Women Are Not Bitches, Ho’s, or Punching Bags... Women Are Full Human Beings

by Sunsara Taylor

November 14, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This is an edited and shortened version of an article originally posted at revcom.us on October 15, 2016.

It’s 2016, and Donald Trump has been elected to be the president of the United States—a man caught bragging and laughing about sexually assaulting women: “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” “I just start kissing them... I don’t even wait.” “I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. ... You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ... And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”

As if women are not people. As if they exist only to look good for him, to sexually please and flatter him, to submit to his groping hands, his physical assaults, his crude insults. As if viewing women this way was something to laugh about.

All this is not “just words.” It’s a punch in the face to women everywhere. These are boasts about the actual violation of real women—the infliction of trauma and pain, of humiliation and insult. It’s a green light to men everywhere, permission to excuse and revel in the violence this society inculcates and unleashes against women. It is a statement to millions of women who have been raped, harassed, groped, flashed, hit, stalked, “brushed up against,” and silenced: shut up and get used to it.

What Kind of System Produces THIS?

Any system that could produce a man like this—not only a violent misogynist and serial sexual assaulter, but a vile racist, hateful xenophobe, a brutal fascist, and all-around predator—that could produce a whole culture where someone like this could command a frothing-at-the-mouth, violently loyal social base of millions, where a man like this could be put forth and backed by major ruling institutions, supported, promoted, and excused by the ruling class media, and backed by powerful donors and interests—such a system is COMPLETELY ILLEGITIMATE.

It has no right to rule over the masses of humanity.

It has to be overthrown at the soonest possible time.

After women from all walks of society courageously stepped forward to put their faces to sexual assault, Trump’s response? To dismiss and excuse this sexual violence as “just locker room banter” and to lash out further at these women. To suggest that these women were not “attractive” enough to “deserve” his sexual predations. As if being groped, humiliated, raped, harassed—having one’s humanity violated and one’s body degraded for someone else’s perverse power-trip—were a “compliment.” No! It is NOT a “compliment” to be preyed upon, demeaned, and degraded. It is a violation. It is painful and humiliating. It is traumatic and something that no one should ever have to endure.

Again, any system that would consider this slithering, blustering, world-class creep after he lashes out in this way as a legitimate president, has no right to rule. It must be overthrown at the soonest possible time.

This shit does go on in locker rooms. Men joking and boasting about women as things to be used and abused, ranking their value according to objectifying and demeaning physical standards, encouraging or looking the other way while men violate or abuse women. It goes on in the frat houses—where new recruits have been mobilized to chant “No means yes and yes means anal.” It goes on in military barracks—where violent and cruel porn is used to pump people up before they go out and kill, where one in three women is raped or sexually assaulted. It goes on in the office suites of Wall Street and strip clubs; in video games that reward players for beating prostitutes to death. In the hotels of traveling businessmen where 40 percent of housekeepers report having been groped, sexually assaulted, or flashed.

Heart-wrenching voices have poured out on Twitter—MILLIONS of women describing their first sexual assaults.

The fact is, the oppression of women is deeply woven into every aspect of this “modern” society. Its roots are thousands of years old, and while some of the forms have changed, it is not “getting better.”

In fact, in many ways, the vindictiveness of this misogyny and the cruelty of its violence are escalating—precisely as a backlash and revenge against the major changes that have taken place in recent decades in women’s place and traditional roles, including the changes women have fought for and won. So now they are being assaulted for challenging thousands of years of patriarchy’s barbaric chains. This, in fact, is one thing that explains the rise of this reeking pig and how he clawed his way to the top to win the presidential election.

The Most Important Thing...

But here is the most important thing: as vile as Trump is, Trump and the violent misogyny he embodies are NOT a problem that can be solved by electing a Democrat—even if they can sometimes speak compellingly against the crudest expressions of this slave-master talk about women.

Differences, Yes. But Trump, Obamas, Clintons Are Still Products, Representatives, Functionaries of the Same System

Yes, Hillary Clinton, the Obamas, and the Democrats aren’t exactly the same as Donald Trump. But all are products, representatives, and functionaries of the same system as Trump—a system which in a thousand ways embodies and enforces the most horrendous oppression of women, in this country and throughout the world.

The reality is that the system represented by the Obamas, the Clintons, and the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, rests in a fundamental way on a worldwide network of sweatshops, where masses of people, a large number of them women and girls, are viciously exploited.

What have the Clintons, Obamas, and Democrats done about the massive dissemination of woman-degrading pornography, which is encouraging and conditioning whole generations of males to regard and treat women as subhuman objects of exploitation and degradation? What have these liberal representatives of this system actually done about the international enslavement and trafficking of millions and millions of females, a huge number of them young girls?!

The fundamental fact is that this system could not do away with the oppression and degradation of the half of humanity that is female, and on the contrary can only maintain and enforce this, including in the most horrendous forms, regardless of what the sentiments of individual representatives and functionaries of this system might believe or wish.

The world doesn’t have to be this way. Men are not born baby-Trumps. Misogyny and patriarchy are not ingrained in human nature. They are products of a system that can and must be overthrown at the soonest possible moment.

UNLEASH THE FURY OF WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION!

WE NEED TO OVERTHROW, NOT VOTE FOR, THIS SYSTEM!

 

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