This is why I love Bob Herbert. His column, in its entirety:
“Who needs a brain when you have these?”
— message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young womenIn the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.
Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.
In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.
There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.
None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.
The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, “When was the last time you got screwed?”An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman’s face with the lotion spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.
We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We’ve been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we’re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.
What have we learned since then? That there’s big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it’s never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.
A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We’re all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society’s casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels — objects — and never, ever as the equals of men.
“Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now.
That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream America. Forget the embarrassed, inhibited raincoat crowd of the old days. Now Mr. Solid Citizen can come home, log on to this $7 billion mega-industry and get his kicks watching real women being beaten and sexually assaulted on Web sites with names like “Ravished Bride” and “Rough Sex — Where Whores Get Owned.”
Then, of course, there’s gangsta rap, and the video games where the players themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the Academy Award-winning song this year was “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”), and on and on.
You’re deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It’s all part of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches down in places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel Mines, Pa.
Thanks to idiosynchronic for sending this on.
I love Bob Herbert too! Read his column this morning.
“There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry.”
God. That’s so optimistic.
At the risk of hating on an otherwise great column on the pestilent silencethat has surrounded the mysogyny of these shootings, I just really wonder if it was necessary for Herbert to enter into the Oppression Olympics to make his point.
Herbert and Rich are the best two reasons to read the NYT these days.
One of the problems we have is, except for dedicated Feminists, most Americans DON’T EVEN SEE the misogyny. THey don’t see it ! It is invisible to them.
Girls and women just want to “Be feminine” and “feel pretty”, two framings of reality that make existing only to be a vessel for masculine pleasure, normal and OK.
We are constantly fed such a vile stream of violence against women, both in the news and on dramas, that it is just a normal fact of life.
If you ask the average person out there, male of female, if we exist in a culture DRENCHED in the hatred of women, they would look at you like you are crazy.
one thing that bothers me about this article is that I am reminded of how evangelical xtians offer up their own brand of female oppression as THE alternative to the porno/gynocidal society-or how the veil and everything that goes with it is seen as THE answer to sexual dehumanization of women
in other words while it’s refreshing this man is aknowledging the rampant hatred of women he only addresses the secular non religious dehumanization but not how we are dehumanized by religions that treat us like baby machines
this attitude could lead to people to believe that “family values morality” or “veiling” is the answer to the problem when in fact it is just the flipside of the same problem
not that I’m against family and motherhood-I’m just against forced motherhood, and the idea that women who die from illegal abortions don’t count as “lives”. I don’t have a problem with women who want to wear the veil, I have a problem with the hand that throws rocks at women for not being “properly” veiled
re: the murders that occured at the Amish community , I found it offensive how quickly the Amish “forgave” the murderer. How forgiving are they of a woman who has an unintended pregnancy?
Why are you so offended? And why did you put “forgave” in scare quotes? They forgave him, because that is what they believe they must do.
As for women with unintended pregnancies, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the Amish position on that, because the Amish pretty much keep to themselves. More importantly, what the fuck difference does that make?
well I’m very suspiciouse of such “forgiveness” and I put in quotes because I think that the forgivness is not real
I think it’s a way of appearing “good”
(again I use the quotes because I think it’s a false goodness)
I think the Amish “forgivenss” is an insult to those dead girls and frankly I would like to see a little Amish outrage first, a little Amish concern, not just for those particular dead girls but for women in general, then forgiveness, I’m not against forgiveness per se
just bullshit forgiveness that ignores injustice that ignores dead girls and covers it up like it never even happened
you got a problem with that?
Yeah, I do. Who are you to tell them that they’re forgiving the killer for appearances’ sake, when they don’t care what we think of them?
…Actually, the culture of forgiveness was brought up in an extremely creepy article about child molestation, which is apparently epidemic among the Amish. Basically, men molest girls and young women; if and when the women complain, the men get extremely light penalties; anyone who does not forgive and I mean really forgive these men is committing a sin and is subject to the same punishment; the men continue to rape with impunity.
I agree with Herbert,I also find it beyond absurd that nobody questions or cares how this nut got his guns. Are we so accepting of guns and gun related violence in our country that we don’t even question how it is someone who’s obviously a nut can get the firepower to commit mass murder?
Auntie, I don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about. Your anger won’t bring back those dead girls anymore than the Amish’s forgiveness. The killer is beyond any sort of justice we could impose.
piny, do you have that article? I’d really like to read it. In particular, I’d like to have it to cite when I have discussions about the murders.
I’ll go looking.
http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2005/feature_labi_janfeb05.msp
I know very little about the Amish. I am neither endorsing nor condemning their beliefs and practices, because I don’t know shit about them.
But I feel like a fundamental problem of our culture is a deep, deep belief in revenge, that forgiveness is weakness, that blood calls for more blood. This is the culture that keeps alive the death penalty. I think it takes tremendous courage to call for forgiveness after so profound an act of horror. Forgiveness DOES NOT mean acceptance of the act. Forgiveness DOES NOT mean that it was ok, that it should be ignored, that we shouldn’t stand against the roiling hate that led to these acts. It means, rather, that we should not perpetuate that hate. It means working to repair, rather than to lash out and perpetuate the cycle of violence.
Now, I have no idea if the Amish will practice forgiveness the way I envision it. But I admire their restraint in extending compassion to the killer’s family, as well as to the families of the victims. I admire them for trying to make sure the violence goes no farther. Would that all Americans could try to practice such forgiveness.
All that said, I also love this column by Herbert. Right on.
forgiveness and mercy is like water
outrage at injustice is like fire
water and fire
can heal or destroy
use each element wisely
I look at the suffering of women in this world and I see that the world is so quick to forgive and forget, so quick to tell feminists not to get “angry” , I see how those Amish tore down the school where those little girls died, covered over the ground with grass seed leaving no memorial-and it reminds me of how women’s suffering is covered up seeded over with no memorial almost as if it never happened, a thousand years of footbining, four hundred years of witchburning , barely a paragraph in the history books
millions of rapes, wifebeatings ,genital mutilations, deaths from illegal abortions or complications of pregnancy on and on
and when a woman dares to mention it she’s called a manhater-angry bloodthirsty feminist
it’s my mind and I will not censor my thoughts, my thoughts are as valid as anyone else’s thoughts-and if the Amish situation reminds me of the invisibility of women’s suffering and the “forgiveness” this world has for woman hatred well-
what’s it to you?
being outraged at injustice is not the same as being bloodthirsty for revenge
anymore than desiring forgiveness and mercy means weakness and tolerating injustice
justice AND mercy is what I’m talking about
I don’t like the way those Amish “forgave” so quickly
so what? I’m not suggesting naked feminists storm the Amish compound and hold a memorial church burning for those dead girls!
re: what betsy said
do you wish for palestinians to practice such forgiveness too?
Auntie – No one is asking you to censor your thoughts. I disagree with you. They’re not the same thing.
Um – I don’t know what answer you’re looking for. Morally, I believe that both the Israelis and the Palestinians should practice such forgiveness, which is fundamentally rooted in compassion. I know that’s not gonna happen, but it’s an ideal. I do not pretend to have a solution to such a horrible, entrenched problem. I would certainly never suggest that the Palestinians should not strive to achieve justice, freedom, and equality, and I find many of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians to be horribly unjust and violent. I do think that nonviolent resistance has been a tremendously powerful force for change, and is the corollary to the kind of forgiveness I’m talking about. Forgiveness is not the same thing as passivity.
Ok, sorry to derail the conversation; I definitely do not mean to turn this into a debate about Israel/Palestine!!! But I did want to answer Auntie’s question.
I think the Amish “forgivenss” is an insult to those dead girls and frankly I would like to see a little Amish outrage first, a little Amish concern, not just for those particular dead girls but for women in general, then forgiveness, I’m not against forgiveness per se
just bullshit forgiveness that ignores injustice that ignores dead girls and covers it up like it never even happened
you got a problem with that?
Why is it that many people feel that everyone must act as they do, feel as they do, grieve as they do? Why do you do that?
qrazyqat- they can grieve however they want
and I can express my feelings about that however I want . Expressing my viewpoint is not the same as forcing my viewpoint on the Amish
re: betsy I don’t want to derail the thread either. I love non-violent protest and I hate it when anyone suffers be they muslim jew christian atheist male female black brown red white yellow whatever I hate death and suffering of anyone including animals-death and suffering sucks and injustice sucks no matter who is doing it to who
I asked the question of you because I just wonder if you DO long for people to forgiving or if you only long for some people to be forgiving while tolerating blood vengence in others
(same question goes for me)
while I love non-violence I am not against self defense
but if one can defend oneself with nonviolence that is the way to go
but nonviolence itself can be used for harm
for instance, lets say someone is being attacked by a homocidal maniac-
the nonviolent person doesn’t tell the homocidal maniac he should be nonviolent, instead he persuades the other person to be nonviolent, to die rather than kill
but if that person dies he’s dead no? So in that way nonviolence itself can be used as a weapon.
I don’t think anyone should be made feel they guilty for defending their lives
by the way if an Amish person molests a child at that point I would force my viewpoint on them-no molesting children -period
SLy civilian: “At the risk of hating on an otherwise great column on the pestilent silencethat has surrounded the mysogyny of these shootings, I just really wonder if it was necessary for Herbert to enter into the Oppression Olympics to make his point. ”
Bob did not enter the Oppression Olympics. That would have involved the opposite of what he said. He said that, if the killings were racially motivated, they’d have aroused *more* outrage.
My sister has a game like that “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” I watched her play it once and she hired a prostitute then killed her to get her money back… then she shot up a strip club. I asked her if she had issues… she said it was just something she could do in the game, like she thought it was amusing or something… I told her that if she kept doing that, I was going to sell her game on ebay and send her to a mental hospital.