JustNotSports Video

A Society Saturated in the Hatred of Women—and the Way Out

by Sunsara Taylor | May 2, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Last month, the website JustNotSports produced a damning video that revealed a taste of the pervasive hatred and harassment against women in sports. In this video, men read out loud just a few of the countless hateful comments that have been directed at Julie DiCaro and Sarah Spain, two female sports reporters. They read these comments directly to these women’s faces and they can barely get through it. You really have to watch the video. Here is a sample:

“One of the players should beat you to death with their hockey stick like the whore you are.”

“Cunt.”

“Why bring up your own rape in the story? Is it your way of firing back at critics who said you can’t get any?”

“I hope your boyfriend beats you.”

Think of the psychic toll of having to wade through this sewage of abuse every day just to do your job. Think of the stress and degradation of knowing that anonymous men are lusting for you to be hurt, raped, or killed. Think of the real physical danger that confronts women everywhere. Every 15 seconds in this country a woman is beaten. Every day three or four women are killed by their “partners.” Millions are raped. Millions more face harassment and abuse. Think of the men who carry out mass killings of women, leaving behind revenge-filled screeds dripping with anger at women for not sleeping with them.

And if you are a woman who speaks out against this abuse, it only makes you a bigger target. Think of Anita Sarkeesian, who spoke out against sexual degradation and harassment in video gaming, only to be sent drawings of herself being raped, stalked, and driven from her home. Her face was turned into a video game where, with each virtual “punch,” her face bruises, then bleeds, and finally disappears in a bloody mulch.

What JustNotSports has brought to light is powerful and invaluable—but there are three points that need to be made in response:

1. The hatred of women is not a “problem in sports,” it’s pervasive throughout this entire putrid society and system.

Misogyny—the violent hatred against women—saturates society. It fills the comments sections of sports and gaming websites. It is celebrated and glorified in pornography, where gang-rape, torture and abuse is mainstreamed. It is spewed—to the cheers of crowds—by the fascist bigot Trump.

In this society, nearly every boy and man has been trained since a young age to see women as sex objects who exist to titillate and please them, and to feel entitled to a woman all his own and to the subservience of all women. They learn this through porn, which shows women being routinely demeaned and degraded—and loving it. They learn it through comedy and music that calls women “bitches and hos.” They learn it through sports and video games that promote a grotesque “guy culture” of winning at all costs, being callous to the feelings of others, building oneself up by dominating others, and most of all degrading and demeaning women and LGBT people.

Then, way too many men, way too much of the time, spew and act on this hatred against women—in the bedroom, on the street, in locker rooms, on the Internet, at the job, in the military... everywhere.

2. The oppression of women by men is not being “overcome,” it is intensifying in its venom and volume.

Constantly, we are told that in this country, women have won their equality. We are shown the faces of women in politics and sports, in academia and the sciences, in the media and the boardrooms, and told these women are proof.

This is bullshit. As this video powerfully demonstrates, behind every public face of a woman who has broken into a previously exclusive male realm—be it sports, tech, gaming, etc.—is a barrage of abuse, raw anger, backlash and threats.

The hatred that so many men feel against women and feel the need to vent, is not new. For thousands of years men have been trained to treat—and rewarded for treating—women like chattel. Women have been beaten and forced to serve fathers and husbands, to guard their virginity and bear children—or have been cast out, shamed, killed outright, and/or treated as “whores.” The subservience of women to men is preached by every major religion. The Bible commands women to submit to their husbands as if they were the lord, and commands death to women who are not virgins when they get married. This oppression of women by men emerged with, and is a cornerstone, of all societies divided into classes, all societies in which one section of humanity rules over and lives off the labor of others. This definitely includes U.S. society today, a system of capitalism-imperialism that extends its armies and exploitation to every corner of the globe, and which has the oppression of women woven into its very fabric and functioning.

Yet, today, many men feel they are losing control over women. Major changes in the global capitalist economy, together with struggles waged by women, have undermined many traditional forms of patriarchy in this country. Gone are the days of “Father Knows Best” where women obediently stayed home with kids, while men were the sole breadwinners. Gone are the days when sports, the office, and politics were realms of male exclusivity and unvarnished domination. With some traditional forms of patriarchy slipping from their grip, but patriarchy itself remaining and growing in strength, men are lashing out and hitting back. Attempting to drive women out of “male realms” with threats of rape and violence. Attempting to force women into motherhood against their will through clinic bombings and laws that deny access to abortion and birth control. Openly proclaiming, as one commenter does in this video, “This is why we don’t hire any females unless we need our cocks sucked or our food cooked.” Today, this misogyny is intensifying and getting worse.

3. The oppression of women is NOT “human nature,” it can be overcome. This will take a total revolution. This is what Bob Avakian is leading and the time is NOW to get into—and get with—this revolution.

In the video, you see the pained reactions of the men who read the comments (not their own). The men squirm. They stall. They flinch. They apologize repeatedly. They ask if they can stop. “Uhhhh, okay, so I have to read all of them, right?” They avert their eyes. “I’m having trouble looking at you when I am saying these things.” Their faces crumple or go wide in shock. “I don’t think I can even say that.” You see how, when men begin to confront this misogyny for what it is, there is tremendous potential for them to reject it and want to break with it.

But for this potential to be realized not just among individuals or in small countercurrents, but throughout all of society and ultimately throughout the world, we need a total revolution. The system of capitalism-imperialism must be overthrown. A radically new economic system, a radically new social system, and a radically new state power must be brought into being—a socialist society on the road to a communist world. This new revolutionary state power would unleash the pent-up fury of women at thousands of years of tradition’s chains and give it backing throughout society—in the media and schools, in music and culture, and beyond. This revolutionary state power would give initiative to people as they experiment in bringing forward new ways for genders to relate, to forge relationships of love and friendship, to find new ways to live together and share in the rearing of children not rooted in women’s subordination. This revolutionary state power will unleash struggle against the hold of patriarchal religion over people’s thinking. All this would interpenetrate with the struggle to build a new economy free of exploitation, to strengthen the world revolution, to uproot white supremacy, to abolish enforced ignorance, to protect and repair the environment, and more. This will not be without contradiction and it won’t only be done from the top down—the whole society will be filled with turmoil and ferment and learning and experimentation, but there will also be leadership fighting to lead this entire process on the broad road to the complete abolition of exploitation and oppression of all kinds.

It is very good that JustNotSports made this video. We need more people resisting the intensifying hatred of women. At the same time, if you want future generations to grow up without ever knowing what it was like for half of humanity to be demeaned and degraded just because of what lies between their legs—the ONLY way this can be done is as part of the movement for a real revolution.

Get into the leadership of Bob Avakian, the foremost revolutionary leader and scientist on the planet today. Dig into his Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America to see how the new society will concretely function. Dig into his compendium Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution for the most realistic and liberating approach to winning the complete liberation of women. Read A Declaration: For Women’s Liberation and the Emancipation of all Humanity. Go to www.revcom.us every day to learn and stay connected to this movement. And join with the Revolution Clubs and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, to fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution, getting ready and getting organized to bring this system down and bring something much better into being.

Break the Chains! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!

 

 

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