Somehow, as we hit the week of Valentine’s Day, it’s even more appropriate to discuss what we’ve seen this week. Domestic abuse is something that everyone knows exists — and yet somehow, rarely gets addressed well. Women (and some men) risk their lives day-by-day, trapped in a relationship where they feel they have no way out. Love, isolation, fear, apology...fear.
Thanks to all the WoW crew for helping with this, especially Besame, Mettle Fatigue, Noweasels, OfficeBSS, Ramara, SandraLLAP, and Tara. I didn’t have room for everything — I needed to rant a bit. Please add what I missed below!
Abuse
There have been several stories about Mr. Porter, who was forced out through some means or another after the allegations and reports of domestic abuse against two ex-wives, and one girlfriend, came out. And while there’s a unique sense of disgust at what Trump, John Kelly and Orrin Hatch have done by following the ‘good man’ argument, it’s something we’re used to. Abusers are usually charismatic, direct and aggressive people...something that’s often sought in our current society, no matter the cost.
In fact, it wasn’t just one man who had to resign this week — the White House also lost a speechwriter, also over domestic abuse. In all of this, somehow Trump has decided it’s the men who are the victims, not the women isolated, threatened, strangled and assaulted.
How dangerous is it to come forward? The most likely time for a woman to be killed is as she leaves her abuser. But it’s not just abusers who will resort to lethality rather than risk consequences. Although vanishingly few rapists are actually convicted, one young woman who came forward with a report of rape will never see court — because she was killed.
And in a far different, equally terrifying world...a Bengali woman was taken for surgery and what she thought was appendectomy — but was in fact her husband selling her kidney, to make up for the lack of a dowry.
And lest we forget the terrible abuse scandal in the Olympics, don’t think it’s confined to just gymnastics. One brave woman has come forward to tell her tale of a coach who groomed her for years — both as a swimmer, and a victim.
Politics
There are many things that lead to this. One is what those in power do. Again, we have a story of a powerful male...a legislator in Oregon who used that power and the belief in immunity to assault not just staffers, but fellow senators. No, the fact that it was fellow senators doesn’t make it worse. But it does show that the arguments of ‘then work for someone else’ aren’t enough against a serial perpetrator.
Arizona is considering yet another form with another irrelevant question required by doctors before they perform abortions.
https://www.azcentral.com/…
Poland may make their already extreme anti-abortion law even more restrictive by no longer allowing abortions for severe or fatal fetal abnormalities. Sign this petition. (It's interesting how the ultra-right adds this to recent actions like forbidding discussion of the Polish part in the Holocaust.)
https://act.amnestyusa.org/…
Society
None of this would be possible if it weren’t for society turning a blind eye or condoning such behavior. Some of it is blatant, like the Trump Administration. However, a lot is more subtle, and therefore more menacing.
Women regularly have lower quality of health care — and most of that is because their symptoms are quite frequently dismissed as hysteria or overreacting. This is especially true when it has to do with our reproductive health care. And in some — many — cases, that focus on ‘it’s all in your head’ can lead to devastating misdiagnoses.
Looking at society at large, there are still a host of issues we need to break through. I just went and saw The Last Jedi (a movie the extreme right planned to boycott because too much non-white people, I guess). It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but that had everything to do with a tired scene through a casino. However, it was a movie about women and their agency. From Rey finding ways to learn about the Force despite Luke’s (a white man, and the Great Hope of the last series) dismissal outright to the amazing strength shown by General Leia Organa and Vice Admiral Holdo, to the powerful sisters: one of whom destroyed a dreadnaught at the cost of her own life, the other who was willing to go against a powerful man, because he lied to her...and then saved his life in the end because she could see clearer than he, the movie was about agency, and even about men underestimating, dismissing and ignoring those women at their own risk. But a movie like that is rare.
There’s nothing unsophisticated in recognizing that an industry mired in sexism will produce art that is tainted by sexist beliefs. There’s nothing childish or bourgeois about calling time on representations of the human condition which fail to accommodate half the human race. For too long genius has been defined as male, far removed from such petty concerns as granting consideration to the female gaze. This isn’t just unfair; it’s dull.
“You just didn’t get the irony/humour/bathos/[add your own technique]” is the male critic’s version of that lesson girls are taught from the first time they’re groped in the playground: abuse is flattery. We just haven’t learned to read it correctly. From now on I suggest we don’t even try.
https://www.newstatesman.com/…
It may seem minor, but we see this delineation between ‘normal’ and ‘women’ everywhere. How about at the Superbowl? Or how ‘women’s’ products somehow cost more than men’s...and this extends even to cards!
For more of the ‘you just don’t get it,’ the backlash against ‘me too’ has been present. Here is a Canadian reply to those who say the MeToo movement is ruining men's lives on accusations alone.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/...
Or how about bogus ‘studies’ on how women aren’t suited to certain (high-paying) career paths?
How did Silicon Valley become the land of the bros?
Emily Chang: It didn’t have to be this way and it wasn’t always this way, importantly. Women played vital roles in the computing industry from the very beginning. Just think “Hidden Figures,” but industrywide.
What happened in the 1960s and 1970s was that the industry was exploding and was starved for talent. There just weren’t enough people to do the jobs in computing. So they hired these two psychologists, William Cannon and Dallis Perry, to come up with a personality test to screen for good programmers.
Those men decided, in screening about 1,200 men and 200 women, that good programmers don’t like people — that they have a complete disinterest in people. These tests were widely influential and used at various companies for decades.
What happens with that is that if you search for antisocial people, you will hire far more men than women. There’s no evidence to suggest that antisocial men are better at computers than women. But that stereotype has perpetuated to this day.
https://www.nytimes.com/…
Good News
Even in a week this triggering, there are still good things happening. Maybe, in a week like this, we need them even more.
It’s a small step, but in Saudi Arabia, a cleric has come out to say the abaya should not be mandatory.
After more than a generation of struggle by women’s rights activists, Sri Lanka’s patriarchal political scheme has, reluctantly, opened up a bit to require that 25 percent of candidates in local elections be women.
And in the Olympics, where the torch was carried and lit by women, the first black woman to make the US speedskating team has advanced from the first round.
Do you know this woman’s story?
Find her at WOW2: www.dailykos.com/...