{"id":19164,"date":"2016-08-17T13:52:07","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T20:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=19164"},"modified":"2016-08-17T13:56:28","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T20:56:28","slug":"blasphemy-is-hard-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=19164","title":{"rendered":"Blasphemy Is Hard Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the time of year in southern Arizona where evening thunderstorms form right about the time you want to cook on the patio. Last night’s storm was a teaser. It looked like it was going to stay parked\u00a0over the mountains, so I tempted fate by lighting the grill. The first gust hit as I walked back into the kitchen, snuffing\u00a0out all three burners in\u00a0the covered kettle gas grill. We had to broil\u00a0our steaks in the oven, and if that isn’t blasphemy, I don’t know what is.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1278\"<\/a>
I should have known better<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Speaking of blasphemy, I’m\u00a0not quite willing to toe the party\u00a0line on this\u00a0widely-shared blog post<\/a>.\u00a0In it, Erin, an attractive young woman, describes\u00a0running a daily gantlet of leers, unwanted sexual cracks,\u00a0and verbal assaults\u00a0from strange men. Erin, speaking for herself and other women, says hey, leave me\u00a0alone. I\u00a0should be allowed to wear what I\u00a0want when and where I\u00a0want, without being verbally or physically assaulted. I deserve this, we deserve this, as much as men.<\/p>\n

Well, who could disagree with that? I don’t stray into the dark\u00a0corners of the net, so I don’t know what the trolls are saying about Erin’s post. Most of the commentary I’ve seen has been positive. But I have to admit\u00a0my first thought, upon\u00a0reading Erin’s post and looking at the photos she chose to include, was that she’s pulling\u00a0our legs. Click the link. Go take a look.<\/p>\n

You’re back? Good. Now tell me those photos aren’t meant to showcase\u00a0Erin’s physical attractiveness. They’re like the posed glamor shots aspiring actors carry around in their portfolios. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re exactly that: posed glamor shots from Erin’s own modeling portfolio. And then read her words: “I wear a size small in my Nike compression shorts that I like to wear when I workout …\u00a0and looser baggy clothing just gets in my way of my workout”; “I often run in just a sports bra …”; “We deserve to feel sexy in our own skin without feeling like we’re here to bait you.”<\/p>\n

The last statement is important. I totally agree:\u00a0we all want to feel attractive or sexy in our own skin, but that doesn’t mean we want strangers touching our skin or coming on to us, especially in a crude or aggressive manner. At the same time there’s such a thing as going out of one’s way to look sexy, and Erin here isn’t exactly hiding her light under a bushel. She clearly\u00a0wants to be seen as sexy and attractive, but not to have to endure the looks and unwanted attention that comes with it. She may be trolling for attention from the right man or woman, but she doesn’t want any from me, or you, or that gross old man over there. And she shouldn’t have to put up with it.<\/p>\n

Well, yeah, that would be nice. And that is how civilized people should behave. I know women feel uncomfortable in coed gyms. I go to Anytime Fitness, and make a conscious effort to not ogle the women working out next to me. I’ve noticed we all do that, men and women who share gyms:\u00a0we look at the equipment or the wall TVs, never at one another. Nor would I ever talk to\u00a0women the way Erin says strange men talk\u00a0to her. I don’t know any man who would … which is another thing in Erin’s blog post I wonder about. Do you know men who talk to women like that, who\u00a0would walk up to a strange woman at the gym, tell her\u00a0they like her\u00a0leggings, that they make her ass\u00a0look great, and that they’d look better off? Because I don’t, and I’ve been around men my whole adult life. We might talk that way about women who aren’t there\u00a0…\u00a0locker room talk\u00a0…\u00a0but we don’t talk that way to women who are. Unless we’re really drunk.<\/p>\n

No, I’m not saying Erin exaggerates. I’m sure strange men do\u00a0come on to her with inappropriate comments, and she is right to\u00a0ask to be left alone. But the photos she chose to include with\u00a0her blog post suggest to me she wants to have her cake and eat it too.<\/p>\n

I’m in enough trouble already with my social justice warrior friends, so I’ll say no more.<\/p>\n

But hey, my blasphemy pales beside that of\u00a0Rebecca Schoenkopf, editor of the satirical news website Wonkette, who wrote about Juanita Broaddrick’s<\/a>\u00a0claim that Bill Clinton raped her many years\u00a0ago. Ms Shoenkopf\u00a0defended\u00a0Bill by arguing\u00a0some things we call rape today were\u00a0regarded as mere alpha male sexual aggressiveness\u00a0back then, that Bill himself probably never believed he raped anyone, and that even if that’s what he did, a man can redeem himself by being sorry and not doing\u00a0it again. The flying rage monkeys of the internet swooped down upon\u00a0Ms Shoenkopf within minutes and are still gnawing on her bones\u00a0two days later.<\/p>\n

As for me, I take no position. I don’t think the\u00a0old rape accusation\u00a0has anything to do with Hillary Clinton or her campaign for the presidency, though it’s clearly being dug up again to hurt her\u00a0chances. As for what may or may not have happened in an Arkansas hotel room almost 40 years ago, hasn’t that been investigated and commented on to death? I might not mind this being stirred up again if anyone in the media was asking about\u00a0accusations Donald Trump raped a thirteen-year-old girl,\u00a0but on that subject\u00a0all I hear is\u00a0crickets chirping. If similar\u00a0accusations were directed at Bill Clinton\u00a0we’d hear about nothing else.<\/p>\n

The last thing I’ll link to this morning is this eyewitness account of the stampede at JFK<\/a>\u00a0Sunday night, after someone started a panic about terrorists firing shots inside the terminal. There were no terrorists, no shots. It’s a frightening\u00a0story nonetheless, and it shows what all the airport security we’ve invested so much money in has bought us: absolutely nothing. The people who should have been in charge fell all over themselves. TSA agents deserted their posts and joined the stampede. Police and airport officials had no idea what to do. There was no evacuation plan, and at one point panicked passengers from the terminal were milling around\u00a0outside\u00a0on the tarmac next to a Korean Airlines jumbo jet from which other panicked passengers had escaped by sliding down the emergency ramps!<\/p>\n

How frightened we are, how likely to bolt\u00a0and run screaming at the least provocation! I was going to go on a rant about the home of the brave, etc, but really people\u00a0would have reacted the same way anywhere in the world. We are herd animals. There are very few Chuck Norrises among us.<\/p>\n

Whew, blasphemy is hard work. I think I’ll take a break now and go read the ads on Facebook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the time of year in southern Arizona where evening thunderstorms form right about the time you want to cook on the patio. Last night’s storm was a teaser. It looked like it was going to stay parked\u00a0over the mountains, so I tempted fate by lighting the grill. The first gust hit as I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,250,10,16,2,8,827,22,6],"tags":[1729,2161,243,2162,1679],"class_list":["post-19164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-media","category-personal","category-politics","category-social-media","category-terrorism","category-a-series-of-tubes","tag-bill-clinton","tag-erin-bailey","tag-jfk","tag-juanita-broaddrick","tag-panic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19164"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19184,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19164\/revisions\/19184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}