Friday, November 19, 2010

The Right Junk: The Feminization of the Medal of Honor and Bryan Fischer's Truth-Telling About What It Takes to be "A REAL MAN"

image of human male reproductive system and surrounding region of the body is from here
Will someone please get some blood flowing to turn that dick red, for Republican!

According to men on the Right, what every man needs is a good dose of Viagra so his penis can become a weapon against women. What he also needs is a non-organic gun with which to shoot to kill everyone he deems an enemy. These are WHM's God-given rights: to bear arms and to fuck or rape--however the man wants to describe his "conquests" to his homosocial buddies. REAL MEN don't allow limp-dicked dudes to parade themselves off as "heroes"--there better be a body count of raped and murdered people if these brave men are to be honored at all, especially if you're a soldier boy. Mostly, of course, women and men in armed combat, serving their country's government, aren't honored at all. Mostly they're just toe-tagged and body-bagged, or sent back into warfare with so much post-traumatic stress that they can't function properly, even as soldiers-trained-to-kill.

What the latest recipient of the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor, Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, demonstrated in recent days is extraordinary humility and a lack of egotistical and testicular narcissism preferred among our allegedly heroic leaders, such as the co-cojones, aka, the Big Kahunas, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Their politically protected culturally appropriated titles aren't evident in this honored, now decorated U.S. soldier, Sgt. Giunta. The "real men" don't like him. Why?

Sgt. Giunta doesn't have a WASPy-enough name (it's Italian, like mine); he demonstrates an astoundingly endearing lack of ego; he makes public declarations that his wife is his rock, which is taken by the anglo-saxon-hetero-boy-bullies to mean he's a bit lacking in the "manhood" department. His alleged flaccidity of character is an outrage to many, including the intellectually and spiritually turgid Bryan Fischer. But there's a context here for Bryan's hyper-erectile ranting.

Right-wing Crusading Conservatism, in the U.S., is rarely so naked about it's politics as Bryan Fischer reveals here. Radical feminists are accused of being man-haters for pointing out how much and to what degrees men romanticise, sexualise, and glorify murder. So what do we call the White Het Men who do this, but not critically? What do we call the men who promote rape, racism, genocide, murder, and gross sexual exploitation of children and women? The Christian Right-wing has lost all credibility on matters of "morality", showing themselves to be utterly and defensively pro-rich, pro-corporate, pro-patriarchy, pro-racism/white supremacy, and pro-homophobia.

Their "straight" men are anti-gay to cover their sexual abuses of male children and procurement or rental of male prostitutes, which they consider to be "gay" activity except when they perpetrate it. Their "moral" fathers sue the shit out of ex-wive women for fighting to keep or get custody of the children abused by the fathers. Their "moral" brothers are against rape in theory, but not in practice if the rape happens to "foreign" women and children in countries the U.S. is invading, or in countries where women and children are trafficked for Western white het Christian men. Their "pro-woman" politics lack any integrity or even a modicum of plausibility.

Sarah Palin will likely run for president of the U.S. in the 2012 erection election under the pretense of being pro-woman, when all her policies and practices politically are misogynistically racist (anti-women of color), classist (anti-poor women), pro-imperialist (anti-Third World and Fourth World women), and pro-war (anti-"invaded" country's women, and pro-rape of those women too). She's all for refusing to hold rich white het men accountable to all the many crimes against humanity they commit such as indulging in having rapist sex with trafficked human beings, mostly girls, sometimes pre-pubescent girls. You won't hear much from her on that subject nor any other that would politically place her against men's abuses of women. She'll support The Church that practices child sexual abuse as much as it practices giving sermons and passing the collection plate. We have to conclude that her anti-Jesus and WHM supremacist ideology has no more regard for women than the anti-Muslim ideology and practices of the men of the Taliban.

The main difference between the Taliban's misogyny and Sarah Palin/Donald Rumsfeld's/Dick Cheney's/GWBush's/John McCain/and company, is that the Taliban is far fewer in numbers and has monumentally less political power than the white het men I just named. The Taliban has engaged in far less institutional and systematic terroristic activity, including against women, than do the white het men I just named. And, the U.S. "moral" men will try to murder every last member of the Taliban, if it takes all our tax dollars to accomplish it. While the Taliban will never, ever accomplish the task of taking out the terroristic white het men who believe warring against every Muslim nation is a right, a moral imperative, a sport, a spectacle, and a[n inter]national pastime.

To be clear: I vehemently oppose all of the Taliban's activities as terroristic, rapist, misogynistic, and immoral. I just don't think the U.S. government and its key financial supporters and masculinist apologists--white het male liberals and white het male conservatives--have done jack-shit to stop the atrocities we commit daily, hourly, by the minute, each second, against poor women, women of color, Third World and Fourth World women, and patriarchally colonised women globally, including white women who prefer to garner the respect of pro-genocidal/gynocidal men than fight the moral fight for justice and liberation for women, from patriarchal atrocities.

What Bryan Fischer is stating is that not murdering one or preferably several men who the U.S. targets as the current enemy (whether or not we also do plenty of business with them or appoint them to lead the countries we invade militarily, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan) is sissy behavior, unworthy of being dignified with a medal of honor. The not quite spoken-out-loud part is that all women are p*ssies and f*ggots, and so is he.

No woman will ever be given The Medal of Honor: she just doesn't have the right "junk". As has been noted by a woman on Facebook, apparently in these sorry economic times, "the family jewels" are now "junk".

To unpack the term "junk" a bit: it has existed as a term for usually young men's genitals--penis, testicles, and scrotum; the whole package, so to speak--at least since 2003, well before the U.S. middle class's drastically detumescent downturn. It is symbolically synonymous with "the Western mythological right stuff"--an often imperialistic, militaristic, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, aggressive, sadistic, and nihilistic form of courage or bravery or bravado that is both racist and rapist in practice. "Junk" is what men are obliged to allegedly laboriously haul around between their legs but it really is far larger, greater, and protuberant as an idea in phallocentric men's minds than in their pants. But the organ--genital, not mental--that does hang down is habitually and publicly adjusted, self-groped, self-grabbed, self-fondled, and occasionally flaunted or flashed. To "be a [young] man" make no mention of one's own "junk", to never bring social attention to it, is to be effectively castrated, turned into a [non]member of the castrati, a no-man, a woe-man, a f*ggot: a category of person who cannot mythologically demonstrate courage, bravery, or bravado. With swelled ego or swollen dick, real men fuck and rape women and murder other men--IF they and appropriately use The Right Stuff/Junk.)

So if the male soldiers are not killing the bastards we do business with and politically support and pay lots of money too off camera, then we better not be handing out any medals to our soldiers, who are being sent back into service with massive amounts of post-traumatic stress disorder, because the U.S. government has never, ever cared about the humanity or dignity of soldiers in any other than a symbolic, public way.

Privately, sometimes off-camera, in case you haven't noticed, the U.S. government sends our poorest and most racially disenfranchised men and women abroad to murder civilians and non-civilians in "the fog of war" and not be accountable to any international human rights organisations for doing so. Whatever we do in the name of "justice", "freedom" and "democracy" that is utterly unjust, thuggish, terroristic, and tyrannical, is "all good" as long as we have an ample body count at the end of the day, week, month, year, or many years and counting.

When Andrea Dworkin noted precisely what Bryan Fischer is talking about below, she was ridiculed and reviled for being a man-hater, which she wasn't. So is Bryan Fischer a man-hater, a "misandrist", as well as a misogynist, or isn't he?

What follows is from The [Im]Moral Liberal. Please click on the title below to link back.

The Feminization of the Medal of Honor




Editors Note: You can see Bryan Fischer’s Update to this Article by Clicking Here.

By Bryan Fischer

The Medal of Honor will be awarded this afternoon to Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta for his heroism in Afghanistan, and deservedly so. He took a bullet in his protective vest as he pulled one soldier to safety, and then rescued the sergeant who was walking point and had been taken captive by two Taliban, whom Sgt. Giunta shot to free his comrade-in-arms.

This is just the eighth Medal of Honor awarded during our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Sgt. Giunta is the only one who lived long enough to receive his medal in person.

But I have noticed a disturbing trend in the awarding of these medals, which few others seem to have recognized.

We have feminized the Medal of Honor.

According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one.

Gen. George Patton once famously said, “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.”

When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe do Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements.

That kind of heroism has apparently become passe when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.

So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?

I would suggest our culture has become so feminized that we have become squeamish at the thought of the valor that is expressed in killing enemy soldiers through acts of bravery. We know instinctively that we should honor courage, but shy away from honoring courage if it results in the taking of life rather than in just the saving of life. So we find it safe to honor those who throw themselves on a grenade to save their buddies.

Jesus, in words often cited in ceremonies such as the one which will take place this afternoon, said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). So it is entirely right that we honor this kind of bravery and self-sacrifice, which is surely an imitation of the Lord of Lord and King of Kings.

However, Jesus’ act of self-sacrifice would ultimately have been meaningless – yes, meaningless – if he had not inflicted a mortal wound on the enemy while giving up his own life.

The significance of the cross is not just that Jesus laid down his life for us, but that he defeated the enemy of our souls in the process. It was on the cross that he crushed the head of the serpent. It was on the cross that “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15).

The cross represented a cosmic showdown between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and our commanding general claimed the ultimate prize by defeating our unseen enemy and liberating an entire planet from his bondage.

We rightly honor those who give up their lives to save their comrades. It’s about time we started also honoring those who kill bad guys.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

The Moral Liberal contributing editor, Bryan Fischer, is Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, and is the host of the daily ‘Focal Point’ radio talk program on AFR Talk, a division of the American Family Association. ‘Focal Point’ airs live from 1-3 pm Central Time, and is also simulcast on the AFA Channel, which can be seen on the Sky Angel network.

Editors Note: You can see Bryan Fischer’s Update to this Article by Clicking Here.

8 comments:

  1. Wow. This is wrong on at least forty different levels.

    But yeah, that's certainly the best advice I can give to an invading/occupying army: screw with the civilians! Everyone knows that the best possible situation you and your comrades can be in is unfriendly territory with hostile locals thousands of miles away from home.

    (I'll add that I've never actually felt threatened by any Afgani or Iraqi, ever, in my entire life. This dude might want to get some medication for his paranoid delusions...)

    Also, "we" award the MoH for life-saving actions because, guess what? It takes more courage to put yourself in danger to save lives than it does to kill someone who's already threatening you - or who isn't. Every well-known soldier in history who was regarded as brave? Went into battle at their own detriment, acting to save their comrades.

    This guy is pathetically ignorant of history.

    And what's this shit about Jesus? Fuck you, Giunta defeated "an invisible enemy" too, so there, shut up. Fucking fundies. I can say anything I want too, and I can write it in a book too, and I can pretend that book is magical too. I can even take LSD when writing the last chapter.

    Mr. Smiley Oldey Whitey over there should shut the fuck up unless he's putting his own blood on the line - not anyone else's.

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  2. It's astounding, as you note, Cerien, how completely foolish and ignorant white men can be, writing up any old silliness and presenting it as meaningful discourse.

    Talk about PRIVILEGE. Talk about ENTITLMENT!

    Talk about "U.S. white het Christian men say the stupidest things" and think they're being intelligent!

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  3. As much as I hate citing Cracked...

    #5 was a guy defending his home from invaders. (That is to say, not someone this dude wants to compare our invading war to.)

    #4 was a guy who saved pretty much everyone else in his battalion (or whatever) by going it alone.

    #3 is hilarious. And pretty badass. But I'm not entirely sure it's courageous, or a good thing to give a medal for. I mean... yeah. "If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going for another 10 years!"

    #2 was a pacifist drafted in Vietnam... and fired back because they were firing at him first. That's not particularly courageous. Like I said; it's easy to fight back when someone's threatening you or not threatening you. It's much, much tougher to put yourself in the line of fire when someone else is in danger, but you are not.

    #1 put himself in danger instead of anyone else he was fighting with.

    And some last stands.

    Every single one of those has to do with letting the rest of their squads get away while taking the heat themselves. And yeah, they died, but I don't much get the point of awarding medals to dead people? You're kind of, like... dead. And I don't believe you generally float around Earth after death.

    I don't particularly know why people see courage as killing when you're cornered. Isn't that sort of normal? That's what... every animal does. If you corner them, they'll fight; they get scared. Trapping someone makes them scared; it's why pinning someone down can give them fucking trauma. Cornering someone into a situation and place is the most reliable way to produce terror.

    Peace is knowing you're going to die; terror is when you don't.

    I especially love how Mr. Smiley Oldey Whitey assumes that everyone is just going to agree with him because OMFG JEEEEEEEEZUS. And that the armed forces/military should take him seriously even though his ENTIRE ARGUMENT is Christian.

    Yeshua was a wandering homeless radical who said it was bullshit that people were being dumb prejudiced assholes. And he managed to subtly insult the Roman emperor, too...

    (Which is one of the few things I can believe in the NT; Paul is utterly unreliable, a total douche. Matt or Matthew - I'd have to refer to my edition of the NIV - is my favorite: he was a reformed tax collector. Having read through enough times, it's clear that he managed to keep himself uncorrupted by remembering that he was not inherently good. All his life he was trying to be a good person, to "work off" the shit things he'd done in his life. Paul comes off as an arrogant little jerk because he was; like most high-powered Christian men these days, he went on and on and on about how everyone was a sinner, but he never showed any indication of believing it about himself. You can tell a lot about people based on the way they write.)

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  5. I shudder to think what "Heroism" truly means. Thanks for linking to Cracked.com's Western Civ examples. I think Western Civ, itself, is about as cowardly an enterprise as it gets: basically a big ol' bully from the start, and a bigger ol' bully now.

    Cerien, thanks for being around. Seriously. And to all the regulars over the years. Thank you! Without you I'd assume I was just talking to myself. Not that I'm not, mind you. ;)

    Wasn't Paul a homosexual-in-denial? My fav Christian white guy, ex-communicated Anglican Bishop John Shelby Spong proposed this theory to much uncomfortable shuffling and consternation back about twenty years. The denials from atop the Christian hierarchy have yet to simmer down. Me thinks they doth protest too much. Here's the link on the subject, from the New York Times (1991)

    http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/02/nyregion/was-st-paul-gay-claim-stirs-fury.html

    And for those who don't know, I've taken Jesus back from the Christians. They've done such a miserable job of representing him and re-presenting him.

    See here for more on that:

    What Most Christians Don't Want You To Know About Jesus.

    And, I'm not what is sometimes referred to as "a Jew for Jesus". I'm not for him, exactly. Nor am I against him. I'm reclaiming him as a Jew for those who seek to make him into some kind of very, very, very early Christian--perhaps, in their minds, the first one.

    I'm one of his kind of people: Jewish. Note, dear Christians, the meaning of the term "people". As in, not entirely divine, or not more or less divine than stones and trees, aardvarks and hippopotami. Not more divine than, say, The Color Purple. But significantly more divine, however, than my annoying sibling-from-birth who still has cooties.

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  6. Sheesh, it's true. I don't understand people who want to pretend he's Christian; I honestly don't believe he even thought he was the "Son of God" as such, any more than anyone else. Everyone being "Children of God," from what I know, is pretty basic in Jewish, um, what would you call it... not mythology. Tradition?

    Also, I lol @ the people claiming the Jews killed him. It's pretty definite that it was the Roman emperor...

    Paul was a jerk. That's all I have to say about that. It doesn't matter to me how closeted or not-closeted he was; there's good evidence that the Corinthians passage "against homosexuality" was actually mistranslated, and originally it read as a tirade against idolatry.

    Oh! Oh! And I love your point about how Yeshua (I prefer the spelling/pronunciation) wasn't a capitalist. Like I said - he was a wandering homeless radical. It's highly unlikely that he never stole - my friend actually pointed out a passage to me in the NIV where he got his bros and went into some ripened fields and was like, "Hey, take anything you need, it's all God's anyway."

    It drives me nutso that people will quote that passage about "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, give unto God what is God's" like it's in support of taxes.

    Context: He was saying it specifically around the emperor's tax collectors - and Yeshua thought tax collectors and debt collectors were fucking EVIL. (Looking at debt scams and harassment now? Yes. I agree.)

    Context: He was paying off those tax collectors so that he and his friends didn't get thrown in jail - that is to say, enslaved.

    Context: To a guy like that, everything was God's. Caesar didn't own a goddamn lick of it.

    I have also seen that Slacktivist dude (I only read his blog for the Left Behind series reviews, it's hysterical!) use that quote in the NT that goes like (and I am very sorry that I keep paraphrasing, but my memory is absolute shit for verbatim): [To a guy asking him how to get into Heaven] "Sell all your things and give them to the poor and come, follow me."

    ... And he says it was to tell the guy he was asking the wrong question. But the guy's a capitalist, so he CAN'T see that Yeshua was pretty much being the most literal he ever had in the entire damn book.

    It was: Give all your things away. You don't need them. They're just things. Then let's go and experience the world away from civilization and all this bullshit.

    Because that's one of the few ways you can awaken your soul, ever. Voluntary "homelessness"/traveling/wandering is a long-standing tradition among radicals and the enlightened. Siddhartha did it, too.

    I find it very sad, and very telling, that our beloved radicals are no longer wanderers and travelers, people who have managed to bring back the "crazy living fire" into their souls.

    But, yes. I agree. Mostly. My views on divinity, gods, and spirituality are complicated, albeit well-thought-out, and they'd take an encyclopedia to explain.

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  7. Oh, and I want to also put in that Jewish non-fantasy fiction is my favorite, and sometimes the only kind I'll read. I search it out and devour it.

    A good comix on the subject is The Rabbi's Cat both 1 and 2. I adored it and take a different view of Genesis now, especially with the Judaic emphasis on the power and meaning of words, especially holy words.

    I also really enjoyed Lost Tribe, an anthology of Jewish fiction.

    And, even though it has nothing to do with this, Blue Italian by Rita Ciresi was really beautiful and heartbreaking for me. It's another existential fiction novel.

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  8. Hi Cerien,

    I welcome you to write me any parts of that encyclopedia, at my email address.

    I'd like to know more. I love your use of Yeshua. I may have to start using that spelling too.

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