Gritty Mermaid Reboot

Thoughts on St Dymphna, responses appreciated.

taketherain:

so I thought before I started praying the rosary I could pray chaplets to st Dympna for reasons which may or may not become apparent on this blog. I really apreciate that there is a patron saint of incest victims, I really, really do but i was looking stuff up about her and aparently the things you are supposed to concentrate on when praying the chaplet are

• The red chaplet is recited in honor of her martyrdom. 
• The white in honor of her virginity.
• The green is for hope of relief of emotional disorders. 

And I’m kind of like “uh?” because it really seems to be saying that it’s better that she died a virgin than “letting” herself get raped by her father. which seems like an incredibly messed up message to give survivors. Like you are worth more dead and unsullied than you are if youve been abused/raped and survived it. And like it is better to choose to die than to get raped and strive for recovery with every atom of yourself.

And I find the idea that she was “pure” at the time of her death ludicrous as well because fifteen year old girls whose father wants to fuck them? yeah there’s always all sorts of weird inappropriate abusive stuff that goes on before it gets to that point.

So, short answer: I’ve made my peace with the uncomfortable aspects of veneration of virgin martyrs the same way I make peace with other things…by just refusing to acknowledge the traditions I find problematic and going with better interpretations.  Cafeteria Protestant, ftw. 

So, that said, I think that there is precedence in seeing the “virginity” of the ancient virgin martyrs as something that is not taken by rape.  I think there’s also an interpretation of their virginity where it  can be seen as dedication, unto death, to defining themselves as children of God as opposed to being defined only in terms of their sexual availability to men, which is what was expected of them in their culture.  

Agatha, for example, is listed as a virgin martyr,  but her hagiography is pretty clear that she was raped.  So for the people who originally venerated her,  there wasn’t this obsession with “purity” in the same way you see with the veneration of Maria Goretti. And even for women for whom it doesn’t *say* they were raped, I think we can be realistic enough to realize that women being tortured for having the gall to say that they don’t want to get married probably didn’t escape sexual violence. 

I love the ancient virgin martyrs because I see in them women who passionately asserted their equality in Christ in a society where they were seen as nothing but sexual objects.  And the brutality of their martyrdom accounts are, for all that they are gory and bizarre to modern eyes, are such an amazing record of the bravery of women contrary to the idea that women are weak.  And an amazing record of the persecution of Christian women as women .