Meet the New Boss…

Homegirl Zuzu, in November:

There’s been a great deal of excitement about Barack Obama’s plans to reverse or do away with a good number of Bush’s executive orders and signing statements.  This is a sign of his progressivism! some say.  This is hope for the future! others say.  Let’s just all move on and not question him anymore! still others say.

The idea, apparently, is that by signaling (not coming out and saying, mind, but signaling through surrogates) that he intends to reverse, say, the Global Gag Rule, Obama is showing his progressive bona fides, and that therefore any cynicism about him based on the way he conducted his campaign (you know, leveraging misogyny and homophobia and using a lot of right-wing anti-choice framing and god-talk) or on the way he’s conducting his transition (16 men and 4 women on his transition team, LARRY FREAKING SUMMERS as a serious choice for Treasury) is unwarranted. […]

Bullshit.

Listen, if you think that reversing the Global Gag Rule is a sign of great progressivism, I have news for you:  It’s not.  It’s basically returning the country’s policy to where it was in 1984, 24 freakin’ years ago.  It’s the bare fucking minimum I would expect of any goddamned Democrat worth the name in the Oval Office.  Reversing it was Bill Clinton’s very first official act as President, and I don’t see too many people calling him a progressive.

Barack actually didn’t get around to doing it (yet). Of course, some people are so pathetically desperate for crumbs, some weak-ass, all-over-the-map statement with no actual action is considered “pretty damn good.” Pretty damn good. Are you fucking kidding me with this squeeing fangirl shit?

Meanwhile!  Harry Reid thinks that Republicans may be right in thinking that women are inherently inferior due to their possession of (*gasp*) vaginas, so they’re going to haul out some of that shiny new “post-partisanship” to mull over Lilly Ledbetter, thereby confirming earlier suspicions that “post-partisanship” was code for “Democrats and Republicans Working Together to Fuck Over Women” because, in 2009, we really, really have to have a “discussion” about basic equality.

Back to Zuzu:

Progressivism requires progress, and what Obama is proposing to do with the GGR and other executive orders and signing statements (though his position on the Gitmo trials and torture may not be as strong as originally reported) isn’t actually progress.  It’s restoration.  And not even full restoration, because he can’t, merely by reversing all of Bush’s executive orders, get us back to where we were in January 2001 because so much damage was done through Congress.

So while it’s great that Obama is reviewing all those orders, I remain skeptical.  And I remain skeptical not because my tiny lady-brain has been warped by eight years under Bush, but because I still have great, truly great, expectations for a progressive administration, and I’m not going to settle for some crumbs.

Of course, I’m still confused how anyone ever considered someone who worships fucking Reagan (i.e. “the dude who enacted the Global Gag Rule in the first place“) the next Great Progressive Hope, but wevs, it’s been just that kind of fucked-up year, innit it?

Eye for an Eye

Reclusive Leftist had an excellent response to James Carville’s incredibly stupid comments on CNN in her It’s the System, Stupid post:

Sexism is a deeply learned behavior with a thousand manifestations. You can’t quarantine the big pieces of it — rape, legal discrimination — as if they exist in a vacuum apart from the rest of society’s values. From frat boy joke to date rape, from gangsta rap to domestic violence, from pink housework toys at Wal-Mart to the boss who won’t promote a woman into top management, from “Math is hard” Barbie to the physics lab where men harass their female colleagues relentlessly, from Girls Gone Wild videos to the jury that acquits a rapist because the victim was wearing a short skirt — it’s a system. A giant, all-encompassing, self-reinforcing system.

No one thinks that Jon Favreau is personally responsible for crimes against women. What we think — what we know — is that his frat-boy grope is one lurid thread in a larger pattern. It’s symptomatic of a culture in which women are routinely sexualized, diminished, and harassed; a culture in which violence against women is normalized as mainstream fun; a culture in which powerful, accomplished women are ridiculed as b**ches and c**ts who just need a good f***ing.

In comments, Lucy had this to say:

I am so angry about this, I just can’t stop shaking. I’ve been groped hundreds of times, date-raped, and I worked for years in a hostile corporate environment long before the term “sexual harrasment” had any legal meaning — for a boss who used to take us gals to lingerie shows and pick out something for the best of us.

As for Carville suggesting women who are upset by this need shrinks: well, I spent years in therapy specifically because of the trauma visited on me by men. How dare he. How goddamn dare he.

This frat-boy mentality is just disgusting and I’m beginning to think the only way to combat it is to get militant. A commenter over at Heart’s place said that one reason men don’t get it is that women don’t assault men, don’t rape them.

Maybe it’s time we do.

Why, after all, can girls not have the same “fun” that boys do?

While I’m generally not a fan of violence, I couldn’t help but sympathize with that sentiment. After 8 years of trench warfare against the aggressive attacks on women’s rights by the Republican Party, watching women being so egregiously betrayed by the so-called “progressive” party this year, their traditional “allies“, disheartened by the capitulation of increasingly toothless feminist establishments such as NARAL and NOW, and the general overall atmosphere of seething male resentment has clearly accelerated my path towards rad-fem status.

Which is why, after reading this, I was not quite as horrified and sickened as I once would have been, but rather… coldly pleased.

Ameneh Bahrami refused to accept “blood money.” She insisted instead that her attacker suffer a fate similar to her own “so people like him would realize they do not have the right to throw acid in girls’ faces,” she told the Tehran Provincial Court.

If that’s what it takes, that’s what it fucking takes.

Jon Favreau Needs to Be Fired…

… But, of course, he won’t.

Jon Favreau: Douchemonkey Extraordinaire

Since this little brouhaha jumped up, male reaction seems to have been has been (largely, with some exceptions) “OMG ITZ NOT THAT BAD, BOYZ WILL BE BOYZ, HE’S YOUNG AND WUZ DRINKING, HILLARY’Z OLD AND SHOULD APPRECIATE THE ATTENTION AND SHE PUT UP WITH HER CHEATING HUSBAND SO SHE KNOWS WHAT OVERSEXED MEN ARE LIKE AND IT’S NOT EVEN THAT SEXIST ANYWAY.”

As always, I love how the mens quickly jump in to tell us what is, and what is not, sexist and/or offensive, while continuing to be egregiously sexist and offensive in the process. Because intimating sexual assault on a cutout of one of the most famous, powerful women in the world, and your political rival, is not demeaning or degrading at all.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen a dude act in this exact manner towards any woman higher than him in seniority (professor, supervisor, boss, etc.) – any woman who makes him feel a little insecure about his Total Dudely Awesomeness, that Total Dudely Awesomeness that comes with his possession of the correct genitalia and automatically places him as superior to half the population through no effort of his own. This behaviour is depressingly common, and epic in proportion. It needs to be nipped in the bud immediately, and severely. Otherwise, how else will they learn?

Parallel situation: Hillary staffers, one wearing an “CLINTON STAFF” t-shirt, mugging for the camera, “jokingly” holding a noose around the neck of a cutout of Obama. Would immediate dismissal be an inappropriate reaction then? Would Clinton be condemned as condoning gross racism if she didn’t fire them immediately? (Answer: Betcherass.)

And no: this is not an extreme, hyperbolic theoretical. Threats of rape and sexual assault are weapons used against women in exactly the same manner as threats of lynching are used against black people: the implication of violence if they dare step out of line and get “uppity.” It is exactly the same thing.

In no way did Favreau ever feel insecure about himself in the presence of Hillary Clinton, I’m sure: a woman ten times stronger, sharper and smarter than him. There is absolutely no way that this little photo op represented, to him, a way to bring her down a peg to his level, so he could feel reassured about his position in the world. She’s just a woman, after all, like every other woman – she starts getting uppity, just grab her boob and remind her that no matter what she does, she’ll always be a cunt, existing solely for the sexual gratification of men. That bitch. And she needs to be reminded of that, as do all women, that they should never, ever, make men feel insecure about their Total Dudely Awesomeness.

It’s Monday, and the fact that Favreau has not been dismissed immediately speaks volumes about the frat culture of the Democratic Party, and the Obama Administration’s judgement. Bitches ain’t worth shit, so why don’t you lighten up, and get a sense of humour? Now, go get me my coffee, woman, I have a wicked hangover, and I’m late for my three hour lunch with the dudes from State.