Some Fox news acolytes argue the man shouldn't be held accountable, because he was only 17 at the time, just a teenager, and boys will be boys, yet Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice were also teens when, despite their being unarmed, they were shot and killed, and those same Fox news acolytes hold them accountable for their own deaths, because different rules apply when your skin is not white. Indeed, there is a woman on TV at this moment saying of the accusations against the supreme court nominee: "Groping a woman, that’s not a big deal. It doesn't affect his character or him being able to do what he needs to do as a supreme court nominee. If he was pro-abortion they wouldn’t be fighting this hard." I swear she said that, and with her two daughters listening
Which brings up the undocumented immigrant girl, age 15, who had been raped and wanted an abortion, and the supreme court nominee, whose name I cannot stomach writing here, blocked a previous judge's consent, saying in effect she was old enough to be accountable for her actions, because again, different rules also apply when your skin is not white, and your gender is not male, never mind that you also come from one of those so-called sh*thole countries.
Every night I watch the news I feel as if I'm twisting on a spit. I can't truly take in how insane everything has become. I am out of practice writing my outrage, because I can no longer sort through it to make reasonable arguments—there is nothing remotely reasonable about what is going on with our so-called public servants. Who serve no one and nothing but their own greedy appetites. I'm worn out. White male privilege and entitlement and contempt are on full and appalling display, and that's still not enough to cause anything to change.
As for the midterms, I fear that they will be hijacked—why else was cowardly Paul Ryan in Russia for ten days but to run down for the hackers which races to target? Is this hell? I'm starting to think we're in the bad place. Speaking of which, I am oddly absorbed by The Good Place. When I can't bear the news anymore, can't bear the way women's deep sexual traumas are being trivialized and cast aside by career rapists and abusers and their allies in congress who have escaped consequences their whole lives long, I watch an episode. It's become my nightly escape.
I don't mean to say there aren't glimmers of hope on this parched landscape: Anyone following Texas's Beto O'Rourke?
It is definitely a type of hell. The part of it all which makes me fear the most is how these women who are brave enough to step up become, somehow, blamed for what happened to them which is how it's always been and quite frankly, how so very many men would like nothing more than for it to continue. And there are so many women, too, who have swallowed the lies that somehow, it is always our fault. Internalized a blame which is not ours. What can we do? Continue to speak out. Support each other. Vote.
ReplyDeleteNone of this seems enough.
But here- here is my hand. Let's hold on tight.
Yes actually, I do think this is hell.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100%. These feelings have been mine for years and years. But women have not stuck up for women since the beginning of time. That must change. We ARE the strongest, most compassionate, hardest working sex and we must gather together and let it show and MAKE the white, privileged male child hear us!! Dammit! It's time. Let's do this!
ReplyDeleteYes...
ReplyDeleteSince I'm moving to Austin next year, I've been following Beto for quite a while and he gives me such hope! It does feel like we are on the precipice of hell, now the world doesn't even bother to hide its laughter at our boaster in chief. Thanks for writing about it so clearly, my outrage often leaves me without words.
ReplyDeleteXoxo
Barbara
Just realized that, once more, I tried to send a comment while in Safari instead of Google Chrome or Firefox. I'm not sure that I can reconstruct my comment, except to say that the liars and lawbreakers who are currently governing our country are creating their own hell. We don't have to go to hell for anybody. It will take a diversity of men as well as women to make an ongoing stand against the insanity that human beings are prone to when they are corrupted by power. Our hearts are wrenched again and again. Something keeps rising to resist hell on earth.
ReplyDeleteI have hope that the MeToo movement was just the beginning of lancing the boil that constitutes white male privilege all over the world. There will need to be more surgery before things are righted. A lot more. To say that "all teenage boys do that" is sickening.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I have seen a short clip of Beto O'Rourke speaking and it is a breath of fresh air.
ReplyDeleteMy husband is currently watching the news. A pedophile who sexually assaulted children in his care when he was a nanny. Then a care aide who sexually assaulted his elderly patients with dementia. Then a police officer sexually harassing a female coworker. The news has been on for 10 minutes.
ReplyDeleteWhat is happening?
I hear you. I feel the same way. how have we come to this? white male christian power. their religion tells them they are everything and women are nothing, made from their rib to be used. their god tells them women are worthless and inherently evil. what we see going on in the government has been long in the planning. these men would turn this country into an authoritarian theocracy and they don't care how it is accomplished. they will use whatever means at hand to subvert our democracy. if we don't take back Congress in November, we are fucked.
ReplyDeleteI just can't stomach this whole confirmation process. I have literally blocked it out -- not because I don't want to listen to the women but because I'm so disgusted. And some of the people who are so strenuously defending this court nominee were so quick to condemn Bill Clinton back in the day. (He certainly has his own faults but the double standards are shocking.)
ReplyDeleteWe were just watching the Senate hearings and the Kavanaugh testimony devolved into a crazy anti-Democrat attack. We had to turn it off when Lindsay Graham went into a tirade about the Democrats. It's CRAZY. The times we are living in are incredibly disheartening, and I am worried that the election will be hacked. These are pretty horrific times.
ReplyDeleteYes. I'm reading this a day later after the shitstorm, and it's exactly like being roasted on a spit. And now burnt to a crisp.
ReplyDeleteAnother glimmer of hope is that our public library bought two copies of Lucia Kay McBath's Standing Our Ground. Yesterday I went to the library to pick up one of the copies of the book from the hold shelf and was deeply impressed by the first few pages that I was able to read. Today I will be making time to read further. Thank you so much for using your powerful gift of writing in these times when lucid coherent voices of experience need to be heard so that necessary changes can be made in our troubled country.
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