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DEMONS IN THE ROUGH
First Lady Hillary Clinton's informal announcement that she will run for the Senate from New York has hotted up the hate radio scandal-mongers. The invective emanating from these Rychus-wingers contrasted with the tone of an article about former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jenny Shipley.
Quotes
from The Beehive:
"Jenny Shipley, also known as the perfumed bulldozer, rules with a smirk, a bellow, and a slickly coiffeured hairdo. Despite her Presbyterian upbringing, Shipley adopted a liberal viewpoint on contraception and abortion as Minister of Women's Affairs.
"Shipley knew however, that her moral conscience would serve as a barrier to political office. She therefore resolved to turn herself into a cyborg. It was the seventies, and robotic technology was in its infancy, but slowly Jenny replaced parts of her body with titanium equivalents. By 1987, when she was elected M.P. for Ashburton, Shipley was a robot from the neck down.
"Her rise was unduly rapid for half a tonne of metal. It was only when she became Prime Minister that Jenny underwent the final conversion; her brain was removed and replaced with a pentium processor. The public noticed little difference, although her much maligned smirk is the result of faulty wiring rather than the self-satisfaction most people suspect. As Prime Minister she also underwent a makeover. She adopted spectacles -- totally unnecessary as she enjoys infrared and heat-sensitive vision. Her hairstyle was also updated, and a fuzzy-logic chip implanted to give her more personality."
Well at least the Kiwi's are inventive as well as scathing when they subject women to the rough and tumble of political satire. Our home grown christian's vocabulary appears limited to words such as bitch, killer or liar with no redeeming humor.
But what is this invective toward women politicians about? Suddenly there are several books hitting the shelves about Hillary Clinton. And talk about demonization! They accuse her BY INFERENCE AND GOSSIP -- not PROOF, of nearly every crime on the books. They hate her hair and the color of her cloths. They hate her husband, and her by inference.
Why does this woman strike such fear in the hearts of self-described religious-family values people that they wage a slash and burn campaign against her? And women write these hate books too. Any anti-Hillary book has an instant market among the Rychus.
Clinton and Shipley have something in common besides being vilified, and it may point to the reason there is such a fuss being made. Both are liberals who support women's reproductive rights. The attacks on both, true to form, come from the Rychus Ones in both countries who have delineated not only a place for women, but insist that they shut up and stay there.
What the all out attacks against the First Lady spotlight for us is how acceptable it has become to viciously beat up on women both figuratively and literally.
It took an all out campaign led by Assistant Professor Sabrena Parton at Kennesaw State University to get a doll pulled from Wal-Mart (a "god & family values" store) TOY shelves. It had been modeled after Al Snow, a wrestler who carries a female mannequin's head into the ring.
The doll that the Rychus Ones of Wal-Mart thought suitable for children comes with a woman's head with "Help me" scrawled backwards across her forehead. Jim Byrne, W.W.F. V.P. defended the doll. "This is the first complaint we've had about the TOY. Al Snow's act with the mannequin head is a silly as it gets -- loads of fun." Hahahahahahahaha!
Parton commented, "What kind of a message would this TOY send children about the brutalization of women?" 'Gappers can answer that one, Dr. Parton. The message of that TOY says that it is not only O.K. but it is really funny to brutalize women.
We are seeing and hearing more and more definitive proof of how much threats, overt and covert, affect what women choose to do or how to act. Author and psychologist Polly Young- Eisendrath writes that certain images of women, such as MUSE or BITCH might trap her and restrict her ability to become an autonomous and whole person.
Her latest book, Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to be Wanted (Harmony Books), suggest ways that women can free themselves of the bind between who they think they should be (and appear to be) and who they want to be and are. "The heart and truth about female beauty is that it has been under the domination of male power and fantasy for far too long. It has produced all kinds of suffering and misery," she writes.
When women DO start to define themselves one of the first things they realize is how they have enslaved and degraded themselves to this male power and fantasy. That doll ("action figure") may have been removed from the TOY shops, but children watch wrestling too.
[WAY TO GO, COKE! Coca Cola has just announced that it is withdrawing its advertisments from the World Wrestling Federation matches because of their objectionable language and actions.]
Children hear adults disparage women who run for office, or dress comfortably, or live alone, or who do not conform to society's norms in all sorts of other ways. How much of this kind of early programming deters all but a few women from running for a public office because they fear reprisals?
Women like Hillary and Jenny do upset applecarts. It wasn't so long ago that men responded to this sort of thing by declaring upsetting-women to be witches. They had a great system to prove if they were guilty or innocent. The suspected witch was thrown into a deep pond. If she sank, she was innocent. Of course she was also dead.
This solution is still used in Tanzania where 34 people, mostly ELDERLY WOMEN have been killed recently as suspected witches. Proof of their "witching ways" was their red eyes -- eyes turned red from years of standing over cow-dung cooking fires.
Of little comfort is the official explanation of sociologists who explain that this is used as an excuse by family members to get rid of these old women in order to seize their property.
Ah, but WE live in a more advanced society. Here our names, our lives and our sacred honor may effortlessly be maligned if we become a candidate for political office. In the attempt to make us fit the male image of beauty and fantasy, any insult, any accusation and any suspicion becomes fact.
The severed heads and the programming of our children to brutalize women escapes notice or causes laughter as the hate-radio, $hit-parade plays merrily on.
1999-049
Copyright 1999 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@together.net.
G e n d e r G a p p e r s T M
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