Values, Accountability, and women

The world is all topsy-turvy, with serial sexual harassers who assault young girls elected to high office, while gropers grimly hang on. Politics is a mess and there are no values left in its practitioners. At least the media has been cleaning house, with the latest being NBC news host Matt Lauer.

I do not watch television, so I am only dimly aware of who he is. Apparently, he liked to sleep with women not his wife, and exposed himself to his staff, gave them inappropriate gifts, and tried to have sex with them. And like Charlie Rose before him, he had power and authority and he got away with it. (What is it with talk show hosts and sex?)

But one thing that struck me was that the guy earns $25 MILLION for a combination of fluff interviews and reading the news. One twitter account I saw suggested that $25m is enough to put 5 reporters in each of our statehouses and pay them and give them benefits. I am a fairly well paid professional and there's no way in an entire lifetime of work that I would come anywhere near $25M.

And what does it say about our culture that we pay a sex-mad newsreader $25M while people who do the actual job of journalism, or cancer research, or teaching, struggle to stay in the middle class. (And they won't, if the GOP tax plan passes).

Meanwhile, today there was an article published in the Federalist arguing that it doesn't matter what Moore did, because ABORTION.

Really, it all cycles back to abortion, which is an outcome of female sexuality and that is why it must be controlled.  Because women should be shamed if they are pregnant out of wedlock, because women's bodies must be policed.  Because men feel they have the right to power over women.  Because a woman's job is babies. It's not surprising that ThinkProgress found evidence that Roy Moore co-authored a law course that included arguments against women holding elected office.

 From Salon, a few weeks ago:

And make no mistake: It's patriarchy, not morality, that is the animating force behind the Christian right that has elevated Moore. Evangelicals may talk a big game about chastity, but their overwhelming support for Donald Trump is a reminder that "chastity" is just the cover story for the true agenda, which is bringing women firmly under the control of men. Men's unchaste behavior isn't really considered a problem, even when it's criminal. It's female bodies and female sexuality the Christian right is interested in controlling — and dating young girls in no way conflicts with that goal. If anything, as the above examples show, locking them down young is considered a handy way to achieve these patriarchal objectives.

I salute the women who have come forward against these powerful men, but nothing's going to change.  The Democrats lost a moment when Franken and Conyers refused to resign (Franken's seat in MN would remain safely D), so the GOP can point at them and say "everyone does it".  Alabama evangelicals are even more likely to vote for Moore after these allegations.  The President remains in office, and get prepared to say hello to Senator Moore.  The darkness is upon us.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

---

The Second Coming, W. B. Yeats.

Fanning the flames of the new sexism

Somehow, the election of Barack Obama allowed all the racists to crawl out from under their rocks and expose their blatant bigotry. I’m not sure why opinions that in my youth would have been repressed as shameful, are somehow now acceptable in the light of day. The resurgence seems to be promoted by the anonymity of social media, its ability to unite people with unpopular opinions, and to pile on in twitter storms with hashtags.   This appears to have risen just as we have loosened community social norms and personal expectations, as people become more isolated from real life interactions.

Similarly, we seem to be under a rebirth of sexism,  with a vile new internet component. This has exposed a scary undercurrent of angry men and made our advances as women seem far more vulnerable than they felt 10-15 years ago..

Three on line articles that I saw today make this point.

Item 1: 
A female comedian posts a comment on Twitter about guns, and is subject to vigorous disagreement by men. Disturbingly, this degenerates into threats of rape and sexual violence, and internet stalkers spread the threats to friends and colleagues.

What’s upsetting is that so many men took that statement as a springboard to making me feel uncomfortable and unsafe. And they felt fine doing this because I’m a woman. Two male friends of mine with much larger followings had tweeted similar jokes and didn’t see a fraction of the hateful responses that I did. And I’m sure they saw none of the same threats.

This isn’t the first time that a woman has been harassed online. It’s definitely not the last time, either. That’s really the problem. This is one small instance in an unending series of events. We need to stop accepting this behavior as an unavoidable consequence to writing on the Internet. Harassment doesn’t need to be just the cost of doing business.
…..

My point is for men: Stop doing this. The only thing gained from you saying disgusting, aggressive, sexual, violent, and threatening things on the internet is that we now know that you’re part of the problem.

This woman’s experience is a dishearteningly common. See, for example, “Gamer Gate”,  in which some male video gamers are angry that women and gays are part of the community and changing the sorts of games it produces, and reacting violently and angrily against inclusive gaming. It is deeply disturbing and ongoing online harassment including techniques such as “doxing” (publishing personal information online) and “Swatting” (telling the police there’s a shooter at your address) which are hugely frightening.

It is only a small step from this to

Item 2 
Apparently, there’s a figure named “Roosh” who advocates for legal rape of women, and is trying to arrange world wide gatherings in major cities of men who agree. These are men who assume that a woman’s body belongs to them by virtue of their sex. Roosh is part of the internet “manosphere”, the sort of online misogynists who inspired shooter Elliot Rodgers who complained he couldn’t get a girlfriend.  Rodgers went on a violent stabbing and shooting spree targeting women at the university of California, Santa Barbara, and killed six people.

This objectification, although contributes to the less scary but still disturbing

Item 3 
Seems that Susan Sarandon showed some cleavage in her dress for the recent SAG awards. Whereas this and more is apparently acceptable for the young things, the fact that Sarandon is 69 brought out ridicule and body-shaming.

To be clear, Susan Sarandon is a grown-ass woman who can wear what she wants. The suit was tailored, the bra was barely visible, and her breasts were only a “distraction” to those who would make them a focal point of conversation in the first place. You don’t want to be distracted by a woman’s breasts? Here’s a thought – LOOK AT HER FACE WHEN SHE’S TALKING. THAT’S WHERE THE WORDS ARE COMING FROM.

Another commenter writes,

it’s strikingly awful that Sarandon alone was the target of the social media bigots.

Sarandon is 69 and therefore it’s apparently not OK for her to remind us all that she’s still a living, breathing, sexual being.

Just saying, I thought she looked great.

Again, it seems to me that somehow the internet has empowered people (men, mostly) to express opinions that social pressure would normally?  at least, previously,  repress. And the speed of reaction and ability to connect across distance magnifies this.  

Indeed, we see violent reactions to political disagreements or other counter opinions on line, many of which are overtly sexual in their threats (to both men and women).  What is it about those who are angry and threatened that makes them think of sex as a weapon?

So instead of making steady progress toward a rational, equality driven future, we seem to be regressing into a violent, tribal past where the biggest man bangs his chest, and drags the woman away by her hair.

WTF?

Crawling out from under a rock (updated)

So, a little while ago Cheerios had an adorable on-line video ad, where a little girl wants her dad to be healthy by eating Cheerios. Thing is, it was a biracial couple and the haters came out of the woodwork and from under the rocks to leave the most vile comments  on Youtube. You can read more here. So, here's a spoof version of the ad that....well, you'll see.
(Updated: Corrected video now uploaded)


Humor is always a good response.

But more troubling, this isn't isolated.  An 11 year old San Antonio boy with a terrific voice sang the National Anthem before one of the games in the NBA final.  He's of Mexican descent, and the troglodytes crawled out with the racist comments there, too. (Read more about it here--and listen to his awesome performance!) They were sending him vile tweets.

What these have in common is people revealing a racism that we know exists, but that used to be seen as unacceptable.  But now, they are coming out of the closet, using Twitter accounts with their own names.  And they aren't just Angry White Men.  There are blacks and women too.  Because  everyone needs someone to look down upon. There's a hierarchy of putdowns here.  And, they seem to feel its appropriate to express these feelings about CHILDREN.

It's really disturbing how our country is fracturing.  Of course, this prevents building bridges and coalitions against the corporate oligarchs and millionaires.  And of course, cultural warriors benefit too. Look at how the Catholic church is threatening to pull funding from immigration reform groups that belong to progressive coalitions that support marriage equality.

 What's also deeply troubling is how many of these people probably think of themselves as Christian.

It's Buffy's fault

The Telegraph reports that according to a new academic study: The old-fashioned attitudes and hierarchies of churches are causing a steep decline in the number of female worshippers.

The report claims more than 50,000 women a year have deserted their congregations over the past two decades because they feel the church is not relevant to their lives.

It says that instead young women are becoming attracted to the pagan religion Wicca, where females play a central role, which has grown in popularity after being featured positively in films, TV shows and books.

The study comes amid ongoing controversy over the role of women in all Christian denominations. Last month its governing body voted to allow women to become bishops for the first time, having admitted them to the priesthood in 1994, but traditionalist bishops have warned that hundreds of clergy and parishes will leave if the move goes ahead as planned.

The report's author, Dr Kristin Aune, a sociologist at the University of Derby, said: "In short, women are abandoning the church.

"Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularised by the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.

"Women's ordination, as priests and now bishops, has dominated debate and headlines – but while looking at women in the pulpit we have taken our eyes off the pews, where a shift with more consequences for the church's survival is underway."

Her research, published in a new book called Women and Religion in the West, cites an English Church Census which found more than a million women worshippers have left churches since 1989.

Over the past decade, it claims, women have been leaving churches at twice the rate of men.

In addition, the census is said to show that teenage boys now outnumber girls in the pews for the first time.

Gee - you think -- young women are tired of the sexist rhetoric of church?

Talk among yourselves until I return in two weeks --- Ann