What kind of movement calls female supporters “white bitches”? And what type of women take that to be a term of endearment?
Via The Atlantic, The Occupy Movement’s Women Problem:
“I’m called ‘that white bitch who gets everything she wants’ at the GA’s,” says Elise Whitaker, 21, adopting a bit of a defiant posture. She’s been at Occupy LA since the second week of the encampment….
During the very first week of the Occupation in LA I noticed that the gender breakdown in its General Assembly (GA) and various committee meetings was roughly the same as the within the U.S. Congress. In other words, about one-fifth of those who were participating in the (small d) democratic part of this Occupy encampment were women. It was the same with the people who slept in the camp.
This is pretty consistent throughout the movement in general.
The author then goes on to excuse it all, and to blame enemies of OWS for publicizing the rapes that have taken place as part of some sort of smear campaign against OWS.
The problems with OWS and its supporters goes far beyond a woman problem.
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B-b-but it’s the Tea Party that is filled with violent unwashed misogynist bigots who throw trash around and hate poor people! These OWA people are just innocent little lambs, violated by a right-wing crushing capitalistic University system that thinks only of money and power, denying these flowers of society from getting multi-million dollar jobs with their degrees in Socialist Wymons Studies of Trans-Gendered Middle-Eastern Lesbian Herbal Vegetarianism. It’s a conspiracy! I’ll sue! Gimmie! (*)
* The preceding has been an unpaid rant. No funding from the George Soros foundation has been used to finance it. Honest.
Professor Jacobson, shh! The longer OWS lingers and the bigger it grows, the more completely leftism in America will collapse. Don’t get in the way!
We are not nice people but you are bastards for recognizing this. Waaaaaaaaah! Talk about children not “playing well with others”.
If the Occupy movement can adopt an anti-corruption platform instead of the disjointed messages, they will be much more respected. An Occupy member’s page http://owwc.gu.ma , supporting a business owner who lost millions of dollars to a corrupt officials, seems to go a long way in starting down that road.
@ lilac, your sentiment is nice but it presupposes OWS actually seeks positive goals. No question some its joiners have higher aims, but the movement itself was birthed to create chaos, not constructive progress. It’s true we should encourage its minions to seek otherwise, but I believe the bulk of our conversation needs to be with OWS fringe members.
Wow. Has nothing at all changed since the SDS sent out it’s “Smash Monogamy” message?
When I was in college, I got to see some real, persistent, ongoing nastiness directed at a rather ordinary, nice and nice-looking coed, because she dared to have a few (by no means all) non-radical opinions.
The guys were nasty, and in an overtly sexual way. I didn’t agree with her, but I also certainly thought less of them, to the point that I never once went out with any of that bunch. They were what passed for the local radicals, and were considered very edgy and “in.” I thought they were pigs. If they haven’t grown up, they are all big OWS supporters right now.
I read something the other day that suggests the left’s issue with women dates back to Marx, who apparently was upset at the idea that half the human race can bear children and half cannot. How can we all be equal with THAT in our genes?!
The main problem with the “occupy” movement is that they oppose one form of corruption while supporting another. They maintain dreams of physical and material instant gratification through redistributive and retributive change. Actually, they are very much like the individuals and cooperatives they oppose, only on a smaller scale. Unfortunately, their ambition is to become an authoritarian interest with the power to conduct progressive involuntary exploitation.
There is no positive progress to be realized if we are to replace fraudulent exploitation with involuntary exploitation.
Also, the “occupy” reference is in extremely poor taste. They should have focused on the issues of merit rather than marketing and their own self-indulgence.
I’ve visited OWS L.A. in the evening (it’s across the street from my office).
I went there with a buddy from work. I asked him to film what was going on at the time (speech with the creepy repetition from the crowd) and he wouldn’t do it because of the ominous atmosphere (we already stood out like sore thumbs from our grooming and dress).
Any girl who would consider sleeping there really needs to have her head examined. Even though it’s across the street from LAPD’s main HQ, the large ficus trees (Ficus macrophylla, from Queensland, btw) hide what’s going on inside from the street. Cross the street and you have no idea what’s going on inside the camp. Add the fact you have quite a few shady, menacing looking characters … and, I repeat, any girl who’d camp out there has lost her mind.
LukeHandCool (whose old classmate, the media critic for the LA Times, works in the LA Times Building, also across the street. Of course, true to form and right on cue, he wrote a column about the need for journalists to start focussing on America’s suddenly acute crisis of income and wealth inequality. What’s Chris Matthews’ problem? My old classmate already took his orders from President Obama).
There are women who are struggling against the misogynistic tendencies of the Occupy Wall Street movement. For example, the Occupy Patriarchy group — http://occupypatriarchy.org/
The inclusion of “white” in her nickname implies they’re more than just misogynistic. It’s sad the way so many have been convinced that the way to be against racism is to be bigoted racists themselves.
The white bitches have been forgiving Leftist misogynist males since…well…since at least 1992. This has been the deal for Leftist womyn for as long as most of them (in the OWS movement) have been alive. If you are a woman, and want to be a part of the “revolution”, you better be willing to lay down, physically and emotionally.
This sounds suspiciously like self-referential boasting you might hear when speaking with someone from a tough neighbourhood. I think she said this in her interview to make herself look tough, no-nonsense, “with it”, and street-wise. Personally, I don’t think anyone calls her “white bitch” except herself. If any of the dudes at OWS call her “white bitch”, I’m pretty sure it’s with her consent and approval.
That being said, on the larger issue of how the men of OWS respect the women of OWS, I can’t imagine that the guys of OWS see women who’re willing to live in the same squalour and filth as them as having a whole lot of the self-esteem which causes girls to turn guys down.
How about just “Crazy Bitches”?
[…] Occupy Has More Than A Woman Problem. “What kind of movement calls female supporters ‘white bitches’? And what type of […]
The difference between leftist/liberal/progressives and conservatives is the latter raise their boys to respect women, and the former do not, and here’s a thought experiment if you are brave enough to admit the truth.
Think about your most left-wing friends, and your most right wing friends or associates- and just ask yourself, what would they say- would you want your daughter to speak this way in reference to herself, or your son to call his sister or mother a bitch, white, black, or other. Any fancy-nancy quibbling or politics of meaning transnational foucalt double speak “words dont have meaning” excuses or double talk at all, and you have your answer.
I’m a little curious about the percentage of women of child bearing age actually want to have children. Of that percentage, I’d like a further breakdown of those women who wish to have children with a man with no prospect of supporting a child, much less a wife and child(ren).
If the percentages are close to those percentages when I was younger, that simple equation will go far to explain the numbers imbalance.
The rest of the imbalance can be explained by the grime and the crime.
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