The alternate universe of the international feminist

Quite by accident, I came across a year-old story told by a so-called journalist named Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, writing for National Public Radio. In this story she tried to draw comparisons to the status of women in the Muslim world and Latin American, as usual drawing on the accepted Western stereotypes. Garcia-Navarro is one of those Euro-elites who also happens to be quite attractive to her employers and to herself—both attributes which I consider with scorn because people like herself refuses to accept the fact that she is the beneficiary of the cultural superficiality in this country that she attacks in another just to make her gender politics point. Not only that, but that she is the beneficiary of a peculiar fact and does not acknowledge it makes plain her obsession with her own self, an egotism that requires a broad brush to white wash.

Brazil seems to be her principle point of contention, mainly because she doesn’t recognize that it is a party place where tourists like to congregate without the self-consciousness that she apparently possesses. Now, are Brazil’s bikini-clad beaches supposed to be demeaning and sexist? Maybe compared to the U.S.’ prudish standards (at least in the media), but Garcia-Navarro obviously hasn’t been around Mediterranean beaches in the summertime. So what about men’s attitudes about it. What about images of the scantily-clad on magazine racks she complains about? Is it really “worse” in Latin America than in Western countries, or at least in Europe? No, but because she can’t imagine “demeaning” herself wearing a bikini, she has to criticize the “patriarchal” culture that allows it, instead of asking women why they do it. Do many of them do so because they like to “show off”? Very likely. 

This “culture” didn’t come out of nowhere. Was the semi-nude beach look in style in Brazil 50 years ago? Brazilian culture was likely as conservative as any place, and many of things that Garcia-Navarro complains about are likely a reaction to the exhibitionism that many women choose to display—especially in “Latin” culture. It is also likely that Europeans on “holiday” to the beaches of Brazil brought an element of this “culture” with them.  Latinas do it for their own reasons. One evening right here in Seattle I saw a Latina walking with an Anglo man, obviously in the course of an evening date. Was I “surprised” to see that she was wearing a see-through top underneath her jacket, with her breasts plainly seen? Hell no.  My own observation is that Hispanic men are attacked for essentially the same cultural traits that are found “attractive” in Hispanic women (at least for white men). Caucasian and mixed-race Latinas often seem obsessed with their looks, and more than a few times I find them trying to catch my attention, as if in an effort to draw the jealousy of their boyfriends or husbands, which is no good for me, but makes them feel “good” about their self-perceived attractions.  

On the other hand, indigenous people (i.e. Full-Blooded Indians) who are often segregated from the prevailing society, and have difficult lives (which is why they immigrate here), so it is hypocritical for Euro-elites like Garcia-Navarro to stereotype their “culture.” Furthermore, Spanish-language television is clearly the preserve of Euro-elite life—which shouldn’t be too surprising, since in places like Mexico and Colombia where this programming originates only Euro-elites do anything “interesting,” given that they keep the political, social and economic power for themselves. Soap operas and prime time programming almost exclusively represents the lives of this unmistakably white upper crust. Oh sure, on game shows you might see the faces of darker-skinned “lower class” types, but  that is because Euro-elites wouldn’t “shame” themselves to rub shoulders with “that kind.” There is no “Good Times” or “Sanford and Son” to speak to their lives; just like in this country, people don’t want to see the real reality anymore, just people in nice houses, wearing nice clothes, speaking “proper” English and basically making fools of themselves for a few tortured “laughs.” 

Why is that Garcia-Navarro interpretations are the only valid ones, based on anecdotal evidence that just happens to supports her “thesis”? Individuals are only on this Earth for a short time; when they die, the vast majority leave nothing behind but memories for a generation or two of immediate family. Of course, Garcia--Navarro is in her line of business because she has a superstar-in-her-own-mind complex, while most people—men and women—have to face reality and hope that they earn enough money to support a minimum level of pleasure in their lives, whether this is eating something that tastes good, watching a good movie, taking in nature on a sunny afternoon, or just getting drunk with friends. 

What makes Garcia-Navarro feel “good” is telling people that they should feel “bad” even when they are not. She does this while trying to justify globe-trotting around the world on someone else’s dime, which the vast majority of us are not privileged to do. Why is she allowed to do this? Is it because her employees see her fulfilling two roles—filling the role of both gender and “minority,” even though she is hardly the latter, being a Hispanic of the Euro-elite class—thus killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. But like Erik Lacitis of the Seattle Times, who Times columnist Danny Westneat hilariously told me was the paper’s Hispanic representative, she doesn’t at all, just “representing” her own obsession with self. 

Garcia-Navarro rather amusingly claims further that women in Brazil are more “oppressed” than women in the Middle East. Frankly, I don’t think she understands anything about the Middle East; I worked around Muslim women (mainly from Somalia) at the airport who did not complain about wearing those long frocks. They didn’t talk about and didn’t seem unhappy about it. Not only that, they sassed with their men without any particular fear of retribution. I’m sure that Western-influenced Muslim women prefer to dress they want, but there are those who not only accept but like the way their culture defines proper attire; they might even find a woman in jeans or a man’s business suit unattractive and insulting to them. Why not ask them what they think, instead of forcing them to accept your own poor taste in clothes?

But in Brazil, it is more “insulting” to women to show “too much.” But that’s Garcia-Navarro personal issue, not the women who choose to “show off,” which is how I see it. It is not up to her to tell them what they can or cannot do; it’s odd how feminists like her can claim to be fighting for women’s “freedom,” when in fact they are trying to take it away by pigeon-holing them into their own paranoid world. Just because men “like” it doesn’t mean that they are “forcing” any one to do it.

Garcia-Navarro really goes on the deep end when she “bolstered” her argument by declaring that in Brazil (which has a female president; so much for “sexism” among male voters) is where women are murdered in “shocking” numbers, thus their lives are “devalued” more than anywhere else in the world. Again, she disposes of facts rather readily, or at least prefers to leave out context. One report I found claims that 41,000 women were victims of homicide in Brazil from 1997-2007; that’s 4,000 per year. That’s a lot, but how are we supposed to judge this statistic when compared to 64,000 total homicide victims in all of 2012? 

Obviously the vast majority—in fact, by a much higher percentage than in the U.S.—of victims of homicide in Brazil are typically male. And not just that, by far the largest homicide victim demographic (not surprisingly) is black males, in 2009 by a rate of 51.1 per 100,000—compared to 16.3 percent for whites. This is 12 times the murder rate for all females (4.3 percent). These rates have something to do with relative social and economic standing, but more telling is the way gender activists like Garcia-Navarro freely ignore context and other more pertinent factors and issues to further their own personal political agenda.

Garcia-Navarro did receive some criticism for her over-broad and self-serving  insinuations in her initial article on gender oppression in Latin America, but NPR allowed her a follow-up performance to “defend” herself with one or two additional bits of anecdotal evidence and comments from the similarly like-minded. The reality, of course, is that people like her are just as much oppressors as the “male” culture she attacks—maybe more so because she lives in an alternate reality that most people. 

"Pimping" by the media

Last December I wrote about the case involving last November’s publication of a Rolling Stone magazine “exposé” of a brutal gang rape that allegedly occurred back in 2012 by seven members of a fraternity on the campus of the University of Virginia. The story was written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who was apparently in search of a victim who had a story that was suitably horrific to advance an advocacy journalism agenda. Unfortunately, when fanaticism enters the picture, truth and justice fly out the window; the fact that a police investigation could find no evidence that an assault had been committed against the alleged victim, “Jackie”—a then student at the university—but that the fraternity has decided to sue Rolling Stone for libel has left one wondering exactly how something like this could happen.

It’s not that hard to figure out. We live in a world where the media simply does not report what is really important in people’s lives. Plane crashes, mass shootings, police shooting blacks, anything involving sex, and politicians and pundits shouting inanely at each other has been determined to be the most reliable ratings winners. Nobody wants to talk about what the long term effect on health care coverage in this country will be if the partisan Right has its way and kills the Affordable Care Act. Why? Because the media knows that the Right would be exposed (once again) as inhuman brutes, and media doesn’t want to be accused of being “unfair and unbalanced”—like Fox News is.  

In the wake of the Ray Rice episode, Rolling Stone didn’t want to miss that gravy train. Who cares about facts, as long as you have a large demographic that believes it happens “all the time” and revels in its “victim” status, largely a creation of the media and “studies” by advocacy groups who keep what is useful and throws out the rest—which is usually most of the picture. 

Thus the magazine published an article telling the sordid tale contrived by “Jackie” and fictionalized by Erdely. How did these two get together in the first place? It seems clear and that they were “made” for each other. “Jackie” apparently had a victim complex and was vindictive by nature, and Erdely was only too eager to accept her tale whole hog, since the reality is that it isn’t that easy finding such stories (I have noted before that a Seattle Times story on campus crime at the University of Washington noted only six reported sexual assaults in 2006, none leading to charges). The fact that Erdely was extremely eager to disseminate such a story no doubt convinced “Jackie” that she could “embellish” a story whole cloth without fear of being found out. After all, a phony name was shielding her from culpability for her lies; what did she have to fear? Everyone would believe her—or if they didn’t, their doubts would be muzzled in the face of accusations of “women-hating.” What is wrong with just hating injustice?

 

The Washington Post has now reported that “In March the Charlottesville police department detailed a months-long investigation that exonerated the fraternity and found there was no evidence to substantiate the sexual assault allegations described in Rolling Stone. Fraternity members told The Post in the fall that they knew within hours of the article’s publication that there were significant discrepancies in the account. Phi Psi members said that they used social media logs, digital records and financial statements to confirm that the fraternity did not host a function on Sept. 28, 2012, the night Jackie said she was attacked by seven Phi Psi members while two others watched.”

It turned out that three friends who had encountered “Jackie” the night of the alleged sexual assault told a much different story than the one reported in Rolling Stone.  They recalled being told that she had been on “date” with a male friend who in fact was not only not there, but hadn’t been anywhere near the vicinity in six years. Later in the evening she appeared “upset,” but said nothing of being “gang-raped,” only alluding vaguely to something about being “forced” to perform oral sex. They suggested that if she was upset about this, that she should report it to campus police, but apparently she never did. Perhaps it was that later given all the media attention given to the issue of sexual assault, she could feel “empowered” and “special” by portraying herself as a victim of a “patriarchal” society, and this was her chance to send someone or someones as low as she possibly could. Who wouldn’t believe her in the media? She would also be a “hero” to gender victim advocates.

The Post also reported that “A months-long investigation into a flawed Rolling Stone magazine article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia has concluded that the story reflected failures at virtually every level, from reporting to editing to fact-checking…a 12,000-word report that reads like a reportorial autopsy, a three-person team at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism called the November article ‘a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. . . . The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting’ that would likely have exposed the story as dubious.”

Many have attempted to escape from their own hypocrisy and contempt for due process. The president of the university had reacted with near hysteria over the publication and subsequent campus rioting over the alleged assault, assuming that everything was “true” and kowtowing pathetically to the media and the advocacy frenzy. Teresa Sullivan rolled out the usual bovine scatology of the self-deniers: “Rolling Stone’s story, ‘A Rape on Campus,’ did nothing to combat sexual violence, and it damaged serious efforts to address the issue. Irresponsible journalism unjustly damaged the reputations of many innocent individuals and the University of Virginia. Rolling Stone falsely accused some University of Virginia students of heinous, criminal acts, and falsely depicted others as indifferent to the suffering of their classmate. The story portrayed University staff members as manipulative and callous toward victims of sexual assault. Such false depictions reinforce the reluctance sexual assault victims already feel about reporting their experience, lest they be doubted or ignored.”

Do false reports really “reinforce” the “reluctance” of sexual assault victims to report their experiences? Or could it be that because of the fantastically broad definitions used to include various sexual scenarios that make virtually all heterosexual encounters potentially “sexual assaults,” depending on what the “feelings” about the encounter by the female (like did she feel “disrespected”), that we have an overblown sense of the extent of the crime? It is because so many alleged sexual assaults fall under the category of “he-said, she-said” with differing interpretations of an encounter, the fear should be that too many men fall into the chasm between lies and what the monster that the media and public officials have created to protect themselves from attack from gender victim fanatics. 

Such fanatics include Emily Renda, the University of Virginia’s project coordinator for sexual misconduct, policy and prevention, who was quoted in the Washington Post as asserting that “she didn't question ‘Jackie's’ credibility—because that wasn't her role.” What? Is she saying that the so-called victim’s role was to create the illusion that a crime had been committed, in order to “illuminate” the issue? No doubt Renda has a tougher job than she wishes, since most of what she has to work with is hearsay and unsubstantiated sob stories from the women’s studies department. In order to lend “substance” to her beliefs, a lie—especially a really big whopper—is infinitely preferable to the truth. 

And for her part, Erdely hypocritically “apologized” to everyone except those who were the actual victims in her story:  “I want to offer my deepest apologies: to Rolling Stone readers, to my Rolling Stone editors and colleagues, to the UVA community, and to any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article. . . . In the case of Jackie and her account of her traumatic rape, I did not go far enough to verify her story.” She still cannot accept the probability that “Jackie” had lied to her through and through as suggested in the police investigation, and she was desperate to believe those lies. She is not “sorry” for reporting lies.

So Jackie’s “role” was not to tell the truth, but to tell as  grotesque story as possible from "memory," regardless if it was true or not, in order to paint as broad a brush over as many people as possible to “prove” a “culture” of sexual assault on campus. Didn’t we learn anything from the Duke University Lacrosse case? As for Erdely, is putting her credibility in the toilet is how to persuade people to take her as seriously as she wishes, when she wants to create innocent victims in order to create false ones? Who can believe anything she writes about now without the suspicion that she has utter contempt for facts in the pursuit of a personal agenda?

Of course, pumping up an incident so that it overwhelms truth goes beyond gender. As we have seen in the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases, the media and activists have little use for such inconvenient things like facts and context. The media exploits these incidents to disguise the fact that it ignores the problems that affect the lives of many people, like the lack of decent paying jobs, the on-going fact of job discrimination (which I will elaborate on in a future post), adequate health care if the extremist Right gets its way, and the like. Just play on emotions, and it will drown out everything else. The media did its duty, and it’s time to move on and ignore reality.

A week or so ago, gender victim fanatic and Seattle Times reporter Sara Jean Green wrote a story about some “months long” sting operation on a rundown motel that netted  a few “pimps” and drug dealers.  Of course, this was all part of the city, law enforcement and media campaign to portray prostitutes as “victims.” So I asked Green (or tried; my email to her was blocked) what made herself as a representative of media (along with the city and police) no less of a “pimp”? Is she going to help prostitutes (the vast majority who do not use “pimps” to find their “clients”) find alternative employment? Does she actually believe that most prostitutes are being “forced” to be so by “pimps,” and all you have to do is arrest pimps and johns and they will be “free” to find other employment? 

Who is she trying to kid?  No doubt herself and the like of mind.  These “victims” most likely will continue to do what they are doing instead of, say, going to temp agency and getting started on the path to a legitimate job, because basically despite the sob stories they tell you, they are really just kind of indolent, preferring to work at a “job” that requires no special skills or annoying hiring process. When forced to explain themselves by phony moral media paladins, they seem to expect the kind of “help” from people like Green (or the city and police) that they never actually get. They are just used to satisfy some grudge people like Green harbor against, say, the “patriarchy” that she herself benefits from. She and all the rest of these “advocates” are just as much the victimizer as anybody else—perhaps more so because these “sex workers” don’t have immediate income prospects, and Green is unlikely to assist them personally in the matter. They are simply being used, and in the quest of a sensational story, it is the media that is doing the “pimping.”

Come to think of it, the media is in the business of “pimping.” It is only made worse when the person that is being “pimped” is exposed as a liar—and the “pimp” couldn’t care less.

One more human hurdle for the Badgers to overcome

Minutes after the Wisconsin Badgers stunned the basketball world by defeating the previously unbeaten Kentucky Wildcats Saturday evening, 71-64, the moaning and groaning about “history” being averted had already begun in the sports media. While a few brave outliers thought this game testified to the value of quality over quantity, and even unhesitatingly predicted that the Badgers would prevail over Duke for the same reasons they did over Kentucky, the great majority of opinion seemed to be that Wisconsin had shot its wad and has nothing left for Duke in the championship game on Monday. Who would be after downing a team that was considered capable of beating a lesser NBA squad like the New York Knicks?

It seems that the Wisconsin basketball program under Coach Bo Ryan just refuses to play by the accepted “rules.” It’s players supposedly are not “athletic,” or a bunch of oddballs for whom winning in  education is as important as winning on the court. They don’t “fit in” with the street-level play of most teams, which is what the NBA accepts as the “standard” by default. I think it is all political, because the Wisconsin-Kentucky rematch from last year’s heartbreaker (for Badger fans) was a referendum between two entirely different program philosophies, coaching and players. Few of the media “experts” wanted to see Wisconsin win, not because they couldn’t—oddly, most “experts” had been saying all year that the Badgers were the team best equipped to beat Kentucky—but because of the myths it might destroy.

Despite Wisconsin’s tremendous season—winning the Big 10 conference title and tournament, finishing the third-ranked team in the nation—unimpressive wins over Coastal Carolina and the Pac-12’s second-best team (Oregon) seemed to suggest to the doubters that the Badgers were not that good after all, and seemed headed for a fall against a good team from the powerful ACC in the Sweet Sixteen. North Carolina led Wisconsin by as many as seven points in the second half, but Wisconsin proved that it was a finisher, just as it did against Michigan State in the Big Ten tournament finals, when they outscored the Spartans 31-10 after falling behind by 10 with five minutes left in regulation. Up by only one point with a minute to play, Wisconsin outscored the Tar Heels 8-2, scoring all their points from perfect free throw shooting to win by seven.

Yet even before that game the “experts” had their next opponent, Arizona, in their Final Four bracket. Again, the explanation for this seemed to be ignorance of the quality of the Wisconsin brand of basketball. They were accused to being “slow” and not matching-up well with Arizona’s guards, but in general the question marks seemed to make no sense. Some guy named Mitchel Lawrence in Forbes Magazine quoted one NBA “expert” about Arizona:

“’They’re the one team that could take out Kentucky,’ one veteran NBA scout who watched the ‘Cats win the Pac-12 tournament told me. ‘They should have gotten the No. 1 seed in the West, not Wisconsin. They have the kind of team that can beat Kentucky.’’’

What was he smoking? Like North Carolina, Arizona—who for the second consecutive year was playing essentially a home game in the Elite 8—led at halftime, but with the Badgers raining down three-point baskets on their parade, the game was over five minutes into the second half.

And again against Kentucky, despite the fact that Wisconsin supposedly was best equipped (or the second-best equipped) to beat the Wildcats, few took them seriously. But Kentucky played either cupcakes in the SEC all season, or teams like Texas who were ranked early in the season but then fell off the map. When Kentucky was finally “tested” against a top-ten opponent in Notre Dame, it was only the exhaustion of their smaller opponent that prevented defeat. 

But the Badgers are a bigger, more veteran team than the Irish, and they were a team that didn’t wilt at the end. It wasn’t Nigel Hayes’ non-basket that tied the game after Kentucky surged from an eight-point second half deficit to a 4-point lead late in the game that “cost” them  the game (Wisconsin had a three-point shot negated after a bizarre off-the-ball foul call, and Trey Lyle’s flagrant foul to the face of Josh Gasser went uncalled); the Wildcats lost because unlike against Notre Dame when they went 9 of 9 shooting in final minutes of the game, they were equally ice-cold against Wisconsin, hitting only one of their last eight shots.

The team that deserved to win won, and this was proved off the court as well. While Kentucky “fans” in Lexington were rioting in the streets, a few Kentucky players couldn’t keep the “street” out of their post-game thoughts; during the press conference afterwards, Andrew Harrison blurted out “F—k that n---a” in response to a question about Wisconsin’s top player, Frank Kaminsky. Harrison quickly attempted to make “amends,” tweeting out that “First i want to apologize for my poor choice of words used in jest towards a player I respect and know.” But that cow had already escaped from the barn; both the Harrison twins, Andrew and Aaron, had sulked off the court following the game, refusing to go through the handshake line to show their respect for their opponents.

ESPN’s Steven A. Smith (one of those who was certain that Kentucky was going to win the game) offered a “defense” for the slur, claiming that it doesn’t have the same connotation as a white person would have using it. That may be true, except that when used in “context” and in the tone it was used, it was certainly meant to be disparaging. That this is so is again shown by the fact that both the Harrisons showed poor sportsmanship by avoiding the postgame handshakes and skulking off to the locker room. 

Those who before the weekend games were already “analyzing” a Kentucky-Duke championship game were of course deriding the Badgers chances of beating Duke. Wisconsin can’t beat Duke because the Blue Devils can play defense (wasn’t playing defense Kentucky’s strength?) and has more offensive weapons (isn’t Wisconsin number one in the country in offensive efficiency?). Isn’t Wisconsin averaging 78.6 points per game in the tournament? In fact, Duke is averaging less points-per-game in the tournament than in the regular season, while Wisconsin is averaging nearly seven points-per-game more than in the regular season. Oh, but Duke has 8 McDonald’s all-Americans, to Wisconsin’s none. But didn’t Kentucky have nine such players on their roster?

And didn't Wisconsin have by far the toughest road to the finals, having to play both the No. 1 and 2 teams from the Pac-12, as well ACC tournament finalist North Carolina, and finally the supposed NBA-caliber Kentucky? Who did Duke have to play to get to the finals? Gonzaga? It seemed that the NCAA bracket committee had purposely set up an easy road for Duke to play Kentucky, and people are upset because Wisconsin mucked it all up.

Duke’s only real advantage is perceived favoritism from officials. The Blue Devils shot 37 free throws against the Spartans in their Final Four game, and their margin of free throws was curiously coincidental with their final margin of victory. But the Badgers having lost to Duke earlier in the season with star Sam Dekker playing with an injured foot—and most “experts” betting against them—I wouldn’t be surprised by anything.

Despite a 21-point, 12-rebound performance by Frank Kaminsky, Wisconsin fell to Duke 68-63 in the championship game. At least the Badgers denied Duke pride of place as being the team that beat Kentucky in an "epic" showdown.