Self: 5. The assumptions of post-feminism

We might assume that globalisation opens the door to a wide spectrum of rights common to women around the world being rectified: political, economic, cultural and religious. Global sharing has its hazards, however. While it adds positively to most knowledge platforms, with regard to diversity, stereotypical assumptions continue to get in the way.

The history of feminism documents women’s social has development progress occurring in three waves. These have brought to focus or addressed various issues:

1.  Women’s right to vote during nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

2.  Women’s liberation in social, cultural, legal and political equality, beginning from the 1960s.

3.  Continuation and correction of the second wave, arising from the 1980s.

The present is sometimes described as the post-feminist age. To some this means feminist movements are now irrelevant; all their goals, from women's suffrage to gender equality have been achieved.

To others post-feminism is the period of critical backlash. The monolithic ideation of the second wave, they say, was a mistake. Women in non-Western regions would agree, because the feminist ‘history’ fails to acknowledge their existence. The record chronicles the historic footsteps of “white, middle-class, and educated” women.

Due to the paucity of documents in other parts of the world, the universal past is referred to as “proto-feminism”. The term implies that before the West took charge, women’s progress has been rudimentary at best.

The point is other civilizations pre-date Western cultures by millennia, i.e., thousands of years. Their societies and people have been evolving through time, and surely, advancements do not emerge only from the West, even among women!

In fact, some evidences have been gathered that in social status, women have not always been secondary to men. Matriarchal societies were prevalent in Asia and Africa about 5,000 years ago. Then women had ascendant positioning, whether religious, social or political.

Consequent to invasions, colonization and newer cultural impositions, there was downfall. Patriarchy’s hostile domination through subsequent millennia ensured the continuance of their lowered status. More recently, racism coupled with sexism, pitted women against other women to further sink their social positions.

 

In colonial India in the 1880s, for example, the Ilbert Bill sought to bring English and Indian magistrates at par. Conflict flared when the expat English insisted on their superiority to the ‘natives’. 

As Wikipedia relates the story:

English women who opposed the bill further argued that Bengali women, who they stereotyped as "ignorant", are neglected by their men, and that Bengali babu should therefore not be given the right to judge cases involving English women. Bengali women who supported the bill responded by claiming that they were more educated than the English women opposed to the bill, and pointed out that more Indian women had academic degrees than British women did at the time, alluding to the fact that the University of Calcutta became one of the first universities to admit female graduates to its degree programmes in 1878, before any of the British universities had later done the same.

Ethnic distrusts perceived so long ago may have lessened today, but they have not been eradicated.  Tensions persistently underlie cultural specificity. Perhaps we perceive its influence in USA at present where, halfway through Obama’s presidential term, the issue of birtherism continues to occupy national attention. 

Besides, in Western regions, knowledge must base on empirical evidence to be acceptable. In its absence, all claims made are suspect. The rest of the world must toe this line of credibility. We must then also believe that women’s advancements occurred only in UK and USA, and over the last century or so. 

Notwithstanding post-feminism, is equality of gender and race at all possible? Indeed, change initiated at any one point does eventually reach distant shores. Like the impact of a stone hitting the water is not localized, but radiates the influence in ripple effects to all parts of the water-body, knowledge and practice from one part of the globe could relate to another.

One way would be to bridge the culture gaps with “humanity”. Social reformers have done so in the past with super-ordinated objectives. For example, in the reactions to the Contagious Diseases Acts passed in Britain in the 1860s. The legislations empowered police to arrest prostitutes found in ports and army towns within the country and in its colonies. The women were forced into medical examinations for sexually transmitted disease.

Quoting historians, McElroy writes:

No warrant or probable cause was needed … a man whose infamous proposals have been rejected by a girl, may inform the police against her, and on his evidence the girl may be subjected to examination and ruined. A like power would be legally vested in the hands of the brothel-keepers … If the young girl signed papers agreeing to an exam, her agreement was a de facto acknowledgement of prostitution … If the girl refused to sign the papers, she could be held in prison for months.

Men however, were never examined as possible clients. Outraged by the double standards, social reformers initiated the western world’s first feminine revolt. Josephine Butler led a 20-year crusade against this state sanction to male sexual privilege. McElroy writes:

She [Butler] declared that the C.D. Acts were contrary to the Magna Carta and to the constitutional rights of women. Her pamphlet "The Constitution Violated" accused the Acts of suspending habeas corpus for every woman in Britain. In doing so, she accomplished something remarkable: she made middle-class and upper-class women identify with their working counterparts.

The Acts were repealed in Britain in the 1880s, but not in colonial India. Butler carried on her campaign against the “moral wrongs” being perpetrated overseas. She advocated revocation of the Acts - and further, the “robbery and theft” of nations colonized. In her book published in 1887, she wrote:

Suttee, or the burning of Indian widows, has been abolished indeed, as shocking to the moral sense of humanity; but the same Government which with one hand removed these evils, imposed with the other hand the degrading, soul-and-body-murdering system of C. D. Ordinances. … It fastened them [Indian women] down in slavery, it doubled their chains, it stamped them with a deeper degradation than had ever been known before … what a blight it is to the whole womanhood of the world when such a system is allowed to prevail, and to work its deadening and corrupting fruits in the minds of men of all degrees, to sear the moral sense of the whole community, and to render men almost blind to every idea of justice. The question is not difficult to answer in regard to Indian women — whether our government has done more harm than good.

Dr Annie Besant’s social reform radicalism in books she co-authored on birth control, were denounced in Britain as “obscene libel”. She also led the London Match Girls’ Strike in 1888, to protest their appalling work conditions and wages. Thereafter, she arrived in India not as patron or missionary, but a student of religion. She realized she had as much to learn as to teach. 

The Hindu article says:

Dr. Besant studied Hindu Religion and expounded it in a manner which illuminated it and offered it as a practical way of living in modern times. … education had to be wedded to religion, and be graded according to the inner nature of each individual.

Besant’s efforts to transcend the constraints of culture enabled her to become one with the indigenous people. The social reforms she championed through the Theosophical Society in India outshone her achievements back home. 

Women social reformers of the past prove by their works of peaceful protest that it is necessary to identify with diverse groups to understand them. A hands-on approach is required to bridge the existing cultural divides. Perhaps this courage of conviction is missing today, since despite the global connectivity, social ‘revolutions’ tend to become bloody.

Modern assumptions underscore the stereotypes - that differences between cultures are insurmountable, that uniformity abides within homogeneous groups, and especially, that small groups of privileged women render post-feminism irrelevant universally.

References for this post:

   

1. “Annie Besant and India” This Day That Age dated 2^nd October, 1953: hindu.com The Hindu. Oct 02,2003. 
2. “Feminism” wikipedia.org. Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. 19 April 2011. 
3. “Ilbert Bill” wikipedia.org. Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. 10 March 2011. 
4. “Josephine Butler, from ‘Our Indian Fellow Subjects’ (1887)” wwnorton.com THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. NORTON TOPICS ONLINE. 2010-2011. 
5. Lewis, Jone Johnson. “Annie Besant - Heretic” about.com About.com. Undated. 
6. McElroy, Wendy. “The Contagious Disease Acts” fff.org THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM FOUNDATION. March 2000.

Self: 4. The crossed culture of women

The world likes to have heroes, to reward excellence, to appreciate bravery above and beyond the call of duty. Institutions and people are esteemed for works in various fields - social, political, religious, moral, intellectual and artistic. And yet social esteem is often carried by gender. Most veterans of private wars receive the short shrift because they happen to be women.

Many men advocating the upliftment of the masses may be party to bonded labour within the murky confines of home. The personal battles fought by faceless women in the everyday world escape social notice. Where religious and backward communities have supportive lobbies, gender discrimination remains invisible.

In India, for example, the Women’s Reservation Bill, providing for a fixed quota of 33 percent of all legislative and parliamentary seats, was only recently adopted by Parliament, six decades after independence from colonial rule. Men united across party lines to stall the progress of the Bill, citing “grave reservations” to the presence of women in governance.

As one seasoned politician voiced the collective prejudice, parkati mahila jo mahila hi nahi (short-haired women are not even women). Long hair thus identifies the good woman, the sati (virtuous), who conforms to patriarchal traditions.

With the sacrilegious snip of the shears, the modern woman renounces social impositions. In conservative acceptability, she is now a fallen angel, portrayed on Indian celluloid for decades as the vampish home-breaker. Many a Berlin Wall must collapse before allergic reactions to women are rooted out of the social psyche.

Essentially, men fear the implications of equality. First, they would have to compete for power. Second, modern women usurping their positions may resist domination. As a result, their social esteem would plummet.

The male bastion backs women finding place in the sun only insofar as they are family members or malleable disciples. Whether in politics or the corporate industry, women generally make it to the top solely on the basis of family affiliations. This ensures the continuation by proxy, of the masculine calling of shots.

This dominant outlook came in with the Aryan invasion millennia ago, to infiltrate and assimilate the other existing cultures. With the insidious takeover, patriarchy became the bedrock of almost all religions that followed and the societies that were fed on them.

The projection holds till today that the fact of being woman means to have a dubious integrity. Literate, modernized, independent women are suspect to the majority. The reason is the strong internalisation from traditional thought that women are lesser by birth itself. From custom established in ages gone by, their salvation lies only in being controlled, and thus rescued from their base natures.

The French authorities presume to remove this “darkness” within the Muslim immigrant community with the legislative ban on the burqa. Langley writes:

Secularism is taken seriously in French society – a legacy of revolutionary anti-clericalism that was further enshrined in the landmark 1905 law that prohibits the state from recognising, funding or favouring any religion.

The act is termed a “victory for tolerance”. I would however, question the cultural assumptions, because legislation hardly changes distinct cultural attitudes, although Langley writes:

Approval runs right across the spectrum, with Fadela Amara, the Algerian-born former housing minister in Sarkozy’s government, calling the burka “a kind of tomb, a horror for those trapped within it”, and André Gerin, the Communist MP who headed the commission investigating the grounds for a ban, describing it as “the tip of an iceberg of oppression”.

Moreover, the social attitudes of differing cultures are not quite at the same stage of development. Western societies boast of “post-feminism” whereby women may be aggressive in social behaviour. Revealing clothing is symbolic of the feminine gender being in control of their bodies and their choices.

Women with origins steeped in conservatism, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, etc., are far more preoccupied with ongoing conflicts over education, employment and relationships. The immigrant communities are also not ready to accept the independence and individualism of Western-styled post-feminism.

For instance, in her bid at liberation from constraining traditions, a German-Turkish model marked her personal rebellion against conservatism with a revealing photo-shoot for Playboy magazine in Germany. As Sila Sahin explains the bold step in a news report:

'I did it because I wanted to be free at last… These photographs are a liberation from the restrictions of my childhood. I have always abided by what men say. As a result I developed an extreme desire for freedom. I feel like Che Guevara. I have to do everything I want, otherwise I feel like I may as well be dead.'

Although her action has been praised by some friends and fans, the Turkish community is alienated. Her haste to jump the cultural divide has come a cropper. Sahin may be perceived a stooge of Western interests in the ethnic circles. She faces social ostracism within the Turkish community, and now begs her family to allow her to “come home”.

Attempts by states or individuals to compel acceptance on minority groups may backfire to actually harden their stances instead. In some quarters, the French ban on the burqa is thought to be the forerunner of forcible Christianising of minority groups.

Can woman really be accepted as an individual in her own right? As long as attitudes remain they way they are, woman will discover, with a disturbing sense of déjà vu that new advancements are just further burdens she must bear. In the cultural tug-of-war for domination over women, education or employment become new weapons to force their adherence to standards established by men.

O’Neill argues that assumptions that the veil only represents radical Islam are fallacious. He writes:

…the adoption of the veil is a fashion statement more than a religious one; it is the Islamic equivalent of becoming a goth … by putting a veil on your head and instantly becoming mysterious. It is not modesty or chastity that drives the fashionable wearing of the veil in Western Europe… they were effectively saying “Look at us!”, not “Look away”.

Perhaps a better idea for social integration is to allow change to evolve, as it will, without riding roughshod over sentiments based on traditions or religious practice. Just as organisms must change to adapt to their new environments as a matter of course, new generations of immigrants should be trusted to be doing likewise. 


References for this post:

1.  Arthurs, Deborah. “'I wanted to be free': Muslim model upsets family by posing nude for Playboy cover” dailymail.co.uk MailOnline. 19 April 2011. 

2.  Langley, William. “France’s burka ban is a victory for tolerance” telegraph.co.uk The Telegraph. 11 Apr 2011 

3.  O’Neill, Brendan. “Chill out – veiled women are only the Islamic equivalent of Young Fogeys” telegraph.co.uk The Telegraph. April 11th, 2011 

Self: 3. The power of uprising

Calls for socio-political change that began in the Middle East, now spread rapidly to other nations. In India, a 72-year-old Gandhian has launched his campaign against corruption. One man alone is catalysing change in a nation of over a billion people. His convictions should inspire women’s groups that seek gender equality yet lose steam in fighting for their rights.

Social activist Anna Hazare’s fast-unto-death has served to fire public imagination. A spontaneous solidarity now gains momentum, around a country fed up with expediency. The movement is named India’s second independence with housewives among others publicly raising voice against corruption.

With popular uprisings gathering around them, women have not stayed home to remain safe. They have filled the ranks in peaceful demonstrations for mass social causes. In Ivory Coast, the fatal shootings of seven women protesters have not deterred others from joining into campaigns with hopes for a brighter future for their children. 

Beginning from Tahrir Square in Egypt, women have both led and followed in protest marches. Their participation made a large contribution to forcing a regime change. But once that objective was achieved, the men made crystal clear that change does not include gender equality. New roles in Egypt’s nation building have thus become the exclusive male prerogative. 

Women must realize that their rights, in the minds of most men, are convenient bargaining chips. Brown writes the stark reality:

When negotiations with the Taliban seem like a good step, suddenly women’s rights don’t matter so much. When they need Pakistan as an ally, they accept the Pakistani government giving autonomy to regions of the country where women are utterly victimised by the parallel legal system. And alliances are made in Iraq with militia that in their spare time attack and kill women’s rights activists.

Indeed, the ‘male supremacy’ social learning begins at home. Most men around the world perceive household responsibility as ‘woman’s work’. Even in the liberal West, truly fortunate is the woman with equality in marriage or partnership!

For example, after more than a decade of a marriage Laura Munson thought was happy, her husband announced he wanted out of family life. Munson, who had focused on being the supportive wife and nurturing homemaker, asks:

Is showing up for dinner and doing the dishes ‘work’? Hunting for the Christmas tree, or building a house for our children where the hearth is warm all winter and the kitchen alive with smells and good food… Is that called ‘work’?

The bitter truth is the husband’s individual “needs to be happy” comes ahead of the wellbeing of the family unit. Factually, many women play at being indispensable, socializing spouse and offspring into the gender-based division of labour at home. With home-life responsibilities apparently waived, it is no surprise that husbands and partners are free to indulge in other pleasure-providing activities.

Women demean themselves in the relationship trying too hard to please. They invite derision when they allow men to set them impossible standards of perfection.  Women fulfiling both feminine and masculine roles has become the accepted trend. Films that are popular eulogize women that are far larger than life, e.g. Lara Croft. In attempting to meet the impossible standards, mortal women would obviously fail.

A news report on a study says:

Exposure to attractive, aggressive female characters actually increases expectations on women, including potentially inconsistent roles … These increased expectations for women occur not only among men, but among women as well, suggesting that women’s expectations for themselves are affected. 

Although the expectations created are unrealistic, more ordinary working women tend to lose confidence in the comparison. Their feelbad factors increase. Wives end up emotionally disrespected, their burden of childcare taken for granted.

According to a news report on another survey study of working women:

Mothers have less time to themselves and feel under greater pressure to juggle work and family life than the previous generation … 64 per cent said this was because they felt they ‘had’ to go out to work, while nearly a third (29 per cent) said they were under constant pressure to be the ‘perfect mother’.

In India too, when confronted with gender issues, women tend to passively await ‘rescue’. The general reluctance to dissociate from the male shadow has been consistent. As a result, women may vent their frustrations at the patriarchal system in private, but in the actual battle for equality, the spirit proves unwilling to either rock the boat or bell the proverbial cat.

The environment is perhaps conspiring now to compel women to re-examine gender concepts. They are being pushed to realize that powerlessness is based not on genetics, but on inhibitions learned through the ages. It is to be hoped that a change in stereotypical thinking will emerge.

The fantasies of women in Egypt have been demolished. They are also forced by circumstances, to shake off their traditional disinterest in political involvement. The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Right had earlier shelved their awareness programmes because nobody would show up. Today the centre is inundated with applicants actively seeking knowledge.

Davies reports:

… 24-year-old Nawara Belal was driving in Cairo when she was verbally abused by an army officer. "I got out of my car, opened the door of his car and slapped him in the face," she said. "I realized he wouldn't do anything about it, and it gave me the power to do what I wanted to do to every harasser in my past.”. 

Conditioned behaviours deferring to men do little to uplift women’s rights. Men used to dominant roles are not about to give up their advantage easily. Women have to throw off the yoke of traditions that has over centuries imposed a suppression of rights. Women need to be fearless in confrontation; what they have to lose are their chains.

Gender equality is not a common cause, but a goal beyond, that at least half of society is unconcerned with. Women’s rights are women’s problem entirely, and no ‘rescue’ is forthcoming. Women must take charge of their own destiny, and go the extra mile for themselves, their daughters and generations of girl children of the future. As one student activist declared in New Delhi, it is now or never for empowerment.

References for this post:

1. Brown, Widney. “Is the Egyptian revolution sidelining women?” independent.co.uk The Independent. Tuesday, 8 March 2011. 
2. Davies, Catriona “Revolution signals new dawn for Egypt’s women” cnn.com. CNN. March 8, 2011. 
3. Munson, Laura. “Relationships: How one woman kept her cool when her husband said he wanted to leave” Book Extract. dailymail.co.uk MailOnline. 2^nd April 2011. 
4. “Motherhood 'was better in the 70s and 80s', according to today's under-pressure working mums” News report by Daily Mail Reporter. dailymail.co.uk MailOnline. 8th March 2011. 
5. Narayana, Nagesh. “Anna Hazare's fast triggers public anger against corruption in India” ibtimes.com INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES. April 6, 2011. 
6. “Why Angelina Jolie movies give girls the feelbad factor” News report by Daily Mail Reporter. dailymail.co.uk MailOnline. 1st April 2011. 

Self: 2. The feminine sense of becoming

Sexism is by no means dead, cultural propaganda notwithstanding. It is simply changing form. Despite the legislations to curb it, sexist discrimination flourishes, and may be harder to identify.

India still grapples with male domination and female foeticide.  A recent census countrywide shows an alarming imbalance in the average gender ratio of women to men, 941: 1000. Other patriarchal societies of Asia and Africa also continue to be similarly backward in gender issues; in war and social unrest, women and children are primary victims. 'Celibate' priests in over 23 countries, notably in Africa, fearing diseases like HIV AIDS otherwise, have been sexually abusing nuns of their own diocese.

In liberal USA, recent empirical data shows that women’s experience of sexist behaviour is, on average, in two incidents a week. In UK, sexism may be implied rather than verbally articulated. In a scathing response to the “not quite a paedophile” interjection, made with regard to Jeffrey Epstein, Gold writes:

… he [John Humphrys] was saying, probably subconsciously, what our culture says – that the pubescent girl is the physical, and thus sexual, ideal. So what is she for, if not for sex? 

Discrimination causes distress, more so if it is based on gender. Women with self-esteem already low would perceive discrimination more easily in interactions, but high self-esteem does not prevent vulnerability. Memories of sexist incidents re-playing in the mind may actually push the latter more towards mental illness.

Fisher & Bolton Holtz explain that there is a powerful interrelationship between society, group, self and distress. They write:

… negative societal views of women (public collective self-esteem) … may lead to more negative personal views of women as a group (private collective self-esteem) and of themselves as individuals (personal self-esteem), ultimately increasing psychological distress.

The researchers observe:

Specifically, when coupled with lower levels of dispositional optimism, higher levels of perceived sexist discrimination predicted both lower self-esteem and greater depressed mood.

The sense of powerlessness is reinforced with continual reminders of their low status. The women tend to internalize the discrimination at home or outside, and some may even believe that their treatment is deserved.

I should think that women in collectivistic cultures, like India, live with heightened emotional trauma. Despite the apparent advancements of women’s groups in the new millennium, they are also burdened with guilt at breaking social traditions to pursue individualistic objectives.

Fisher & Bolton Holtz write that:

… living in a culture pervaded by institutional sexism, racism, and homophobia reflects a kind of psychic violence.

Attitudes to women in India may reside on a continuum, like the pedestal-gutter syndrome. Traditionally, the mother image is revered in the country. Yet women are taught from childhood to be self-effacing, secondary to men and dependent on them for their identity. A particular woman’s position on the continuum would then depend on her age, and social relationships.

For instance, a young bride coming into the family is by convention, consigned to the gutter. In a joint family, she is a pariah, treated with suspicion and contempt especially by the in-laws. She must keep going through fire to prove her “purity” (and servitude).

Her status begins to change somewhat only when she becomes a mother and, in many cases even today, delivers a male child. The woman tends to forge a close bond with her son, with intent to assume the pedestal of the queen mother in the future, when the boy grows up to head the family.

Thus, age has been an important factor determining women’s social status in India over generations. In fact, in ageing women, the thresholds for the distress and mental ill health may drive down.

The need for modern women to self-actualise is then confronted by the gender-self, conditioned by the weight of traditions, to nurture the collective in dependent existence. Women’s vacillation between orthodoxy and progressiveness creates internal stress that contributes largely to the health states of their mind and body.

Fisher et al write that:

Especially for those in less powerful positions, the effects of individual stressors are likely to be amplified … women’s personal experiences with sexist events would be connected to their beliefs about justice. Particularly in contexts perceived as unjust, women may also feel that they have less control over their lives.

Constant reminders of women’s second-class citizenship have a cumulative effect that is perhaps longer lasting. The point is the absence of overtness does not equal absence of sexism; chronic low-level stressors are equally effective weapons against women.

The hypothesis is that:

… frequency of Sexist Events predicted women’s Depression, Anxiety, and Well-Being both directly and indirectly, through the effects of PBJW [personal belief in a just world] and PC [personal control].

Research on ethnic minority groups appears to show that the men’s psychological adjustment is less influenced by personal self-esteem than that of the ethnic group. This is perhaps especially true in immigrant communities of any society. The group elders’ hard-line on traditions may thus be in fear of cultural assimilation.

In France, for instance, the recent French legislation to “ban the burqa” reflects the majority’s emphasis on ‘sameness’. However, the minority Muslim community may insist their women wear the veil to preserve the distinct ethnic identity.

From their studies on ethnicity in UK, Cassidy et al suggest that:

… compared with men, the degree to which women evaluate and relate to their ethnic group relates less to how they evaluate themselves as individuals  … Aspects of life other than ethnic identity, for example, interpersonal relationships, may be more influential for women’s well-being.

Certainly, Muslim women in France are finding themselves caught between a rock and a hard place in the clash! Their perceptions of sexist marginalizing along with religious discrimination would lead to their beliefs in a just world diminishing rapidly.

The women’s sense of powerlessness would deepen knowing that either way their personal wellbeing is harmed, with sexism within the community, as well as outside of it. While dress becomes the centre of a sociocultural tug-of-war, the psychic abuse of women, ignored by society at large, continues unabated.

References for this post:

1. Cassidy, Clare., O’Connor, Rory c., Howe, Christine and Warden, David. “Perceived Discrimination and Psychological Distress: The Role of Personal and Ethnic Self-Esteem” Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2004, Vol. 51, No. 3, 329–339. 2004. 
2. Fischer, Ann R. and Bolton Holz, Kenna. “Perceived Discrimination and Women's Psychological Distress: The Roles of Collective and Personal Self-Esteem”. Abstract. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2007, Vol. 54, No. 2, 154–164. 2007.  
3. Fischer, Ann R. and Bolton Holz, Kenna, “TESTING A MODEL OF WOMEN’S PERSONAL SENSE OF JUSTICE, CONTROL, WELL-BEING, AND DISTRESS IN THE CONTEXT OF SEXIST DISCRIMINATION”. Abstract. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 34 (2010), 297–310. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 2010.
4. Gold, Tanya. “'Not quite a paedophile' – John Humphrys' strange correction” guardian.co.uk. The Guardian. Tuesday 8 March 2011. 
5. Kennedy, Frances. “Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries” independent.co.uk The Independent. Wednesday, 21 March 2001