WHINING ABOUT WEINSTEIN ?

I received a query from a friend asking “Why aren’t you whining anymore?” 

I am now going to whine again, about the Harvey Weinstein mentality.  Urges.  We all have them, but we don’t all think we are entitled to act on them without restraint.  Who is so important that they are allowed to satisfy every urge at the expense of others with no consequences?  Power corrupts in a myriad of ways – one often ignored way is that power deludes the powerful into believing they are immune to ever being denied, as well as immune to any consequences for their actions.  Often, money can buy silence when the helpless face their powerless position.  Such ‘pay-offs’ serve to embolden the megalomaniacs who proceed again, as if invincible from repercussions. 

    

A theoretical discussion cannot exclude an underlying issue of “sexual urges.”   While the new, politically correct world desires to avoid such sexist topics and strains to insist that the sexes are equal on every level, many would beg to differ.  Some men would profess that sex is in the back of their minds during almost all encounters with females, even though most would never follow through with any overt initiatives.   Many young women approach interactions with older men as lacking any sexual context, since they are viewed as authority or father figures in their work roles.   In the old days, a simplistic explanation would be that women compartmentalize the inclusion of sexuality in encounters with men, while many men maintain a constant awareness of their maleness in almost all encounters with the opposite sex.  Remember, burkas and hajib’s are ubiquitous in much of the Muslim world, simply to prevent a woman’s innate sexuality from being a stimulus to men.   But thankfully, the times have been a changin!  Heightened awareness must be required of males and females in removing sexual bias, harassment, and suggestions from the workplace. 

   

Sadly, I just heard a BBC report on NPR radio today stating the bulk of the Russian people sympathize with Harvey Weinstein and that Putin has recently decriminalized domestic violence.  As with many European countries there has been a move towards conservatism in Russia, which has resulted in the Orthodox Russian Church re-emphasizing traditional family values of women submitting to men.   At a lively intellectual discussion about whether or not Blacks or Jews had been more oppressed in history, a professor intervened to pronounce that “women have been the consistently most oppressed group in the history of the world.” 

 

Awareness of an issue brings up questions to ponder:   How do we reconcile equality in the workplace with traditional modes of femininity in the bedroom?  Should we compartmentalize behavior from nine to five in the workplace and then permit contrasting behavior after hours between men and women?  Are we to pretend that there are no differences between the sexes, as we are now expected to act as if there are no distinguishable races in the world?  The world is not unisex and most would not want it to be.  Equality does not mean we are the same, but that we be treated the same with equal rights.   But can there ever be equal rights as long as one person has ultimate power over another’s livelihood in the workplace or over one’s body in the home?  Can we ever progress from a woman’s assertiveness being equated with whining bitchiness, while a man’s being considered strength?   It is difficult to comprehend how a difference in gender ever resulted in women not being able to speak publicly, vote, drive, own property, or work in certain professions.  It is equally difficult today for most women to comprehend how some men can see women solely as sexual objects to be conquered, overpowered, or dominated.    Can manliness and femininity ever exist side by side without becoming sexualized?  An important conversation emanating from the distorted Weinstein mentality………