Why Aren't We Shocked?
By BOB HERBERT
The New York Times
Published:
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/opinion/16herbert.html?hp
"Who needs a brain when you have these?" -- message on an
Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women
In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural
Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed
and a number of others were molested in the
In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of
the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a
school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot
only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.
There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled
in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous
bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack
would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.
None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so
accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against
females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and
mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as
weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the
The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive
and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at
sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an
insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major
long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a
billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, "When was the last
time you got screwed?"
An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman's face with the lotion
spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.
We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every
day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories,
large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We've been
watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10
years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we're still watching the video
of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.
What have we learned since then? That there's big money to be made from thongs,
spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture,
it's never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters
is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.
A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the
We're all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against
women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness
to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels
ó objects ó and never, ever as the equals of men.
"Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible," said Taina
Bien-AimÈ, executive director of the women's advocacy group Equality Now.
That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that
have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream
Then, of course, there's gangsta rap, and the video games where the players
themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the Academy
Award-winning song this year was ìIt's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"), and on
and on.
You're deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It's all part of a
devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches down in
places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel Mines,