic women.

We live in very strange times. Not long ago I was in a conversation about the options open to a Catholic teacher at a Catholic school who finds himself with a male student who identifies as female and wants to be addressed by a made-up female name. The secular world doesn't even blink at such stuff, so it is interesting that it finds this weirdo completely objectionable.

Of course, people in Extraordinary Form of the Mass circles have been circulating warnings about the man for some time. A big part of his danger for innocent (and perhaps naive) people in the Catholic traditionalist movement is that he called his organization (or business) "The Latin Mass Society". This, of course, was confused with England's Latin Mass Society.  Clearly you do not want your daughters to come under the influence of Mr P*rlas. 

I find it amusing that his models now find  Mr P*rlas objectionable for his new interest in N*zism whereas the traditional Mass societies have been having kittens for years about his fetishistic take on chapel veils, for which he used the same models. To be honest, I probably haven't seen the worst of his photos, for I tend to be dissuaded, not encouraged, by warnings that p*rn lies ahead. But any way you look at it, Mr Perlas's interests are looked at askance by all sorts of people.

What I find most odd about the latest story to come out about Mr P*rlas is that a man of Filipino heritage finds N*zis appealing. Or do I? N*zi aesthetic is (or was) a big deal in Toronto's gay subculture, as it was impossible to ignore if you had to walk past "Northbound Leather" to lectures at the university every day. As Mr P*rlas is an erotic photographer (like Vogue's Helmut Newton, incidentally), it is not surprising that the N*zis get a look-in. What is even odder
 is his take on trad Catholic women.

But again--how odd is that? As a Catholic schoolgirl, I was uncomfortably aware that Catholic schoolgirl uniforms were a turn-on for some men and, indeed, men used to sit in their cars outside my high school around 3 PM to watch our skirts swing down the avenue. From Catholic schoolgirl uniforms to Catholic chapel veils is perhaps not such a jump. Ick.

Oddest of all, Mr P*rlas sees no contradiction between his art and his devotion to the traditional Latin Mass.

What the Fox article cravenly ignores is the very likely possibility that Mr P*rlas is mentally ill. Artists very often are. On the other hand, he could be a socially awkward eccentric. Perhaps he is both. And as much as the traditionalist Catholic community would like to deny that he is a traditionalist Catholic, we cannot ignore the fact that mentally ill people, sexual sinners and socially awkward eccentrics do turn up at Traditional Mass and--incidentally--have souls to save. 

One meets all kinds at the TLM--saints, sinners, pro-SSPX, anti-SSPX, social climbers, working-class heroes, aristos, scientists, conspiracy theorists, toddlers, nonegenarians and the occasional wild-eyed nut. Sometimes the nuttiness of the nut is completely harmless: the absolute conviction he can perceive demons making the choir sing out of tune, for example. Sometimes the  nuttiness is deeply embarrassing: wearing religious habit she has no right to, for example. When the nuttiness is dangerous---well, that's what all the parish safeguarding is about. Safeguarding and medication.

But since Mr P*rlas' models have brought him back to our notice, I am interested in the current craze of self-photography. When I was 20-something and felt Life had given me a kicking, I asked a professional photographer to take photos of me that I could "see" who I was from the outside. The artist disliked "normal" work like weddings, but agreed to take the job, as I was sufficiently weird. (My status as an amateur boxer tipped the balance.) We were interested in my psyche, not my physique, so fortunately these photos were all head shots. I wore unflattering shirts and pullovers. My lips were chapped, my hair was prophetic and I looked the way I felt, which was cranky. I was after Reality, and Reality bit. The photos, however, were artistically very good.  

I didn't tell many people about these pictures because I discovered most people thought the project shockingly vain.  

Ha ha! Skip ahead 20 years and nobody talks about vanity anymore. Facebook is littered with self-portraits and overweight girls on British TV explain they want to lose weight for their "boudoir shoot".  A "boudoir shoot" is an appointment in which a woman pays to dress in lingerie, pose on a bed and be photographed in sexy poses. Do not ask me why because that's my question. 

WHY do women want to be models for Mr Eccentric-or-Mental-Ill-or-Both? WHY do women want to be models at all? In my case, I wanted insight, but what do all these other women want? Do they think it is an easy way to make a living, or are they interested in the art, or what? 

So three things: 

1. Avoid coming into contact with Mr P*rlas unless you are a priest who wants to save his soul.

2. Accept that weirdos hang around the fringes of the traditionalist movement.

3. Examine the growing female interest in self-photography and "being a model." What's up with us?

Update: I find this sentence in the Fox report killingly funny: "Kitty worked with Anthony on a shoot in Ohio.  As was Perlas' style, it was a trade deal.  She got the nudes she wanted for her portfolio and Anthony got his photos of her wearing veils." Apparently the nudes were the normal, respectable part of the matter.

Update 2: I have slapped on the combox moderator to prevent further bizarre spam. Thus, there will be a delay before your comments appear for a bit.

"Lady Columnist"

When I posted my most recent CR column on Facebook, two friends asserted that I was "brave." This reminded me of the time I mentioned the right to life during a "Classics of Christian Spirituality" lecture, and a  male classmate muttered the same thing to me after class. At first I had no idea what he was talking about, but he explained that there had been middle-aged women tutting and sighing at the back of the classroom. However, my thought was that if you can't express pro-life sentiments in a Roman Catholic theology school, where CAN you express them?

The same goes for defending Catholic doctrine on the sacraments in a Catholic newspaper and there comparing our modern laissez-faire attitude regarding sexual sin with the beliefs of the Fatima seers. You would not think that this would shock the Catholic readership, but lo. I have been sneered at on Facebook by someone who feels I have "skipped over Jesus" to focus on "visions and sin." Whoa. Is that how we talk about Fatima now?

Naturally I clicked on my critic's name and discovered that he is a recently retired schoolteacher who is very interested in a number of causes associated with the left. This amuses me, as this stalwart of social justice referred to me as a "lady columnist." Not a columnist, mind you, but a LADY columnist. You know, a conservative or traditionalist Catholic would think twice about using the expression "lady columnist", for fear of being thought sexist.

The feminist revolution swiftly followed the sexual revolution for a reason. I suspect this reason is that men drawn to left-wing causes treated women so much worse than ordinary conservative men who wanted to get married and have kids that women figured that they had nothing left to lose.

Anyway, I suppose "lady columnist" is a relatively minor insult although it certainly grabbed my attention. Of all the aspects of my writing--and I have been writing a biweekly column in that paper for nine years--why focus on my sex?

Is it still unusual for a woman to be a columnist? You would think not, but apparently only 10%-20% of opinion pieces in  "legacy" newspapers are women. This rises to 33% in "new media outlets." There are various theories as to why this is so. I once read somewhere that women don't like putting ourselves out where other people will criticize us. That I can believe. My career more-or-less began with a spirited review of a tome of feminist theology I really hated, and the (female) writer went berserk.

Of course, the reader may have focused on my sex because the column features a (relatively) pretty, nine-years-out-of-date photograph and he's a guy. Maybe not a very intellectual guy because if I were a guy, and I were uncomfortable with something I had written, I would call me a "reactionary" or a "spiritual terrorist who wants to drag us back to the days of dread of God and fear of hell." But on the other hand, what do I know? If I were a guy, I might focus on the pretty photo.

Not that I am anywhere  near the Martha Gellhorn class, but I am reminded of what an amazing journalist she was and how now mostly she is remembered for being Hemingway's third wife. I was thinking about her--and other female war correspondents--when I forced myself to wriggle through thousands of Polish nationalists to confront the one carrying an American flag. As a matter of fact, if you're going to be a foreigner at a right-wing Polish rally, it's a good idea to be female because Poland, for good and ill, is still a chivalrous country. Being a young and pretty female would be ideal, but if you can't swing that, female is enough.

All the same, I was terribly frightened until I faced the chap with the American baseball cap and the American flag and saw that he was, if anything, even more afraid of me. Some tense situation had broken out around him, and so I wriggled back to my de facto bodyguard instead of smiling brightly and asking "Amerykański?"  Thinking about this adventure makes me feel better about being called a "lady columnist" although I wouldn't say I am a tower of physical courage. For one thing, I'm too chicken to learn how to drive. For another, I'd never try to get a story out of makeshift migrant camp in France.

Opposing the Lynch Mob

Sexual assault survivors and otherwise sensitive readers may be disturbed by the themes in this post.

Yesterday my only tasks were to clean the flat, do the shopping and prepare a special supper for a party of eight. It's a miracle I managed them all, for once again I was glued to the internet reaction to the Brock Turner sentencing. Now I'm surprised that I never stumbled across the case when the trial started. Honestly, I had never heard of it until the Victim (as she is called in the police report) read her brilliantly written, heartbreaking testimony to the court and it was published online.

If your first acquaintance with the Brock Turner Story is the Victim's testimony, the story in your head will differ from the story in the heads of those who  read about it from the witness statements the police recorded. No wonder the woman was so traumatized by what she read online. I read the police reports yesterday, and they were metaphorically soaked in urine and booze. Cheap and nasty booze.

The party the Victim went to was in a frat house, named in the official report, and having read this report I now understand why Turner and Turner's dad emphasized the college culture of booze and promiscuity.  That said, the fact that Turner was drunk and promiscuous is not an excuse. It does suggest, however, an explanation. It provides the answer to Why did a 19 year old a dozen people swear was gentle and sweet rape an unconscious woman?

To understand the story, you need to read two documents: the Victim's testimony and the police reports.  Maybe you need to read Leslie Rasmussen's letter, but only if you want to know what Brock Turner was like (or was perceived to be like) before he went to Stanford University. The police reports contain statements about what he was like on the night of the rape: aggressive and wanting to "hook up" with a girl. (Any girl.)

To understand Leslie Rasmussen's remarks to the judge, one needs to have read the police reports and her subsequent statement. In my opinion, having read the police reports, she gets the alcohol stuff right, but she glosses over Brock's promiscuity. She attempts to answer "Why did a sweet and gentle 19 year old I've known most of my life rape an unconscious woman?" Clearly unable to grapple with the idea that even habitually sweet and gentle people can be incredibly and even criminally selfish about their sexual wants, she blamed the booze. Hoping to save a boy she believed was sweet and gentle from a long stretch in an American prison, where he would most definitely not be okay, she hung onto a "shades of grey" notion about drunken sex.  For this--or rather, because "a source" slipped a New York journalist her letter-- she has attracted the ire of the American public, which I think really is political correctness gone mad.

The villain of the story, after Turner, who not only raped a woman, he put her through the humiliation of his trial, is the media,  and I include anyone who puts fingers to keyboard about this trial and writes untruths. I have read outright lies about the Turner family and outrageous speculation.

One big issue is class, which in the USA means money and privilege. I have read that Brock Turner had a free ride at Stanford. He didn't. His scholarship covered only 60% of his Stanford education/swimming servitude. I have read that the Turners are rich. They aren't. Brock's grandparents wrote to the judge that they are on a "fixed income" and can't help Brock's parents, who, though hard-working, are only middle-income. Brock Turner is guilty of rape, but he is not guilty of wealth. Nevertheless, there are journos and keyboard warriors whipping themselves up into hatred of the rich boy.  Meanwhile, the actual victim doesn't hate Brock Turner.  I wouldn't have been surprised if she did, but she doesn't.

I've read that although Brock's mother hasn't said anything, she must have approved her husband's letter to the judge. Really? We need to hate his mother, too?  We are going to make up stories about a silent woman? We're going to substitute our voices for hers? What we think she wants is more important than what she really wants? Gee, what does that remind me of?

Anyway, I hope this is my last rant about the Rasmussen---I mean, the Brock Turner Trial. I have great admiration for the Victim not only because she stood up for herself but because she is such a talented writer she moved millions of people.

I have great sympathy for Leslie Rasmussen, who expressed her thoughts badly and is unfairly being crucified for it. Gone are the days when rock musicians sported swastikas or bit the heads off chickens and their fans yelled "Cool."  Political correctness shows no mercy even to young people who express loyalty to their friends (in my youth a supreme value) and try to get them out of trouble with Johnny Law (another old-fashioned value).

Incidentally, as I expected, I was called "an apologist for rape" for defending Good English. I shall put it among my trophies, i.e. names I have been called while exercising my freedom of speech.

I have also great hatred for the stupidity and debauchery of campus parties that feature so much consumption of alcohol (cheap and nasty alcohol that you wouldn't drink for the taste) that even girls end up going outside to pee on trees, and boys and girls make out with multiple people on the same night. What the hell is that? If parties are so boring that you need to drink to blackout, kids, don't go.

I feel very sorry for the Victim's sister. Know why she wasn't with the Victim? She was seeing a dangerously intoxicated female friend home. The poor girl was running around trying to take care of all the drunk women she cared about and, unsurprisingly, she failed.  This was not her fault, this was not her fault, this was not her fault.

My disgust with men, however drunk, who do what they want with the bodies of women without the woman's say-so should go without saying. Every time I see Brock Turner's goofy face, I want to slap it.  However, as a Christian, I recognize that it's the act we need to condemn, even though justice demands that we punish the wrong-doer. The Victim's statement was not about Brock Turner being a bad guy. It was about the Victim being a human being who deserves to be treated with dignity.

Update: Online media knows the public is angry, and online media acknowledges that the public enjoys and wants to be angry. Take this question from boingboing.net, for example, "Want to get even more pissed off?" My answer is another question: "Are you profiting from my anger?"

Update 2: The various people writing in comboxes that they hope Brock Turner is raped in prison are not even just "rape apologists." They're rape promoters, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Good English

Once again, survivors of sexual assault may find the themes of this post upsetting.

It's turning into Stanford Rapist Week here on "The Historical House", showing that I too have been sucked in by the Greek Tragedy aspect of it all. However, the iconic character who has now caught my attention is that of the woman who defends a man who has done the indefensible and pays a heavy price.

The rape survivor had a lot to lose, and it was stolen from her. Now the rapist's childhood friend has lost her band Good English their gigs.  That is to say, people found out what she wrote to the judge, and they are taking it out on her band.

Her bandmates are also her sisters. There are a lot of sisters suffering collateral damage in this story. The sister of the rape survivor, the sister of the rapist, the sisters of the rapist's character reference ...

I feel sorry for Leslie Rasmussen and even more sorry for her sisters. Did she have any idea that the letter she wrote to the judge pleading for her friend would be made public? Was she only 19 when she wrote it? Yes, what she wrote about rape was stupid, but no more stupid than Whoopi Goldberg's "rape rape" remark (she was in her fifties), and WG still has a showbiz career. So does Roman Polanski and a host of his defenders. I don't think Martin Scorsese should be forced to stop making films, and I don't want Good English to be forced to stop making music.

The idea that a budding female artist has blown her chances to perform and create because she wrote a letter defending a friend really bothers me. When I was 19, I had a male friend or two who really didn't deserve my friendship. I went to great lengths to help one write his essays, and I spent a lot of hard-earned money funding the meals of the other, the leader of our gang.  It was just so cool to be around boys, you know? Good Catholic Boys who didn't pressure me for anything----except my help, my money and my support in their battles and causes. I vaguely seem to recall other boys, quieter boys, telling me I shouldn't be so generous, but did I listen? No. Loud, strong-minded women can be suckers, too.

So I feel very sympathetic to Leslie Rasmussen even though her character reference for her friend included a stupid lecture on what rape is and who rapists are. If one were brave, one would argue that Rasmussen did America a favour by illustrating the dumb ideas about rape the Stanford Rapist and his high school friends grew up with.  (I note she said she could think of other people they knew in high school who might have ended up in  Brock's situation.)

Calling a 20 year old girl a "rape apologist" for a letter in which she tried to convince a judge her friend wasn't capable of rape and then blackballing her band strikes me as getting close to lynch mob behaviour. She thought her friend was incapable of rape, and she was wrong. That shouldn't wreck her life. She didn't hurt the rape survivor. The rapist hurt the rape survivor.  If he deserves six years in the state pen, then he should get six years in the state men. The public shouldn't take out their righteous indignation on a woman.

Update:  Rasmussen's statement, which has been removed from Facebook. That's too bad, as it is necessary corrective to her letter to the judge.

Two months ago, I was asked to write a character statement for use in the sentencing phase of Brock Turner’s trial. Per the request of the court, I was asked to write this statement in an effort to shed light on Brock’s character as I knew it to be during my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood when I interacted with him as a classmate and friend. I felt confident in my ability to share my straightforward opinion of him and how I knew him. I also felt compelled to share my deep concern over the misuse of alcohol that was a well-established contributor in this case. Beyond sharing my personal experience with Brock, I made an appeal to the judge to consider the effect that alcohol played in this tragedy.

I understand that this appeal has now provided an opportunity for people to misconstrue my ideas into a distortion that suggests I sympathize with sex offenses and those who commit them or that I blame the victim involved. [My Thought: But the word "directly" suggested she blamed her indirectly.] Nothing could be farther from the truth, and I apologize for anything my statement has done to suggest that I don’t feel enormous sympathy for the victim and her suffering.

Perhaps I should have included in my statement the following ideas that explain my perspective on the complexities of what may have happened. As a young female musician who has spent years (since I was in fourth grade) performing as a drummer in live music venues, clubs, and bars with my two sisters, I have had the unique opportunity to observe over 10 years of public American drinking culture and the problems that invariably arise through alcohol misuse. I have watched friends, acquaintances and complete strangers transform before my eyes over the course of sometimes very short periods of time, into people I could barely recognize as a result of alcohol overconsumption. I am currently 20 years old. I have made these observations through sober eyes. I have been repeatedly reminded by my family and coached by police to hold my personal sobriety closely and seriously because of the industry I work in and the risks to my own life that I could face as a young woman playing regularly in venues across the country where alcohol is served. [MT: This is convincing testimony against American drinking culture.]

Additionally, I have grown up and currently reside in a university town that is affected every year by the tragic consequences resulting from undergraduate students’ excessive enthusiasm for binge drinking. Student arrests, violence, injuries, and sexual assaults occur with some regularity, and I have often wondered why this culture continues to thrive seemingly unquestioned and unchecked. [MT: And so do I.]

There is nothing more sad than the unnecessary, destructive and enormous toll that
overuse, misuse and abuse of alcohol and drugs play in people’s lives, and I don’t think my effort to point this out in confidence [MT: Why did she think it was in confidence?]to a judge while commenting on Brock Turner’s character, as the sober person I knew him to be, was an irresponsible or reckless decision. [Unfortunately, due to the overzealous nature of social media and the lack of confidence and privacy [MT: It does seem that she believed it would never be made public] in which my letter to the judge was held, I am now thrust into the public eye to defend my position on this matter in the court of public opinion. Now, my choices to defer college to write and play music, to finally introduce 10 years of hard work to a national audience while working consistently and intentionally on my own personal and professional integrity, has led to an uproar of judgement and hatred unleashed on me, my band and my family. [MT: This is a little more serious than Brock's lost appetite. She didn't rape anyone.]

I know that Brock Turner was tried and rightfully convicted of sexual assault. I realize that this crime caused enormous pain for the victim. I don’t condone, support, or sympathize with the offense or the offender. I was asked by a court in California to provide a character statement as a standard and necessary part of the sentencing process. [MT:  My emphasis.]

I believe that Brock’s character was seriously affected by the alcohol he consumed, and I felt that the court needed to consider this issue during their sentencing deliberations. 

UPDATE 2: I just argued in the combox of Metro that Rasmussen and her sisters don't deserve to be blacklisted, so I shall be moderating my combox today. Naturally by defending Good English I am running the risk of being called an apologist for a so-called "rape apologist". Righteous indignation is a virtue, and the rape survivor's brilliant letter has roused America to righteous indignation, as well it might. But then there's fury roaming the world, seeking whom it may devour, looking for fresh blood, forming lynch mobs. 

How did the statements of Turners' family and friends fall into media hands? Does anyone know? Oh, so far I see that a Stanford professor named Michele Dauber was the one who posted the father's statement on Twitter. Apparently she is an authority on campus sexual assault. But are such character reference statements usually in the public domain?

The Cut credits only "a source" for the leaking of the Rasmussen letter. "A source" did real harm to Rasmussen. (The rapist's dad read his statement aloud in court.) I'm really curious about that. That strikes me as the story behind the story. Who wants to throw so much fuel on the fire that Turner's family and friends burn up too?

Her Victim Impact Statement

Sexual assault survivors or the otherwise sensitive may find the themes of this post upsetting. 

As usual, I am behind on the big American news, and I first read the name "Brock Turner" in the  text of the survivor's victim impact statement. You may not want to read it if you are yourself a victim of sexual assault or humiliation. The small mercy is that she does not actually remember the original assault, a fact which was certainly used against her on the stand.

This was a very well written victim impact statement. It's difficult to write well about such things, but she did it. She grabbed my attention from the moment of her confused panic about her underwear might be. She didn't yet know, as her finders knew, that she had been found half-naked and exposed on top of pine cones behind a dumpster. Her attacker ran off when he was surprised in the assault by two Swedish graduate students, one of whom cried from the shock of what he had seen.

I have not yet read "the other side of the story", which I realize must be full of colour and dash because it will be about an American college athlete. One of the sharp contrasts between Canadian and American society is that in the USA college athletes are a Big Deal.

American college athletes are not only  a big deal because Americans are so interested in sports--Canadians are also interested in sports--but because the success of college athletes attracts money to their colleges, by way of ticket sales and alumni donations. (The vast majority of Canadian universities are publicly funded; there is no social hierarchy among universities, there is no "Harvard of the North.")  The fancy buildings, the groomed grounds, the fellowships for theology students are financed from the bodies of teenage to twenty-something boys. Therefore these boys get special treatment, and if they commit a crime (or are accused of a crime), they are deemed newsworthy. They are no longer mere thugs or victims: they are the heroes or villains of Greek tragedies.

What kills me is the dumpster. The meaning of what happened to the survivor is probably different for different kinds of women. Certainly my horror and fear of things like this were different when I was a 24 year old virgin from my horror and fear now.  This, of course, has nothing to do with the criminality of the crime. It is a serious crime to have sex with (or shove things into) a woman too incapable to consent, and that's all that really needs to be said regarding a man's point of view. But from the point of view of a sexually active woman being asked by the media to judge between a woman and a man caught on top of her -- consenting to sex with a complete stranger behind a dumpster? With pine-cones jammed into her back? No way.

Sometimes Nice Catholic Girls (among others) labour under the misconception that girls who have sex before marriage are so robbed of dignity that they will do anything. This is not true and can lead to NCGs who "make a mistake" behaving incredibly stupidly in "might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb" style. When I was in university, my rather Bohemian non-Catholic friends did a lot of things I found shocking but they did have boundaries and a certain measure of dignity. I can imagine this boho pal or that in college deciding to have intimate knowledge of a 19 year old stranger after a party in the fresh air, if it was a nice night, but not behind a bloody dumpster. And not when out of her mind drunk.

The survivor mentions the dumpster several times, as if the idea of any woman consenting to sex behind one is  simply beyond belief, and believes her readers will share her disbelief.  As she responds to his self-serving second-guessing, "Even if you did know me, I would not want [to] be in this situation. My own boyfriend knows me, but if he asked to [...] behind a dumpster, I would slap him. No girl wants to be in this situation. Nobody."  I would say, certainly not a woman who has any dignity, as this woman clearly does, as is made evident by her articulate victim impact statement.

What I am going to say now is not about the criminality of rape but purely about protecting yourself from it. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees. However, I have noticed that a big factor is alcohol. Another factor is party atmosphere, either at a home or in a club. Yet another is friends losing a friend or leaving her (or him--two Libyan soldiers were convicted of raping a young man in Cambridge, UK last year) alone. And it is worth repeating these things over and over again because sexual assault and rape can be absolutely devastating.

Sadly, telling young women how to protect themselves is sometimes considered a form of blaming the victim. Yes, boys and men need to be told not to rape, and boys and men are told not to rape. The problem is, there are men who will do it anyway. Even if their religion or culture says its okay sometimes (a serious problem in some communities in the UK), they know it's against the law in the USA, in the UK. Anyone not on Brock Turner's defense team would argue he knew he was doing wrong, or he wouldn't have run off--leaving the half-naked woman--when the witnesses appeared.

Unfortunately, some men see stories like this entirely from the assailant's point of view--although in this case, as the guy was caught in the act, I cannot see how a guy couldn't think, at best, "What an idiot"--and do not quite get how rape is a form of personality murder.

This is why such articulate victim impact statements are so important. The answer to "Would you, if you could get away with it" would be different if the question was changed to "Would you, if you could get away with it but you knew the woman would suffer serious emotional trauma/lose her job/become an insomniac/find her relationship to her family disrupted ?" I read of a South Asian man in the UK who said he and his pals would never rape a South Asian girl because her family might kill her afterwards. See, even a racist jerk can feel compassion if he understands the impact his choices might have on a woman.

Anyway:

1. Intend not to get drunk at parties or in clubs. If you do get drunk, go home with a trusted friend. Never walk home alone while drunk. If you get in a taxi cab without your friend, take out your phone and call (or pretend to call) someone so the cabbie can hear you telling them. "Hi. I'm on my way home. I'm in Cab Number Such-and-such." Some cabbies rape customers. Sad but true.

2. Never leave your glass unattended at a large party or at a club, and consider having it filled with water between pints of whatever.

3. Don't ever leave a drunk friend alone. While taking precautions for your own safety, take your drunk friend home. If your drunk friend doesn't want to go home but wants to sit down on the pavement and sleep or leave the club or party with a stranger, tell them you're calling emergency services. If that doesn't smarten them up (or make the stranger flee), call emergency services. Emergency services will not be angry with you. In some UK cities, there are special squads to deal with drunk friends collapsed on pavements.

4. Consider not going to the parties of strangers or to clubs. Do you really enjoy them? If not, why do you go? As a twenty-something, I felt quite liberated when I stopped going to the parties of friends-of-friends. Large parties are often frightfully boring, which is why so many people get drunk at them. Clubs are also often frightfully boring and the state of the women's loo by midnight is just...

UPDATE: Just read Brock Turner's dad's statement. (Perps' dads get to make statements?) Apparently he once had to hide his snacks from his son, or he would eat them. I'm sure a sense of entitlement and a lack of impulse control is not what Mr Turner was trying to get across, but it certainly jumps to mind.  The "my son used to love rib-eye steak, but now he eats only enough to live" play for sympathy seems misguided. Here is the whole letter, representing "the other side of the story". Incidentally, insinuating that the victim is promiscuous is not just deluded, it is shabby.

UPDATE 2: Just read Brock Turner's gal pal's statement. Oh dear. I think Brock Turner's family and friends need to stop communicating with the outside world about Brock Turner.*** Nobody is interested in how sweet and gentle Brock Turner was before and after he decided to have his way with an incapacitated women. His personality is not on trial. No matter how much you like him or her, if your friend sexually assaults an incapacitated woman, he or she deserves a prison sentence.

UPDATE 3: American colleges, you have a problem.   But I don't think it's the athletes. I think its the culture you have built around the athletes. I think you are failing in your duty of care.

***CORRECTION: Brock Turner's family and friends are NOT communicating with the outside world. All these revelations are being leaked to the press from statements made to the judge. Who is doing this? Are these documents supposed to be in the public domain?

Just No

I was reading and writing today about why women can't be deacons, and I came across a now old story about a man who identifies as a woman,  got plastic surgery to make him look feminine, and fights women in mixed martial arts competitions.

No to that, too.

Although agitating for a women deacons is obviously just a step to women priests, I have to say that I am momentarily even more horrified by the man who punches and kicks women opponents while claiming to be a woman fighter.

When I was a boxer, I found out how strong men are. Even lazy, weedy men are pretty strong, relatively speaking, but big, muscular men who box? Really, really strong.  I used to spar men--I was the first woman fighter in my gym--oh dear, being "the first woman this or that" is starting to feel so lame--at any rate, being the only woman around meant that if I sparred anyone, I sparred with guys, and if the guys hadn't been good, clever, disciplined fighters, I wouldn't have a face now.

I am amazed Fall*n F*x retained a license and, in fact, wasn't arrested for assault or fraud after being outed. Whatever Thai surgeons do in "gender reassignment surgery", 30 years as a man, building adult male muscle and adult male bone, is a long time for a "female athlete" to be male. Even at my most devil-may-care and at the top of my training,  I would not have got in the ring with a 40 year old man, no matter what doctors had done to his face and genitalia. And my coach wouldn't have let me either.

And to think boxing fans still argue over whether or not real women should be allowed to fight. Whoo! Are they out of date. When I got involved with the sport, it was to find out if boxing would help or hinder female flourishing.  Transsexuals have certainly confused the issue,  and I will be interested to see if a soi-disant F-to-M attempts to join the Jesuits.

Lessons from the Ghomeshi Trial

Twenty-three people have alleged experiencing harrasment, abuse or assault by Jian Ghomeshi. When the public demanded to know why the accusers never went to the police, some accusers went to the police. Three of them are now on trial included in Jian Ghomeshi's trial for sexual assault and choking.

Complainant 1 was eviscerated on the witness stand.

Lucy DeCoutere was disemboweled on the witness stand. 

Heaven--or Ghomeshi's counsel Marie Henein--knows what will happen to Complainant 3. 

Because one thing that has been proven in court is that Ghomeshi kept the letters and emails of Complainant 1 and DeCoutere for years and years afterwards.  Jesse Brown, the freelance journalist who broke the Ghomeshi story (after Ghomeshi himself, of course), both asks and explains why.

This is a trial examining allegations of brutal sexually-charged assault committed (so far) years ago. If all twenty-three people who have alleged Ghomeshi abused or assaulted them appeared in court, each one of the twenty-three would somehow have to prove they weren't lying. But only three went to court, and anyone who has behaved crazily about/because of a man or written him stupid emails or letters, can now see why only three dared. 

Women used to demand their letters back when their romances ended, and gentlemen gave them back. Into the fire went the letters, and that was that. Novels written before the Sexual Revolution abound with wicked blackmailers, bounders who kept (or bought) women's silly letters and threatened to send them to their husbands. Apparently in the old days, a wife could not just say to her husband, "Listen, darling, I know it's a bore, but when I was twenty, I wrote a simply awful letter to a chap who called himself Count Batory Bourbon de Poniatowski, and now he's blackmailing me for £10,000." It is  hard to get my head around this, but apparently my grandfather was furious when he found out that Auntie was my grandmother's real mother, not her adoptive mother. The past is another country indeed. 

What the Ghomeshi trial teaches us, besides the importance of reporting brutal assaults to the police sooner rather than later, is not to write stupid letters and emails to men.  If we love to write, chances are we have already written stupid letters and emails to men. If we are lucky, the men just read the emails and erase them. If we are even luckier, they chuck our deathless prose onto the fire--but who has fires these days? 

The Ghomeshi trial has become excruciating for anyone who believes--possibly because of the, you know, 23 people who went to the media--that Ghomeshi hit women without their consent. Until Jesse Brown released a Ghomeshi email yesterday, the only correspondence we read was from Complainant 1 and Lucy DeCoutere, and their emails were, and Lucy's handwritten letter was, ovary-shrivellingly awful.  

It makes one ponder how ghastly one's own letters and emails have been. Would a scandal-hungry public think "Oh, how very delightfully Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh"or would it think "Ew"?  

How and why do women get into such terrible situations as Jesse Brown describes, and to what extent should adult women take seriously the idea that we can be "groomed" like targeted children? Where is free will in all this? When it comes to pondering one's own complicity in sexual sin, these are important questions to ask. They are less important, however, when the fists come out of nowhere, without warning, without consent. Whatever Lucy DeCoutere said or did before Ghomeshi hit and throttled her--if he did hit and throttle her--and whatever she said and did afterwards, hitting and throttling her without consent were (or would be) criminal acts. 

But as for manipulation, pick up artistry, and all the ways in which men like Ghomeshi and his ilk try to get women to do (or put up with) things the women would not have done (or put up with), there should be more conversations about them--serious conversations by churches, schools and parents, beginning with "Do these psychological methods really reduce women's freedom to make moral decisions?" and not ending with "If so, how can we teach girls and women how to guard against them?" for the ultimate question, as with rape, would be "If so, how do we convince boys and men not to employ them"?

Interesting: Henein is what we at the Abbey called a Joser-Hoser, i.e. she went to Saint Joseph Morrow Park. No surprises, however, as this is the sort of woman Catholic girls' schools like the Abbey and Morrow Park were trying to turn out in the 80s: professional, materially successful.


Update (Tuesday): Complainant 3 implodes. So many lessons in the Ghomeshi trial for both men and women:

Women's lessons:

1. Don't write men sexy emails and letters and don't send them sexy pictures of self.
2. If a man hits, strangles or suffocates you, don't send him love letters afterwards, m'kay?
3. If a man hits, strangles or suffocates you, don't be affectionate with him in any way afterwards.
4. If you break any of the above lessons, don't waive your right to be anonymous if you testify against the man in court.
5. Don't hide or lie about your relationship with the man when questioned by the police. Very, very bad and stupid.
6. Don't say, write or text anything to co-complainants you don't want repeated in court.

Men's lessons:

1. Keep all correspondence from women, just in case.*
2. If you hit, strangle or suffocate women, you may end up in court.
3. If you hit, strangle or suffocate women--or have a reputation for doing so--save your money for a top lawyer.
4. If you hit, strangle or suffocate many women--or have a reputation for doing so--you may not have to go to jail, but you will probably  lose in the court of public opinion.
5. Don't hit, strangle or suffocate women without asking their permission.
6. If you really enjoy such activities, consider psychotherapy. Therapists are cheaper than lawyers.

*As a woman it kills me to write that, but alas. I still have on file nasty emails from a man (a friend's ex-boyfriend) and he's dead. 

World Misogyny Day

American Sex Tourist (Osoba uprawiająca turystikę erotyczną.)

Good News! My post was obsolete even before I finally wrote it. World Misogyny Day has been cancelled. But here is the post anyway.


It is a shame that he picked Feb 6, the Feast of Saint Dorothy, patroness of brides and newlyweds, but an American Pick Up Artist blogger has "organized" meetings throughout the world for his drooling followers. He himself will be at one of the meetings, but it is unlikely to be the one in Glasgow, for Glaswegians have been threatening him with beatings in their inimitable Glaswegian style and he seems rather frightened.

The only meetings that can be said to be "organized" are the ones with emails, not meeting places, attached to them in his long post on the subject. The address list now stands as a guide for men and women who, wanting to show contempt for a rape apologist, may decide to shame his followers instead. (Update: so he has taken it down. My, my.) The blogger suggested that men who are unable to find other like-minded men conclude that their city wasn't ready for them yet. Uh huh. It's as if he grabbed some tourist books and picked the meeting places at random.

Poles will be sorry to see a few Polish cities on the list, but this may have more to do with the blogger's frequent residences in Poland--where living expenses are relatively cheap--than with the number of his Polish fans. (He may be in Poznan even now. Ew.) He writes guides for wannabe sex tourists (whom he euphemistically calls "love tourists"), and he has certainly written one about Poland. The blogger's critics have republished passages from his books in which he actually rapes his pick-ups. One can only hope the books are fictional, and he is merely writing pornos for his pimply audience.

The UK press is full of articles about this blogger, and he insists his "pro-rape" article suggesting that each and every sexual act performed in a domestic space be immune to prosecution. was satire. No. If such an article appeared in a feminist magazine like Jezebel, it would be satire. From that blogger, it was too obviously wishful thinking.

So there is quite a lot of hoopla, which is too bad, as it suggests that more people will buy his horrid books, which will be more money for him to go and live in "second tier" cities in Central and Eastern Europe to prey on virgins and other easily bamboozled women.  His fan demand of his critics why, if he's such a rapist, none of the women have gone to the police. Hmm. Yeah. That would be soooo easy for a Catholic virgin in a traditional country. "So Miss Kowalska, let me get this straight. You were walking down Ulica Piekna, and a bearded foreigner stopped you and asked for directions to the castle, and then made fun of your English. You responded angrily and he apologized, and before you understood what was going on, you were drinking in a tourist bar, and then, after three drinks, you agreed to go back to his apartment. Keep talking. We're fascinated."

The writings of this blogger veer between two points:

1. women shouldn't sleep around but marry young and have babies and take care of their husband
2. here's how to get beautiful young women to have one night stands with you*

He claims to love women and know what's best for women, but his series of books begin with the dehumanizing (and violent) "Bang", as in "Bang Kazakhistan". Ugh. Fortunately, he really hates Toronto--we Toronto girls have always despised preening American strangers who get in our faces, it's true---and also Denmark, where his techniques simply didn't work.

So why waste any thought on him at all? Well, first to put you on your guard against him and men like him. This can be very hard for nicely brought up young women with good fathers and brothers to get their minds around but

1. many men tell lies, some compulsively;
2. some men will say absolutely anything to get sex from you;
3. some men will do absolutely anything to get sex from you;
4. some men see you as nothing more than a walking vagina, no matter how much they may have in common with you on every other level, no matter how plain you think you are, no matter how intellectual and interesting you think yourself;
5. bars are not safe, fun places for a Single woman to be;
6. house parties with many male strangers are not safe, fun places for a  Single woman to be;
7. and, above all, some men practice and perfect psychological techniques to make you consent to things to which you would otherwise not consent. Salesmen have studied such techniques for years, and a knife salesman once--chortling at the stupidity of humanity--explained them to me. He was very good and selling people things they didn't want.

It would be helpful if every young woman in the world had a mobile phone and one solid friend or family member with a car, who could be trusted not to give a lecture, so that if she found herself having drunk a little too much with a guy she barely knows and the thought "What the heck am I doing" crossed her mind, she could go to the "Ladies" and just speed dial the friend.

Update: As the blogger "cancels" the "public" (i.e. largely imaginary, one suspects) meetings worldwide, one wonders if sometimes there is indeed such a thing as bad publicity, especially for alleged serial rapists. Oh, and no your love would not save him.

Update 2: Not safe for work or little brothers.

Update 3: His Middle Eastern good looks are making him a bit nervous in Poland, by the way, as nationalists patrol the streets looking for guys who look like him. WHAT an irony. The very kind of guys he respects--big, masculine, traditional--would beat the snot out of him if they knew why he was in Poland.

*Update 4: In reply to a furious email from a traditionalist reader,  it should be explained out that what is objectionable is the total disconnect between the two points. Naturally women shouldn't sleep around but marry young (if we are grown up, fall in love with a decent chap  and don't have  religious vocations), have babies and take care of our husbands. It's a beautiful, fulfilling, culture-building way of life. But this opinion is a bit rich coming from a man whose life mission is to have as much sex as possible with as many young women as possible and makes money telling other men how to do that, too. 2 rather cancels out 1, what?

Thoughts on the Ghomeshi Trial

Several women in Toronto are currently on trial for having been assaulted by a National Treasure.....

Oh, wait. Start again.

Canadian pop star turned CBC radio interviewer Jian Ghomeshi is on trial in Toronto, facing accusations of sexual assault and choking.  Women who read the newspaper reports of the Paul Bernardo trial, terrified that such things might happen to them or their friends, are now following the Ghomeshi trial via Twitter, grimly remembering things that did happen to them or their friends.

Funny how you start off thinking your generation will be different from any other.

The Twitter reports of the first cross-examination are torture because it feels as if all battered women in Ontario are on trial, not just this woman, not Jian Ghomeshi.  Because sometimes women do stupid things that seem absolutely necessary at the time and how on earth are we supposed to explain our stupid thought processes?


JUSTICE SYSTEM: If he did THAT, why did you go back?

WOMANKIND (muttering): Because I thought it would make it better.

JUSTICE SYSTEM: I beg your pardon?

WOMANKIND: Because I thought it would make it better.

JUSTICE SYSTEM: You thought seeing him again would make it better?

WOMANKIND: Yes, because if I saw him again, and he behaved sweetly and was just like the man I thought he was and hoped he was and knew he could be, then everything would be okay.

JUSTICE SYSTEM: After he did THAT, you thought everything would be okay as long as he didn't do it again?

WOMANKIND: Yes.

JUSTICE SYSTEM: I don't understand your reasoning.

WOMANKIND: Because, um, if he were the man I thought he was, and hoped he was, and knew he could be, that would be a dream come true for me. Because, um, this is really embarrassing, but ever since I was a little girl, I wanted a man to be that man, the man who would always be there for me and love me and help keep me safe from--I don't know--dire poverty, loneliness, disrespect, want.

JUSTICE SYSTEM: And even though this guy did THAT, you thought he could be that guy.

WOMANKIND: Well, I thought maybe it was a one-off, or it was just some kind of crazy but explicable misunderstanding, or... or...I don't know how to explain it. Anyway, I thought if I saw him again, and he redeemed himself, it would just  ... wipe away what happened.

JUSTICE SYSTEM: It sounds to me like you weren't rooted in reality.

WOMANKIND (ashamed): Well, no, I guess not.

JUSTICE SYSTEM: In which case, how can I take you seriously as a witness of what you allege? As you admit that you were not rooted in reality, you have no credibility. I sentence you to a lawsuit hat will completely ruin you financially. I sentence you to a media coverage that will ruin your reputation and make men throughout the land despise you and hurl online abuse at you. You will reap all that you fear most--dire poverty, loneliness, disrespect and want.

WOMANKIND (in abject panic): Maybe I was foolish, but  I'm not a liar! He did THAT! He did!

JUSTICE SYSTEM:  Prisoner at the bar, I apologize for the machinations of this hysteric. Court dismissed.

Something to think about the next time a man gets your attention with a "neg"-- or if you wonder why so few women report acquaintance rape or physical assault in a dating relationship. Women don't think we will believed, and women don't want to relive the trauma in court, and women fear what the repercussions will be.

Update: Ugh. Now she's been grilled on why she didn't tell her media interviewer--a man, by the way--she was kissing Ghomeshi before he pulled her hair.

As Confused as a Jesuit During Holy Week

 Breaking: a liturgical novelty. 

Dear readers, please remember that you do not have to volunteer to have your feet washed and dried by a man on Holy Thursday. You can--and must--say no to any unwanted touching.

Of course, if you are pleased to participate, it is now permitted by the rubrics. It was not hitherto, which may come as a surprise.

Statement of Dr Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society here.

Not Your Oma's Cologne

A Canadian Teutonophile was excitedly telling her UK-based daughter about her planned excursion to Munich when the daughter broke in to say "Avoid the railway station right now." And the Teutonophile was sad, for she remembered travelling all over Germany by train in the 1960s, which was only twenty years or so after her own father was at war with the joint. Astonishingly, Canadian girls--daughters and granddaughters of German-slaughtering Canadian soldiers--were probably safer travelling around Germany in the 1960s (and even the 1950s) than they are now.

Here is Breitbart to explain why. If you wish to take it all with a grain of salt because it is Breitbart or because Russians were involved in reporting the story, be my guest. However, you can take it from me that walking around Cologne in 2006 as a solitary female was not unparalleled joy. It turned out that the "male gaze" was neither imaginary nor extinct nor reserved for those women under 35.

How to cope if you are female but want to tour large German cities? Here are some tips.

1. Wear whatever you damn well please.
2. But wear shoes you can run in or boots you can kick with.
3. Adopt the hostile resting face expression of German women on public transit.
4. But be willing to ask for emergency help from older Germans, no matter how hostile their resting faces. They will be on your side, guaranteed.
5. A male family member makes a great travelling companion. However, if he is a young man, don't be under any illusions that he himself is safe from attack. The untold story of the Cologne New Year's Eve is the number of young German men who ended up in hospital.
6. Avoid large groups of men. Don't think you can brazen your way though with a haughty glance and your nose in the air, as in films. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
7. Don't go out at night by yourself; there will be fewer older Germans around to come to your aid.
8. Don't assume you will be safe alone in a taxi cab with the driver, especially if you are drunk. (This goes for British cities, too.)
9. If you go out dancing, note where the bouncers are. (Also good advice for British cities.)
10. Don't strike up conversations with men you haven't been introduced to, especially not to prove how unracist you are. Some men from certain cultures honestly think that any woman who initiates a conversation with a man she doesn't know must be a whore.

And furthermore:

11. Don't assume all German German men are angels, either, but they have certainly been trained at home and at school to assume the dignity and equality of women.
12. Don't mention the Second World War when making friends with young Germans. If you come from one of the Allied nations, they will eventually bring it up themselves. The trauma continues.
13. Praise Germany; no matter how much Germans complain about it, you must stick to "Germany is wonderful" like a broken record. The bread is wonderful. The cathedrals are wonderful. The shopping streets are wonderful (and how). The art is wonderful. Rilke is wonderful. (Read some Rilke before you go.) Goethe is wonderful. (If under 35, read The Sorrows of Young Werther, but don't commit suicide, please.) Germans are perfectly capable of trashing Germany 24 hours a day, but if a foreigner agrees with them on this, they suddenly get cross.
14. If American or Canadian, read Karl May's books about Old Shatterhand and Winnetou before you go. Trust me on this. Be gentle on the subject of the wrongness of dressing up like movie Indians, feathers, warpaint, leather fringes and all because gazillions of Germans love it and did it as kids.

Life in Scotland

Yesterday a middle-aged lady with blondish-reddish hair went shopping. She wore snazzy blue boots and a denim skirt that fell above her knees and a blue beret studded with glass beads. She walked alone down a busy stretch of road, and then between the road and a wooded area, and under a bridge, and thought of this and that.

She walked all the way to the supermarket and noticed other middle-aged ladies by themselves, and some with their husbands, and some young men and women, too.  She then got £80 out of the bank machine and took a trolley into the supermarket. It was a very big supermarket, seemingly filled with all the goods of the world except dry Puy lentils, an oversight the lady found disappointing. However, she filled up her trolley with other things, and moved when someone said "Excuse me", and went to a check-out queue. The young man at the cash register rang through all her purchases and asked her for £79.12. He wished her a nice day, and she wished him a nice day.  Then she called a cab and took out  another £10 from the bank machine.

A man of forty or so came along with the cab. Like the cashier, he was Scottish.

"I saw your good lady," said the middle-aged lady with blondish-reddish hair.

"Oh, aye?" said the cab driver, confused. He started to put the groceries in the back of the cab.

"Yes, she came with her cab and got someone else. Oh, wait. Perhaps I am thinking of someone else's wife."

"You're thinking of George," said the driver dismally. "Please don't confuse me with George."

"Oh dear," said the lady, climbing into the cab. "I'm terrible with faces. What's your name then?"

"Stewart," said the driver. "Are you having another dinner party?"

"Not this week," said the lady, who loves talking to Scottish cab drivers. "We had one last week. I was feeling magnanimous, so we had roast beef. My husband cooked it. My husband always cooks the meat, as he is very good at it."

"Oh, aye?" said Stewart, vaguely interested.

Stewart drove the lady through the gates of the park around her house and, after a brief stop so the lady could undo the chain marked "Residents Only", drove up to the house. Then he  got out of the cab and carried the groceries to the door. The lady gave him the £10 note and said "Just £4 back, please". "Thanks," said Stewart and gave her the change. "I'll do up the chain again on my way out, shall I?"

"Oh, thank you. That would be very nice," said the lady. "Have a nice day!" She unlocked the door, lugged the bags over the threshold, and turned around and waved to Stewart. Then she carried the bag of bottles and cartons  (including one bottle of beer and one bottle of wine) up the stairs before returning for the others.

And she thought, "In Scotland women can wear short skirts and walk alone to the grocery store without being touched, propositioned or pestered. We can daydream as we wander along. We can go to the bank machine without fear of being robbed, and we can walk up and down the aisles of the supermarket completely unmolested. Young male check-out cashiers speak to us professionally and respectfully, and I can get into a cab with a local cabbie without a qualm. I can speak to him in a friendly fashion, and he speaks to me in a friendly fashion."

Normally she wouldn't have given all this a second thought, but she had read quite a lot that morning about attacks on women in Cologne, other German cities, Sweden and in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Advice for Women in German, French Cities & Edinburgh

After the New Year's Eve attack of 1,000 North African/Arab men on young German women in Cologne, the Mayor of Cologne has given good advice to young women whose cities and towns now suffer from a population of foreign men who rejoice in sexually molesting native women.

Naturally knee-jerk feminists have complained about her advice, stupidly claiming Frau Reker is blaming the victims. However, the mayor's counsel is indeed helpful, as any woman who has been harassed on a German street by a foreigner has reason to know. Germans tend to mind their own business, but they hate disorder, so if you are being bothered by a young man while waiting for a tram in Frankfurt, for example, the best thing to do is to ask the nearest middle-aged to elderly German for help.

As early as 1999, there was a similar (if smaller) crowd of young North African men occupying the steps of the Gare de Sud in Paris at 1 AM, hooting and shouting. The problem of culturally-confident "foreign" men molesting European women is not split-new. Obviously migrants and the children of migrants from deeply misogynist countries should be educated or reprogrammed to understand and believe that such treatment of women--any women--is shameful. But how much work does it take to convince such men?

Obviously it hasn't been done yet, and Europeans should be demanding that it is done.  In the meantime, women should be careful. Groups of migrant men, exulting in the strength of numbers, sometimes take out their resentment of their new circumstances on the local women. Not too long ago, two women in Edinburgh, themselves migrants, were snatched at and even struck by a band of drunken young Eastern European men passing them outside the Balmoral Hotel. Afterwards, the elder prepared for future outrages by  learning "God will punish you" in Polish and has determined to learn this phrase in Russian, too.

Newsflash: Sexism and racism/tribalism go hand in hand. Men treating foreign-to-them women like crap is as old as rape in warfare. Russians (Americans, British, French) yesterday, North Africans today--poor German women.

That said, not all young Scots milling the streets of Edinburgh are Sir Galahad incarnate to the lassies. Generally a Ned (i.e. "Non-Educated Delinquent") will not attack a female stranger in the street, but if he is making rude remarks (e.g. about "poofs") and a girl reproves him, he may very well decide this proof of courage makes her an honorary man and hit her in the face.

The best policy in Central Belt Scotland is to put geographical distance between yourself and the Scottish drunk, and if this is impossible, to respond in a friendly fashion to his (or her) conversational overtures and fake Scottish-style hey-fellow-well-met amiability until you can pay your bill/get off the train.