Wednesday, November 22, 2017

The Patriarchy Problem: sexual abuse (video)

Rebecca Solnit, Tarana Burke, Alicia Garza, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez (democracynow.org); Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Comedian Al Franken pretends to grope Leeann Tweeden's flak jacket bothering her (DN)



I didn't do it!  I'm not the "patriarchy"!
(Now do you believe we have a patriarchy and live in a rape culture?) What about the ongoing stream of sexual harassment allegations by women against powerful men? What about what experts say is our pervasive culture of misogyny that enables sexual misconduct towards women? Let's ask author Rebecca Solnit.

Her recent LitHub.com article is headlined, “Let this flood of women’s stories never cease: On Fighting Foundational Misogyny One Story at a Time”:
 
There’s a problem with the way feminism moves forward in reaction to breaking news stories.

It brings focus to a single predator, a single incident, and people who haven’t faced the pervasiveness of misogyny can build stories around it about why this was the exception, not the rule.

Don't stare at my... My eyes are up here.
That Harvey Weinstein was typical of liberals or Hollywood, or Roy Moore and Bill O’Reilly were typical of conservatives [or DC], that this mass killer with a domestic violence background was typical of veterans or loners or was mentally ill, that case after case is a glitch in the pattern of society, not the pattern itself.
 
But these are the norms, not the abberations [aberrations?]. This is a society still permeated and shaped and limited by misogyny, among other afflictions. More

THE INTERVIEW
Are you staring at my ass, you stupid jerk?
AMY GOODMAN: ...Rebecca Solnit is a writer, historian, and activist. We’re going to continue to look at the torrent of women’s complaints around the issue of sexual abuse....

Author of a dozen books including, most recently, The Mother of All Questions. She is also contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine.... Can you respond to this last week’s -- which has clearly been a sea change in the United States -- and the significance of the number of women, scores of women who are joining this kind of Me Too campaign, stepping up and talking about their abuse? Women, and some men.
 
I wasn't looking. (Al "Grab Ass" Franken)
REBECCA SOLNIT: And there’s so many ways to go at what’s happening, which is, as you note, tremendous. I think one of the first things to note is people who haven’t been paying attention are now forced to recognize how absolutely pervasive this is and how systemic it is.

And you look at Weinstein or Charlie Rose and some of these other people and you see that entire systems around them were designed to accommodate their denigration, harassment, intimidation, silencing, devaluing, and sometimes assault on WOMAN.
  • What in the heaven is wrong with Solnit? Speech impediment, brain damage? She seems unable or unwilling to pronounce the plural word "women" (WYH-min) or distinguish it from the singular woman (woh-myn)? And no one ever says anything although she is interviewed frequently in the mainstream and alternative media. Get a clue, Solnit, or explain yourself if you're trying to make a ham handed statement.
Son, you're not going to treat girls like this? - Dad, you already treat them like this, right?
.
Y'know you love it, baby. - Yes, James Bond.
So that you can’t say, “Oh, it’s this bad guy.” It reminds me a little bit of the aftermath of Abu Ghraib [US prison torture of illegally detained Muslims] where the Bush Administration kept wanting us to believe it was a few bad apples.

And people like you on Democracy Now! were saying, no, it’s systemic. This too is systemic, which means that what we need to talk about isn’t just going after specific high profile perpetrators, but how do we change the system?

How to undermine the patriarchy, the misogyny [female hating], the lack of empathy, the culture that makes men feel powerful and awesome when they do this stuff?
 
It's not a patriarchy! It's a man's world!
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Rebecca Solnit, I’d like to ask you also, we have a situation here, as you are mentioning, the enablers, those who were complicit, who had knowledge of the abuse that was occurring, but said nothing, to what degree they have responsibility as well?

And also, a system where many of these companies, when women step forward and have the courage to step forward and file complaints, they get settlements and then always a nondisclosure agreement, that you can never disclose the result of the litigation in which you were involved. More


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