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“It is important to make the distinction between men’s supposed loss of control and their use of violence for the purpose of control, because this goes right to a root cause of their violence against women. If the problem is that men simply cannot control their tempers, then the solution is to start building anger management skills into school curricula, starting in kindergarten.
But if the problem is men’s learned need to exercise power and control over women, then the solution is much more difficult. It requires that all of us take a look in the mirror and ask: Why do so many men in our society feel the need to control and dominate women? At what age do boys begin to learn that having power over women is part of being a man? What steps can we take in order to change that, both on an individual and an institutional level?”
–Jackson Katz, Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help
I would like to thank a recent commenter here on DWR for the placement of a tidy swarm of bees squarely in my bonnet. The honour, of course, goes to Godless Cranium for this nugget of wisdom shared on a previous thread:
“And I’m not saying sexism doesn’t exist or doesn’t play a factor sometimes, but I don’t think it’s as pervasive as you think, and I certainly don’t think all men are oppressors like patriarchy theory demands we believe.”
Before you can say “not all men…” check that thread for my response, I have it covered – but I think such a clearly stated denouncement of the patriarchal nature of our society requires a response with a little more… hmm… vibrancy than just a text based reply.
As chance would have it, current political events in my dear home province of Alberta have served up a glorious(?) example of the sexist and patriarchal attitudes that continue to flourish in our society.
The political event that I refer to is the leadership race for the Alberta provincial Progressive Conservative party. As of November 8th, the women who were in the race have both dropped out citing extensive misogynistic threats and physical and social intimidation.
“The only two women vying for the leadership of Alberta’s PC Party have both dropped out of the race.
Sandra Jansen and Donna Kennedy-Glans — socially progressive voices within the party — both gave notice on Tuesday that they were withdrawing.
Jansen, the PC MLA for Calgary-Northwest, cited intimidation and harassment for her decision.”
“In all of that time, I have never before experienced harassment like that which occurred up to and including this past weekend in Red Deer.”
Hmm. What is going on in the upper political echelons of our political class?
“In the release Jansen said she has been harassed online and her social media feeds have been “filled with filth.” The final straw in Red Deer was when “insults were scrawled on my nomination forms.”
“Volunteers from another campaign chased me up and down the hall, attacking me for protecting women’s reproductive rights, and my team was jeered for supporting children’s rights to a safe school environment.”
Hey now, politics is a rough and tumble affair, one should expect to face slings and arrows – it is a part of the process. I mean male politicians get the same calibre of flak, right?
Wrong.
“Sandra should stay in the kitchen where she belongs.”
“What a traitorous bitch.”
“Now you have two blond bimbos in a party that is clueless.”
“Dumb broad, a good place for her to be is with the rest of the queers.”
Let’s listen to what she has to say about the harassment she, like other women, face every day.
“Jansen was highlighting an issue that is bigger than her experience, according to Nancy Peckford of Equal Voice Canada.
“The vast majority of elected women are encountering some sort of misogynistic behaviour, online bullying, or harassment on a fairly regular basis,” she said.
“I think what’s very disturbing for Equal Voice is the misogynistic and sexist undertones and explicit commentary that’s used to diminish women’s contributions to public life and also undermine the confidence and the leadership female elected officials are offering.”
The misogyny she is experiencing is systemic, it happens everywhere all the time. Watch as Ms. Jansen explains her motivations as to why she made her speech. It is a damning look at how patriarchal our society actually is.
“Other women have also spoken out about the sexism they encounter in public life, including Conservative MP Michelle Rempel.
“The everyday sexism I face involves confronting the ‘bitch’ epithet when I don’t automatically comply with someone’s request or capitulate on my position on an issue,” she wrote in a National Post opinion article in April.
“It involves my ass being occasionally grabbed as a way to shock me into submission. It involves tokenism. It involves sometimes being written off as not serious when I’ve clearly proven I am.”
“That combination of the immediacy and the anonymity means that it’s sort of exploded into a new culture of pretty vicious, vitriolic attacks,” she said.
“Unfortunately, the attacks are particularly vicious toward women, and the attacks against women aren’t just violent, they’re sexualized violence. So it’s quite disturbing to see that some people will behave in this way, and it’s a challenge for our political culture to respond effectively to it.
She hopes more and more people will come together to condemn misogyny in politics and said it’s important for party leaders to forcefully and unequivocally reject the attacks.”
Yep. Misogyny needs to be addressed and kept in the spotlight, not only as the struggle for this generation but also the next generation of women and girls to show that having political aspirations (or professional ones) doesn’t mean facing a constant stream of harassment and misogyny.
But wait! There is more! Let’s go to another profession and and listen as Danielle Campbell describes what women have to face if they want to join the Police.
“Danielle Campbell walked into the canine unit 20 years ago as the first female graduate of the Edmonton Police Service dog handler program.
She faced insults, taunts and the reek of urine on her belongings.
“When I was in the unit they drew Xs on my eyes and they drew cocks around my face, a whole bunch of them … they would urinate on my gear.
‘It was ridiculous,” she said, referring to how a picture of her and her dog was defaced. “The sergeant in charge did nothing about it. Nothing.”
Campbell, 51, is no longer a police officer with EPS. She ended her 27-year-career in August 2016 when she resigned as deputy chief of police, the highest rank achieved by a woman within the city’s police force.”
The common saying is that women have to work twice as hard to get half as far ahead in society. Danielle Campbell is the embodiment of this, as her hard work and dedication – her proficiency at the job – eventually fought her way to the level of Deputy Chief of Police.
“A high-ranking officer in the human resources division told her she had to sign a document saying she wouldn’t get pregnant.
She was also told she could never become a dog handler because of her gender due to concerns over her menstrual cycle affecting the dog.
“I burst out laughing. But he didn’t laugh with me, he was dead serious,” she said.
“I just stood up and I said ‘This conversation is over. You have absolutely no empirical data to support that. That is just ridiculous,’ and I walked out. And to be honest with you that’s when I thought I was going to be fired.”
She wasn’t fired and neither was the officer or officers who sent her a Barbie doll in the mail, noose around its neck with the note: “No split tails in the dog unit, take a hint bitch.”
So yeah, I’m thinking there might be something to it when women say there is a culture of harassment and misogyny that makes their careers and lives more difficult than it needs to be.
“I really believe that so much has improved, and there’s so much more support for diversity and inclusivity and gender equality.
“But we’re not fully there yet,” she said, adding what she sees happening in the United States and, closer to home, in Alberta politics, is concerning.”
Please note the sentence – “we’re not there yet”. This is the key right here. Liberal dudes are so very quick to say the need for feminism is over, or sexism isn’t that bad, or that prevalent. Dudes… *you* don’t get to say any of that shit. When we hear it from women, then, and only then, can we declare sexism to be ‘over’ and no need for feminism.
It’s not your call. Stop trying to make it your call, it isn’t always all about you.
I completely need this book.
There was a time when religion commissioned great and wondrous art. Awe-inspiring cathedrals were built by the most grand and innovative architects. Beautiful music for masses were composed by the greatest musical minds in history. Religious paintings were created with skills and passion that have yet to be matched, even hundreds of years later. Art was the bright silver lining to the otherwise horrifying and cataclysmic storm cloud of religion. However, that was long ago and that silver lining has since been swallowed up by the black abyss. All that is left is a shit-storm of horribly lame, morally reprehensible, and just plain awful media that is christian pop culture.
The religious will rip off and bastardize anything in order to push their message, with no regard for or understanding of the source material. Whether it be a nauseatingly horrendous christian rock band or an offensively clueless rally video, only one thing is clear. There is no limit to how objectively bad something is, as long as a church can get behind the message.
For your consideration I present two new low points. Be warned. These are so very terrible that I was convinced they were fake at first. Please do not eat for 30 minutes before or after watching these. Your stomach may not be able to handle it.
First we have a trailer for an upcoming Romantic Comedy. The trailer shows neither comedy nor romance, instead it focuses on a cameo by Mike Huckabee talking about legislating anti-abortion laws. The Friendly Atheist has written up a few more details if you’re interested.
Just in case you still have your lunch down, I’ve saved the worst for last. Imagine the most awkward, desperate to be considered ‘cool’ by the kiddies, palm-through-the-face-into-the-back-of-your-skull bad PSA you’ve ever seen. Increase the uncomfortable embarrassment by a couple orders of magnitude. Multiply it by some unbelievable cultural insensitivity, then again by a massive helping of asinine theistic delusion. It should give you something wrong on so many levels, that it may have gone fractally wrong. Something like this:
I think the worst part is I want to have hope. I’d like to think that, given the right circumstances, people could see their religion for the hoax that it is. That their blinders could be removed and the atrocities in the name of religion would stop. But if they are so far gone as to think putrid ass gravy like this can pass as entertainment, I don’t think that hope has a chance.
Happy Lemmings Day! a.k.a Black Friday
Should we besmirch this plucky rodent’s escutcheon by associating Lemmings as the embodiment of greed and feral-consumerism known to a good chunk of the western world as ‘Black Friday’? It isn’t really fair (hey, just like capitalism) to play on the misunderstood ‘suicidal tendencies’ of the much maligned lemming. For the record:
“Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they commit mass suicide when they migrate, by jumping off cliffs. It is in fact not a mass suicide but the result of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. In such cases, many may drown if the body of water is so wide as to stretch their physical capability to the limit. This fact, combined with the unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings, gave rise to the misconception.[6]“
The answer, dear friends, is of course we should – appropriating and exploiting nature is a zesty analog for capitalism and the consumer culture that feeds the satanic mills that are grinding our planet into dust. (Not enough sleep and too much coffee during this particular writing stint.)
It’s hard to believe, but sometimes your dear host finds it necessary to perch upon a perfectly precarious high horse in order to dispense the needed wisdom to the unwashed massess, the hoi polloi, the basket of deplorables, et cetera. I remember making a post about Black Friday expressing my disgust with scenes that seem to happen around this time of year.
As noted in the video above – we’re still mired in this terrible consumerist extravaganza. The problem is that, I’m not disgusted, but rather saddened by the whole, often gory, spectacle. The lengths people will go to, to get stuff, that they think will bring them happiness in their life.
Their association of “happiness = stuff” is no mere coincidence, but rather the endgame of a society, while drunk on capitalism, that measures success, status, and happiness with the amount of material goods acquired. Of course, the needs are manufactured (followed by the goods to meet those ‘needs’) so that the prospect of new shiny baubles will be the next ‘true’ indicator of having ‘made it’ in life. The process of chasing after material goods in the vainglorious pursuit of happiness is a nasty positive feedback loop that reduces citizens in a democratic state to mere consumers always hungry for their next fix and thus justifying the exploitative system that feeds them their drug.
I can’t help thinking that if we had a guaranteed minimum income and housing for everyone people might start to stray from the consumption paradigm. People might start renewing connections with others and engaging in pursuits that they actually want to do instead of what they have to do in their struggle to avoid the depredations of abject poverty.
We’ve lost reverence for the security and connectedness a strong community provides – and it is only way back from the abyss that we continue to create for ourselves.
Make no mistake – capitalism in its current incarnation requires the exploitation of people and resources to make it work. Exploiting people and natural resources inevitably leads to war (see Iraq for instance) and this in this zeal for feeding our doom-systems we often forget that eventually
Start with lemmings and end with Lord of the Rings references, you’ll only see it here at DWR (for better or worse).
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