The Virgin Mother

An homage to Gisèle Pelicot

She is the ordinary woman living next door, and he is the ordinary man. An ordinary couple. Nothing remarkable. Family people. Parents. Grandparents. Ordinary. Except in the deep and the dark, where nothing is what it seems.

Women tell stories that are hard to believe. Stories of angels and rapists who come in the night, in the deep and the dark, seeding their bodies with glory or shame. Nobody believes us. She was asking for it. Seventy and more men who came in the night? An impregnating angel? A virgin mother who becomes the God-bearer? It’s not true. She must have been asking for it.

But shame has changed sides. The woman’s shame has become her wounded and sorrowful glory. The men’s impunity has become their history of shame.

During an online discussion with Polish Catholic feminists this week (yes, such women exist and they are Poland’s unacknowledged prophets and saints), we turned to discussing the virgin birth and female sexuality. I’ve studied the Virgin Mary for nearly forty ye…