Recently, another wave of “Dear White Women” articles and blogposts have been popping up. The contents of these articles or videos reveals that white women - apparently all of them - are anything but dear to the authors.
While it is rightfully considered scandalous and disgraceful to put out racist or homophobic statements and publications, it remains wholly acceptable to utter disgusting sexist filth in songs pumped through the airwaves in public places, make overtly sexist comments in tv, radio, podcast or video interviews, or publish blatantly sexist articles or blogposts, lumping all women, and sometimes all white women, together in one despicably shameful pile.
Wikipedia lists the “Missing White Woman’s Syndrome” as originating from the Western media’s undue focus on upper-middle-class white women who disappear with the disproportionate degree of coverage they receive being compared to cases of missing women of color, women of lower social classes and missing men or boys. While the attribution of responsibility is squarely with the Western media - and by extension also with those who control the media - the very label of this syndrome squarely places undue blame on the victims.
When the MeToo movement started to do some real damage to the existing vertical white male dominated power structure, and knocked off some icons whose dark side was revealed as mostly female victims finally started to speak out about sexual abuse and harassment they had endured in numbers too large to ignore by the media, what happened?
First, those powerful men who ended up suffering the most severe consequences from being outed were disproportionately men of color. Co-incidence?
Second, stories started surfacing featuring young white women calling rape when the encounter had been consensual, resorting to minutia within the encounter leaving the question in everyone’s mind if these were cases of miscommunication rather than rape. These stories were popping up everywhere, including one that got widespread mainstream media attention. It questioned the validity of the entire MeToo movement. It created militancy in protecting victims. It minimized thousands of MeToo abuse stories. It diluted the meaning of the word rape. It created much confusion for everyone, with men fearing that anything within consensual sex could henceforth potentially be used against them. It started the mocking reference of being ‘MeToo’d.” It made young white women look terribly entitled. Co-incidence?
Third, when an actor who had been part of Ronan Farrow’s story that catapulted the MeToo movement into the mainstream media publicly threatened the Hollywood power establishment, claiming: “We [the victims] are coming for you [the powerful sex offenders in Hollywood],” her threat was followed by her supportive boyfriend’s sudden death and the surfacing story of her bedding a seventeen year old boy. This story became so wide spread in the media it was a full blown scandal. Along with it, the news spread that the MeToo movement was dead. Co-incidence?
Grass roots movements that threaten to upset the white male dominant vertical power structure will always be co-opted, infiltrated, smeared, ridiculed, and snuffed out. The MeToo movement may not last, but women and other victims will not stop speaking out about the rape and sexual abuse they have had to endure in silence.
I am offended at the blatant sexism and the media’s encouragement of dumping on women in general, but mostly it saddens me that anyone who knows oppression would take the bait, and choose to attack an entire other oppressed group.
The way society is structured allows each person to use their privilege, of being white, or male, or wealthy, or famous, etc. as a cushion to cover over personal unresolved trauma. Societal oppression feeds personal trauma. Repeated exposure to disrespect, humiliation, objectification and vilification fuels previous injustices experienced as a child of having been disrespected, humiliated, objectified and vilified by the original authority figures in the family and social environment.
What can serve as a release valve for continuous indignities one suffers? The way our lives are structured in the current Western capitalist model is that families live in isolation, with either one couple or one person raising the children, which puts unrealistic expectations and pressures on parents, and leaves children to raise each other or themselves. The structure encourages for the natural rage and negative feelings in reaction to oppression and abuse to be aired when one attains a position of power. This means the easiest release would be to dump on one’s own children, or younger children in the immediate environment. The second most-easy release would be to dump on other underprivileged groups.
From the perspective of the one percent holding the strings of power, the first release valve encouraged by the accepted societal norms - themselves created by the one percent - ensures that trauma is perpetuated within families. This keeps the societal layers of privilege more or less intact, meaning that privilege serves as an unconscious addiction to its benefactors whose personal trauma can remain hidden beneath comfort at the expense of anyone less privileged. The latter release valve, of dumping on groups, ensures division is kept intact, diverting the attention away from the real problem, which lies at the top of the power structure - not with the people.
Can we not look behind the stories in the media, behind what is apparent, behind what the power establishment might want from us, that will protect the mask of power and eventually comes at everyone’s expense, including those at the top? Can we see through the imposed veil of delusion by those in power, who exploit division and trauma to keep the people disempowered and blind to the real sickness, the source of so much pain in the world, the reason for inequality?
Healing from personal trauma is revolutionary. It shows the truth, not only of the family narrative spun to maintain a good face to the outer world, but of the narrative spun by the elite who control Hollywood and the media, controlled to keep us pitted against each other, controlled to perpetuate slavery to create privilege at the lowest bar, controlled to keep desecrating the female. Lies protecting lies.