The capture of her killer has yet again provided the opportunity to pornograph “Murdered Child Beauty Queen”, JonBenet Ramsey.
Obscene pagent photos, displaying her tarted up like a tiny sex worker, are plastered on screens and newsprint, lest we forget that females are defined by and valued in the currency of sex.
Poor little girl, used once again as the erotication of subjugation’s poster child.
Is there no limit, no limit at all to equating dominance with sexuality ?
Thank you for sharing your observation.
I understand how people in other cultures getting exposure to “Media America” can be horrified and resist efforts to become “westernized.”
In this country those who find the displays of this little girl repugnant, and even consider the events at which the photos were taken bankrupt, can get caught up in “free speech” and can find themselves defending degradations. That corporations, guided by the bottom line, get protection using the human individual’s right to freedom of expression, is, imo, an indication of how very far astray we gone from original ideals.
“Free speech” is part of the false equality trap.
Women, children, GLBT and people of colour are measured against the gold standard of straight white males. If we are judged by that standard, the “special treatment” we receive is attributed to our difference from them.
Abortion, a healthcare issue, is regulated by law because men don’t have a need for abortion. Health insurance covers services for men that women don’t need, but when we demand coverage for birth control, we are accused for wanting additional privileges.
Over one third of American women have been or will be beaten by their mates, but this is considered “domestic violence”, not assault and battery. The subordinate status of the victim determines now society labels the crime. Robbery victims (even those who have a history of giving to charity) are not required to prove that they said no or fought back with sufficient force, but rape, a crime of eroticized domination, is treated like a semantic shell game. Even the term “consent” is an insult to the feminine perception of sex as an act of mutuality, not simply submission.
Tampopo, don’t get me started. I am SO angry right now.
You rant well! 🙂
Keep ranting, it keeps me from having to!
Fantastic points Susan. And I love the contrast with the robbery victim. Well said.
Imagine this exchange in a police station:
“So, Mr. Smith, you say you’ve been robbed.”
“Yes.”
“Well, we spoke to the person you accused, and while he agrees that money did change hands, he says you GAVE him your cash and credit cards.”
“No, he stole them from me.”
“Did he. That’s a pretty nice suit you’re wearing, Mr. Smith. Is that what you were wearing during the alleged attack?
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Well, lots of people want money, Mr. Smith. Maybe you shouldn’t go around looking so prosperous. Seems to be just asking for trouble to me.”
“That’s ridiculous. My clothes have no…”
“That’s a pretty poor neighbourhood you were walking in, too. Maybe you were looking for someone who wants a little charity.”
“What the hell are you…”
“You’re on the board of several philanthropic organizations, aren’t you? Is it fair to say that you have a history of giving money away?”
“I have a right to choose to whom…”
“So what really happened here, Mr. Smith ? According to your statement, the suspect approached you, demanded money, and you handed it over, is that right?”
“Yes, I said ‘Here it is. Don’t hurt me.'”
“So you didn’t scream, didn’t fight. Did you even say NO when he asked for the money?”
“It seemed safest just to comply.”
“And you expect us to believe that you were ROBBED?”
You expect us to believe that you were raped? You already told us you weren’t a virgin.
Best comment ever! I have never seen it so beautifully laid out like that.
Thanks, Cake. I’m an OLD feminist,(you know, one of those Women’s Studies types) from the days when we hoped that if we shone a bright light on the ubiqitous landscape of descrimination and oppression by using analogies that men could relate to, there would be a great awakening. Social justice through moral revelation, that sort of thing.
It appears that we have to keep doing it over and over and over, perhaps one person at a time and armed to the teeth.
My favourite was a conscienceness raising exercise used (briefly) in some large corporations:
A panel of women conducted “tests” on top male executives (there were ONLY male executives for the most part in those days), and scored their achievements on a scale from 1 to 10. The first three exercises were in various kinds of problem solving. After the first test, when the men were upset that the scoring didn’t seem to correlate with their performances, they wisely changed tactics, trying cooperation instead of competition, and thinking outside the box for the next two tests. Still, their scores didn’t change; a man who was a 5 at test one, was still a five at the end of test three no matter how he performed. The last test was a swimsuit competition, in which most refused to participate; even then, they did not figure out that they were been judged exclusively on their appearance.
In post exercise discussions many reported this as the most frustrating and humiliating experience of their lives. No shit.
I wouldn’t be caught dead defending what Ramsey’s parent and all those other kiddie beauty pagent parents do to their kids, but…
…pedophiles would not be drawn to kids that are made up to look like adults. They are drawn to kids.
I refuse to ever blame the behavior of a victim in any way, shape, or form for the acts of their attackers.
Many pedophiles dress children up and put cosmetics on them. Make-up and “sexy” clothing are part of objectifying and eroticising victims of sexual assault; it help the perp to feel that the victims want (and deserve)it.
-Those freaks you just described technically wouldn’t be textbook variety pedophiles according to how pedophiles are defined.
I’m not going to argue that freaks like you just described don’t exist. They clearly do. They are categorized a little differently.
-I still have to point out that you are still blaming a victim for the behavior of an attacker. Yes, the child was dressed up bizarre. However bizarre, the parents did not hang a “please rape and murder my child” sign around JonBenet Ramsey’s neck.
Should we find out of these bizarre kiddie pagents put kids at greater risk of attack? Yes. If the kids are put at greater risk, then maybe we consider pulling kids out of homes if the parent continue the behavior after being educated about the risks associated with the behavior.
We need to find out these kiddie pagents lead to greater risk of abuse of kids like parents leaving kids at pools alone leads to greater risk of kids drowning. If there is greater risk, then we start educating parents about these risks. Once educated, the vast majority of parents stop putting their kids at risk.
Maybe JonBenet’s parents are guilty of some ignorant and bizarre behavior. That’s a long, long way from the Ramsey’s even sharing a slight bit of responsibility for the terrible act that was done to their child.
I am blaming the victim ???????
I am blaming a tiny, powerless child for her own exploitation and murder? Where the hell did you get that ?
This is not about the Ramseys. This is about the way society defines and accepts who is fuckable.
It is not about parsing pedophile profiles. It is about a media that makes money from the sexualization of children.
There were many non-exploitive, candid photos of this child that could have been used in newspaper and television reports. Instead, they CHOSE to use pictures from her competition portfolio. She was referred to this morning on NPR as a murdered Beauty Pagent Queen.
You’re preaching to the choir. We all know how screwed-up the corporate media is.
Right now, damn near any train wreck that keeps people focused on their TVs, and not on what is going on in the world, is being allowed.
I don’t think it’s as much about sexualization of children as it is about the necessity for the media to get more and more outrageous and shocking in every way, shape, and form to continue to capture an audience.
If it’s not Jon Benet or Britney, it’s blood, gore, and body parts. Whatever they think people will stare at for a while, they get up on the tube.
And used again as a Rove/GOP device in a summer campaign preceeding an election to distract from the major political issues of the day.
It’s hard to distinguish where the line is between the media’s shameless propensity for encouraging the public’s disgusting appetite for other people’s tragedy and their craven sycophancy with regard to the Bush regime.
Either way their behavior is appalling.
Yes, look at the response to “terrorism”.
Since 9/11, between 2800 and 3000 women have been murdered by their batterers EVERY YEAR. I doubt that I need to cite rape and incest statistics; suffice it to say that less than 8% of American women surveyed can say that they have never experienced rape, never fought off an attempted rape, never been grabbed, groped or fondled, and never had their lives, safety or livelihood threatened if they didn’t put out.
Over half our population lives in the midst of a terrorst state all the time.
You’re going to have to do the same thing every other oppressed group has done to stop being oppressed. Take direct action.
Oppressed groups discussing serious issues and appealing to an oppressor’s sense of decency to stop being oppressive hasn’t every stopped oppression. Not once.
Only direct action creates change.
Again you stand up for the ones whose voice gagged. In this case by lipgloss and America’s desire for all that glitters is SOLD.
(not a typo)
Why this the fact that people live in the past even considered news? For crying out loud, it was over 10 years ago!!! And before I am told that I am cold and unfeeling, I would like to point out that, 10 years after my uncle was murdered (which is still unsolved), my family wasn’t carrying on and on and on. It’s called moving forward.
Sheeh!
Nobody got their jollies looking at pictures of your Uncle. Sorry, he’s just not newsworthy.
You know what I mean–there are many murders that remain unsolved to this day!
that the accused is a TEACHER and was found in Thailand… Thailand is notorious for it’s child sex slaves.
Another local story: Another teacher has admitted to “fondling students” a Christian studies teacher…
the “terrists” aren’t attacking airplanes… they’re attacking our children.
We all know the terrible statistics re child abuse, slavery, incest, sexual assault, and domestice violence. The worldwide war on women and children has been raging for centuries.
Just don’t take down a building full of investment bankers. (Please don’t interpret the forgoing as a lack of compassion for the victims of 911; I sent 2-weeks pay and gave blood to relief efforts in New York. I object to the complaisency with which institutionalized terrorism against women and children is ignored.)
Posted without additional comment, as it’s left me sputtering with rage.
(Link via Feministe.)
I am speechless. This is disgusting in so many ways, it would take an hour to dissect it and comment on each horrifying aspect. Thanks, IndyLib.
This case is fascinating to the media because it has ‘exciting’ elements to it – beautiful white child, rich parents, the skeevy world of beauty pageants, violence etc.
That said, this guy is weird and I don’t believe him.
It isn’t at all surprising that the Ramsey story is so newsworthy. Beyond all of the media hype that comes with a lovely blond white kid being murdered, there is the titillation of the creepy beauty pageants that made the parents look exceedingly strange. Hints of pedophilia.
By the way, people who are attracted to kids are attracted to jobs where they can work with kids. And there is no single way that pedophiles are – some can’t differentiate little kids from older kids; some do like to see makeup and adult, provocative clothing on young children. (And our media has sexualized kids to an amazing degree. Many models are actually very young teenagers. For that matter, if you want to see strange age/sex oddness, think about female olympic gymnasts deliberately kept in small, pre-pube-like states in order to be lighter, smaller, smoother, unencumbered by developed bodies.
It certainly emphasizes to little and big girls that the coin of their realm is going to be their bodies, come-what-may – unless their are powerful protections against those traditions.
Don’t you just love the circularity of it all ?
Until very recently, men have owned and controlled all woman. They valued women based on their own desires, not by the same standards used to measure themselves and other men. Women competed for survival by attracting and holding men with status and resources which might protect her and her children form other predatory men.
Women make a tremendous investment in creating and maintaining “attractiveness”, that is whatever males find desirable at the time, as a means of basic survival. We will look rich, thin, slutty, young,or busty; we’ll laugh at jokes that aren’t funny, fake orgasm during sex that isn’t satisfying, turn a blind eye to philandering, and cover those bruises with make-up. Because we still have so little social, economic and political power, we do whatever it takes to survive.
Because second class citizens are forced to use the tactics of second class citizens, we are blamed for being trivial, weak, untruthful, manipulative, etc., which precludes us from being taken seriously in areas which could increase our power and autonomy. The paralells between sexism and racism are obvious.
This not to say that all men are repressive bullies. This site is a testament to men who see the benefit of equal partnerships, but the society as a whole is entrenched in partiachial institutions and attitudes that are so familiar and pervasive that they are invisible, they are just the way things are, unless we drag them out into the sunlight.