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Read other letters about this article
I am not just thinking of STDs.
When I was a freshman in high school, there was this girl who mentioned that her father was having sex with her. She was wrong-side-of-tracks sort of girl. Already, she had been picked on. She mentioned this to another girl in study hall who quickly spread the word.
One of the boys on the football team asked this girl out, but instead of taking her on a date, he took her out to the country where most of the football team raped her. Nothing was ever done to these boys. Indeed, her social status was so low that they didn't even think that they had committed rape. They bragged about her crying and told horrible stories about her. They said that roaches came out of her clothes.
Just by confiding that her father had molested her this girl was perceived to have advertised sexual availability.
Girls without fathers in the home, girls of lower social status, girls who were not white were all perceived to be sexually "looser" with no evidence whatsoever. (Note that Parson Jim uses the word loose, a perjorative term.)
When a very popular boy in our school, Frank, broke up with Betty Sue and went out with a "Mexican" girl, he was considered to lose status and be shamed -- until he announced that she put out for him. Thus, he regained social status. It was assumed that Betty Sue was a "nice" girl and wouldn't have sex with him. All of a sudden, Patsy, the Hispanic girl, was shamed. It went all around school that she was a slut.
There is a Southern writer whose name escapes me who wrote a long story called "The Old Forest" I believe who wrote about privileged upper class boys who dated poor girls and felt no compunction about seducing those girls but saved girls of their own class for marriage.
As a single mother I was aware that my behavior not only set an example for my daughter but could also put her at risk. Daughters of divorced women are five times more likely to be molested by men coming into the home than those of intact families.
I was also aware that should my ex-husband challege me for custody that my sexual behavior would be scrutinized in a way that my ex-husband's would not.
When I was a girl, I was quite aware that my own father and other men viewed women who were divorced as sexually available. There was something in their tone of voice when they spoke of a newly divorced woman. Something almost predatory. They did not speak of widows in that manner.
I still don't know why divorced women were called grass widows.
