I know this article was linked to the previous post, but Sunsara Taylor is such an impassioned, thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate speaker and writer, that I thought this needed to be posted on it's own. Everywhere.
Read, motherfuckers, read.
Read, motherfuckers, read.
Women Are Not Bitches, Ho’s, or Punching Bags... Women Are Full Human Beings
by Sunsara Taylor
October 15, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
It’s 2016, and one of the two “legitimate” candidates for president of the United States has been caught bragging and laughing about sexually assaulting women: “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” “I just start kissing them... I don’t even wait.” “I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. ... You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ... And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”
As if women are not people. As if they exist only to look good for him, to sexually please and flatter him, to submit to his groping hands, his physical assaults, his crude insults. As if viewing women this way was something to laugh about.
And laugh is what Donald Trump and the men around him have done. Laugh, and join in. Laugh, and excuse. Laugh, and threaten the women who complain. Laugh and continue to devastate the lives of real women, and to cement and reinforce a culture and society that treats women everywhere as objects to be used and humiliated, insulted and ridiculed, and then tossed aside.
All this is not “just words.” It’s a punch in the face to women everywhere. These are boasts about the actual violation of real women—the infliction of trauma and pain, of humiliation and insult. It’s a green light to men everywhere, permission to excuse and revel in the violence this society inculcates and unleashes against women. It is a statement to millions of women who have been raped, harassed, groped, flashed, hit, stalked, “brushed up against,” and silenced: shut up and get used to it.
What Kind of System Produces THIS?
Any system that could produce a man like this—not only a violent misogynist and serial sexual assaulter, but a vile racist, hateful xenophobe, a brutal fascist, and all-around predator—that could produce a whole culture where someone like this could command a frothing-at-the-mouth, violently loyal social base of millions, where a man like this could be put forth and backed by major ruling institutions, supported, promoted, and excused by the ruling class media, and backed by powerful donors and interests—such a system is COMPLETELY ILLEGITIMATE.
It has no right to rule over the masses of humanity.
It has to be overthrown at the soonest possible time.
Now, facing the prospect that this man who has spent a lifetime inflicting trauma and pain on women is seriously contending on the national and international stage for the presidency of the most powerful nation in the world, women from all walks of society are courageously stepping forward to put their faces to sexual assault. His response? To dismiss and excuse this sexual violence as “just locker room banter” and to lash out further at these women. To suggest that these women were not “attractive” enough to “deserve” his sexual predations. As if being groped, humiliated, raped, harassed—having one’s humanity violated and one’s body degraded for someone else’s perverse power-trip—were a “compliment.” No! It is NOT a “compliment” to be preyed upon, demeaned, and degraded. It is a violation. It is painful and humiliating. It is traumatic and something that no one should ever have to endure.
Authored by Bob Avakian, and adopted by the Central Committee of the RCP
Do you know anyone else—any person or organization—that has managed to bring forth an actual PLAN for a radically different society, in all its dimensions, and a CONSTITUTION to codify all this? — A different world IS possible —Check out and order online theConstitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).
Again, any system that would continue to put forward this slithering, blustering, world-class creep after he lashes out in this way as a legitimate choice for president, has no right to rule. It must be overthrown at the soonest possible time.
As for “locker room banter,” the fact is, this shit does go on in locker rooms. Men joking and boasting about women as things to be used and abused, ranking their value according to objectifying and demeaning physical standards, encouraging or looking the other way while men violate or abuse women.
It goes on in the frat houses—where new recruits have been mobilized to chant “No means yes and yes means anal” at Yale or to give date rape drugs to female students at Mizzou.
It goes on in military barracks—where violent and cruel porn is used to pump people up before they go out and kill, where one in three women be raped or sexually assaulted, and where, if they report it, they are more likely to be retaliated against than have their rapist punished.
It goes on in the office suites of Wall Street. In the strip clubs where women are kept undressed, on display, subservient, so that men can “bond” in their common supremacy and domination. In the video games that reward players for beating prostitutes to death. In the hotels of traveling businessmen where 40 percent of housekeepers report having been groped, sexually assaulted, or flashed.
Just look at some of the heart-wrenching voices that have poured forward in recent days. On Twitter—MILLIONS of women have described their first sexual assaults:
- Soccer coach discretely groped my boobs while demonstrating how not to block someone in gym class. I was 13.
- Old man Disneyland cups my butt and fingers hit vag while I’m in line for ice cream at Disneyland when I was 14.
- The first time i was assaulted was in 2nd grade(?) and he was a lot elder to me and i spent a decade figuring out what to call it.
- I was 13. Dad of the kids I babysat offered to drive me home. I said no. said he wanted me to be safe. On the drive he felt me up.
The pervasiveness of this disrespect and violence against women does not make it “OK.” It makes it all the more outrageous, all the more horrendous, all the more harmful. It shows that this problem is much deeper, much more widespread, much more entrenched in this society than most people want to admit.
The fact is, the oppression of women is deeply woven into every aspect of this “modern” society. Its roots are thousands of years old, and while some of the forms have changed, it is not “getting better.”
It is good that so many women are raising their voices against this. And it’s good that many men are listening, learning, and showing their support. But the bitter fact remains, these stories are REAL. Sexual violence and sexual humiliation, reducing women to their bodies and violating them with impunity, hitting women and stalking women, harassing them and firing them if they don’t submit to sexual aggression, none of this is slowing, none of this is going away.
In fact, in many ways, the vindictiveness of this misogyny and the cruelty of its violence is escalating—precisely as a backlash and revenge against the major changes that have taken place in recent decades in women’s place and traditional roles, including the changes women have fought for and won. So now they are being assaulted for challenging thousands of years of patriarchy’s barbaric chains. This, in fact, is one thing that explains the rise of this reeking pig and how he clawed his way to the top of the presidential ticket.
"A World of Rape and Sexual Assault"
by Bob Avakian
The Most Important Thing...
But here is the most important thing: as vile as Trump is, Trump and the violent misogyny he embodies are NOT a problem that can be solved by electing a Democrat—even if they can sometimes speak compellingly against the crudest expressions of this slave-master talk about women.
Differences, Yes. But Trump, Obamas, Clintons Are Still Products, Representatives, Functionaries of the Same System
Yes, Hillary Clinton, the Obamas, and the Democrats aren’t exactly the same as Donald Trump. But all are products, representatives, and functionaries of the same system as Trump—a system which in a thousand ways embodies and enforces the most horrendous oppression of women, in this country and throughout the world.
Think about this. Michelle Obama recently gave voice, from her own standpoint, even perhaps sincerely and certainly eloquently, to the broad anguish and outrage over what Trump has said and done in relation to women. And she may undertake certain projects to “lift up” some girls and women.
But meanwhile the system she represents and acts on behalf of, through its fundamental relations and dynamics, and through conscious political and military actions, causes tremendous and relentless oppression, degradation, misery and death for literally billions of women in this country and throughout the world.
To cite just one dimension of this: Even as Michelle Obama was delivering her recent speech, Saudi Arabia, with U.S. backing and U.S.-supplied arms, etc., is bombing and blowing to pieces large numbers of civilians, including many women and girls in Yemen; and the same Saudi Arabia, a key ally of the U.S., embodies some of the most horrendous oppression of women and girls anywhere in the world.
And this isn’t all. There is the reality that the system represented by the Obamas, the Clintons, and the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, rests in a fundamental way on a worldwide network of sweatshops, where masses of people, a large number of them women and girls, are viciously exploited.
So while Hillary Clinton, the Obamas, and the Democrats seek to portray Trump’s attitudes and actions toward women as some kind of aberration that isn’t representative of this society—what have theydone about how women are routinely debased and abused?
What have the Clintons, Obamas, and Democrats done about the massive dissemination of woman-degrading pornography, which is encouraging and conditioning whole generations of males to regard and treat women as subhuman objects of exploitation and degradation?
What have these liberal representatives of this system actually done about the international enslavement and trafficking of millions and millions of females, a huge number of them young girls?!
Beyond these—and many other—examples that can be cited, the fundamental fact is that this system could not do away with the oppression and degradation of the half of humanity that is female, and on the contrary can only maintain and enforce this, including in the most horrendous forms, regardless of what the sentiments of individual representatives and functionaries of this system might believe or wish.
And this applies not only to the continual outrages perpetrated against women and girls under this system, but to everything concentrated in the 5 Stops, including the genocidal oppression directed against Black and Brown people in this country. Where is the impassioned denunciation by Michelle or Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, of Trump’s racist “law and order” ravings or his continued defense, right down to the present, of the racist lynch-mob hysteria he whipped up using the Central Park 5 as his target?
The world doesn’t have to be this way. Men are not born baby-Trumps. Misogyny and patriarchy are not ingrained in human nature. They are products of a system that can and must be overthrown at the soonest possible moment.
Women—and everyone else—should be outraged by the hateful misogynist and all-around bigot and Nazi Donald Trump. But all his sick, putrid garbage springs from a whole system. That’s why voting for Hillary Clinton is not the answer to Trump; electing Clinton will not defeat what Trump represents, and it will certainly not end the oppression of women.
UNLEASH THE FURY OF WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION!
WE NEED TO OVERTHROW, NOT VOTE FOR, THIS SYSTEM!
