I
The Market Forces of Sexual Abuse
Body mass, superior musculature and hormonal aggressiveness made males the natural "hunters" since times immemorial in practically all cultures, and also (as seen in practically all mammalian species), the protectors of the group's biosurvival perimeter.
While living in a warfare state in which global destruction is threatened by nuclear powered adversaries, especially the USA which is both the inventor and only user of such murderous powers, much of american consciousness is occupied with this issue reduced to sometimes idiotic propaganda, while other issues become the stuff of surreality tv, fake news, and greater profits for the media, legal and psychology business community. Thus, we surround Russia and China with armadas and military bases while being told that Russia has destroyed our fictional democracy and China threatens our economic empire, and are given around the clock coverage of the renewed discovery that some men are pigs in relating to women, while some charges and countercharges of wrong doing have far more to do with the political and economic power of those making or resisting the charges.
Actress Ashley Judd, one of Weinstein's many accusers. Privileged victims easily gain social attention but their far numerous victimised sisters in the working class go on living anonymously in highly oppressive power structures.
Almost daily allegations, sometimes revelations, of things ranging from sexual indiscretions to abusive sexual practices lead to scandals causing powerful men to be reduced or quit their positions of power due to the public scorn which is both bad for men in business and good for women sometimes in the same business. The fact that women in some of these cases have waited many years before revealing such secrets is all due to what is seen as male power and rarely identified as market power. The entertainment figures who have “come out” in the case of Weinstein all allowed his piggish behavior because they wanted-needed-aspired to the financial success his power might assure them but would possibly be denied if they had told him to buzz off or smacked his face when he dared disrespect them. It is pitiful for humans to be reduced to such groveling and submission before power, and all due to finance. It is also safe to imagine that if Weinstein looked like Brad Pitt, some might brag about attracting his attention at the time or be accused of wishful thinking if revealing it years later. The most important thing to consider is not just the male power exercised but also the economic power that serves as its foundation, obscuring any sense of self-respect on the part of victims, all at the upper end of the financial spectrum.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]ens of thousands of women suffer such disrespect, and much worse, while laboring in bars, restaurants, malls, coffee shops and other places of lesser financial reward collection, and usually do so in public silence, even if the outrages are common knowledge not only to those who suffer but often seen as the price that must be paid to get-do-succeed at the job. Playboy “Bunnies”, Hooters “Servers” and other women whose work totally depends on being subjectified as sexual merchandise, are part of the enormous and profitable sexual marketplace relatively invisible to those programmed to act in outrage at the treatment of those in service to a higher echelon at our collective sex mall. But the reduction of humanity in the pursuit of survival for the worker and profit for the owners is no different, in essence, at the bistro, the movie studio, the political palace, or the taco-pizza-burger joint. Those who need jobs are frequently reduced in humanity but have to go along in order to get or do the job, and socialized-to-be mistreated women reduced in stature by socialized-to-be mistreater men should remind us of the common state of humans reduced by market relations to perform in grudging acceptance of such disrespect in order to survive.
We should also consider the notion of justice alleged in believing an accuser simply because we agree with or have experience of what someone is being accused of. Our all but totally dependent on double standards culture makes it profitable for lynch mobs of thought or deed to form very quickly, emotionally and thoughtlessly, at the provocation of what some of us define as the Deep or Shallow State. Why is one person deemed a crook-liar-thug for doing what another person gets away with by being labeled a hero-heroine-savior? How does one president performing as a sexist slob become heroic when another who speaks like a sexist slob becomes a villain?
The social role of male and female is not a simple biological matter, and even that is being subject to all manner of stress and strain by market forces which enable some of us to buy sperm or rent wombs and become parents of new life which never knows one parent. That force of the market, dominant in all our lives but too often reduced to individual heroes and villains, needs to be considered in all these matters. If being able to afford profiting a law office is what amounts to justice, or being able to afford profiting an insurance company is what amounts to health care, then tolerating sexual abuse will remain a social reality. Far more than a person or a sex need to stand up against the systemic forces that keep us apart and at wars with each other, and worse, with nations, but if women need a model that is sex based, they should consider what happened 100 years ago when women took social action. They worked in a factory and while they may have suffered personal indignities their common cause was being overworked and underpaid. When they could no longer tolerate it they shouted, that’s enough – no more. Their walkout was one of the first actions in an experience that shook the world. It was called the Russian Revolution, and American knowledge of it is on a par with our ignorance of what market forces do to all of us, on both sides of the profit-loss ledger, with the losers growing in number and the profiteers growing wealth beyond reason. We need to become a collective people of reason who act as a democratic human race and not simply a sex or other identity group, to assure our survival as humanity before we are abused out of existence by being forced into continued action as racial, cultural and sexual commodities.
II
Calm, Rational Observations From a Raving "Hate-Monger"
“Just how polarizing and negative are these fake news sites? Are they writing inflammatory stories about their political opponents with headlines like ‘This Is How Fascism Comes To America?’ Oh wait no, that was The Washington Post, in an article about Donald Trump. Are they suggesting their opponents will commit genocide if elected? No, that was an op-ed in The New York Times, also about Donald Trump.
“Just say it: Trump sounds more and more like Hitler” was, again, not published on any of the sites on the left-wing ‘fake news’ list, but on Slate, a once-respected magazine that published Christopher Hitchens.
“And what about the unverified dossier claiming that the Russian government is blackmailing Donald Trump with evidence of him engaging in ‘perverted sexual acts’ that were monitored by Russian intelligence? It was published on Buzzfeed and reported on by CNN.
“Obama is right, there is a problem with hysterics and misinformation in the press – but it’s a problem of the mainstream press, not the alternative media. It’s a bit fucking rich for journalists who got absolutely everything wrong about this election, and who published biased polls assuring the public of Hillary’s victory, to start complaining after the fact about ‘fake news’ because they lost the election.”
-------Milo Yiannapoulos, Dangerous
FRANK SCOTT—Why is one person deemed a crook-liar-thug for doing what another person gets away with by being labeled a hero-heroine-savior? How does one president performing as a sexist slob become heroic when another who speaks like a sexist slob becomes a villain?
FRA
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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
2 comments
The present struggle for the adjustment of female powers in the US is intriguing because in its (as is common here) polarization, it makes the issues very clear. There is no liberal blurring of the lines of combat as one finds in Western Europe (it is hard to judge what happens elsewhere because I have not traveled to the Far East or Russia and the Arab world is very much in stasis what that concerns). How this struggle is apparent is shown in the judgments about sexual confrontation by male bosses, which is the most outwardly determinable way to fight it.
At the core of this are undoubtedly the differences in power and the abuse of it by those in command. Any woman who is not afraid to defend herself against such abuse was not listened to, but by now the women have reached such a stratum of society whereby they can and do express the struggle against oppression by humiliation and bullying. It can only help enlighten all those who must submit to such treatment by the necessity of having employment and it shows the cruel reality of societal capitalist arrangements.
The hierarchy of traditional society is due to a male arrangement for the optimal functioning of human cohabitation. For that matter this kind of hierarchical relations is also adopted by socialist countries and it appears again and again throughout history. If it is true that pre-agricultural humans were democratic in their hunting/gathering phase, then this assault of women on the traditional male dominance is a step back into the past, whereby true equality is sought for everyone, children included. It appears therefore to be a first acknowledgement that the shape of human society should change and that most of it now is unjust and oppressive.
In the case of the US it appears that most men fear women which is a result of the pioneer character of its beginnings whereby the women were precious objects because the outward fringes of the US early national empire had relatively few women settlers. The male directed hardships and fierce competition for survival is still reflected in Western movies. That attitude has percolated throughout US history and independent women were a fiction to titillate the imagination of sexually deprived males. Immaturity is a result and the subsequent conflicts of power have taken on special significance in the US. It predates the capitalist and later extensive technological development of the US.
The objectification of women and their body parts for commerce is too well-known to be ignored and though it persists in blatant exposure in the visual arts, advertising and almost every movie, much of the West and the US yet fail to notice the utter degradation of that exploitation and exclusion. Criticism of Moslem veiling fails to understand that it can protect women as well as restrict them but its custom falls far below the alienation visited on women in capitalist Western countries. That this is now so thoroughly questioned and about to change can only be supported even though its methods are still very crude and often diffusely directed. But the impetus is there and certainly in the US it may now clear up the tension between the genders and their roles in life.
On the other hand, US politics have always been rather nauseating, and it is no wonder that it attracts the worst elements in society, and that includes men as well as women. Is it a concomitant feature of capitalism? I am not so sure, but I rather think that it was so from the outset with representation of the public based on financial interests, i.e. with how the Federal pot was to be distributed after taxing and with the entirely corrupt institution of lobbying, namely bribery. Yes, Mae goodness has nothing to do with it and how can the public ever be represented honestly? A career in US government is a business proposition, making the most out of the least. As for that, the women assertions are good to weed out foul slime buckets like senator Frankenstein, not from the severity of his actions, but how he shows his utter contempt for women. Moore for all his objectionable ideas must have at age thirty-two been an exciting male to a young girl of fourteen, an age when women are well-nigh mature and fully well know the value of their gender, surely giggling at the attention they get. That is far less obnoxious to women’s dignity than the slimy senator’s behavior.