Sarah Huckabee Sanders is upset about "silence from the left" re Sam Bee calling Ivanka a "feckless cunt" for swanning around on social media, hugging her son amidst news of children being ripped from their parents by ICE. So I won't be silent:
deadline.com/2018/05/white-…
deadline.com/2018/05/white-…
1. Language's ability to inflict harm depends on power of who's wielding it & against whom it's being wielded. Not just individuals, ie, it's not about Bee/Ivanka or Roseanne/Jarrett, all of whom have power. It's about power of entities & ideas individuals are representing.
2. So when Bee goes after Ivanka for supporting an administration that's doing grievous harm to the bodies, families, lives of human beings, she's acting on behalf of less powerful people (immigrants ripped from their children) against the grotesquely powerful & abusive.
3. You can not like the word "cunt" for feminist reasons; you can--& should!--think about why a term for female anatomy is such a potent pejorative. But use of it in this context is not reinforcing or replicating the crude harm it has been used to inflict historically...
4. ie the patriarchal diminishment & vilification of women. In fact, Bee is using it to critique a woman precisely because that woman is acting ON BEHALF OF THAT PATRIARCHY, one which systematically diminishes women, destroys families, hurts kids, especially non-white.
5. It is fundamentally different from Roseanne comparing Jarrett to an ape, a racist locution w deep racist roots, bc unlike Bee's deployment of cunt AGAINST a misogynistic, racist administration, Roseanne's racism is deployed IN SUPPORT OF a racist, misogynistic administration..
6. that came to power in part on racist & misogynistic rhetoric that vilified & promised revenge against Obama administration of which Jarrett was a member & which is using the power it so gained to inflict real world racist & misogynistic harm on human beings.
7. Therefore, Roseanne's utterance mirrors & reinforces harm being inflicted by most powerful against least powerful, while Bee's challenges that power dynamic
8. This also applies, of course, to faux-offense at Michelle Wolf, to cowering hobbits of the dark web & to idea that metoo is a witch hunt and its critics have been unjustly silenced. NONE of that is real. NONE OF IT.
9. The illusion of persecution of the powerful is made possible by the powerful's ability to fashion a public narrative around their own interests & to normalize to the point of invisibility the ACTUAL harm done every day to the less powerful.
10. Cause remember kids, SHS can say w straight & righteous face that a comedian being mean to Ivanka on TV is "vile" "vicious" "appalling" & "disgusting" but would apply none of those descriptors to administration she's fronting for, which takes CHILDREN AWAY FROM PARENTS.
