Anytime you put the word ‘domestic’ in front of anything; Domestic terrorism versus international terrorism? It has a softening to it.
Rachel Louise Snyder
Intimate terrorism is a better descriptive phrase for what occurs in an abusive relationship than domestic abuse or violence ever could be. This segment of On The Media was brought back to mind by this segment of Morning Edition, a podcast feed I only discovered after changing my preferred podcast player to player.fm from beyondpod. I’m not signing up for a subscription to player.fm, mind you, I just like the intuitive interface in player.fm‘s app. I don’t have enough money to allow me to give money to everyone who deserves to be paid. It is a failing in the monetary system that I don’t have enough to cover the costs of essentials. Essentials like easy access to the information that keeps you alive. But I digress.
Someone should probably engage in some counter-terrorism. Say, publish Youtube videos of these murderous men being tracked down and emasculated. A literal or actual emasculation, I don’t think it matters much which it is. Some of these men deserve to be physically emasculated, but I won’t call for harm being caused to anyone, not even those who so richly deserve it. These videos would serve as an example to other abusive men. An example of what will happen to the men who think they can get away with their behavior.
Intimate terrorism reminds me of this episode of The Stakes. A podcast series I started listening to because of On The Media‘s rebroadcasting of the three-part miniseries on A History of Persuasion. The Stakes deals with the fraught nature of modern American society, and what it is we stand to lose if we don’t take the threats represented in the Trump presidency seriously enough.
The ERA, abortion, rape, you know, issues — women were organizing all over the place. But in some ways abortion and rape are more visible issues. This was sort of background noise. You know, the background hum that you get used to and you don’t notice anymore? That was the status of sexual harassment. Between 1960 and 1980 women’s participation in the workforce went from 38 percent to 51 percent. A huge jump. Men were threatened. They were women coming into the old boys club. They needed to assert their dominance, and make sure that women knew their place. And this was one of the ways to do that.
The Stakes
All of this is related. All of it. Male domination of society is coming to an end, and small-minded men are threatened by this fact. They hope to force women back into the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. The rest of us should be properly outraged by this fact. The Trump presidency is a physical manifestation of this reflexive male panic. Don’t believe that? Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta resigned because he got caught giving a serial pedophile and rapist a free ride. A serial pedophile that Trump called a good friend and used hang out with extensively, to paraphrase Stonekettle Station.
Donald Trump is himself a sexual harasser, as well as being a confirmed con-artist, philanderer and pathological liar.
I have a solution to this problem. Men like Trump will not like it. In fact, it is probably their worst nightmare, the kind they wake up screaming from. We (the big we, we as a society or we as the world’s human population) we should train every girl in self defense. We should start this training when they are girls, not women, so that we can get a jump on the passive conditioning forced on most girls in most societies at an early age. Four or five years of age should be young enough. We should train them and then arm them with their weapon of choice. Guns, knives, whatever. Then you give these women one free pass on killing a man. Not two or three, just one. If you kill two or three men, you are probably one of those rare serial killing women. We don’t want to encourage that. Nope, they get one free pass, if… If they present themselves to a police officer or prosecutor and officially make the claim that a rape occurred.
No inquiries, no grand jury, no nothing. A free pass for killing rapists.
I predict that the problem of violence against women will be cleared up in a single generation if we were to install this anti-misogyny policy. If you just pissed yourself, you are probably one of the men that has nightmares about women you’ve mistreated tracking you down after the policy went into effect. Maybe you should try apologizing.
