Madonna and the fantasy world of female self-obsession

Indiana has passed a so-called “religious freedom” law, which allows people who are “uncomfortable” being around certain “types” to use their “religious beliefs” as an excuse to deny employment or provide services to people they harbor prejudices against. About a dozen other states are considering such a law. Many people are claiming that this is an “anti-gay” law, but those who fall under its net goes well beyond that. This law opens up a Pandora's Box of legalized discrimination, without actually claiming it is so. If you are subtly being discriminated against, all you have to do is complain about it, and be accused of being a "troublemaker" to be denied service. That's a problem with this law and society in general: Silent discrimination happens all the time, but as long as you don't say anything about it, no one will "know."

Unfortunately for people like pop singer Madonna, being tucked away in her castle in the UK, occasionally speaking in a fake British accent and imagining that she is the reincarnation of a duchess of American extraction—thus far away from the scene—leads to inane comments like this:

Gay rights are way more advanced than women’s rights. People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period. It’s moved along for the gay community, for the African-American community, but women are still just trading on their ass. To me, the last great frontier is women…Women are still the most marginalized group. They’re still the group that people won’t let change. [To be a successful woman,] you must fit into this box: You must behave this way, dress this way.

So sayeth the person who despite some marginal success, as she nears 60, in foreign countries by aping Euro-dance trends and saying words like mother-f%@#er at her concerts, but otherwise means nothing in the USA these days, save to feminist culture critics. Don’t bother asking Earth to Madonna concerning the above statement; she probably expends equal effort forgetting that she has a brother (a white male) living on the streets.  Let’s just say that Madonna lives in an alternate fantasy world that bears no relation with reality, and only feminists and gender activists recognize. Frankly, I don’t see her or Lady Gaga dressing to anyone else’s “expectations,” and these days a woman wearing a skirt is almost a subversive act.

“People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period.” Is that so? And compared to the black community? Huh? How about the Latino community, the national scapegoat for everything (outside of Obama)? Is Madonna crazy? Is she off her medication? Is she high on meth?  No (or at least I don’t think so), but perhaps this is evidence of a sociopathic level of self-obsession that unfortunately many otherwise empirically highly successful white women (well, there is Opra Winfrey, who is just plain sexist) wallow in such self-pity. Madonna apparently believes she is not receiving the “respect” she “deserves,” and indignant that she is increasingly irrelevant in the U.S. (and a joke and a fraud in Britain).  

Of course, the reality that Madonna can’t face honestly is that despite all these supposed “barriers” for women, she is practically a billionaire, who made her money being one of the most successful poseurs in history, who married a Brit, took his castle after she divorced him, and pretends that she is better than you or I by speaking in that phony British accent, and believes she is the Duchess of Windsor reincarnated. In Madonna’s world, it doesn’t matter that this duchess and her husband the Duke were Nazi sympathizers and even friends with leading Nazis (one wonders what beliefs they shared); surface detail is all that matters in Madonna’s world. 

Or at least for Madonna; being deep isn’t her bag, although she frequently confuses her superficial (and often vulgar) proclamations as such—that is to say, when she isn’t shamelessly pandering to people young enough to be her grandchildren. Then again, this shameless crassness has always fit her like a glove. She isn’t doing white feminism any favors by claiming that white women are doing worse than minorities and gays, because you don’t need the eye test to know that belief comes from an excess of self-obsession, principally fed by mendacious media gender advocacy that is curiously mixed with the egotism and pomposity. 

But back to reality. Are white women like Madonna really more “oppressed” than other groups? This can only be true if they have an extremely high opinion of themselves, believe in white “privilege”—remember feminist Eleanor Smeal’s “racism against white women” quote (of course not)?—and basically harbor prejudices and stereotypes against other demographics they feel superior to (being white). Take Madonna, for example, having already mentioned that she cavorts as if she is a British peer. Anyone familiar with her history knows that she is an almost pathological exhibitionist who cares not one wit what other people thought of her or what she said or did;  she just doesn’t like that anyone has an opinion on it—and it “oppresses” her.

So while other people might have an opinion that oppresses her mind, that has never stopped her from doing whatever the hell she wanted to do (or say). There couldn’t be anyone less oppressed by the alleged “patriarchy” or “society” than Madonna. In fact, without the support of the male “oppressors”—like, say, record company executives—she would be just another annoyingly egotistical exhibitionist not worth only laughing at her pretensions. To say that women are “marginalized” is also a travesty of truth, because we are continually bombarded with gender-specific images and messages that suggest that the exact opposite is true; in fact, if we take the media as an example, it would seem it would be a truer statement that men are “marginalized.” 

If we want to just get down to the heart of the matter, there is no better place to discover something akin to reality in employment and wage statistics. According to the February, 2015 Bureau of Labor economic news release, the unemployment rates for specific demographics (for some reason excluding Hispanics) are as such:

White males   5.2

White females 4.2

Black males   10.9

Black females 8.7

The Bureau of Labor’s weekly earnings tabulation as of January 2015 as broken down by demographic is as follows:

White males    907

White females 738

Black males    667

Black females 602

Asian males   1067

Asian women  826

Hispanic males 631

Hispanic females 544

There are few things to note here that would likely go unnoticed. One is that the weekly earnings of white females is significantly higher than black males and even more so than Hispanic males. No doubt that even these income figures for black males is blown out of proportion by multi-million dollar sports contracts; it may well be that in the private and public sector, black women earn more than black men. If white women (like Madonna) want to make a case against white males—or better yet, both Asian males and Asian females (who make 12 percent more than white females)—then the ground is a bit firmer, although it has been suggested than Asians make more money as a demographic because they concentrate in high cost urban areas with similar higher wages. But to make a general claim of gender oppression as Madonna does (and she is obviously not the only one) just ignores the specifics. 

For example, black men have nearly three times the unemployment rate of white women; there are “explanations” for this (education level is the most prominent), but given it is a fact negates Madonna’s claim that the  “rights” of minorities have “advanced” more than people like herself is an absolute travesty of logic. Studies have shown that white males with criminal records are more likely to be hired for jobs than similarly qualified black males with no criminal history, and a black male with a college degree has a harder time finding a job than a white male (and woman) who is a high school dropout.

It is also useful to note that income disparities are far more pronounced for those making high wages than those who in low-income jobs; in the former, there is a vast difference between $100,000 a year and $15 million, yet both would be regarded as an exceptionally high wage to the average laborer. This is where gender wage disparity really occurs. At the other end, at every job I ever worked at, males and females start at the same bare minimum wage and only marginally advance from there. 

It gets worse. I was listening to a radio commercial recently on one of the local sports station about how (white) women were advancing in all kinds of fields of endeavor—yet things were only getting “worse” for them. How so? Because more women (or so the ad claims) die of heart disease than men. Despite the fact that women live significantly longer than men, and that heart disease would be the most likely reason for mortality for anyone at an advanced age, women have to be singled out as being the alleged worst “victims.” So this is “red” month; but last month it was “pink” month because breast cancer was supposed to be the worst medical condition women suffered. What will April be? Purple month? 

But some people believe what they want to believe. In a recent post I mentioned the case of Philadelphia Eagles football player Nate Allen, who was falsely accused of “exposing” himself after a teenage female claimed she saw a man masturbating in his truck. Police arrested a “usual suspect”—i.e. a black male—in this case Allen. According to the Fort-Myers News-Press

The 15-minute interrogation of NFL player Nate Allen by Fort Myers police Feb. 16 assumed the Cape Coral High grad was guilty of masturbating in public and continually urged him to confess.

A transcript of the interrogation was released by the state attorney's office Tuesday afternoon. Earlier on Tuesday Allen and his family said last week's involvement between the NFL player and Fort Myers police left two victims, the young girl who reported a man masturbating and Allen. They urged changes be made in the city police policy to prevent similar victims in the future.

Early in the interrogation, several hours after Allen was detained by police, Allen told Detective Audenia Thomas that he had no idea why he was there. After she told him why, Allen was adamant in his innocence throughout the interrogation.

"I was hoping you would be honest with me," she told him. Furthermore, she said that it could be that he's young and immature and made a bad decision. "But you're not even man enough to even acknowledge that," she said.

"Because I didn't do this," he answered.

Allen was emphatic in his denial of being the person the girl saw masturbating. "I promise you...like seriously...I'm on my knees," he said. "Seriously. It's disgusting, seriously."

As the interrogation wound down, the detective asked Allen if he needed a few moments to reflect.

"No, I need a moment to understand why someone would say something like that," he said.

"You don't need a few moments," she asked again. "No because this is the truth," he countered. "I'm telling you the truth. I promise you, I would never do anything like this ... ever."

Now who is trampling on the rights of whom here? Who is doing the “marginalizing” and who is being marginalized? Stereotyping and myth-making (by the media both news and  in crime shows) in order to advance a gender victim agenda is itself a form of oppression.The power of women cannot be any more clearly exposed than in the fear of males in the media (including the sports media) have in inciting the wrath of their female colleagues by any effort to suggest impartiality or objectivity in regard to facts.