"Don't mess with my sistas"!!
As part of this BFF, undying-devotion of girls with their gals, we listen empathetically and charge into action. Friends pile-on husbands or boyfriends who are unfaithful. We sympathize in mountainous ways with a friend who is wronged. And we stand right by the side of a woman with compassion, and with big angry faces, at any man who would disrespect or disregard.
Specific to the plague of vile Internet opportunities for men, women cry together and are broken-hearted, families weep and bend in the storm of it all, and it is not a surprise to me that through it all, "sisters" stick together in disgust and frustration. We ought to. It is disgusting and frustrating.
We expect great things of men and boys, and we should. We, and God, expect them to be upstanding, moral, devoted, clean, and single-eyed. No matter what mud and filth gums and mucks up the world we live in, we appreciate and anticipate that men will stonewall evils that hurt themselves and women so deeply. We want them to act with discipline and resistance.
All of the above is foundational to this picture of a marvelously-adorable, back-stabbing praying mantis. Mantis' chomp on their spouses and friends. They bite off their heads and eat 'um up. That green guy is my little symbol tonight to express my sadness. Girls, we are eating our own. Women are hurting women.
In horrifying numbers, men use roadside shops, quiet private rooms with an Internet browser, magazines, movies, ipods, phones, and books to browse the vile and break our hearts. Greg tells me that when he was a Bishop, LDS Social Services told him to expect 100% of teenage boys to have experiences with Internet scum. Now, in the hugest, most gigantic irony of life, none of this would be possible if women banded together, like girlfriends are so good at doing, and refuse to create and pose and write and film. It is women who are destroying our men. OK, blame it on a creepy, snoop or a vulgar filmmaker or an undisciplined husband, but it is women willing to sell themselves and in doing so, sell out our sisterhood.
As women, there ought to be the campaign of all campaigns urging our own to dress modestly, to refuse to be exploited, to repel and run from extracurricular relationships, to escape any opportunity to be a temptress-- even virtually, and to outright refuse to be part of the moral, spiritual, emotional destruction of our men.
In the name of "sisters", for the good of the "girlfriends", to protect love and intimacy and family, the women of this world need to stop selling each other out.
I am powerfully moved by Elder Christofferson's General Conference talk, "The Moral Authority of Women". (Oct 2013) He stated that in the history of the world, women have played a vital role in being the moral authority. But, today, he made clear that God sees our collective weakness, "Where once women’s higher moral standards demanded commitment and responsibility from men, we now have...relations without conscience, fatherless families, and growing poverty. Equal-opportunity promiscuity simply robs women of their moral influence and degrades all of society. In this hollow bargain, it is men who are “liberated” (I, Valerie, laugh at that irony. They are not really liberated, they are actually set in chains in terrible bondage) and women and children who suffer most."
If I could be so bold, I hear in that paragraph a prophet who worries about women hurting women, and hurting men, and hurting family, and hurting children, and hurting our glorious earth by allowing a knock-out, run-um-off-the-road demolition of morals, values and character. As a gender, shame on us.
Elder Christofferson pleads:
"My plea to women and girls today is to protect and cultivate the moral force that is within you. Preserve that innate virtue and the unique gifts you bring with you into the world. Your intuition is to do good and to be good, and as you follow the Holy Spirit, your moral authority and influence will grow. To the young women I say, don’t lose that moral force even before you have it in full measure. Take particular care that your language is clean, not coarse; that your dress reflects modesty, not vanity; and that your conduct manifests purity, not promiscuity. You cannot lift others to virtue on the one hand if you are entertaining vice on the other."
He closed, "Dear sisters, we rely on the moral force you bring to the world."
Now, I add my own plea to all of the earth's "Girlfriends":
Dear, dear Sisters--
As women, we give life.
We would do anything to nurture and preserve our babies.
Those whom you entice with unauthorized evil, are our own creations.
They are our sons.
They are our husbands.
They are our brothers.
Leave them be.
Guard yourself.
Show restraint.
Protect what's sacred.
Let's watch each other's backs.
Let's watch over our men and boys with respect and expectation.
Let's stop eating our own.
We must, collectively, stand as a moral force in defending our marriages and families.
Sincerely, Your BFF, Valerie
Image credit: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/photo_20855734_spotted-praying-mantis-eating-another-insect-in-tamil-nadu-south-india.html'>petervick167 / 123RF Stock Photo</a>
