I just recently had the very dubious honor of a CBS News affiliate doing a hit piece on my recent essay, Patriarchy for Dummies.
Well, I say “hit piece,” but I actually found it reminiscent of the scene in the old movie Cat Ballou, when an old and drunken Lee Marvin, sitting atop an equally aging and intoxicated horse, took aim at a barn with his six shooter, fired- and actually missed it.
The broad side, that is.
The critique, penned by someone who didn’t bother to post a byline, was that bad, and that off the mark.
Whoever it was used the shopworn “Blame the Victim” allegation, and gave an apt demonstration why such over used charges are losing their effect with thinking people.
They intoned that my questioning the judgment of a young woman who would go into a hotel room alone with Joran van der Sloot was somehow burdening her with the responsibility for her own death. I scratched my head a lot while reading the piece, trying to figure out just how they came to that conclusion, and was still a tad bemused later when I came upon a comment on the matter by our good friend Mr. Snark over at The Spearhead.
This was his take on the CBS piece:
The ‘victim blaming’ shaming tactic is really old. YAWN
Serial Killer: Hello Ladies. I am a man who likes to disembowel and torture women to death when they get close to me. How are you doing today?
Woman: OMG! You are so, like, totally awesome! Coffee?
*The next morning*
Coroner: This women appears to have been disemboweled and tortured to death.
PAUL ELAM: If she hadn’t gone with that obvious serial killer-
FEMINISTS: BLAMING THE VICTIM BLAMING THE VICTIM BLAMING THE VICTIM BURN HIM! BUUURRRNN HIIIMMMM!
I always liked ending my confusion with a little laughter.
But the point Snark makes is valid. And in his comedic little melodrama for The Spearhead, he could have interchanged the word “feminists” with the word “media,” or the words “public opinion,” because thanks to the feminists and the media, public opinion has largely reduced itself to the herd mentality of a bunch of consumer zombies that have to wait for Sean Hannity or Al Franken to tell them what they think.
And one of the things they think for sure is “Don’t Blame the Victim!”
Oh, Gawd no!
Not even if it might keep young women from being murdered.
And that’s the greater problem here. Human beings have some very dark problems. Some of them indeed are tied to our sexuality and our innate biological drives. Female attraction to dangerous men is one of them.
Female attraction to dangerous men is a big one.
But as long as anyone gets the bums rush for daring to take a candid look at the problem, we will never be able to even entertain the idea of valid solutions. We will remain completely oblivious to what Lincoln called “The darker angels of our nature.”
Should we try to understand the nature of dangerous men? Of course. We will do a lot of that here as a matter of fact, only not in packaged neat little PC bundles that you can squeeze between Viagra commercials in a 30 second sound bite. I have no female centric sponsors to please here so anything reasonable is on the table.
But we damned well better be willing to take a look at the real problems of women as well, including their own propensity to give and receive harm. I have never made it a secret that I am no fan of what western women have become, but despite the television induced hysterical reaction of the occasional nitwit that wanders in here, it genuinely matters to me that they don’t come to harm.
I am not so sure about CBS.
