Sometimes when I read the news, I’m just too amazed to believe that what I’m reading isn’t in fact something from the Onion, rather than from the actual news. The other day, I caught the story where an Egyptian general, who is still a general today, indicated that female protesters who were arrested were administered virginity tests because, and this part still floors me, they wanted to make sure that when the women claimed they were raped, they could be proved liars because:
What really gets me is the gall the guy had to actually make some kind of in your face comment that somehow any claims of rape would be false because they weren’t actually virgins, the translation meaning that in Egypt, a woman can’t be raped if she’s not actually a virgin. Think about that for a second. Now think about it for a minute. Did any more time somehow make that come off as making any more sense than the ridiculousness of when you first read it? I would hope not. Or you’re a part of the problem, and you really should be reading comic books instead of this blog. No, I take that back. Comic books shouldn’t get that kind of an insult.
Every day, I read more and more ridiculous stories like the one I just mentioned, and every day they just keep on coming. It’s like we don’t learn anything, and the stories just get worse. To add even more insult to this injury, I can’t even feel comforted by saying, well, that just happens in some obscure part of the world. Way too often the stories are coming right from the United States, where you read of some politician who makes some kind of statement that you feel even a general in Egypt wouldn’t be stupid enough to make. Like the subject of abortion. Recently, it’s been used as justification for all sorts of ridiculousness, so that whenever it’s brought up in subject, people throw all sorts of common sense out through the window. Male politicians in this country, who would never advocate that raping a woman is an okay thing, will then turn around and say, “well, it’s probably God’s way” if someone raped a woman and some anti-abortion person doesn’t want to use this to justify why she shouldn’t carry a baby to term, specifically one that came from someone who raped her. It’s like people have a tendency to turn off the “common sense” knob whenever we start talking about political issues.
But when it comes to relations between men and women, this country, this planet, is like some kind of purgatory for the Middle Ages because we’ve stopped learning anything and suddenly no longer think in common sense terms. I’m reminded of the Civil Rights movement, which most people who have some sense of common sense will argue on the right side, but when it comes to offering those same civil rights to gender, suddenly we’re back in Dred Scott days. So few people even realize that at one point, African-Americans were finally able to gain the right to vote, specifically through an alliance they made with women, who put off their own struggle for equality by dealing with the race issue first. But when it came to the Equal Rights Amendment, suddenly African-American men immediately remembered they were men first before being black men, and they turned completely against the same people who offered them assistance in their most needed hour. There’s something about gender that people just don’t seem to get.
In the 1970s, there was a huge battle in gender roles, mainly because men didn’t seem to see any actual issue when it came to rape. Believe it or not, in the 1970s, a woman had to prove that she wasn’t a slut before she was able to prove that someone may have taken liberties that he shouldn’t have taken. But you’d think that we’d gotten over that. Instead, every now and then, you’ll see some court case appear where some company is being sued by a group of women because it is STILL acting like its mentality is stuck in a loop in the 1970s, not the 21st century. And people will STILL side against women, as if the issue is brand new. And then you’ll get sniping from other guys who start to yell “reverse discrimination” and all sorts of other things, mainly because there’s still this belief that women need to be in the kitchen making dinner, or in the bedroom making babies. It’s amazing how quickly we fall into these roles yet again.
Anyway, I found myself reading the newspaper today again, and I began to wonder if I was stuck in a time loop again. But I guess I’m not. I have a feeling this is going to be the way things are for a very long time to come. So women, I guess you’re going to just have to learn to live with it, because apparently, I’m the only one who seems to care.