One of the greater pleasures of a short holiday on the other side of the globe, aside from the desire, and more importantly the time, to eat and drink non-stop for 15 days, is the opportunity to read the news. My employment requires that I stay up to date on certain matters, matters mostly related to the technologisation of our world, the daily gossip on the internet and the frailty of the European employment market…all riveting stuff, I know it keeps me quivering with an..tici…….pation.^
On holidays at the end of the calendar year, one can spend hours poring over the online broadsheets, reading all of the “Best Of” lists and “Can You Remember” quizzes that the astute journalists at The Guardian can churn out. One can watch endless videos of idiot news anchors in America on YouTube, one can read commentary on a single dreadful happening in the media of differing nations, comparing the points of view, which facts are included, which are omitted, which stories did the NRA pay for, you catch my drift.
After hours dedicated to reading, browsing, perusing and arguing the toss with Motherbear, it struck me, these last few weeks have been dominated by a two news stories, both related to singular women.
The first of these stories was the shockingly barbaric attack on a young student in Delhi. Anyone who has stood within sight of a Newsagent in the last 3 weeks would know that this unfortunate woman has now died as a result of the sexual violence she was subjected to at the grubby hands of five even grubbier men. The fact that such an assault could still take place in 2012 is, I suppose, inevitable. There are f**kwits everywhere, even in the world’s largest democracy with a relatively educated population. I just cannot fathom why men think it interesting or validating or gratifying to violate a woman in such a manner. That they would have such perverse impulses and then practise them with an audience is so hopelessly depressing that I had to stop reading.
Why? What possible pleasure, be it carnal or psychopathic or even misogynistic, could be garnered from committing such violence, most especially committing such violence with your mates watching? In 2012 a man survived a 24-mile jump to earth, NASA landed a robot on Mars, scientists discovered the God Particle, and then this kind of thing happens and I am left wondering. Have we, the human race, advanced at all since Sir Thomas More spent his weekends burning heretics on Tower Green?
What is simply unprecedented is the outpouring of grief and solidarity on the part of India’s 1 billion Brahmins, Vaishyas, Shrudas and Untouchables. That so many people, women and men, young and old, have walked the streets in support of the young woman who died has afforded me a modicum of hope that the plight of so many of the world’s women may improve.
I’ve never read the Female Eunuch or The Beauty Myth. I shave my armpits and wear a bra everyday. I’m not a cliché feminist but I am certainly not a Stepford Wife. I’m not Betty Draper, but I still can’t decide if I’m Peggy Olson or Joannie*. What I am is really pissed off, increasingly so. I am angry at the sad truth that having a vagina implies that anyone without one can shove anything inside it, at his discretion, wherever he chooses, whenever he wants, however short and unsatisfying it may be for a woman, however violent and degrading, however badly copied the act may be from his hours spent watching B-grade pornography, however committed the relationship betwixt them is (or isn’t), however short a time it is that he will treat you well (or not). I am pissed off that they get to choose. I am pissed off that in so many places often legally they own their women.
The worst is that in so many places, the forenamed Vagina Impaler can mandate his ownership (or not) of any issue of the woman. He can subject her children to all manner of medieval ideals, forced marriage practices and again, and depressingly all too often, more violence. So I am aggrieved that so many men, usually Fundamentally Religious Ones, feel it their God-given right to legislate on whether or not a woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. Pregnancies that are so often the result of unwanted sex, which will result in unwanted children possibly even uneducated ones, who will think violence on women is natural and normal, and so the sad cycle continues.
But fear not! The light still shines!
Thank God, and all that is good and bountiful, for the other big news story that closed out my 2012. Kim Kardashian is pregnant! Even better still, that role model of sympathetic masculinity, Kanye West, is her impregnator!
It is depressing that violent uneducated men with religious stars in their eyes attack women. It is depressing that women are second-class citizens in so many second-class places. What is most depressing is that mixed together with the news that the young Indian woman had died was the news that one of the most famous women on earth, she who has contributed absolutely nothing to the advancement of even an amoeba or a plankton let alone actual human beings, was going to further spread her DNA. Worse still, that she would mix hers together with that of a man who personifies the worst kind of misogynist, a man who uses semi-naked juveniles to sell his music, a man who has let his undeniable musical talent become sadly overshadowed by his macho moronic persona.
I watch my fair share of reality TV. I watch Survivor. I love anything where people are required to cook, preferably if Ramsay is swearing at them while they sauté. I am obsessed with Project Runway and I love me a good X-Factor Sing-A- Long. The attribute that all of the people who feature in these kinds of shows share is that they have some degree of talent. They have a skill. They can cook, sing, dance, design very beautiful clothes or light a fire without matches and stab a crab with a hand-hewn spear. They can do something other than take a photo of themselves wearing a bikini.
Ms Kardashian, her sisters and their Momager have become famous for doing absolutely nothing. Kim, she of the 72 day marriage, she of the slightly larger than usual bottom, she who shares her intellect with a gnat, and the gnat comes off better. She who has proven to the world that a woman can simply pout, wear increasingly smaller items of swimwear, spend the GDP of Bangladesh on hair extensions and become a worldwide phenomenon for regressing the standing of the rest of the world’s women in less than ten years on our screens.
One wonders…could it be that the acts of Kardashian and company, rendering themselves as nothing more than glossy lips and barely covered butt cheeks, give men the petty excuse they need to objectify us back? Will the kardashianation of a generation of young women lead to a generation of young men who think it not only normal, but also expected, to treat their women mean in order to keep them keen? Will there ever be a place or a time where women are respected for more than the way they look or how often she is willing to lie back and think of nothing#?
Drawing parallels between a television show and an act of horrendous violence thousands of kilometres away will appear facile and simplistic. I ask you to see this as a Golden Book summary of a Homeric Saga. I am a very busy woman, working, travelling and generally keeping myself afloat. Next time I take a holiday, I promise to read less and write more. Until then, I will do what I can, in my small life, to ensure that the young women I know hear a voice that doesn’t use the phrases ‘totes amazeballs’ or ‘my bitch is sizzlin’.
^ If you got that reference you are at least as old as me, if you didn’t, google Dr Frankenfurter
*If you don’t watch Mad Men, you should, it is excellent and the clothes alone make it a visual feast
# I fear that even thinking of England would be looked down upon in these modern times as that would require a basic knowledge of geography.
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