‘What happened to women’s agency?’
Your Squire is a guilty white male. I blame my parents.
And there you have it! The liberal-progressive-socialist Trifecta! Identity politics + victimhood + blame-shifting. I broke bad but it ain’t my fault. It’s Da System! Your Squire is not an agent of his own life. He is a victim of a white, patriarchal socio-economic construct. (And violent, 1950s TV kiddie cartoons.)
The evil partisan side of the Squire delights as the #MeToo conflagration brings down another liberal politician or media star after a spate of conservatives. But his better angel (back from disciplinary leave) whispers that there is a scent of McCarthyism to the movement, an indiscriminate mania. No one said politics was fair but maybe Al Franken got jobbed for some bad jokes.
The white lab coats here at the Policy Werkes have detected a new meme on social media: Franken photoshopped with hands placed on boob-endowed Facebook friends, acquaintances, and luminaries. Politically incorrect? Sure. Funny? We only report, you decide.
Have you now or have you ever …?
Might there be a difference in degree between the crimes of Harvey Weinstein and the indiscretion (if that) of Garrison Keillor? Yet both careers have ended, both reputations destroyed, at least, for the moment.
There was a point at which the French Revolution promised liberté, égalité, fraternité before it became the Great Terror. A point at which a needed corrective became a witch hunt, voracious for victims regardless their degree, or lack, of guilt.
So now Meryl Streep, whose craft I admire, has weaponized the #MeToo movement for partisan gain. Rather than explain why she never spoke out against Harvey Weinstein’s depredations despite reaping awards and millions by starring in his movies — She Must Have Known! — the First Lady of institutional, liberal Hollywood is casting stones at the Trump women. (Reported here.)
“I want to hear about the silence of Melania Trump. I want to hear from her. She has so much that’s valuable to say,” Streep said. “And so does Ivanka. I want her to speak now.”
A welcome corrective comes from one Daphne Merkin, writing in the New York Times. “What happened to women’s agency?” she asks.
‘Frail as Victorian housewives’
Described as a “critic and novelist,” Ms. Merkin writes that the women she knows, when men have “come on” to them … have routinely said, “I’m not interested” or “Get your hands off me right now.” Or sometimes, it is reciprocated. (Or so we’ve heard.)
I hear these same feminist friends say. “What ever happened to flirting?” and “What about the women who are the predators?” Some women … have gone so far as to call it an outright witch hunt. … more troubling is that we seem to be returning to a victimology paradigm for young women … perceived to be … as frail as Victorian housewives.
If you are starting off with pinching butts, you are not flirting. Surely, in the pantheon of victims, there exists more than seven degrees of separation between Paula Jones, a little-educated, low-level state employee summoned by state troopers to Governor Clinton’s quarters, and Anita Hill, a Yale-educated attorney specializing in equal rights litigation and of near-equal status to Clarence Thomas. Both in degree of offense and ability to defend. Mrs. Merkin again:
The fact that such unwelcome advances persist, and often in the office, is, yes, evidence of sexism and the abusive power of the patriarchy. But I don’t believe that scattershot, life-destroying denunciations are the way to upend it. In our current climate, to be accused is to be convicted. Due process is nowhere to be found.
Daphne MERKIN!
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Reblogged this on On the Patio and commented:
What once was a noble cause has now degraded into a simple attack on anyone a woman sees as a competitor or threat. All accusations are not founded, That has been proven but no one remembers the exoneration. Just the accusation.
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Careful, Dave. Matt Damon made the mistake of voicing the same opinions and got lambasted by the Hollywood harridans of the MeToo movement. Their latest ploy is calling on women who plan to attend the Golden Globes ceremony tomorrow to wear black in solidarity. I can see it now: a sea (or maybe mountain range) of surgically-enhanced boobs erupting from black gowns whose necklines plunge to their crotches. What an inspiring image of women’s empowerment! Of course we must remember that women parading around in public gussied up like two-bit whores just demonstrates how heteronormative males in positions of power have duped these innocent maidens into devaluing their females bodies … blah, blah, blah.
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“…surgically-enhanced boobs erupting from black gowns whose necklines plunge to their crotches…gussied up like two-bit whores…”
Awful lot of hostility there, GLK, toward women merely agreeing to wear black at a public event to protest sexual harassment and assault. Dave cites a feminist with reservations about the #metoo movement. Seems more worthy of thoughtfulness than spittle.
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Watch some footage of recent Academy Awards (or any of the endless ceremonies at which these preening narcissists celebrate their wonderfulness) and tell me which of those details are anything but an objective observation of reality. And while you’re at it, tell me how decades of Hollywood’s objectification of women could have been so thoroughly accomplished without the complicity of those now performing the swooning Victorian maiden act. Meryl Streep in particular makes me puke: sanctimony in a designer gown. She’s known for years about the depredations of her buddy Harvey and his cronies, but now suddenly she’s the piano player in the whorehouse who had no idea of what was going on in the rooms upstairs. (Sorry for all the whorish references–they come naturally to mind when discussing this subject.) Not defending pigs like Weinstein, just pointing out that there’s plenty of blame to go around.
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Sure, Hollywood objectifies women and they go along with it, fake boobs and all, because that’s what consumers want and there’s money to be made. But the predations of men like Harvey are all about exploiting power and selfish gratification, both physically and for ego. Harvey was the worst because he was one of the most powerful and untouchable; he controlled productions, funding and careers. Did Streep know about him, probably for many years? No doubt, it was an open secret. But what could she or almost anyone else do? When that kind of powerlessness finally has an outlet, it produces the righteous rage you’re seeing now. While there’s plenty of blame to go around, it shouldn’t extend to the victims. And it’s a thing because it’s universal. As my wife points out, any woman who’s ever been twenty and creeped out by a man with power over her knows what this is about.
I’d also drop all the references to whores; it IS a defense of pigs like Weinstein.
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Such bravery to wear black to a black-tie event – it’s just too much!
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Everyone knew about Harvey. Hillary knew, the Obamas knew. Harvey determined the price of their silence and paid it. They are all complicit. They are all guilty.
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There’s a picture that’s worth a thousand–scratch that–a million words! Speaking of words, “victim” is too often used (usually by the left) as a convenient way to place certain individuals and groups off limits when it comes to assigning blame. So we’re expected to believe that Meryl Streep, the most powerful and respected actress in the industry, was utterly incapable of raising a peep of alarm against Harvey and his fellow porkers. She was and is many things, but powerless is not one of them; she spent years playing the game–for immense profit–and now expects nothing but adulation for her “bravery” in finally speaking out? Three words: BAH-LOW-KNEE.
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Guys like Weinstein, Lauer, Charlie Rose, et al. are not only pigs but monsters who wielded their power in the ugliest way; abusing a woman’s sacred sexual self for their own momentary gratification. But it was anything but that for their prey.
We men should condemn them in the most explicit way possible, in all conversations and commentary.
What is nearly as disgusting is that people like Streep, Oprah, and others are only now willing to say anything about it when they could have many years ago. Interesting that few if any male actors are speaking out. What a bunch of cowards. An illustration of people masquerading as artists willing to sell their souls for lifestyle, money, the big house, prestige, power, etc.
Anyone with functional synapses knows that virtually everyone within the industry knew what was going on but let it ride with their silence, including the nauseating phony Savannah Guthrie.
Hollywood is a deeper, darker, and more grotesque cesspool than Washington, DC., and that is really saying something.
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