Politics is Distribution So Why Not Discuss the Distribution of Women?

The classic definition of politics is decision-making about the distribution of stuff or decision-making about how to make decisions about the distribution of stuff.  Who decides health care?  Markets? Insurance companies?  The government?

Well, we are finally addressing the most important question:

Daily Wire host goes on strange sexist rant: “The central purpose of every society is to figure out the distribution of women ... Women cannot take care of themselves” www.mediamatters.org/daily-wire/d...

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— Media Matters for America (@mmfa.bsky.social) Jul 29, 2024 at 10:20 a.m.

My first thought is: well, in fantasy sports leagues, you have to figure out whether you have a draft or an auction.  In a draft, "owners" of teams are allotted draft positions (due to past performance or randomly--tis another political decision) and then one owner at a time selects a player in that sport--football, basketball, whatever, to fill a specific need or to get the best athlete available, thus imitating most major sports leagues.  The alternative is an auction, where each owner gets the same budget to start and then they bid on various players with the best players and those in the areas with the least depth commanding the higher bids.  

So, should American society go to an auction style model to allocate its women?  Or should it go to a draft?  Of course, this require a lot of data gathering so that the "owners" could figure out which women they want to draft. Like in sports, in this, the various bidders/drafters would have different preferences for what "fills a need" or count as the "best available athlete."

Or am I missing the point?  Most public policy debates tend to degenerate into two extremes: the private sector allocates (tis a political decision to let markets decide) or the public sector.  So, should a government agency allocate women?  If so, is this a state level thing or should the responsibility belong to the federal government?  The GOP is always so contradictory on this, depending on what outcomes they prefer.  States' rights on abortion, federal rights when Colorado thinks Trump is an insurrectionist.  Anyhow, the GOP tends to oppose government allocation as "socialist."  So, I guess this speaker would want society to agree that markets should decide the distribution of women.  

Isn't that how it works now?  Men and women meet in a variety of fora, online and in real life, they end up coupling temporarily or permanently (the GOP prefers the latter, given their hostility to divorce and casual sex--which, um, means stricter government regulation?).  Hmmm, sounds like the market, except, well, the status quo gives women too much agency.  Obviously, we can't let them distribute themselves--that would make women people and not property.  Remember, the MAGA slogan is all about regression to a "better" time, and that better time in this particular policy realm is where women had few rights and were seen as property.  Tim Walz, potential VP candidate, has been calling the GOP the "He-man woman hater's club" and that really does get at things.

The good news here is that the various folks within the Trump universe are outing themselves in a variety of ways including making their misogyny so very clear.  The bad news is that they might have a great deal more power to inflict their views next year (and forever, given Trump's recent speech). 

So, um, yeah, the GOP is going to have a hard time removing the weird label, because, yes, this is just frickin weird to think women are property, something that most of us got over a while ago.  Hence this exercise in satire.  They are weird because the mainstream of American life has moved one way, and they have moved another, back into a partly imagined past. 

Anti-Woke as Vice-Signaling

Last week's awful speech set me on edge immediately.  The first words about handouts were a signal, but the thing that confirmed that the talk would be awful was Maisonneuve invocation of "woke."  Whenever I hear anyone tossing around that word contemptuously, I immediately code that person as not worth listening to.  Why?

To be clear, woke refers to folks who have become aware of the historical legacies of discrimination and the present-day implications.  That's pretty much it, that woke people understand that there is and has been significant discrimination.   That's it.  

To be anti-woke, which many folks on the right are now so proud of, means denying that discrimination happened and/or it has made an impact on today.  Of course, it is more complicated than that--it can mean being opposed to the measures used to address the remedial efforts aimed at reducing discrimination and compensating for its impact.  The classic case of this maybe opposing affirmative action as it may be seen as unfair to white men, and the opponents usually say that such measures are unfair as it means that those who are more meritorious are being denied opportunities due to the sins of their fathers.  There is a lot built into that including the notion that today's procedures would be otherwise focused entirely on merit if not for considerations of race, ethnicity, gender, etc.

The reality of today's politics is that when one loudly proclaims that one is anti-woke, one is doing one of two things (or both):

a) one is signaling to one's white, male, "Christian" supporters that one is with them, an enthusiastic supporter of some past status quo (real or imagined) where the woke folks were kept in their place;  folks, including myself, refer to this as vice-signaling. 

b) one is actually one of these folks who are actually an enthusiastic supporter of some past reality (fake or real) where the uppity folks knew better and that one could discriminate, harass and do more without being called out for it.

I tend to think Ted Cruz, for instance, is in the first category--that he does not really believe anything but wants power and signals being anti-woke to appeal to his racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynist supporters.  That does not make these folks better even if they don't believe in the hate they are inciting--it makes them just as bad as the genuine article as they are inciting and providing comfort for them.  Vice signaling is dangerous and awful and should be called out.

Is this cancellation?  No, free speech means one has the right to engage in vice-signaling, but it also means that others have the right to call it out for what it is. 

Maisonneuve got more than just a right to speak last week--he got to have a platform to do it.  And he abused it.  And I have the right to call him out as does everyone else who considers his speech to be awful, intolerant, and retrograde. 

 

 

Canadians Remember Better, Misogny edition

One of the differences between Canada and the US is that Canadians tend to remember stuff better and longer.  I always note this on November 11th, as poppies and ceremonies here remind folks of World War I far more clearly and directly than either Veterans Day or Memorial Day in the US.  Today is another one of those days. 

On December 6th, 1989, a man killed these 14 women in very cold blood. 

Today we remember 💕
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz#16Days

— Celina Caesar-Chavannes (@iamcelinacc) December 6, 2020

He separated out the men from the women and then executed the women.  It was the biggest massacre since the 1800s until this past year (the Nova Scotia spree).  The guy killed himself.  He might have been the first incel terrorist.  Certainly, the violence was misogynist as he declared he was attacking feminism.  He went to a school and systematically killed the women.

Every year, this day is marked across Canada, not just in Quebec.  Violence against women was not new then or now, but this is the largest attack by a misogynist in Canada.  This summer's attack in Nova Scotia was a bit more complex, but the perpetrator had a history of "domestic violence" as well.  I put that in quotes since the phrase, to me, sanitizes the beating of women (yes, it applies more broadly).  

Anyhow, I can't help but notice that the US does not have national remembrance of its various massacres.  Maybe because there are so many, maybe because 14 women is small compared to Tulsa Race Riots (which were lost to history for most Americans until the past few years) or Las Vegas or Orlando.  Columbine?  Well, we know it is April 20th (Hitler's birthday and all), but we don't mark it.  Nor do we mark Sandy Hook, which we damn well should.  

Anyhow, I am sad and angry that women face so much violence and other forms of abuse.  Today, we are reminded of the toll it has taken.  Remember the women who paid the price.  And let's not give the man any additional attention or notice.  That is what these guys want, so let's deny them that.  It is the very least we can do.

Learning the Old Lessons

I have been trying to remember the classic quote, and so the internet was my friend:

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) said this:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The relevance today: some Jews are saying that Trump is not anti-Semitic. I have two responses to that: hell's yeah, he is; and if not, so the fuck what?!

Trump has targeted African-Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted Muslim-Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted Mexican-Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted Native Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted disabled Americans, so should you speak out?
Trump has targeted Prisoners of War and other vets, so should you speak out?
We can go on and on.... but any Jews who remain silent about Trump are betraying every lesson of the Holocaust.  Side with him? Make excuses for him? I am not an us vs. them kind of guy.  You don't have to be for Hillary Clinton, but you have to be against Trump if you have any decency.  Even if he has not quite gotten to your group yet.



 

Trumpity Trump Trump

I have not spewed about Trump in a while, so I am overdue. Given the news of the weekend: posting this anti-Semitic picture on twitter and then us all learning that the pic was not created by Trump/his campaign but borrowed/stolen/plagiarized from a white supremacist website, I cannot help but vent a bit.

First, I have learned to be a bit more careful with my rhetorical devices on twitter:

Let's see: African-Americans? Check. Mexicans? Check. Muslims? Check. Women? Check. Jews? Check. Has Trump attacked Native Americans?

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) July 2, 2016

Oops, as I got a slew of folks tweeting at me the long history of Trump's anti-Native American slurs from the recent Elizabeth Warren stuff to his rivalry with Indian casinos.  What I was trying to say there is that Trump is a white supremacist who has targeted pretty much everyone who is not a white male.... ok, non-disabled, non-POW, white male.  I keep forgetting what he said most recently about LGBT folks.  Still, the basic point remains: his white supremacism is actually quite consistent.

Second, the consistency is Trump--he has been doing this stuff longer than this campaign: his Birther obsession. So, one cannot just say it is strategic or tactical.  It is the man himself.   So, when Trump uses the phrase "American First", it probably is not due to ignorance (although his shallow dumbfuckery can often be Occam's Razor in all of this), but due to his affinity for white supremacy, fascism, and all that stuff.

Third, CNN is dead to me.  Spending heaps of money on hiring a failed hack, Corey Lewandowski, who happened to have assaulted a journalist is really the step too far.  Corey spent yesterday defending the tweet.  CNN, you have lost whatever corporate soul you had.  The boycott starts today.

Fourth, the big question is how long will the damage last?  Has Trump done for the GOP what Pete Wilson and others did for California--kill the party for a generation or two?  The country is increasingly diverse, yet the GOP moved from dog whistles to air horns.

Forget about losing African-Americans for another generation thanks to the tolerance of the birther nonsense.  How about losing Latinos for a generation or two as they become an increasingly important force in US politics?  Sarah Palin's "Real America" in 2008 was subtle compared to this, and that was already a call for self-marginalization of the party--white, rural voters uber alles.

Fifth, I understand why #NeverTrumpers want to call Trump Liberal since that is a way to get Conservatives to not vote for him, but Trump's only consistent ideology is ... white-supremacy.  His policy stances are all over the place and change regularly depending on what he heard most recently or who he is talking to.  The "the rules don't apply to me or rich people" is not American Liberalism.  I don't think Trump is Conservative either, because Trump does not have much in the way of conservative values either. Well, any values.

The more this goes on, the more we need an election outcome that is a landslide to demonstrate how intolerant we are of this intolerance.  Probably will not get quite the landslide I want since HRC is not loved and because polarization means that many Republicans will vote for Trump regardless of what he says and because the number of white supremacists out there are, alas, more than we want to think.

Project Much? Understanding the Latest NSFW Obsessions

Last night, on twitter, I learned some new lingo.  I had been seeing on cuck mentioned a lot on a conservative academic's twitter feed and seeing it elsewhere, but was mostly confused about the origins of cuckservative.  Pegging? That was new to me.  The common theme, of course, is emasculation. Obviously, what is going on here is that the utterer/twitter-er/whatever is insulting someone by suggesting that their wife is sleeping with someone else or one is being penetrated by one's wife--that the person is less of a man because of their political opinions.  And maybe calling someone gay or an f* is not as acceptable so these people have had to get more creative?  (I guess there must be sociologists already on this stuff, looking at trends of insults).

*I don't want my blog posts to be searchable by epithet

This may not be an entirely right-wing thing--my guess is that the misogynists among the Bernie bros are probably saying similar stuff.  Why?  Tis in the title: these folks are projecting.  They want to make men (mostly) feel bad by suggesting that they are lousy men.  Why?  I am no feminist scholar (I am a feminist, just not a scholar who uses feminist theories/methods), I guess this people are themselves feeling emasculated.  This may be why this campaign seems to be gamer-gate in a different arena. 

Of course, some will note that women use these terms as well.  Sure, but much of the volume seems to be from males.  Of course, when women are the target, the language is not about cucks and the like, but the usual misogynist vocab and, of course, threats (the woman with whom Justin Trudeau made contact in "elbowgate" or parliamess is now being hit by the barrage of internet insults because fans of Liberals can also be illiberal).
 
The extreme political stances are chock full of hate--hate for women, hate for those who support women, hate for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Jews, Latinos, LGBT, and Muslims (and Sikhs because ignorant people are easily confused).  And the US now has a candidate who has successfully been stoking these flames of hate to get to the nomination of a major party.

Lots of stuff is being written on why this is coming out from under the rocks now, but it has always been there, of course.  Racism, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia are not new.  The internet has made it possible for groups of losers (those who either lost in life or feel they are losing their advantages over others) to gain an outsized voice by directing attacks at specific people, especially women and minorities.  It is not just the anonymity of the web as plenty of idiots gave away their identities when attacking the Nevada Democratic Chairwoman, but anonymity does have a role, of course.  As does Donald Trump who has been inciting hate for the past year (more than that since he was a birther for quite some time, but more so lately), leading to hate crimes quite directly.

And, yes, this stuff is intensifying because these folks have been losing the big political battles.  They rail at Social Justice Warriors precisely because gays are now more accepted, that transgender people are now being treated more positively (a long way to go, of course), that women are breaking through some glass ceilings, and, yes, we have a black President.  Whenever I see someone use the SJW, I assume that they are a gamer-gate kind of misogynist because if one is on the opposite side of a social justice warrior, does that not make the person a fan of injustice?

So, what can I conclude from this rambling rant? That it sucks to be a loser?  That much of the hate is venom spewed by those on the wrong side of history?  That those who use cuck and other terms to denigrate the masculinity of their opponents have small hands and peni?  I guess we cannot dismiss these folks because they can and do resort to violence, but perhaps we can remember that they are losing, that their losing is a source of their animus, and that we need to keep winning the battles that improve the opportunities for all.  And if the losers do not want to partake in a better society, we need to marginalize them and the politicians who tolerate or empower them.  Which, of course, means vote against Trump.  

Update: I forgot one of my key points: there are all kinds of men with all kinds of ways to be a man, so these folks have a very specific idea of what is it is to be a man.  And, the irony is that their cowardice--attacking folks online, using lame insults rather than good arguments--actually contradicts their ideal John Wayne-esque kind of manhood.  But then again, their efforts to emasculate others emasculates themselves more than anyone else.