I just read, True Love Waits, by Donna Freitas in the Wall Street Journal, an editorial about the Twilight vampire romance series.

She made some good points about the Twilight Series and the sex involved. I've read the first one and though no one "does it" the book is hot with anticipation.

Freitas argues that this book encourages girls to be abstinent and helps them understand they can have fulfilling romantic relationships while demanding respect from boys.

It's a compelling argument. In theory, it's one I'd like to hop on board with.

Don't do it. It's hot not to do it. And I remember - from being a teenager - how hot it is not to do it, just to fool around, to make him chase me. It really is much hotter not to do it. (Ironically, it's so hot not to do it that it makes you want to do it.)

Except that it doesn't account for the language in the book that struck me as exactly the same dialogue we hear from battered women and victims of teen relationship violence.

Not a small problem when you consider that around 20% of our teens have experienced teen dating violence.

"He couldn't help it," is what Stephanie Meyers argues is an acceptable reason for Edward to want to kill and harm Bella, the heroine. It's not just acceptable, it's romantic.

Battered women and codependent women (women in relationships with addicts) use this excuse in real life, as a "valid reason" to stay and take more abuse from someone who declares his "love" for her and his simultaneous inability to treat her with respect.

The question is - Is it valid?

The reason they don't "do it" in the first Twilight book - is that he's godlike strength "would crush her fragile, delicate, vulnerable body."

Oh, and his vampire instinct makes him literally want to kill her. He wants to so bad that he can barely touch her. The smell of her makes him think "lunch," the same way I feel jerks who catcall think of us - "lunch - meant for my consumption."

Hello, that's not the language of patient, abstinent, sweet and touching young love. That's the language of power and violence.

Meyers pretends Bella has power over Edward because he claims that being near her drives him out of control (wanting to kill her) that he can barely contain himself. But, existing in a pretty state and smelling good is a pretty passive power.

He has POWER and CONTROL- because he gets to choose whether to kill her or not. Lucky for her he doesn't - no matter how much she wants him to - until the 3rd or 4th book. Bella's death was another mingling of erotic and passionate love meets violence and pain. My cousin read me that part over the phone, "Isn't that great writing? Such a powerful description."

Yeah, of battered woman syndrome - not of true love.

This is not the language I want to use to make my daughter demand respect and maintain abstinence.

This is the language that makes victims of girls and women. It makes them believe that being a victim is romantic. In real life it's not at all romantic.

It's a distortion of love - not True Love.

A man who expects me to not to violate my own sense of self-preservation to win his love actually loves me. We need to stop being confused about that.

If I have to give up my self, my abilities, my life, my safety, my sense self-preservation to be with him - that is most definitely NOT true love. Those are all red flags.

You know another connotation of the word Twilight is a distancing from feelings surrounding reality - they used to put birthing mothers into a semi-coma called Twilight Sleep. This way they could participate in the labor, but without awareness or feeling.

Not my idea of healthy love.

I had to learn these lessons the hard way. God willing my daughter won't have to.

Should most of the issues in this series, or any of the red flag language, come up for Ainsley I hope her first and only instinct is to RUN FOR HER LIFE AND NEVER LOOK BACK.

I, quite ironically, am wishing Edward the Vampire Boyfriend was mine. I have a rare genetic condition called Hemochromatosis. Basically, my body doesn't get rid of iron as it should. Iron is poisonous, especially in the liver where it sits in my body. The only treatment is for me to be bled.

I really need one pint of blood removed from my body every week for the next while. Hot and passionate Edward would be a lot more fun then the phlebotomist at the lab. My husband, he's pretty great with the dishes - but, he hardly ever offers to suck my blood. And unlike, Bella, that would really be an asset in a mate for me.

Oh, and if you're going to buy the books to read - to make sure they are or aren't appropriate for your daughter (you probably should since all the girls all over America are talking about it) feel free to buy them here to support these Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me book reviews.

Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)

New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2)

Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3)

Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4)

The Host: A Novel

For more in-depth reading about how using romantic language and imagery really turns into violence against girls and women read these:

Battered Woman, Do Not Stay

Gossip Girl & Date Rape

Dating Violence

Sharpton Protests Ant-Girl Lyrics

Empowering Girls: Twilight, Female Crack Cocaine

How Falling In Love is Addictive

My much adored cousin told me I just HAD to read Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1), by Stephenie Meyer, which is flying off the shelves as women indulge our addiction to the love story.

In the meantime, I've been contemplating a few things like why girls and women can be so self-defeating.

Why does the battered wife stay or go back?

Why are girls willing to put up with blatant disrespect for boyfriends?

Why do women and girls tend to glamorize "giving up everything" for their husbands and children?

What is wrong with us?

Women make up 50% of the population, yet we have so little of the world's power. Why?

Read Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1).

Edward, the beautiful vampire tells Bella, the teenage human girl, over and over that his biggest desire is to kill her. That he can barely contain himself whenever he's around her. Her own demise only turns her on. She has zero sense of self-preservation. She "Loves" him. Within the first week of meeting Edward, who immediately treats her like crap, because he wants to harm her so badly he finds it difficult to resist, she gives up her friends, her studies, her father and her mother and all of her interests. Giving up everything is "worth it." (Where have I heard that line before mothers?)

The answer to all those questions is - we think it's romantic. It makes us hot. It makes us linger in the bathtub or passes the time quickly on the treadmill.

The self-defeat, the sacrifice, the giving up of self, is in our feminine collective dialogue and it's like crack cocaine to us.

Women are addicted to this emotional drug we call "Love", but which is really a lot more like unhealthy emotional psychosis.

It starts with the Disney Princess drama as toddlers and children.

But, then we grow up and it has no effect on us our "real life?" Right?

Then why is the Twilight Series flying off the shelves?

There's no sex in the book (because he would crush her vulnerable and breakable body). But, really, is sex the most self-distructive thing girls participate in? I think not. I would hold up "Love," and our distortions of it, as the most dangerous thing to girls' confidence, their self esteem, their sense of self, their psychological and emotional health. How many girls have sex too soon for this distortion of "Love?"

Here's the other thing that gets me about this type literary dialogue, it's so prevalent in the collective female culture. Yet, the "give up everything" theme doesn't exist in men's literature.

How many relationships have actually self-destructed with these words, "But I gave up everything for you!" women/girlfriends/wives declare.

"Who asked you to? Why would you do that?" men want to know. Love is not described in the same terms, nor defined by the need for women to give up so much of themselves that they no longer actually exist, in the literary consciousness of men.

Women keep acting out the same self-distructive communication patterns and the same self-sacrificing behaviors found in books like Twilight and men are completely bewildered by it.

The only literature or culture in which this exchange - women giving up everything - shows up is in their pornography, where women aren't featured for "LOVE" as we write it, they are featured as inanimate objects for a mere moment's pleasure.

Stop this little cultural miscommunication and you most likely increase not only the duration, but the quality, of marriage in this country.

Stop buying into this ridiculously absurd self-defeating definition of "LOVE" and we might actually give our daughters a shot at healthy love, positive and fulfilling relationships, and enduring marriages. One where they get to keep their selves, their identities, their interests, their talents, their careers, their hobbies, their sense of self-respect and their physical safety.

The question is - can we have both?

Can we have our trashy teenage romance vampire romance novel where we "pretend" to give up our choices and our well-being, our life even, our families, for the "love of our life" who wants to kill us and flat out tells us that and then live empowering strong lives?

Or, do we hardwire our brains to believe that doing self-defeating things for a man is "romantic?" If our brains are hard wired this way, are we passing that down to our daughters? Especially if we allow them to indulge in this type of culture and media?