The Horseshoe of Scorn
Men Unite in Misogyny
I keep sitting down to write a blog post and abandoning it. The truth is I’m a bit sick of writing about gender and sex and I wander into thinking about the broader issues of politics that seem to split opinion of women more. I am finding though, that women’s issues inevitably come back to my reluctant attention and I return again to the painful realisation that we are always going to need women who talk about nothing but women’s rights, even if it is only for the other women to talk about other things.
Like any political junkie I have been glued to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. I woke up to the news just coming through from right wing pundits, and as we now do, I googled and saw that the progressive networks were not reporting on it, leading me to think it may just be a bit of a blow up. As the day went on, of course the reality of the event unfolded.
To be honest, I imagined that when a person is shooting at a Presidential candidate, an army of dark suited, sunglass wearing six foot tall and four foot wide men would emerge from the shadows and carry the target away so fast we would not see his face for days. I didn’t image the target would be permitted to stop to collect his shoes and raise his big orange and bloodied head to address his fans. It seemed strange; it didn’t initially lend credence to the occasion.
If the discourse had gone down the road of critiquing the secret service and point out the gross failures of the security measures in place for such a figure as Trump in a highly charged political atmosphere, I would have not taken much notice of it. But what we have seen is the women in the security detail of former President Trump be targeted and mocked on social media as weak links inserted by a corrupted recruitment process, ruled by DEI.
Readers of my blog will know I am no fan of DEI and I have been openly critical of DEI organisations as agents of institutional corruption. I especially critique the use of gender identity to erase the reality of sex and sexuality. At no point would I seek to mock people in their workplace due to the vulnerabilities of their protected characteristic. OK, maybe sex clowns.
What emerged though, was open mockery and misrepresentation of the women who were hurled into the centre of Trumps, clearly inadequate security operation. Matt Walsh tweeted the iconic picture of Trump raising his head and fist above the security detail to his fans with the question ”Why is the female agent ducking her head and exposing Trump?”. The comments are a mess of misogynistic abuse toward the woman for not having enough body matter to cover Trumps large body with her bullet absorbing flesh. I did see a community note briefly pointing out that the picture was a motion shot before going down the stairs.
British actor and Reclaim Party leader Lawrence Fox, tweeted a picture of an awkward looking woman outside Trump’s car with the caption “Get back in the kitchen, or learn how to holster your mostly peaceful non binary pistol”. Fox is an actor, as far as I understand, from an upper middle class British family. It is likely the woman would have quite a bit more training in pistol handling than Mr Fox.
It is entirely possible that the woman in the photo Fox tweeted was pushed into a terrifying situation with inadequate training, or was ill equipped to be present at a live assassination attempt. But again the misogynistic abuse toward the woman, doing the job she was assigned, in the comments could have been from the 70’s. Of course, in the 1970s the comments would be made at the bar not on twitter. I will remind you that in my state of Queensland it was only 1970 when women were permitted to be served alcohol in a public bar.
Requesting that women are given a modicum of respect seems to be too much to ask for the new right in their request to be rid of what they call “wokeness’. Women’s rights are now what is called wokeness, and it is in the target to be swept away with DEI corruption. It is becoming clear that much of the centre right want to take us back to before women had basic rights.
As the anti-women fury started to ramp up, Taylor Silverman the female skateboarder campaigning to remove men from women’s sports tweeted: “Women shouldn’t be secret service. Women shouldn’t be police. Women shouldn’t even be mall security guards.” This more than any other tweet indicates how close the misogyny on the right meets the left in a horseshoe kiss.
The tweet by Silverman seems clueless that men would have actively tried to keep women out of skateboarding competition and competition money. I make this statement with no proof or intention of looking it up right now because if men didn’t try to keep women from skateboarding competition or prize money, it would be a remarkable exception to the way things have worked in every single sport women have ever sought to compete in. While I have been writing my 100 days of feminism, I have choses a few sports that I have picked at random and have found, without exception, that women were at some point blocked by men from wanting to compete with each other in sport and seeking toearn money doing it.
In my continued inability to concentrate on any topic but feminism I want to mention an astounding interaction I watched last week on Sky News the Late Debate between Liz Storer, James McPherson and Joe Hilderbrand. I don’t recall all of the conversation and it wouldn’t be something Sky should be proud enough of to put up on YouTube. But the topic was if men (mostly men) who have a conviction of child sexual assault should be allowed to seek employment where they please. Liz Storer took the view that a child sexual assault conviction should have a significant bearing on a sex offender’s future employment and living situation.
Christian conservative James McPherson actually mocked Storer openly for the view, saying that such men had done their time and should have a chance to integrate back into society without the stain on their record confronting them in employment. Storer went on to remind McPherson that child sex offenders are very resistant to change and there is a child safeguarding issue. Her view that child sex offenders shouldn’t be in the Public Service was then scoffed at by both McPherson and Hilderbrand. She didn’t remind them, as I would have, that a blue card is required for an increasing number of public service positions.
If you googled “smug male condescension” it should come up with McPherson’s face as he openly laughed and Storers ongoing protest, asking her repeatedly in a soft victim voice to let him say something. But when he was allowed to speak, he continued to double down on the rights of paedophiles to participate in society. Storer did work up into a bit of a frenzy trying to place her perfectly reasonable and historically substantiated view forward. It was an interesting example of how the conservative right (McPherson) and the new centrist left (Hilderbrand) are meeting in the resistance to feminist arguments even when they are platformed in a traditional conservative package.
So for this quickly written and no doubt mistaken written post I want to assure you that I am not going to stray too far from women’s issues, I remain chained to my own nature, that continues to bear witness to the disintegration of public discourse and politics where women are concerned.
This response is to the last part of your essay, in regard to how the community should deal with men who are known sex offenders. You reminded me that one of the central questions of the Feminist movement is (or should be restored as?) - what do women do about deviant male sexuality? How do we keep society in general conscious of it, its pernicious consequences (for individuals, families, whole communities) and how do women mobilise effectively to ensure sufficient resources from the State are allocated to monitoring and minimising it?
Well you embarrass me because I've taken part in this. However they really didn't look capable or competent. A DEI target of 30% female agents is definitely going to lower the bar. One of the kindest comments I read is that these women have been lied to and gaslit by being told they have met the physical standards for this job. In all similar cases (military, police) standards have had to be lowered to allow women to make the cut. I have daughters and I want them to be able to do whatever they want in a world free of sexism. But there are some jobs where physical capacity and hormonal aggression are critical to the job. I will support my daughters going into the military if they want to but not into front line combat roles. A small number of roles, very small, women in those roles are going to risk getting hurt or dead and getting others hurt or dead. It really isn't that different from excluding biological males from women's sports. I have heard professionals say that there absolutely are women who can be fully capable in this role, hugely effective and deadly when needed to be. However they are at the absolute upper extreme of female physical capability. There is never any chance that 30% of USSS agents - that would be around a thousand women - will reach that level, even ignoring other agencies and forces who would compete to have those women. The three women we see in the video are clearly not at that level. They can't even maintain position in the crowd when protecting the Escalade, due solely to strength/body mass. I actually feel horribly sad for those three women. I imagine if they were my daughters. They have been lied to, sold a lie, lived it, and are now being humiliated. The failure is in no way theirs. The likelihood they will be made official scapegoats is very high. Unofficially they already are.