There is so much going on in the world that is acute: N. Korea with Nukes, impending war with Iran, vote theft and voter suppression, global warming. It is too much to take in.
That being the case, there is a tendency to overlook the less acute — the chronic nagging pain that is always there. Today’s news smacked me between the eyes. The chronic pain became acute. Sorrow. Rage. Frustration. Bubbling up and spilling out in a welter of bitter tears.
The amazing, Bob Herbert, wrote a searing column in the New York Times on misogyny as exposed through the two recent to school shootings. (Herbert can be read only if you have a subscription – and this may be the time to get one.)
I hope I’m not pushing the limits of fair use, but I want to share some of what he said.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, violence and dehumanization have been reduced to a dull ache and it took the eloquent words of this man to throw it up in our faces, to smack us between the eyes with the ugly reality that confronts women, girls, mothers, sisters, daughters and aunts every day.
Oh, and the other article – the president of Israel may soon be arrested for raping women on his staff.
