Good morning and welcome to another edition of What’s Pissing Off Jenny Today: the death of Roe v Wade, the Texas’ bounty-hunting forced birth bill and other atrocities against women There are a million and one reasons to be outraged by this draconian, tyrannous BS, but I’d like to focus in on just one (because it’s my favorite) – how unconscious gender inequality makes the world a shittier place for all of us.

Let’s start with how there is actually a McCarthyesque hotline for people to report women who accidently become pregnant and don’t want to give birth (for any and all reasons-none of which are your business). FYI if you are a guy and can’t get pregnant – it happens really, really, really, easily but only with your help. Just to be clear, fertility is not a female character flaw. The involvement of a man and his fertility is pivotal in all conception. Yet men are not held responsible by this law. In fact, they can now turn around after impregnating someone and collect the $10,000 bounty creating stunningly disturbing new career options for men.

So let’s break these gender double standards down into easy bite-sized pieces:

Double standards of gender expectation regarding fertility

Women:

• Responsibility for birth control
• Responsibility for birthing a child
• Responsibility for medical costs
• Responsibility for the cost of raising child to adulthood (a cost estimated around $230,000)
• Responsibility for adjusting their lives/jobs to accommodate a baby
• Okay I’m gonna stop there because who are we kidding. This list would go on for days!

Men

• Police women to make sure they are forced into all of the above

And while this is all highly problematic and hard to even fathom there is yet another level to these expectations around the idea of taking/controlling life that suggests such power is a male entitlement not allowed to women. Women who want to have a clump of cells removed from their body to maintain their own autonomy are seen as murders. (Don’t come at me with your heartbeat nonsense. That’s such BS – and you know it! – that we are not even entertaining that discussion anymore.) Women who have abortions are not murders. Yet, women who become impregnated by men (very often through the violent dehumanizing experience of rape/incest) are expected to love, nurture, and birth a child that they don’t want.

Double standards of gender expectations regarding having children:

• Women should want to birth, love and sacrifice for their children
• Men…*crickets* – no such expectation

Women are regularly villainized for not wanting to be pregnant. Trust me, I know. I’ve never wanted children and have no regrets for not having them which according to society makes me Cruella Deville. (No problem! Happy to wear the t-shirt.) Now swap genders and imagine (just for a tiny moment) if a man was raped and forced to give birth and care for the child. Tons of men are outraged about losing their bodily autonomy around having to wear a mask. They are also indignantly refusing to get a shot in their arm because they believe in their right to that choice while they (gender double standard) expect women to push another human being through their birth canal then love and support them for 18+ years. While we still have massively ineffective laws to hold men accountable for child support (gender double standard). How would men feel about being forced to birth? Come on! We all know if men could get pregnant, you’d be able to get an abortion at the McDonald’s drive through window.

So, here’s some fun (gender double standard) facts: women are expected to nurture and protect life, but men commit more than 88% of the murders that occur in our country daily. And men have committed 100% of the wars that have resulted in millions of deaths. Men have committed 100% of the acts of genocide. Men have committed 98% of mass shootings in the USA.

And now we come to the special little place where my rage goes off the charts: reporting, policing. and bounty hunting. People report these violent, murdering men all the time. And not only are they not rewarded with $10,000, they are totally ignored. They are told by the police that the man with homicidal ideation hasn’t committed a crime YET so we all need to wait for his inevitable, socially sanctioned violence. Please come back and make your police report after he’s killed you. The social message being that men are entitled to violent behavior on the bodies of others with relative impunity, but also have the right to police women’s bodily choices (gender double standard).

There are just a shit-ton of male terrorist out there posting on facebook, on incel chatrooms, reddit and subreddit, threatening people with guns in their hands, acting like all kinds of violent fools about to take lives and there are no hotlines to report them. No laws to protect their innocent victims. There are actually laws that protect them from being investigated as domestic terrorists. There are no financial rewards for saving lives by reporting them. And you know why? We have different expectations around acts of violence based on gender. Let’s break it down:

Expectations for women:

• Always be loving and nurturing to everyone around you.
• Don’t ever get mad or people will call you a bitch and shame you.
• Don’t become physically aggressive or you will be labeled as psychologically disturbed, medicated, and shunned by society.

Expectations for men:

• None. You are not responsible for your anger and if you get violent, we will make an excuse for you. That guy who just gunned down his entire family was just stressed at work.

And our social systems support this message. Men are adjudicated for reported rape only 9% of the time. In case math isn’t your strong point that means 91% of men reported for rape (a much lower number than men who actually rape because rape reporting numbers are so low because the adjudication rate is so low….too tired to go on…) experience no consequence for violently dehumanizing another person.

So, what I am pissed off about today is why is the right to aggress and murder other humans an unspoken male entitlement? Where is the complete and total moral outrage around this? Why don’t we have more effective laws, and hotlines and bounties to hold men accountable for their aggression that destroys lives, but we hold women accountable for having some unwanted cells removed from their uterine lining. Let me be totally clear. I am not saying that abortion is murder. I don’t believe it is. But people who support forced births suggest that it is. So, based on their logic why are they not holding men accountable for murder? Why are our double standards around gender, personal autonomy and concepts of control and violence so completely disproportionate? And again, I’m not suggesting women pick up assault rifles and head on down to the local school yard. I’m just suggesting we have a bit more moral outrage at the fact that men do use assault rifles than we have about women having abortions, because while women are destroying a lump of cells, men are destroying real humans with lives and relationships and hopes and dreams. Yet we just don’t seem to be holding them accountable for those heinous behaviors.

So here is the point I am making. I don’t want to hear the self-righteous ramblings of one more man about a women’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy until you start making laws that hold men accountable for aggressing, raping, and murdering actual human beings on a regular basis. Until bounties are put on the heads of dangerous men the Texas law is just another new and exciting (sarcasm) form of misogyny that puts us one step closer to witch burning.

And with that I will conclude before I am arrested for writing this post. Because a woman speaking out against male violence is always a bigger moral outrage than the man and the violence he commits. And that’s just another shining example of how gender double standards make the world shittier for us all.

I recently read an article that suggested girls just need to try harder and take more risks. It states, “When girls try NEW things, hard things, their confidence grows.” While this would be the natural conclusion, it is rarely true. As a researcher into gender inequalities in educational setting I can assure you there is endless data to show that when girls take risks they are harassed, shamed, embarrassed and delegitimized. Blaming girls for a system that is stacked against them from the start is just another way we disempower them. Here’s how it works:

We live in a patriarchal society structured vertically with rich, able-bodied, heterosexual, White males at the top who maintain the majority of power. We are all born into this system and told it’s normal. We rarely think to question how power remains the unspoken entitlement of (mostly White) men. We learn that it is just ‘natural’, but it’s not. Society begins policing girls at an early age to teach them in myriad ways that power and competency don’t belong to them. Girls experience multiple microaggressions every day that direct them to limit their behaviors, their confidence, and their power. These microaggression shape girls’ identities and harm their mental health making them feel ‘wrong’, ‘less than’, and ‘broken’. It informs their identities in long-term ways like unrealistic body images (diet culture) and behavioral expectations (slut-shaming and mom-judging). These constant microaggression are an emotional form of water torture as the drip…drip…drip results in constant feelings of failure throughout their lifetimes.

And it’s a double-edged sword because girls/women get shamed when they take risks, so they stop taking risks. Then they get shamed for not taking risks, so it’s not really girls that need to try harder. Society needs to try harder to recognize and support the competencies of girls/women. Yet society continues to blame girls/women for their lack of confidence instead of recognizing the many barriers that obstruct it – regularly policing and undermining female power.

It’s really the ultimate in gas lighting to suggest that girls/women are responsible for the obstacles to their power. We’ve all had the job(s) where we did the majority of work for our mediocre male supervisors and were never recognized for our ideas or efforts. Women are told in a million and one ways that power and competency are male entitlements and if we reach for them, we will be shamed, shunned, or fired. Society has taught women through social learning that we are not entitled to the same things that men are.

And it starts early. Just watch when students are released for recess. Girls will give way to boys who have already learned that recreational/gym spaces belong to them as does the equipment. Girls who challenge boys’ entitlement to those spaces will be socially shamed not just by the boys, but often by the school staff who will direct girls to other activities to appease the boys. This is how male power is reinforced and naturalized through social learning. If you observe a typical physics class, you will probably recognize a boy who has been crowned ‘King of physics.’ He is confident. He knows it all and shines the brightest in the classroom. But if you check the grade book, it is usually the girl quietly cowering in the corner who has the highest grade in the class. Yet she is not given the power of the recognition of her skills. Boys who are good at physics (or STEM subjects) are often described as naturally skilled and brilliant while girls are just ignored or described as hard working. There are so many constant ways that girls are disempowered every day in the classroom and in life. It’s exhausting to watch how regularly their self-esteem gets beaten down as they gradually stop taking risks to claim a power that they know they will be denied. It’s actually a testament to the strength of girls that they get out of bed and go to school every day.

Patriarchal systems are constructed hierarchically. Power is not shared but constantly contested and challenged. Our society is based on a system of dominance where individuals fight for power that benefits them. According to patriarchal values this kind of ‘power over’ is recognized as the most legitimate form of successful power negotiation. Unfortunately, ‘power over’ or dominate power is rarely the most effective form to benefit society as a whole. More effective than dominate power is collaborative power or ‘power with’ that shares power in a way that more effectively benefits all. Boys are allowed to negotiate and fight for dominance or ‘power over’ while girls are only allowed to negotiate collaboratively or ‘power with’. Yet our society doesn’t see collaborative ‘power with’ as a legitimate form of power so girls are never actually positioned to lead. Their power is contested by boys fighting for dominant power. When girls fight for ‘power over’ they are pathologized as too aggressive. They are often sent to the school counselor or suggested for medication for anger issues. While boys who display actually physical aggression are excused as ‘boys will be boys’ – just another message that power in the form of dominance belongs to boys not girls.

What’s ironic about how gender informs power is that girls are actually being taught to be the most effective leaders but are then denied their right to lead by boys whose aggression is read as confidence. Yet girls are shamed for this form of confidence – labeled as ‘showoffs’ or ‘braggers’ and not allowed these forms of perceived competency. When they are not allowed to fight like boys they still reach for power and competency in the form of what little is allowed to them – relational bullying. Books like Queen Bees and Reviving Ophelia blamed girls for this kind of power suggesting that this is a female character flaw. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a response to a society that rarely allows girls forms of legitimate power. Yet girls are still labeled as problems just for responding to the only forms of power they are allowed in a system that regularly disempowers them. Girls are shamed when they speak out, challenge the status quo, or try to establish any kind of acceptable power, autonomy, or success for themselves.

And let’s face it, being/feeling powerless is terrifying. Why do we expect girls to be able to tolerate it, but protect boys from it? Developing confidence and having access to power, success, and leadership are important for everyone. Why are we so afraid to let girls lead? We must stop blaming girls for trying to survive in a culture that teaches them daily that power, confidence, and success are forms of dominance and the rightful property of (mainly White) boys/men and start rewarding girls for more effective forms of leadership. And we must start teaching boys that they are not entitled to wield power just because they are born male. We need to change this message and therefore our culture because that is where the problem lies. Not with the girls who don’t take risks, but with a world that shames and limits them when they do. Change that problem and the girls will change with it and we may see more functional forms of leadership emerge from our young people.

1 in 6 women is killed by a man every hour around the world – most by someone they know and trust. That’s around 100 women killed every.single.day. Male violence against women is a massive systemic problem that needs to be discussed in order to advance much needed social change. If these discussions make you uncomfortable because you feel guilt by association despite not having murdered, then feel free to call your therapist and discuss that issue. But don’t expect women to stop talking to make you feel better. Stop centering yourself and your own immature feelings in public conversations. If you aren’t one of the men hunting/raping/killing women then good for you! You’re a good boy (*pats on head). Here’s your cookie for not being a murderer. Now take a seat and be quiet.

Are you blind to the grotesque double standard of not feeling any personal responsible to take action to address male violence against women (seriously…have you?) because you aren’t a perp. Yet you expect random women online to cater to your emotional needs and stop talking about their life-or-death matters because it upsets you? On a post that you could just easily scroll by because it’s not really about you? You are literally expecting women to focus on your emotional immaturity and discomfort instead of their own survival. You are placing your personal need to avoid reflecting on yourself and your unspoken male privilege to commit violence with impunity over the lifetime of trauma that women accumulate while practicing continuous safe-keeping behaviors – trying not to get killed or to keep each other from getting killed. And the more you scream about it online the more you show women how angry you can get when you aren’t given the attention, privilege and priority you expect at our expense. So, my question to you is – When do you get angry enough about this to hurt one of us? Because that is the road you are driving down with your #NotAllMen screams. That is what you are telling us. We read the threat in your expectation of privilege – in the prioritizing of your own emotional needs over our very survival. So, every time you scream #NotAllMen you are actually telling on yourself.

Dear all women saying #NotAllMen. Derailing conversation of women’s trauma of being hunted/raped/killed by men to protect men from their personal discomfort is prioritizing the selfish needs of men over the lives of women and that shite thinking got us in this mess in the first place. #YesAllWomen

Men need to learn to be big boys and deal with their own emotional discomfort. They don’t need you to be their mommy. They need to learn to prioritize the well being of their community members and not just themselves. And when they are selfish enough to center their own needs over the safety/lives of women we need to call them out and shame them for it – not coddle them and protect them. This is what women have been taught to do all their lives with men. But it results in men expecting women to sacrifice and cater to their needs to the point where some men become violent if we don’t. Women must stop allowing men these selfish privileges, or we will never be able to shift the social norms that erase and excuse male violence because we are complicit in their reproduction. Let’s change from the idea that ‘boys will be boys’ to the expectation that ‘boys will be better.’

We now return you to your regularly schedule programing.

Watching the images of Washington DC locking down for the presidential inauguration, I feel a terrible sense of loss. A feel a loss of the celebration we should be enjoying right now. More people turned out in the last election than ever in history and we chose Biden/Harris to lead our country. Georgia turned blue and its run-off races balanced the Senate. I want to celebrate this. I want to run through a field of daisy’s blowing bubbles to celebrate the first ever woman and person of color to serve as the Vice President. This is a historic and joyful event and I feel like it has been stolen from us by a bunch of selfish, entitled white dudes (and their associates) who believe they are entitled to more power.

Stop the Steal!

I think about the past year and all the covid hardships: isolation, economic uncertainty, anxieties about our health and the devastating loss of loved ones. As I watch the red line of infection rates continue to climb the chart, I think about what might have ameliorated these losses. I think about basic public health efforts like wearing a mask and implementing track and trace procedure with mandatory quarantine. I wonder how many people would still be alive if we had done this. And I feel like personal safety, economic security and actual lives have been stolen from us by a bunch of selfish, entitled white dudes (and their associates) who scream about their freedom and their entitlement to ignore the public good for their own convenience.

Stop the Steal!

It’s MLK day today and I think back on the 50 some years since his murder. I think about his sacrifice and the many efforts made throughout history – striving for social equality so we can live in a peaceful, equitable world where no one is judged by the color of their skin, gender, ability, sexuality or religion, etc. I think of all the people who have devoted their lives to make this world better and I feel this dream has been stolen from us by a bunch of selfish, entitled white dudes (and their associates) who have always had a bigger piece of the American pie and refuse to share.

Stop the Steal!

I watch an angry white man on the news with a bullhorn screaming that no one will ever be able to take his guns away and I think about all the people killed by guns: the senseless murders, the domestic violence and femicide, the school shootings. And I feel like our safety and the safety of our loved ones are being stolen from us by a bunch of selfish, entitled white dudes (and their associates) who are so weak and anxious that they need to carry a weapon around no matter what that privilege costs the rest of us.

Stop the Steal!

When I first heard the slogan ‘Stop the Steal’ in relation to the presidential election I knew the lack of factual evidence of election tampering wouldn’t matter. The discourse behind ‘Stop the Steal’ is not really about the election. It is about a bunch of selfish, entitled white dudes (and their associates) who believe they are losing their unearned privilege as the USA becomes less and less homogenized. They believe their extra serving of pie is being taken away from them. They believe it is being stolen. And they want that to stop.

Stop the Steal!

But the truth is, the unearned entitlement of this group of people has been the ultimate story of thievery. They have been taking more than their fair share – stealing pie – for way too long. And it’s time we call them out and demand that they stop. So, to all the selfish, entitled white dudes (and their associates) put down your bullhorns and stop screaming! You are stealing our peace. Put your guns into a locked closet or better yet melt them down and make a lovely art project. Get some balls and go outside unarmed for a change. You are stealing our safety. Put on a damn mask and care about someone besides your own pathetic self. You are stealing our health and our collective recovery from covid. And be sure to wear your trump gear, orange arm bands or carry your confederate flags so we won’t confuse you with decent white men (and their associates). You are stealing their reputation.

To all the selfish, entitled white dues (and their associates) STOP eating all the damn pie! You have been stealing all your lives and it’s time you learned to Stop the Steal!

I woke this morning after a few hours of fitful sleep expecting to see that trump had been removed from office after emboldening his supporters to incite insurgency against the US government. I expected to see that investigations had been ordered to explain the lack of police response to the rioters. But I was shocked to see the US legislature in session continuing with their work. While I applaud their work ethic and recognize the importance of getting Biden/Harris certified, I am strangely troubled by their composure after the magnitude of yesterdays events. I listen carefully to their speeches to understand how they are constructing the narratives that will be fed to the public. I am struck by Ben Sasse’s folksy story about how we should continue on as normal and help our neighbors shovel snow from their sidewalks. I realize what we are really being asked to do is the old America habitude of ignoring our heinous legacy of white supremacy even when it walks right up and pees all over our Capitol building in broad daylight. Senator Sasse is simply asking us to ignore the white man behind the green curtain. You know, the one who always holds the levers of power that determine: who is subject to the rule of law and who is exempt from it, whose votes count and whose don’t, who has the power to protest, to destroy property, to threaten the safety and lives of others without being called terrorists.  Well Ben, how ‘bout we ignore the whiteness of our neighbor’s snow and focus on the whiteness of your politics instead because it is a damn blizzard out there right now.

From the earliest days the trump administration has emboldened and animated the sin of white patriarchal supremacy that has so long haunted, tyrannized, and terrorized America. He and his media ilk have radicalized many disempowered, cognitively and emotionally challenged people who are desperate to embody the mythical supremacy and its corresponding individual and systemic privilege that they have long been promised by history, their families, their churches, the judicial system and other institutions. These populations are ripe for the cult picking and make excellent weapons and cannon fodder. I was watching trumps unhinged rally speech as he instructed them to march, unleashing the rabid dogs he has fed and trained, on the US Capitol building while our representatives were counting the votes that will finally free us from his disastrous rule. And for some unexplainable reason they were met with no real resistance or consequence – allowed to walk right in and despoil. And that’s the big fat white elephant trashing our Capitol building, our politics, and our country.

Because white culture is centered as the default setting of America its power and privilege are often invisible. It can be difficult to recognize how the rule of law and equal protection under the law become entitlements – the property of whiteness. Critical race theory describes the racial identity of whiteness as a form of cultural capital akin to ‘real estate’. If we use the concept of property to interrogate whiteness as unearned privilege or cultural collateral to spend when we participate in insurgence against our own government it is easier to understand how racialized power remains invisible, systemic and ingrained in our daily lives. It’s important that we all learn to recognize and call out when race, gender and other identity markers become pivotal points in the negotiation of power.

As we witnessed yesterday, police and laws can be used as tools deployed to protect the power and wealth of privilege associated with whiteness. They can be used to support and reify the dangerous narratives we are hearing from our (mostly white) representatives implicitly supporting and normalizing the tyrannous actions of a (mostly white) mob. This is how regimes of white supremacy are maintained. They are taken for granted. We make them invisible in our narratives talking instead about shoveling our neighbors snow, so we can comfortably ignore the radicalization of whiteness that continues to escalate in our country. This is the power of the opaque and unmarked status of white culture. As whiteness is erased and place outside consideration it is imbued with a racialize privilege to walk right into our nation’s Capitol building, sit at the Speaker of the House of Representative’s desk and steal their mail. There are a million ways in which yesterdays events were profoundly disturbing and destructive but it’s hard to see them all in the blinding glare of invisible whiteness as it continues to work as an effective barrier to social change.