Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a P.R.I.C.K. And he joins a long list of prominent men who have behaved similarly

photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger is from here
I've never had any particular respect for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Perhaps for him as an immigrant to this country. But beyond that, no. He's been a misogynist who has acted out his WHM supremacist entitlements and privileges without regard for any of the women he has hurt, or without enough regard, at least. How he could mistreat Maria Shriver so very hurtfully, so abusively, only shows the calculated cruelty of his heart.

May she feel the support of her friends and loved ones.

Arnold demonstrates what I've been discussing here for a long time--men who are positioned, structurally, to oppress women will generally do so. And the more power individual het men have--and Arnold had about as much as any man--the more exploitive and abusive they often are, because they know they can be, because they have no integrity, because they are immoral and value being immoral, and because they flagrantly act out their power over others with reckless abandon.

Arnold is a P.R.I.C.K. who has been predatory towards many women and has publicly condemned impoverished single women parents while being so sexually irresponsible with his own dick that he brought a child into this world with a woman to whom he wasn't married, at least in part because he was married at the time to Maria Shriver. Such hypocrisy and het male supremacy ought not be overlooked, when men promoting "nuclear family values" behave so outrageously and misogynistically.

photo of Dominique Strauss-Kahn is from here
This week we also have the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, charged with sexual assault against a woman who was working at a hotel where he stayed and preyed. Surprise--his male supremacist attorney claims the assault was consensual. And we have news of Osama bin Laden's pornography collection--I'm not sure if I believe he had this collection or not, but would not be at all surprised if he did. Regardless, bin Laden was not pro-feminist. He was part of a militantly misogynist political group.

This all demonstrates that men with power--the power of manhood at least--will, when the opportunity presents itself, abuse it. The power men have is abusive power; it is exploitive power; it is oppressive power. So as long as men act it out, there will be damage done to women. One, two, or hundreds.

I would prefer if the media called his behavior "male supremacist" rather than "bad" or "naughty" as one man on AC360 termed it. "Bad" and "naughty" doesn't get at what the harm is--or even that there is actual harm, and it also allows us to believe he's a naughty, bad little boy, rather than a very entitled and privileged grown man.

Ex-president Bill Clinton, politicians John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer, TV talk show host David Letterman, US football player Brett Favre, and actors Mel Gibson and Charlie Sheen were also male supremacist exploiters and/or sexual abusers of women, as have been and are so many white men in the religious Right--who ought not have any cred as "preachers of morality". "Practice what you preach" is apparently not taught to white het Christian men by other men with the same forms of power and privilege.

Dr. Drew, on AC360, will not name the problem as accurately as he could. He will speak about "celebrities" with "certain character liabilities" as if these are personal problems, individual issues, not structural political and moral issues that have a social and institutional, not a personally historical base. Drew sees the problem as narcissism or sexual addiction--psychological conditions, not a political problem of being placed in society in such a way as to believe one can do whatever one wants because when one does as one wishes, and it hurts people, there's no negative social consequence that is meaningful to the men. At least he named some of his own patients as having a sense of entitlement. But not ever in a context of patriarchy in which all men are positioned to socially and structurally exploit and abuse women with male supremacist entitlements.

Also this week, a king of arrogance, Donald Trump, has announced he won't seek to be president, as if he had a chance in hell. He clearly believes he did, which only proves that if you have enough control over your life, you can live in your own reality.

I hope Dominique Strauss-Kahn is found guilty of what he did. And I hope any other political leaders who are men who abuse and assault women are found similarly guilty in a court of law. Chances are, we'll never really know how many women these doods abuse, and the doods will never be held to account.

Let's support women who believe in human rights for women being the leaders of all social and religious institutions, economic policies, and nation-states. Men should stop abusing and exploiting people, and cease ruling everywhere. For at least a thousand years. Let's see how that works out. Does anyone really think the world wouldn't be better off?

When does it become more than obvious that men behave "badly" in the course of behaving like men, not narcissists, not people with character disorders, not due to having an alcohol or drug problem, not because of depression, not because they had unresolved issues from childhood. But because they are men, in the social-political-structural sense of that word.

2 comments:

  1. I wouldn't feel too sorry for Maria Shriver. Like Hilary Clinton, she most like already knew of her husband's proclivities. Preying on female workers is the prerogative of white upper class men, after all. It's happened right through history and is well documented. Their wives, who are well kept, also with eyes on the prize, a move even higher up the ladder of status and power, keep quiet or even make arrangements for them. Of course, in this day and age, it'a not acceptable for this to be known, so if it comes out in the media, wifey claims to have been oblivious, probably cusses husband about being sloppy, helps fix the family's image and smiles for the camera. Mr. former bodybuilder is being carefully groomed for something higher up in washington, most likely housed in white. The scandal and supposed consipiracy theory about Obama's place of birth has brought the rule about citizenship and presidency into the real of conversation and recondieration. He's basically a Kennedy, very powerful and wll placed. They will most likely find a way to make him elligible to run for office. He's massively popular with multiple generations of white men though his film career. He's a shoe in. She's not going anywhere. She will get her family back into the white house. That is her role, her accepted task for which she left her own career and threw her lot in with him. She isn't a scorned wife or a betrayed wife. She's a dutiful strategically placed white patriarchal upper class bot. I have no sorrow to spare on her.

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  2. Dark Daughta,

    I don't know whether Maria knew all of what Arnold was up to. I can't know that. I accept that in many cases the wife does know what her husband is doing. And in Maria's case, she hasn't got economic dependency as a reason to pretend to not know, or to repress what has had the evidence and opportunity to know.

    That white wealthy women are capable of doing great harm to people of color, largely institutionally, but also interpersonally, doesn't mean white rich women don't pay, in some way, for being women at the end of most days.

    I don't believe in minimising people's privileges, and Maria has an enormous amount of them, in part because she's a Kennedy--a family treated as US royalty. Arnold won't even get that level of status, no matter how long he lives in this country.

    But I do believe the powers he has, that he has flexed over and over again, against many white women, is not a power Maria Shriver either has, or would use to such destructive ends, as has her soon to be ex-husband.

    While I don't know what Maria knew, I do know this: powerful white het (and some closeted gay) men lie through their fucking teeth, and do all kinds of things to play with and fuck over the minds of women in their lives. I assume he's done this to Maria, and to any of the other women who he has impregnated and economically controlled.

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