When news broke this week of Herman Cain's history of sexual harassment problems, it was only a matter of time before conservatives were tripping over themselves to insist that sexual harassment isn't a "real" problem; it's just about humorless, radicalized, money-grubbing women who can't take a joke. Like conservative columnist
John Derbyshire:
Is there anyone who thinks sexual harassment is a real thing? Is there anyone who doesn’t know it’s all a lawyers’ ramp, like “racial discrimination“? You pay a girl a compliment nowadays, she runs off and gets lawyered up. Is this any way to live?
Evan McMorris-Santoro and Jillian Rayfield at Talking Points Memo compiled some more examples of apologia and dismissiveness from this week:
Right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham, a former Thomas law clerk, was also ready to blame the women. “We have seen this movie before and we know how it ends. It always ends up being an employee who can’t perform or who under-performs and is looking for a little green,” she said on her show.
And this gag-inducing exchange between Sean Hannity and Ann "Women shouldn't be allowed to vote" Coulter:
Hannity told Coulter: “Do you realize as friends, the conversations and the things we joke about on a regular basis…do you realize in any work environment?…Because people are humorless. And I’m not saying real sexual harassment doesn’t occur. That’s not it.” Coulter replied: “But they don’t care about real sexual harassment.”
And the brain trust that is Fox & Friends:
“How in the world does that rise to the level of sexual harassment?” Peter Johnson Jr. asked. Gretchen Carlson replied: “As a female, when I’m listening to that, I’m thinking, I’ve heard a lot worse than that in the workplace. I mean, I have! Come on, that is not sexual harassment.”
Brian Kilmeade concurred: “True.”
Even Sen. Rand Paul weighed in:
Sen. Rand Paul is among those leaping to Herman Cain's defense, whining that it's just so hard to be a man these days because you just can't "tell a joke to a woman in the workplace, any kind of joke, because it could be interpreted incorrectly."
That's the same Rand Paul who in college kidnapped a woman as a "joke." So maybe he's not really the best arbiter of humor.
Even Michele Bachmann, the only woman in the Republican race for president, says Herman Cain's history of sexual harassment is the "least of his problems." This self-proclaimed defender of women's rights can't be bothered to use this opportunity to address the very real problem of sexual harassment; she's far more concerned with attacking Herman Cain for being insufficiently anti-choice. So feministy of her.
Twenty years after the most infamous story of sexual harassment, and this is how far we as a nation have come in understanding it: pretty much nowhere. It's a get-rich-quick invention of the feminists. It's not like women ever really face discrimination in the work place. It's not like women ever really have to decide whether to tolerate inappropriate "humor" in the work place or risk losing their jobs. Lighten up, ladies. So what if your boss invites you to his hotel room? Or demands sexual favors if you want to keep your job? Or casually mentions pubic hair on his Coke can? Can't you take a joke?
But as just about any woman who's ever held a non-mouthpiece-for-Fox job will tell you, sexual harassment is real. That we have not yet learned to take it seriously, that complaints of sexual harassment are greeted with a big fat "So?"—even by women—doesn't mean that it isn't real. No, it means that it is still so ubiquitous that our culture demands that women learn to tolerate it, to toughen up and lighten up and suck it up because, well, that's just how it is in the workplace. If you're uncomfortable, that's your problem. And if you dare to complain, you've got a chip on your shoulder. Or you're just looking to make a buck. After all, if Gretchen Carlson at Fox & Friends has "heard a lot worse than that in the workplace," and she can laugh it off, clearly you should do the same. If Fox contributor Andrea Tantaros didn't sue when her colleague Bob Beckel threw a candy corn down her dress, then obviously no woman has a right to complain.
We like to think that sexual harassment—like many of the problems women face—is a relic of a bygone era that no longer exists. Sure, you can watch Mad Men and shake your head in disgust at how things used to be, but it's not like that's how it is now. Feminists successfully banned humor from the workplace, after all, so if you think your superior makes you feel uncomfortable, it's not because your superior is doing anything wrong; it's you who has the problem.
Unfortunately, even in the 21st century, blaming the victim is still the all-too-often go-to explanation for what women are expected to tolerate. If you've been raped, well, it's probably because your skirt was too short. If you've been abused, well, it's probably because you were asking for it. If you're making less than your male colleagues, well, it's probably because you don't want to make as much. If you're seeking to terminate an unwanted or life-threatening pregnancy, well, you should have kept your legs closed, you slut.
This, today, is our reality. Yes, we've made advances. We have the vote. The wage gap, though still significant, has narrowed. We're attending college in record numbers. And we're slowly increasing representation in government.
But that's it, girls. You've got enough; stop demanding more. At the end of the day, complaining about discrimination and inequality just makes you look so ungrateful. After all, the brave women of Fox can handle it; why can't you?
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This week's good, bad and ugly below the fold.
- If you live in Mississippi, then this Tuesday, run—don't walk—to your polling place to vote against Amendment 26, the Personhood Amendment. Unless you believe a fertilized egg is a person.
- And in case you need further convincing, read about how the Personhood Amendment will be bad news for pregnant women too.
- About that wage gap "myth":
The wage gap median between full-time female and male workers in Florida is lower than in the U.S. as a whole, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers in the U.S. stood at $753 in the third quarter of 2011. Full-time working women had median weekly earnings of $673, 81 percent of the $827 median for men, according to Labor Statistics numbers.
- And it's even worse for women in Alaska.
- Sex-selective abortion isn't exactly an epidemic sweeping the nation, but Randy Minchew, candidate for Virginia's House of Delegates, says he'll push to outlaw it anyway.
- Oh great. Another plan for failure:
Wisconsin’s GOP-controlled Senate took steps Thursday to undo comprehensive sex education in schools. Senators voted 17-15 — along party lines — for a bill that would require schools that teach sexual education to promote marriage and teach abstinence as the “only reliable way” to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), reports the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.
The law, if passed, would repeal a one-year-old law that requires schools that teach sexual-health courses to teach both abstinence and contraception. Abstinence-only education was banned while Democrats controlled both state chambers, but in 2010, House and Senate control flipped to the Republicans.
To review:
After years of warning the Bush administration and social conservatives that abstinence-only education does not stop teens from having sex, nor does it prevent teen pregnancy, a new study by the Guttmacher Institute confirms what many have feared: that deliberately misinforming teens about sex can have serious consequences and that comprehensive sex education, in addition to the availability of contraception, is the best way to reduce teen pregnancy rates.
The significant drop in teen pregnancy rates in the 1990s was overwhelmingly the result of more and better use of contraceptives among sexually active teens. However, this decline started to stall out in the early 2000s, at the same time that sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence—and prohibited by law from discussing the benefits of contraception—became increasingly widespread and teens’ use of contraceptives declined.
- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour: hypocrite.
- Since it worked so well in Florida, now Maine's governor thinks drug testing welfare recipients is a great idea.
- Blame the victim:
She was forced to have sex with him, and now she's being forced to pay his bills.
Crystal Harris of Carlsbad, Calif., had been financially supporting her unemployed, abusive husband Shawn Harris for years. But after he sexually assaulted her in 2008, she took him to court.
The jury heard a damning audiotape of the attack secretly recorded by Crystal Harris, and her husband was convicted of forced oral copulation.
Even so, in 2010, the year their divorce became finalized, he requested spousal support. The judge awarded him $1,000 a month, and also asked Crystal Harris to pay $47,000 of her ex-husband's legal fees from the divorce proceedings. [...]
Under normal circumstances, Harris would have been required to pay $3,000 a month in spousal support after the divorce, but because of the domestic violence she endured, the judge said he would lower that amount to $1,000.
"I call that the rape discount," Harris said.
- It's just a joke:
About six weeks ago now, I blogged here about the proliferation of rape-joke pages on Facebook and the company’s refusal to remove them. Though Facebook has policies against hate-speech and threats of violence, a statement issued by Facebook to the BBC compared the rape humor to lewd pub jokes, stating: “Just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook.” But activists are not backing down so easily.
Several major advertisers—including Sprint, Blackberry, and PBS—have already demanded that their ads be removed from any pages promoting rape and other forms of violence. Worldwide, petitions calling for the pages’ removal have received a total of over 200,000 signatures. Yet Facebook remains adamant that pages with titles such as, “Whats 10 inches and gets girls to have sex with me? my knife,” do not constitute hate speech.
- Two great pieces this week on the future of feminism.
- Hey, look! It's a sex education bill that would actually do some good:
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) introduced House Resolution 3324, or the “Real Education for Healthy Youth Act” into both chambers of Congress on Wednesday. The bill would require student instruction on both abstinence and contraception. Information taught to youth and young adults will have to be “medically accurate and complete,” meaning the information provided to students will have been verified and supported by scientific research. This bill also prevents federally funded programs from withholding “life-saving” information about the efficacy of using condoms and other contraceptives correctly and consistently.
- The Washington Post reports on a crazy new idea out of the Department of Defense to create a new, elite group of soldiers to work with Special Forces teams and Rangers: women. Why, it's so crazy, it just might work!
- Anti-woman jackasses love to say that family planning services are inherently racist because Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, and she was all about killing black babies. But the truth is a lot more complicated.
- This is what a feminist looks like.