I love my family, but post-conversion some conversations with them too easily drift into the “stomach churning, want to sink into a deep hole, please-can-we-not-talk-about-this-now” category.  This is particularly true with my Dad who became an ordained Anglican priest around the same time that I became a Catholic.  Because faith is his vocation, and because his formation involved a four-year stint in an a highly left-wing Theology college in Vancouver, most religion based conversations end up where I really don’t want them to go.

The reason is my style of communication is Narrative based.  I talk to talk, and I talk to connect emotionally with people.  For me the idea of heaven is a dinner party with close friends, lots of wine, and talking until the alcohol makes speech difficult.  Arguing diametrically opposed views doesn’t invite connection, it shatters it.  Even if I believe very strongly that my Dad is wrong on very important issues, that his theological stance is too colored by the leftist ideology of his instructors and he needs to give orthodoxy a fair hearing, and that he reminds me so much of the Bishop Ghost in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce that I fear for his eternal salvation, I can’t imagine myself actually telling him that since  I still want him to love me.

In one of these uncomfortable conversations he brought up the issue of how supposedly “The Catholic Church prohibits people from asking questions”.  My response was to argue that point by bringing up Thomas Aquinas who pretty much asked every single question and debated every objection against it, and is considered a saint and a doctor of the Church.  That seemed to give him food for thought.    But it did get me thinking about this accusation, which I’ve heard from others as well.

I’ve come to realize that there are two directions one can take when one “questions” something.  ”Questioning” can involve a search for knowledge, for a satisfying answer that increases one’s understanding.  This is typified by the childlike and immense “why?”.  When the answer is found,  the questioner is elevated, his wisdom increases.    The other type of questioning, however, is the search for a loophole, for a reason not to do something.  This is typified by  ”why should I?” “Who says?”.   Both forms of questioning involve a kind of wrestling with the faith.  In the former, like Jacob and like Job one wrestles with it in order to enter it more deeply and find a resolution to the challenges it presents.  In the latter, one wrestles in order to escape the faith, to avoid those difficulties and take the easy way out.

In addition, I always find it curious when people on the left, be they atheists or some “progressive Christians” exhort more orthodox believers to “question” their belief. Really, they mean one should question “conservative” ideas only. Questioning which might confirm the believer’s orthodoxy, might lead an atheist to reconsider the question of faith and might lead a leftist to conclude that the left is wrong, are never taken into account.   Indeed, the left has its own orthodoxy, so confirmed in the absolute goodness of its maxims that the thought that one might question *their* ideas and assumptions is rarely considered.

It’s hard for the embattled leftist to accept that one can be both intellectually honest and still conclude that some “conservative” ideas are correct and their “liberal” counterparts are not.  Questioning is not unidirectional.  I was a leftist and I reasoned my way to orthodoxy by questioning my own assumptions, particularly the leftist maxims I had taken as facts.  I actually concluded in my questioning that the Catholic Church was correct in its position on a lot of issues, and that its positions were grounded in both reason and compassion. , The Church is logically consistent in its views while leaving ample room for human freedom.

The truth is, a mature faith always asks questions and wrestles with issues.  We live in a fallen world and our vision is darkened.  Questioning applies the intellect and the reasoning with which God blessed humankind.  The apostle Paul encourages questioning when he exhorts us to “test everything, hold fast to what is good”, but I think it´s that second part of the phrase that bothers those of the “Why should I?” approach to questioning.  ”what is good” doesn´t always mean “what feels good.” Good is not necessarily nice, sometimes it´s downright bracing and uncomfortable.

Tom Jackson’s version is the greatest.

Spanish/English transferability:  The name should exist in both languages and be pronounced relatively similarly in both.  My own name is an excellent example of this.  It’s even the name of the badass hacienda owner in Venezuelan author Rómulo Gallegos’ novel and the telenovela based on it.  As we are a bilingual/bicultural family it’s important that the child’s name not be a stumbling block while moving between the two sides of her identity. Transferable names might include “Claudia,” “Laura” “Paula”, “Samuel” “Sara” “Maria” and “Ana”.  Some names exist in both but undergo a radical change in pronunciation or spelling: “Steven” becomes “Esteban” and  “Henry” becomes “Enrique”.  Also there are cultural differences in how certain names are used in both.  Ariel in Spanish is a boy’s name while in English it’s a girl’s (Thank you Disney), and while “Jesús” is a very common Spanish name, in English it sounds odd (and a bit presumptuous).

Faith connection:  For Catholics, naming a child after a saint or a figure from the Bible is a very long-held and honorable tradition.  It connects the child vertically with the faith of her family and provides a patron Saint to intercede and pray for that child throughout her life.  Isabel is named for Saint Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist.  Saint Elizabeth was chosen because of my husband becoming a father in his old age, and because I always imagine her as helping Mary, who was very young and newly pregnant, understand what childbirth was.  There was something remarkably practical about the angel sending Mary to visit her cousin who was in her sixth month of pregnancy.  Mary was an only child and a consecrated virgin who had no expectation of motherhood.  Visiting Elizabeth was a way to prepare herself in a kind of apprenticeship.   When I found out I was pregnant with Isabel I was completely clueless and blindsided by the news, I could relate to the need for guidance.

Family Connection.  I think it’s good to have a name that connects you to your family history.  Latinos have done this for centuries, hence the gordian knot of multi generational names in Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Isabel shares her first name with both an aunt in El Salvador and with her grandmother.  It’s a way to create bonds between members and between generations, and to reinforce the roots that every child has which help to define who she is.

These are some of the names I have in mind…of course this list is bound to change as I get closer to my due date.

Boys

Samuel

Pros’:  These days I’ve been reading the stories of King David and I’m drawn to a lot of the male personalities.  Samuel, the prophet of the lord, chosen from childhood to anoint the King of Israel, first Saul, then David.  I also like Jonathan, Nathan and David as possibilities. It’s also the name of my favorite Sci-fi character of all time, the Christlike Samuel Beckett from  Quantum Leap.

Cons:  No family connection, and also the nickname “Sammy” is just…urgh!  On the other hand…it does sound good in the sentence “Your neurosurgeon will be Dr. Samuel Valencia.  He comes highly recommended.”

Leonardo

Pros:    Hispanicization of my Dad’s first name.  Won’t be mispronounced or misspelled, could go by “Leo” which still sounds cool.  Also a saint, and a DaVinci.

Cons:   Also a DiCaprio…

Gabriel

Pros:  The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she conceived by the Holy Spirit.  I love archangel names.  Michael and Raphael are also possibilities here.

Cons:  Playground factor “Gay-briel? Are you a gay Gabriel?”

Magno

Pros:  This is actually the name of one of my husband’s childhood friends, and while there is no family connection, I secretly love this name because it’s so very badass!  “Magno” is the Spanish version of “Magnus” which in English means “The Great”  (Alexander the Great = Alejandro Magno)  I can see my strapping 6 foot 10 son “Magno” strolling into the kitchen with his broadsword kissing his 5’11’’ mother on her forehead saying “hey mom, guess what? This afternoon I conquered five cities and changed the balance of power in the region.” “That’s good sweetie, now go wash up, I made fish-tacos for dinner”  “Awesome.  Fish tacos are the shit!”  Of course, even if he’s only 5’6 and his conquests are all on “World of Warcraft,” he still has a badass name.

Cons:  Badass or not, the name is very likely to end up on “Baby’s named a bad, bad thing” along with the woman who names her son “Emperor”.

Pablo

Pros:  Spanish version of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, the razor-sharp intellect who defined the Christian faith.   My due date is July 7^th, if the baby is born on July 12^th he will also share a birthday with Pablo Neruda, one of my favourite poets, thus it would be cool to give him that name.

Cons:  Pablo Neruda was a great poet, but also a womanizing douchebag and an unrepentant Stalinist who would trash other poets in public.  Probably not the best example.

Girls

Maria or any variation:  

Pros: Latinos are so fond of the Blessed Mother that they overwhelmingly choose it for a girl’s name.  Rather than having 25,000,000 Marias (sounds like a great title for the next Santana + pop flavor of the month collaboration) they use Mary’s many titles.  Thus you have Carmen (Maria del Carmen), Tránsito (Maria del Tránsito), Lourdes, Rosario, Guadalupe, Dolores and Socorro.  Anything that honors the Blessed Mother is good.

Cons:  My husband already has a daughter named Maria.  The rest of those names sound odd in English, especially Tránsito.  The only exception is “Carmen”, and I don’t feel comfortable with my daughter sharing her name with an opera whose titular character is murdered by her jealous lover—no matter how good the music is.  Call it a touch of superstition.

 Cecilia

Pros:  Patron Saint of music.  We love music in my house, my husband classical, I pop.

Cons:  Playground factor “Sissy, Sissy, Sissy”

Clara

Pros:  Means both “bright” and “transparent” in Spanish.  Also St. Clara was the beloved friend of Francis of Assisi and started one of the first orders of religious sisters which encouraged the nuns to go out on the streets and interact with the poor rather than remain in the cloister.

Cons:  Two names from The House of the Spirits makes me sound obsessed.  Truthfully I can no longer relate to or stomach Isabel Allende’s anger.

Catherine/Catalina

Pros: Two of my favourite saints in one name: Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Alexandria, also the hard-done by first wife of Henry VIII (and the daughter of Isabel of Aragon), who should be a saint in her own right.

Cons:  Don’t really like the Spanish version, sounds like salad dressing.  (Playground Factor)

Juana

Pros:  There are so many great “Juanas” out there, from Juana de Arco to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.  It’s a name so rich in history and associated with strong, intelligent, faithful women.

Cons:  Playground factor “Wanna” “Wanna”

I will keep adding to this list as more ideas come up.  But for now, there it is.  I’m open to suggestions.                                                                                 

Basic Philosophy

Naming baby is not about me!  It’s not about showing how creative or intelligent I am, or about how many literary references or cutesy twists in spelling I can inflict upon a human being.  It’s not about my personal philosophy of life or what I think is cool, or what celebrities I pay most attention to.  I’m not engaging in an act of self-expression as I might be if I were picking a stage name, a pet-name or a character in a novel. I am naming, not just a baby, but a human being.  What I choose will be an integral part of that child’s identity.  And while no one except God himself knows who this little being inside of me going to become, the name I choose must respect, both horizontally and vertically who that child is.  Horizontally the name connects the child to his or her community and culture.  Vertically, the name should connect the child to his faith and or family traditions, to give the child the sense a sense of being rooted.

Which is why current naming trends really piss me off  especially…

Last names as girls’ first names…This is just trendy idiocy: Taylor, Fisher, Madison (Damn you Splash! Damn you to hell!) Mackenzie, Why Mackenzie? Who decided that the most perfect name for an angelic towheaded baby girl was a Scottish patronymic? Why not Macdonald, or Macduff?   “This is my daughter MacLeod, she is an only child because there can be only one”

Kre8iv Spelyngs Many names have spelling variations due to way English evolved.  One can spell it “Lee” “Leah” or “Leigh”.  “Isabel” can be written “Isabelle.” However, as a teacher who has to pore through lists of approximately 120 names a year, seeing an already beautiful name like Jasmine turned into Jazzmyn because some parents believe that they are “too hyp and indivijul to folo kommin rools uv spelying” is like listening to Mozart’s Sonatas played on recorders by fourth graders backed by a dentral drill orchestra.   

FauxCeltica: I suppose the Scottish patronyms might fit here.  There has been a trend in recent years towards Celtic names, not the real, toothsome names that recall the harsh and ancient tongues of woad wearing wild men such as Cuchulainn, Llew Llaw Gyffes or Lugh.  I mean the Celticy sounding nomenclatures by yuppies who think a fifth generation grandfather from Ireland and a “hand binding” wedding ring makes them true heirs of Tara.  These are names that almost always end in the consonant N, especially “aden” or “ayden” (because by law a “uniQ” baby name requires a minimum of 3 y’s under penalty of torture) such as Hayden, Brayden, Jayden, Maiden (for a boy of course).  This is where I give the Neopagans credit.  If they are picking a Celtic name it’s going to be a real one, in Scotts Gaelic or Welsh with consonant pairs that make the Anglophone tongue work for its supper.

Places and things…Just because places and things are all nouns, that does not make them names.   Your child should not sound like a World Cup Match.  “This is my son, Germany Cuba Tied-at-Zero” Paris and Brooklyn are cities, not people.  Also, naming your child “Apple” or “Jazz” or “Storm” is a form of child-abuse.   Children don’t want to be “individual” and “unique”,  their natural vulnerability makes them crave signs of security, which includes, among other things, being part of a family, making friends and being part of a group.  Standing out from the crowd is painful when you’re a child.

The fetish of “uniqueness” takes something natural, that is the singular dignity of every human being, and elevates it to a kind of demon-god.  The results are not only a deeper sense of rootlessness and alienation, but also and most ironically a mob-like uniformity.  In my personal life those  who make bones about their uniqueness, especially those in the arts, end up looking, thinking and  behaving exactly the same.  The phrase in Spanish “repetitive as lentils” applies.   They’re all lefties, they all want to live on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, they all smoke weed, they all hated George W. Bush, they all backpacked through Asia and Latin America, they read all the same books, wrote about the  same topics, practice the same spiritualities (Wicca and Buddhism were most popular) and even dressed alike.  Out the list of howlers on the “Baby’s named a bad, bad, thing” website and you see the same trends trotted out over and over again,  how many Mackenzies and Brooklynn’s?  So many –aydens, pounds and pounds of extra Y’s and N’s and double RR’s and meteorological phenomena, astral bodies and urban districts.  Everyone who tries to be unique, to make their child an extension of their “hip, artistic, outside the box, selves”  sounds exactly like everyone else who tries to be “hip”, “artistic” and “outside the box”.  In the end, because they can’t go deep, can’t root themselves and connect to others on a profound level, they go wide connecting superficially through imitation and identity consumption.

It takes approximately 3/4 of 1 year for a human being to be born,  a radial temporal framework replete with possibilities for the poetic imagination.  A child conceived in the barren darkness of winter will emerge in late summer when nature itself is most fertile.   Both Isabel and baby #2 were conceived in the fall and are children of the summer solstice, the longest and brightest days of the year.    Both, seemingly, are also the enfleshment of two of the happiest periods during my relationship with my husband.  In October 2009 we were very much in that somewhat innocent and admittedly groundless infatuation-period preceding our marriage in which we spun out all of our light-filled hopes for a future together over long talks and glasses of wine.  In October 2011 we were back together again after a brief and difficult separation during which we worked through a lot of pain and found love for each other again.  It’s as if God decided to incarnate these periods of happiness, to make a flesh and blood photograph of them.   He made of them two midsummer babies, children at whose birth the sun will stretch out the day to its maximum in order to bid them welcome.

I also consider Christmas and Advent in the light of this 9 month idea.  I’m not going to go into the “was Christmas a Christianized version of a pagan seasonal festival or wasn’t it?” debate**.   Christmas is its own event. Like the birth of my own children, it is suffused with signs, but not a symbol.   A symbol is a half mask, partly covering and partly revealing the truth behind it.  A symbol is not the thing but points to the thing away from itself.  The Incarnation, the birth of Christ isn’t a symbol pointing toward a big abstraction like “light in a time of darkness” or “fertility in a barren season”.  Rather, precisely the reverse, the quickening of the seasons and the lengthening of the days are the symbols which point to Christ’s birth, than amazing radical event in which the Author of Life became flesh to live among us and die as the worst of us to save us and bless once again all He had made.

But Christ’s birth is also a season, not merely a day.  Mary’s Annunciation is celebrated on March 25th, at the Spring Equinox, when the Earth is warming and working.  He is born on December 24th, when nature has experienced death.   He comes to promise life in the midst of death, but not, as nature, a mere switch of the cycle back to life and death and life.  His is not a cycle, but an end to time itself.  With Him all is now and all is life, pure life without transience or blemish.

You could almost read, inscribed in the seasons between Mary’s conception and Jesus’ birth the story of Creation, the Fall and the Redemption.  In Spring the world is created and life is brought forward.  In Summer the Garden flourishes and Adam and Eve spend long-days revelling in its delights.  In Fall there is radical shift and death enters the world.  In winter all is death and loss…and at its nadir, its blackest point, when the sun can barely spare us northerners a half-day of weak light….

A child is born….

When you think about it,
this jewel of the angry pagan goddesses
and stupefied poets
is hers by right.

Her very likeness sculpted
neat and precise in the heavens,
like the petals of a white stone rose
The light of God worked into her face

She walks gently in the beam of the Son, so that invisible
He may be seen. So that night may be pressed down
in serpentine shadows beneath the trees.

Not the pride of the witches trying to squeeze light
From the atoms of their faces, trying to swallow
The celestial like a pill.
but the humility of one who of dust was made
who was raised to be a white mirror of the divine
who in summer or winter
pulls a veil of cloud across her face.
So that only the light is visible.
So that all is light.

But moreso that when darkness
radiates like black thread from the soul
She diffuses His light into smaller pieces
And pours it out on the snow like a mother
Passing warm hunks of bread between the black bars of the pines

And it gets me thinking about the issue of abortion again, not because I’m going to have one, but because thinking, sleeping and vegging on the couch while Isabel watches Dora the Explorer’s Quinceañera Party are my new pastimes right now.   (Who knew Dora was like crack for toddlers?) .

Being pregnant makes me feel like my body is not in my control.   The foods and drinks that used to give me immense pleasure such as coffee, bacon, certain vegetables and fruits are now revolting.   My olfactory sense, which guides me through meal preparation and which lifts my spirit with the scent of rain, sea, brewing coffee and my husband´s soap, is now a source of torture.  I´m Borges´ Funes, except with smell instead of memory.  There are no soft scents; rather every single one is intense and bracing.    My body is getting larger and its already large.  I´m gaining weight and I´m already overweight.   I can´t go on a diet or exercise too vigorously because it will harm the baby.

This is normal pregnancy, which every expecting woman goes through, even the Blessed Virgin, I’m sure.   And while Mary and I both have this odd habit of prenatal travel, at least mine is on a heated BC ferry with free wifi access and not a donkey–could you imagine how many pee stops a donkey riding pregnant woman would have to make between Nazareth and Bethlehem?

Pregnancy in ideal circumstances –anticipated and desired by a married couple open to life– feels like laying in a river-bed while the river pushes rocks, stones, sand and everything over and through you. Pregnancy acts upon you, re-aligning everything, shifting your center of gravity, drawing things in and expelling things out in ways impossible to plan for or expect.  Unplanned or unexpected pregnancy magnifies this sense of passivity where it can feel like a catastrophic loss of agency.   You have no control over what is now re-orienting everything in your life.  Even as a married Catholic woman who knows that sex and babies go together, the feeling of passivity is sometimes keen and painful.

I am all too aware of the obsession with “body autonomy” in the feminist cause.  According to feminists, the patriarchy saw the female body as something to be placed under the authority of  husbands or fathers.  Women were always an object, never a subject, a passive terrain to be fertilized by male agency, not a human being capable of making decisions.  Feminists believed it wrong for a woman to “be defined by her biology”.  “Biology” rather had to submit to the woman’s will.  Pregnancy, and that state of passivity it brings about, is a direct challenge to that “control”, a reason why it must be circumscribed by hyper control mechanisms:  contraception, to prevent it from happening without super-explicit signed and notarized and consent, abortion as a failsafe when contraception fails and as a second-line of defense in cases of rape.  These layers supposedly ensure that women have complete control even of their own passivity.

Truly, humans are embodied beings, thus everyone, both men and women, is “defined by biology”.  If a man breaks both legs, no matter how much he wants to dance or play soccer, he simply is not able to do so.   The feminist’s desire to not be “defined by biology” seems to be an echo of a much older heresy, Gnosticism, the belief that the body and the flesh are “prisons” which entrap the “spirit” and from which the spirit must be liberated.  Thus the pregnant woman and the new mother is encouraged to not allow biological motherhood to frame her in any way.  She must work outside the home even though her maternal instinct calls her there.  She must lose all of her pregnancy weight so she can fit into the same clothes as before.  She must be a yummy mummy. She must be able to travel, to go to parties and do all the things she used to before motherhood.   The biological imperatives attendant on motherhood must be surpressed for a “higher” role such as earning a salary or the pursuit of her own pleasure.

Into a woman’s passive pregnant state, that dark, frightening place where solid ground is shifting, unformed and unpredictable the devil whispers “take back control” “undo this thing”.  Control is the temptation, a way to halt the biological vortex and drive it back.  The pro-abortion feminist is Dr. Faustus, seeking to bend nature itself to her will, to suspend her laws, and reverse time.  With a magic pill she can sever the cause and effect law with which nature links sex and the generation of human life.

And like in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus there is a price to be paid once the contract is signed.  Divine homeostasis.  To drive against the body sickens it.  Breast cancer rates and infertility have increased exponentially since contraception and abortion became widespread.  Post-abortive women experience both physical and emotional trauma, nightmares, depression and thoughts of suicide. Similarly, the culture becomes sickened when its people are all on the Faustian payroll, seeking to alter and control the Natural Law inscribed on our bones and members.

To be Catholic is not to run from passivity, or from the body.  Catholicism praises a certain active passivity.  All are called to wait on God and submit to His will, to submit to all states in life, and at the same time we are called to act in accordance with those states.   We are called to be aware of choices and consequences while being docile in circumstances beyond our control.  To neither flee from suffering nor to be resigned to it.  Here we avoid the Faustian traps laid out for us, and our passivity is turned into glory.  We become more ourselves, freed when we let go.

Abortion on the other hand,   I got right away.

I was never overly fervent in my pro-choice views, views I absorbed through osmosis rather than conviction. I absorbed inhuman amounts of television in my adolescence, and the subtle messages disseminated through it communicated the “natural rightness” of that position.  I still remember an episode of Degrassi High when I was 16 where Erica, one of the twins, has an abortion and is mercilessly tormented by a pro-life student who finds out about it.  As a bullied student myself I automatically sided with Erica,  absorbing the pathos of her situation and hating the bully.

Becoming pro-life was the first time I really used critical thinking, looking at something objectively without pathos and examining those tropes I had accepted as  givens.  Beyond my religious conversion, yet not altogether separate from it, there was a process that I underwent, several steps which lead me to the conclusion that abortion is an injustice and must end.

1.  Meeting pro-lifers and hearing them describe themselves.

Up until I started examining Catholicism I had never encountered a pro-lifer in real life.  I was, and still am, an academic in a very left-wing university where the pro-choice position is the default, so much so that the issue of denying funding to pro-life clubs doesn’t phase people as a lack of fairness or censorship.   Pro-lifers were “hateful”, so what is the problem with preventing “hateful” people from speaking?.  Meeting people who were pro-lifers and listening to their ideas was something I had never done.  I had simply taken as facts the tropes that radical feminists attributed to them, assuming they were motivated by religious extremism or a desire to curb women’s sexual and reproductive freedom in order to produce more male children for the patriarchy.  It had never occurred to me, until I spoke to them and listened to them that They believed the unborn child was a human life worth protecting.  I began to ask myself hard questions about it.  Was it a human life?  Is it worth protecting?   Is this not a noble goal?  Is this not what the social justice principles I believed in were, the ones that made me a feminist in the first place…to protect the weak from the strong? the vulnerable from the powerful?

2.  Understanding opposition to abortion as an extension of social justice principles.

In my studies I read a lot of testimonies from torture victims in Chile and Argentina during the Dirty War of the 1970′s and 1980′s.  I also studied novels and poetry from that time period.  I struggled to understand how a person could wilfully commit the kind of violent acts I read about such as hooking genitals and sensitive bodies up to car batteries, driving rats into women’s vulva’s through heated pipes, cutting the stomachs of prisoners open and throwing them into the sea. In so many ways lives were violated, bodies immolated to produce enough pain so that the so-called subversive would give up “information.”  These acts were justified and motivated by twin engines:  first a political ideology with a strong dualistic tendency, viewing its opposition as evil  and threatening,     second a practice of dehumanizing the person on the table, making macabre jokes or referring to him or her in material terms.  When I turned my lens to the issue of abortion I started to see their similarities.  An ideology (radical feminism) with a strong dualistic tendency (opposing patriarchy/conservatism as threatening) which also dehumanizes the victim of its practice (the unborn child is referred to as “fetus” “clump of cells” “parasite” et. al.)  Macabre humor is used to avoid any type of feeling for the “thing”, or any recognition of its humanity.  

3.  Understanding that justice needs to be consistent.  

These first two realizations put a definite chink in my pro-choice views, I began to understand that abortion was actually a human rights violation, not a human right, and that a life was being taken.  At first I modulated my views to say that abortion should only be allowed for the “big 3″ hard-cases…when the life of the mother was in danger, in cases of rape, and in cases of incest.  To this I added one more, in cases where the woman was under the age of 15.  This seemed, at first, quite reasonable.  Here we can avoid unnecessary suffering for women and protect the lives of the majority of unborn children.  There was a niggling inconsistency in those views that started to bother me.  If I truly believed that abortion was a violation of human rights, that a human life was being taken unjustly, then why is it okay in cases of rape, incest and in young mothers?  We are a long way away from the time when we punished descendants for the crimes of their forbears.   The child in the hard-cases is as innocent as the child of the party-girl who has her third abortion in one year because she can’t figure out how a condom works.   Nothing done by the father or mother makes these children somehow stained or punishable.  If anything, the child of the rapist is as much a victim as the mother herself.  It’s as if a man were to kill his wife, take their newborn baby to  the house of another woman, rape her and then leave the baby on the doorstep.    The second rape victim would have to give the baby to social services or an adoption agency, or raise her herself, but to kill her who had no role in the crime other than that of bystander/victim?  This steers close to a kind of bloody retribution, not justice.  I realized that justice needs to be a consistent and objective standard.  It seems more compassionate to give the hard-cases a pass, and yet to allow innocent lives to be taken in order to spare other’s pain is not justice.   I also realized that there are non-death alternatives in these hard-cases, adoption being one of the best ones.  There is an opportunity in choosing life, in leaning towards love and away from death, to heal the past.

4.  Witnessing…

I became unexpectedly pregnant, and I saw this:

Blanca Isabel sucking her thumb at 18 weeks gestation

In the first ultrasound, at 16 weeks, Blanca Isabel was a fully formed being.  She was in a state of bliss, alive, swimming, thriving, kicking her little hands and feet.   The technician laughed “she’s playing from the camera!” as he tracked her crazy circles with the wand.   At 18 weeks the doctor wanted a shot of her digestive system to see how she was developing, so I saw her again, this time bigger, her heart valves pumping at marathon-runner speed as she sucked her thumb for the “camera”.  I saw her mouth open and close to swallow fluid, and maybe its the oxytocin speaking, but I saw her wave both of her hands saying “hii”.  Blanca Isabel the same yesterday…

Today

And tomorrow

My cold, feminist heart, sealed in the mausoleum of its ideology, has been broken, gloriously broken, by this tiny astonishing body, as real in the womb as it is when I wash it and dress it in the morning. Those eyes, that hair, that ever expanding awareness.  And I fell through the cracks in my old thinking, to this place of feeling.  My heart is splayed open and aching for every baby washed out in a bloodbath, every one dismembered, I think it could have been Isabel, perhaps if I were younger, or even if I had never made this examination of belief before I got pregnant.  I would have coldly had her dispatched because I “wasn’t ready” and that flesh-flame of a life would have been extinguished by the coldness living inside of me.  For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on me and on the whole world.

I’m thinking of this concept today in the light of what I wrote about feminism a couple of days ago.  Particularly “take 6″ in which I talk about how conservative women reflect, in an odd way,  what some feminists  seem to actually want.  How can this be?  They want it “de reojo”, wanting it without focusing on it as a central desire and even disparaging those who do.  A woman who states as her personal goal “I want to marry and have children” is met with contempt or pity –I speak as former feminist who once “pitied” an ex-roommate who expressed her very sincere desire for a family–.  It’s bad form to want marriage and children as your central goal in life.   You have to want other things and then have those also.  They are desired only as “de reojo”.  Center-stage belongs to ambitions such as career, travel, and sexual adventures.

There are two authors whom I used to read voraciously, reading and re-reading the same books over and over.  I loved their novels because I would enter into their characters and ambiences.  Both are feminists and both wrote books featuring strong, liberated woman characters.  The first, Isabel Allende, along with Pablo Neruda, was my introduction to Latin American literature, the second Jacqueline Carey, author of fantasy novels such as the Kushiel’s Legacy Series, created such a vibrant and engaging alternative universe that I wanted to live there.

Neither writer makes bones about their feminist convictions.  Allende ‘s first novel The House of the Spirits  features three generations of women who each rebel against the Judeo-Christian sex-hating patriarchy in various ways.  Clara, through practicing spiritism and alienating her violent patriarch husband with long-silences.  Blanca, the daughter, who has a prolonged love-affair with a campesino turned folk-singer/revolutionary,  and Alba the granddaughter who gets involved with a guerrilla and joins the socialist movement occurring in the country at the time (based on Chile 1970′s).   Carey is even more risqué with the protagonist of Kushiel´s Legacy, Phedre,  the  daughter of a courtesan sold into indenture in one of the realms many pleasure-houses who rises from obscurity as courtesan/spy and twice saves her homeland and queen from the machinations of a traitor.   Phedre is “blessed” or “cursed” with the tendency to get pleasure from pain, thus making her a highly prized (and priced)  submissive for nobles interested in Sadomasochistic sex-games.

And yet, because both writers are good at what they do, their writing reflects more than their ideologies or worldviews.  Into the vortex of their creative energy get pulled things subtle and unseen, inferences of the complexities of human life, and hidden or prohibited desires.  Allende often proclaims free, omnivorous, liberated sexuality as an intrinsic good.  She even wrote an erotic cookbook called Aprhodite: A Memoir of the Senses arguing the need to engage in all the pleasures of the senses in order to truly appreciate life.   Yet the type of sexuality which Allende proclaims as truly “good” involves romance, and yes even monogamy (dare I say “marriage”?).     Allende´s female characters in The House of the Spirits are all monogamous and deeply in love, perhaps, the exception being  Clara who marries because she foresees it as her destiny.   While Blanca goes through her own period of rebellion in which she keeps pushing away her lover she marries him at the end of the book.  Alba, meanwhile, chooses to stay in Chile under Pinochet in order to wait for her beloved and raise the child they have conceived.  Allende herself, in Aprhodite, admits that while she has been married twice, most of her experience with sexuality has been in marriage.  For all her posturing about sexual freedom,  living a long-term committed love-relationship that includes children appeals to her more than a life of free sex,  and this is reflected in almost all of the female protagonists of her later novels who marry more often than not.

Then there’s Carey, who invents a world in which free-sex is the norm and which consent is the sole determinant of sexual morality.  Carey wrote 3 trilogies in this world, each with a different protagonist.   Terre D’Ange is the feminist/liberal utopia writ large.  The gods of that realm have declared free-love the norm:  ”Love as thou wilt” is the commandment of Elua, the god-man gestated in the womb of the Earth from the shed blood of the crucified Christ and the tears of Mary Magdalene (All religious issues aside for now. Someone really needs to send that woman a primer on Catholic theology regarding the Incarnation, the body, sexuality and what the word “sacred” means.) There is no such thing as unplanned pregnancies because D’Angelines are given the gift of “natural” contraception:  conceiving only after they undergo a fertility ritual to “open the womb”.   There are no sexually transmitted diseases, nor messy problems of real-world sexual liberation.  No D’Angeline dies alone in a hospice from HIV or Syphilis because they have no family to care for them.  No D’Angeline suffers the degradation of a porn or sex-addiction making affective relationships difficult.  Consent is always explicit and clear, never manipulated or obtained through deception or a power-imbalance (except when Phedre is sold into slavery in another country, but even then she “consents” to have sex with her captor and enjoys it.)

Yet, in Carey’s three trilogies the most central relationships are all heterosexual, fertile and bound by lifelong commitment.  Two are marriages, (Imriel and Sidonie in the second,  Moirin and Bao in the third) and one, Phedre and Joscelin are “consorts”, an official declaration of union to which the difference from marriage is not made clear.   Imriel and Sidonie, Moirin and Bao all wish for children as part of their marriage, while Phedre and Joscelin become the adoptive parents of Imriel, the son of the traitor, ending the final book of the first trilogy on a note of completeness, and redemption. There are no polygamous marriages or gay marriages, even though there are many homosexual characters.  Few homosexual characters are exclusively so,  the exception being one key relationship in the first series which is cut short by violence.  Homosexuality, for the most part, is relegated to sexual experimentation for some of the characters.   There is even an example, odd as it seems, of a gay character–Ricciardo Stregazza– married (to a woman), having children  and actually happy in his life with her.

Carey’s realm is a place where one can have all of the promises of the sexual revolution and none of the problems, and yet, the protagonists all gravitate back to this old-as-the-hills idea that marriage and monogamy is good, positive and life-affirming, that marriage is fertile and children are an integral part of it.  That there is something unique about committed heterosexual relationships that can’t be levelled to “just another kind in the multiplicity of sex practices.”

This is the truth which these feminist authors see “de reojo”, a longing which sits on the periphery of all their posturing and bluster about sexual liberty.    It is the truth of the human condition, and especially for women, we are made for love, for commitment, for children.  We are made to be in pairs and then in families, our bodies as much as our souls.  Many who clamor for freedom want, “de reojo”,  the freedom to bind themselves.

When you’re a student, whether you live on campus or not, posters are your answer to interior decorating.  I still have several of the posters which adorned both my basement suite apartment in Victoria and my dorm room at Green College in Vancouver, a psychedelic Bob Masse Stevie Nicks poster which I don’t have the heart to throw away even though I haven’t listened to Stevie Nicks in a long time.  There’s a glossy image of Frida Kahlo’s  “The Loving Embrace of the Universe” which I bought from a stand in the Plaza Mexico in LA the first time Mauricio and I went.   Then there’s this…

I still see this poster, all over the place on campus and it just serves to remind my why I’m done with feminism.  Why?

1.    Because victimology is not  a replacement for thought, because writing off a profound, complex literary work because its author was white, or male, or portrayed his female characters as domestic angels or beautiful blondes is not true literary analysis. Because art is wasted on those who only see it through the lens of sex-politics.

2.  Because it’s 2011 and we’ve been living with the outfall of the Sexual Revolution for 40 years. Because there is no more “Sex Negative Judeo-Christian Patriarchy” to overthrow, there is an oversexed, neurotic culture that dresses little girls in halter tops and pants that say “juicy” on the derriere and feeds them a steady diet of Bratz dolls dressed like prostitutes and Lady Gaga singing about sadomasochism.   Because this revolution has brought us atomized relationships, hookup culture, disposable multi-marriages, psychic disorder and callusing of the heart.

3.  Because there is a difference between being beautiful and being sexy.  To be beautiful is to be a sign of transcendence, order, symmetry and grace.  To be sexy is to be an object for consumption.  To be beautiful is to draw the eye of the mind upward to higher things, to large questions, to the aching wound the loss of divinity leaves in the soul.  To be sexy is to draw the mind towards that lower instinct that has no sense of the other as “person” but merely as a means to gratify an urge.   To be beautiful is humility, to seek to be fully oneself reflecting the truth of the soul in the signs of the body.  To be sexy is an insatiable hunger for power, seeking to dominate the other by stringing him along by his hormones for as long as one can.

4.   Because not everything is a matter of power.  Marriage, love relationships, religion all humanize us by taking us out of ourselves and bringing us into communion with others.  Because gender roles in marriage don’t matter as much as a mutual attitude of give-and-take and self-giving.  Because men and women are fundamentally different, and thus perform different, complementary roles.  There’s nothing wrong with serving your beloved.  It is the very nature of love.   When my beloved husband asks me for a glass of water my heart leaps up to bring him five.

5.  Because the Catholic Church does not have to change just because some women want to be priests or some boomers want to have sex with whomever they like.  She is not stuck in the past, YOU are.  She is at the center of the eternal spiral of time.  Her gaze spans the fullness of the ages, taking in the past, present and future of the human condition.  You, sitting in your Birkenstocks, smoking roaches and listening to John Lennon’s Imagine are stuck in a temporal feedback loop, not seeing how the world has changed and how the younger generation of Catholics, men and women, is drinking in orthodoxy like fresh water.

6. Because while rebellion feels good in the moment, one cannot build their home there.  The tent cities are chilly and protest chants get old.  Though you love the high you get from imagining yourself a hero, tearing down walls and breaking through boundaries,  you crave what we, those evil conservatives of the world, have and defend: stable relationships, a life of usefulness, a family, a sense of belonging and integrity.  You might fight for sexual liberation, but most of you would use that freedom in order to bind yourselves, to find that one right person with whom you would build that home.  Your rebellion sends you off in all directions, proclaiming sexiness here, sexlessness there, babies here, baby-killing there, matriarchy here, egalitarianism there.  You rebel against us, and yet we hold your desire before us like a banner filled with wind and sun.

7.  Because it’s a child not a choice.  Because terminating a pregnancy means terminating a baby.   You dehumanize your unborn child by declaring him mere bio-matter.  You declare yourself arbiter of  the life and death of another person to whom you have the responsibility of care and protection.  Because you swaddle that ugly truth in euphemisms about “reproductive rights” and “choices” and deny anyone has a right to speak against it. Because shouting down pro-life speakers and preventing pro-life campus clubs from receiving funding means you have no argument, it means you revert to strong-arm totalitarian tactics to avoid hearing inconvenient truths.