Buy and Sell You/Terrorize You/Mass Destruct You

As someone who is related to several women (wife, daughter, mothers, sisters, niece, and grandmothers), has women friends and colleagues, and is generally concerned about women's status in our society, I feel compelled to point out Bob Herbert's column in yesterday's Times:

"In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.

There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls."

And...

"We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We’ve been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we’re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there’s big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it’s never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We’re all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society’s casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels — objects — and never, ever as the equals of men."

Obviously, there are no simple answers here--clearly we need stronger laws protecting women from violence, hate crimes, and discrimination at work and home--but there also need to be seismic changes in our attitudes, habits, and culture. Hollywood and Madison Avenue have become so skilled at exploiting women's sexuality--and manipulating men's sexual desires--in order to sell just about anything you can buy. Yet, no father wants his daughter to be treated as a sex object, though we're perfectly happy to get off on the sexualized image of someone else's daughter in an ad, show, movie, video game, or music video (that generates gobs of money for corporations).

I'm not calling for widespread censorship or a culture-war clampdown on anything remotely sexual. We're a free and democratic society first and foremost. But all of us need to do some soul-searching and realize that, collectively, we have an enormously destructive problem on our hands, and act to change things for the better. We need to teach our boys in such a way so they grow up to respect women and treat them as full equals; to teach our girls that they should never settle for being treated as second class citizens; and we need to become more aware of what the corporations are dishing out--and refuse to consume what they're selling if the product or ad campaign is degrading to women.

* * * *

The "buy and sell you" lyrics are from the Super Furry Animals' song "Slow Life," which can be found on their "Phantom Power" album (which is one of the best 9/11-related records I've ever heard).