T-shirt not funny to victims

It's just a little T-shirt. Gray with white and fuchsia writing.

But its message was a slap in the face to the woman who called me Thursday after seeing it in her local Wal-Mart.

"Some say it's stalking, I call it love."

For the past two years, this woman has been stalked until she feels like a prisoner in her own life. She has been spied upon, bullied and threatened with her life.

She has been in frequent communication with local authorities. Yet, because North Carolina has one of the most vague stalking laws in the nation (a bill is wending its way through the legislature to address that), her recourse has been limited.

So when she saw the T-shirts, clearly aimed for the teen-younger adult set, she didn't see the humor.

"It's reprehensible," said the woman, whose story is well documented but who asked not to be identified for fear that her stalker might retaliate.

"People don't realize how serious stalking is," she said. "You constantly live in fear, look over your shoulder and suffer from psychological and physical symptoms due to the stress of the stalker."

She wondered aloud: What's next?

"Some say it's rape, I call it hot sex"? Or: "Some call it domestic violence, I say I'm just teaching her a lesson"?

To me, the T-shirts fuel a notion that stalking is a natural, even comical element, of young love. Typical teenage mooning. I doubt that the college students once stalked by the Virginia Tech shooter would view it as quite so harmless.

These days stalkers employ a world of technology to track their victims, pester them with e-mail and even videotape them in their homes.

When I called the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence office in Durham about all this, I didn't even get the words out before executive director Rita Anita Linger said, "Oh yes, we've heard about the T-shirts, and oh yes, we're responding."

The coalition sent a letter to Wal-Mart calling on the company to "model corporate and community responsibility" by removing the T-shirts from stores immediately.

The question now is how the world's largest retailer will respond. Tara Stewart, a spokeswoman for the company, forwarded me information about Wal-Mart partnering with the attorney general's office in South Carolina on a public education campaign to combat domestic violence.

"We work hard on this issue and do a great deal to bring awareness and help families in need," she wrote in an e-mail message.

And the T-shirts fit into that public education campaign how?

Repeated calls and e-mail messages elicited promises of answers -- but no answer. No explanation.

What is a wonder is that a company as successful as Wal-Mart wouldn't see how the stalking T-shirt tends to undermine its public education campaign against domestic violence.

Sure, it's just one T-shirt with one ignorant message.

If only it didn't say so much about the world we live in, too.