In Stephen King’s epic novel and later movie, “The Stand,” there is a peripheral character in the first few scenes called The Monster Shouter, a man who stands on the street corners with a “Repent!” sign. As people pass by and try not to look at him, he screams at them to “Repent, the monsters are coming!” Later, as we see in the novel, a terrible virus wipes out 90 percent of the population, and the remaining 10 percent divide and do, in fact, battle against, or fight for, an Antichrist-like monster.
While it could be argued that we have had a Monster who Shouts in the White House recently, and we have had plenty of warnings that this Monster could come back and destroy everything, the sad fact is that there is a Monster Shouter in my family who corners, annoys and even terrifies other family members with his admonitions of repentance. He seems to sincerely believe he is saving souls, but in a way, he is to be pitied, because he cannot hold a conversation as much as spray or blast people with his convictions. Asking questions or really trying to find out what makes an individual tick—that is not going to happen—and so his life will not be enriched by coming to know others.
His devout conservative Catholic faith has led him to believe—and he claims to have had a vision or dream—that it is his place and should be his mission to corner every female at every family event and lecture them about abortion and repentance, or whatever preoccupies his mind at the time. Is the religious mind more prone to this kind of obsession or predilection? A person like this recently marred my husband’s funeral, going around telling everyone that the “pedophile crisis was just a plot to smear the Catholic Church,” and that the priests never did anything wrong. By the way, my husband’s funeral was NOT Catholic. As someone who worked in and around the Catholic Church for 40 years, I personally knew 12 priests who were credibly accused, sent to jail or otherwise confessed to molesting children.
Some of the monster shouter’s female relatives, sisters-in-laws, nieces, etc., have become adept at avoiding him, ducking him, or politely nodding while he rants about his Catholic beliefs and everyone else’s need to repent. As some of us women have learned to do. Just giggle nervously when someone at work makes a sexist remark. Just deflect, or ignore, or hope they go away. But it seems that we women shouldn’t have to do so, that we shouldn’t be victimized or targeted like this just simply because we are women or just because we have been raised to be polite. We would never be “unpleasant,” mind you, while someone else mind-fucks us with his religious and political beliefs in an urgent, scary-angry voice, while we nod as if we agree because it’s easier—and certainly more pleasant and polite--than to simply just start screaming or to say, “Fuck you, are you doing this again?” We feel we have to nod politely because we were taught that the men have all the authority, and we must be “nice little girls,” speak only when spoken to, “leave people with a good taste in their mouths,” etc. Because someone, usually a devout religious person, and usually a male, will beat the crap out of you if you don’t. Or if you dare speak your mind (sass), you will be “sent to the Catholic home for bad girls.” (There was literally such a place a few blocks from my childhood home--a Catholic home for unwed pregnant women and abused teens that was of course mischaracterized as a place for "bad girls," because you know everything is always the "bad girls' fault going all the way back to Eve. And yes, my parents did say this from time to time when overwhelmed by the sheer exhaustion of having a very large Catholic family. My mother actually called all of us children her “rhythm band," a sarcastic take on the Catholic Church's only allowed method of family planning.)
It is this training to be polite at all costs that leads to bad things happening. I believe that my children have been damaged by seeing my need through the years to be polite. I lost my young son for a scary minute or two while a clerk at a store kept asking me for my ZIP code over and over again for their preferred customer program. About halfway through this transaction, I became uneasily aware that my four-year-old was not at my side, but I politely kept repeating the ZIP code while wondering if I should just bolt and go find my child. Once I was on a home-based conference call and looked over to see my toddler calmly eating Kleenex. As he smiled up at me with a great ball of white tissue in his mouth, I found myself (shamefully) weighing whether it would be polite to get off the phone immediately with an important figure from India to pluck out that spitty wad of tissue clogging his mouth or to just let him amuse himself. What are the odds of the baby choking, I asked myself. How unpleasant would it be if I pissed off my client versus protecting my child? Once I had some friends over for dinner and their child was bullying and physically harming my child. The whole evening was exhausting, and they seemed not to notice that their child was badly misbehaving, but I could never simply ask my friends to leave. Because, polite. Once, as a working musician, I went to the home of someone I knew who told me they had a recording studio in their basement and needed my help on a song, and froze up as they raped me there. Because, polite. And fear. Because religion tells you to be nice, give people what they want, and maybe that big dude in the sky won’t punish you, maybe they won’t shout monsters at you, they won’t beat the crap out of you, and they will let you live. It’s been said that men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
As we approach Christmas, perhaps there will be a Monster Shouter who will corner you in the kitchen, or at a family gathering. We live in a time when more and more people are NOT civil or polite, and civility and politeness are good values for a functional society. But some people will also take advantage of your civility or politeness. Some now feel the Dems are too polite, too civil, as the “monster shouters,” the right-wing REPENT people, shout up and over them, drowning them out and scaring—but also entertaining--the masses tremendously. “The monsters are coming! Repent!” “The trans people are coming! Repent!” “The single women who won’t get married are coming! Repent!” “The immigrants are coming! Repent!” “The gay people are coming! Repent!” “The woke, the communists, the socialists, the atheists, the Marxists are coming! Repent!” “The vote fraudsters are coming! Repent!” Whatever monsters they can conjure to terrify us, they will.
“Here’s how it’s gonna be, little girl. Get down on your knees and repent!”
What are the monster shouters and shouting monsters in your life, who terrify and silence you, and how will you protect yourself, your children, your sanity, or anyone else they might victimize?
