I use Facebook mostly for family and friend’s updates, birthdays, encouragement, some sports memes and post the occasional political topic or comment.
I come here for my politics.
Once in a while however something strikes a chord and I share my liberal leanings. Yesterday a wonderful diary by Murchadha pointed me to an article in The Daily Beast, about Evangelical women (finally) abandoning Donald Trump. This resonated with me since I am active in a church, and going back to the W. years (shudder), I have seen the quite obvious deception the GOP used to trick Christians into supporting the fleecing of America. Finally! Christians see the light! I shared the article to my Facebook page, expecting the usual jeers and cheers, but then something surprising happened.
First let me introduce my brother, an extremely smart but somewhat sexist 55 year-old white suburban dude. He has a great, stable job, a product of an excellent state university education (you’re welcome, "taker"), and wears the “independent” label with a misplaced sense of pride. He derides both presidential candidates this year, which we know means he is really a depressed Republican. (How many of us are depressed at the moment? I can usually tell a depressed Republican on my social media feeds because they feel there are no good candidates this year; who are you really kidding? After last weekend and the poll scroll across the top of this page, I have been feeling GREAT about this election.) Anyhoo, I expect my cynical depressed brother to be one of the first to arrive at my political posts, with a can of gas and a lit match! Sometimes I engage and we have an embarrassing public bloodletting, other times I just take the high road.
So yesterday I shared the Daily Beast article with the precursor “It is too bad they had to wait until white women were threatened, rather than the disabled, poor, immigrants, African American, Muslim and LGBTQ people, but better late than never!”.
Sure enough, the first comment that rang in was my brother, in all his “independence”, and I quote:
10 years ago locker room talk. I’ve heard other people say far worse at a guys night out. Keep it all in context and beware of being manipulated by the media. You’re smarter than that.
Oh, what a surprise! Locker room talk. Media manipulation. Fake praise of endearment. Whatever, bro’, not worth my time to respond. Besides, all my lefty friends began taking him to task.
Then his daughter shows up and lowers the boom.
His daughter, my niece, is a charming and extremely bright Grad student, and while she may be white, entitled and highly educated, she is first a woman. And she was having none of that! Now, usually she has absolute no comment to me except the annual “thank you”, to my annual “happy birthday”, but this time was different. She broke down the fucking door and let a round off into the ceiling! She didn’t even acknowledge him as her dad.
If you wouldn't want a man talking about your daughter that way, then I would hope that you speak up because that's someone's daughter. Media manipulation or not, it's wrong. Behind closed doors or not, it's wrong. By not standing up against it, men are giving each other the go ahead, indicating it's acceptable to think of women that way. I am not an object, and yet I am perceived that way. I wish I could go for a walk down the street in peace, but I can't.
You could have heard a pin drop.
I personally think she pwned him and could not have been more pleased and proud at that very moment. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. My oldest son, a college freshman and her cousin, rolled into the thread and threw out the definitive declaration of who pwned who, as only a teen can.
Yeah, the kids are alright. Thanks for reading.