Sexploitation

March 8, International Women's Day
and the whole month of March is Women's History Month. In celebration, Time magazine devoted an issue to 100 women of the year with short summaries of each.

Luminaries known are joined by women unknown to me that I feel I should have known about.
Just one—Recy Taylor—helped to shape Rosa Parks, known for her courageous refusal to surrender her seat on a bus, thus sparking the civil rights movement. Years earlier, Recy Taylor was gang-raped by white men and refused to stay silent. Despite death threats and firebombing of her home, she insisted on prosecution. Rosa Parks was sent by the NAACP to investigate. Find the story in Time's stellar issue.

Super Bowl Halftime ShowSexploitation

I never watch the Super Bowl, biased as I am against pro sports, which I hold responsible for many problems in our country. I still can’t say who won because I don’t remember names of teams. They mean nothing to me. But “everybody” was talking about the half time program, so I went online to see what the fuss was about.

The Super Bowl Halftime Show drew praise for its exuberant, “electric energy” and sexy Latin women. Franklin Graham objected that the show violated moral decency, and many thousands agree. Viewers criticized the NFL for lowering decency standards on primetime TV by allowing young people to view “soft porn.”

I have more serious objections than moralistic preaching.

I believe the show’s female stars set back advances of the women’s movement more devastatingly than sexual violence committed by Weinstein, Epstein, and other sex offenders like the one in the White House. They lowered the status of women.

They told the world that women function primarily as sex objects. They justified keeping women in their place as bodies to lure men. They told girls to admire sexual behavior. They said it’s the way to get ahead and hid its real effect of inviting gender violence.

I need to note that religion with its supreme male gods set the stage for demoting the place of women. Despite its fine words about cherishing women, Christianity needs to take responsibility for contributing to gender abuse with its Father/Son myth, which robs women of ultimate dignity and worth.

But a woman who gyrates sexually and gestures suggestively to her crotch area in front of over 100 million viewers demeans women as surely as any man who beats a woman. The show’s efforts at solidarity with Puerto Rico, and resistance to current immigration policy do not redeem it.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Goddess in the Bible

Eckhart's Trinity

EL SHADDAI