Here's What Slut Put-Downs Will Get You!

Soon to-be-elected US Sen. Doug Jones (D-Alabama) with women voters who made the upset possible last night, and Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) campaigning in Alabama—where Roy Moore was soundly defeated despite Steve Bannon and Donald Trump campaigning for the accused girl-stalker. 

When Donald Trump says Senator Kirsten Gillibrand came to him “begging” for donations and “would do anything,” he knew damn well that his “anything” would be heard as “anything sexual” in the halls of male power. (See CNN story https://tinyurl.com/y9bz )

Men like Trump, who use force, or pimp their money out for favors they can’t get unless they pay first, have always used surplus money for power, closely aligned in the male imagination, with sex. Mounting someone, whether with money or slut-language-putdowns, supposedly demonstrates your masculinity, even when your hands are tiny. Sex is the male metaphor used to explain dominance—the pattern a supposedly male-only-God-intended one—with males mounting weaker females expected to “submit.”

Any evangelical woman waiting for Mike Pence or  Roy Moore to admonish the President about Jesus’ sermon on the mount (yes, a play on words), will have to turn blue before she’ll hear a respectful word for principled females like Gillibrand. To patriarchal ways of thinking (not that of real-Biblical Jesus), all females are inferior to males. And females either are begging for it, or having to be forced.  

We’re sorry, but we didn’t make up slut-mounting metaphors, or those silly and contradictory sexual rules. Women say we’re overdue for some new ones. How about getting consent before you make your power move? How about our making love together for the good of all involved? That would be democracy, wouldn’t it?

The hypocrisy Jesus meant when he called the conspicuously religious Pharisees “white-washed sepulchers” surely applies to Pence, Moore, Trump, and Bannon. So to put current matters in the sexual terms powerful men like to use, the pale male sluts of Washington are due to deliver big tax cuts to their big-money johns, effectively screwing the female majority without our consent.

We so agree with newly elected US Sen. Doug Jones from the great state of Alabama (where women’s votes made the difference) —it is time for Congress to fund CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program. (See NBC story https://tinyurl.com/ybnhj9j5)

And Sen. Susan Collins of Maine? Until Republicans repent of corruption, winning your tax vote with a lie about affordable healthcare, it is time for you to become an independent! (See Washington Post story on House/Senate resolution process. https://tinyurl.com/ya6hvhpt)

#MeToo: Her Decade of Empathy

via justbeinc.org

Have you “met” Tarana Burke yet? Her story’s a lesson in the value of
persistence. She started #MeToo ten years ago. I heard her talk with Soraya Chemaly and Alicia Garza on Amy Goodman last week, and was both surprised and deeply moved by her soft-spoken empathy and her commitment to survivors. https://tinyurl.com/yd3uv43r

Tarana told Boston Globe reporter Crystela Guerra in late October that she wasn’t even aware of her tweets going viral until a friend showed her. She said about it:

“In many regards Me Too is about survivors talking to survivors. It was
never really about amplifying the number of people who are survivors of
sexual violence. It was about survivors exchanging empathy with each
other. But when I talk to young people, I use pop culture to promote the
idea of Me Too all the time. We have to have something that reaches the
masses. That’s what I’ve always known Me Too could do. This viral moment
is just confirmation that vision was real and was possible.”
https://tinyurl.com/yaejyba6

Like almost every women, I can name #MeToo encounters, though I want
to be careful to name them trespasses and shocks, not violent assaults of
the kind that threaten to undo a woman’s life. I knew such a survivor,
though, who was left for dead, and for whom attending college took such
courage “survivor” doesn’t say it. She’s a daily hero. She went on, as Tarana
did after her assault, to help and connect other victims of violence. The
trick is to ultimately outlive the bastards.

#MeToo applies widely and “reaches the masses” because every woman,
and some men too, know the special threat of sexual violence, a bodily
invasion and diminishment. But its verbal threat is everywhere, tossed off
in common parlance among men, especially powerful ones—F**k You, the
opposite of love, and the common parlance of suited street gangs in
Washington, Hollywood, and Wall Street.

Tarana says #MeToo is about survivors exchanging empathy with each
other. In the time of Screwnomics, let’s persist in sharing empathy among
us survivors aptly named the 99%. If we are to outlive Trumpish inequality,
only mutually pleasureable exchanges and partnerships will do, not
sexualized violence of any kind.

Wonders and Thanks

Wonders & Thanks

This week of Thanksgiving, let's be thankful for Gal Gadot, the Wonder Woman wonder, and "everyone" associated with the movie, for getting out from under producer Brett Ratner.  Ratner, whose company RatPack-Dune helped finance the first WW film has been accused of sexual harassment and assault. Gadot has her own story about him.

In an interview on the Today show, Gadot confirmed that Ratner would no longer be financing the Wonder Woman franchise, reported the staff writers of Women in the World (NYT)— though she ended  rumors that she had threatened to quit the film if Ratner stayed on as a player. Listen to what she said: “The truth is, there’s so many people involved in making this movie — it’s not just me — and they all echoed the same sentiments,” Gadot told staff writers of Women in the World (NYT). “So everyone knew what was the right thing to do.” 

We're thankful to "so many people" this year who spoke up, and who agreed on what was right: no more pussy-putdowns by men who just are not funny. Thanks too for WiW. 

So What Exactly Is Screwnomics* ???

Screwnomics* is the unspoken but widely applied economic theory that women should always work for less, or better, for free. 

And who thought he didn't have to talk openly about this, or stop taking us and our Mother Earth for granted?

EconoMan is my Screwnomics' name for the money guys in charge of how we live. Let's change his attitude, shall we?  

A Century of Big Brother in the US

This slideshow from Cato Institute probably won't help you feel better about Trump's Whitehouse, but it underlines the importance of Congressional investigation of the "intelligence community," (a weird phrase if ever there was one) and of General Flynn and Trump campaign phone calls to Russia. This picture is of  Jesse Wallace Hughan whose anti-enlistment organization was spied on in 1915. Cato left out Emma Goldman, deported for her WWI anti-draft message, pointing to collusion between government and big business. How long has the war on terror been breaking us taxpayers? A century?

Yes, it would be nice if we could "get along" with Russia (and North Korea and China and Iran), but let's start with seeing all parts of our government and taking seriously its charge for the common welfare.  A CSPAN guest talked about this hundred-year history, well worth viewing. 

www.cato.org/american-big-brother