What’s next, lapdancing Olympics on a dummy (or male judge)? That too requires strength and flexibility.

I seem to recall that pole dancing was brought to the strip club arena rather than starting there, but the bottom line is that this is the association. While I believe all women have the right to pole dance or to strip, I don’t think we put an activity associated with sexual quid pro quo, with the woman being the quo, on the dais of an international sporting event.

Aw, the men weren’t able to break through the glass (heel) ceiling in this competition.

“Setting aside its good attributes for the moment, I think the internet has made the posse mentality and mob violence even easier to achieve.”

Not to mention that (according to NPR) the legal establishment dismisses mob violence against women as “juvenile fun” when it is coordinated online. When the law also says that misogynist companies have the right to intentionally broadcast libelous and threatening material against women through their websites (so long as someone else wrote it), we know the mob misogyny will get worse.

In summary: I blame the pornographers, not the founders of the internet.

People said the same thing about the pamphlets people published during the revolutionary war. About TV. About the devil’s music on the radio. It brings us porn, it brings this blog. It brings us the conservative religious sites with their bad soft rock music.

Majority consensus has brought us the patriarchy, though. And all the twisted thinking about sex as performance….of the woman. The majority consensus is that women are not okay as they are. Whereas men just have to show up for sex without the outfits, the pole, the dieting, whatever. There is no competitive body sport: cheerleading or pole dancing or whatever for men where it is part of the skill to be enticing and exciting to women. I guarantee you that no man I work with thinks…”hmmmm…maybe I should go to just ONE pole dancing class so I can be the hawt and keep my woman interested” or “hmmmm….I wonder if I’m okay to be seen in public in a swim suit without massive de-hairing, dieting, tanning, lotioning….”

I mean, recently, there were pictures of Madonna auctioned when she was, what? 18, and she posed nude without shaving. The horrors! And the criticism she got! But with all the looking and poking fun, some people actually got to look at photos where an unshaven woman was seen as natural and beautiful. But please, I’m thinking…this is scandaleous in this day and age, yet it was done as art in the 1980’s? What is empowerful after all? The sassy pole dancing and naughty, naughty poses for your boyfriend, or being scandalized by women’s body hair?

Suddenly, the one idiot spouting garbledy-hatespeak is immediately joined by a chorus of idiots singing in tune. It’s very easy to lose sight of what’s the majority consensus. Not that majority consensus should be the definitive line on one’s actions, but it does have quite an impact on most people.

Setting aside its good attributes for the moment, I think the internet has made the posse mentality and mob violence even easier to achieve.

I don’t buy it that a younger generation is not responsible for their not protesting, speaking out, not seeing etc. I grant that they are sentient beings. It’s a choice. I don’t agree with not being a feminist. But it’s a choice.

I think we ought to ask for more and encourage more from the women we know. And I’ll just come right out and say it, there are women who are the most anti-feminists people in the world, and especially when they get to be an adult, they should be challenged and criticized whether they are in their twenties or their seventies. It takes work to discard the veil of bullshit the patriarchy puts on the world and I give them props and higher respect. It’s not easy.

I would think that as the great Oprah says, “when you know better, you do better.” But too many know, but just go along to get along. It’s someone else’s problem to speak up at work or to challenge. It’s far easier to not risk unlikability. As Tina Fey shows us, a savage wit helps, but I doubt she has to have everyone like her.

A lot of radicals came from very conservative households. The big bulge of feminists to get the vote in the 1920’s and in the 1960’s were raised and preceeded by very conservative people.

And not too long ago, a lot of women faced great pressure to not keep their names in marriage, to not work during marriage, to make only the career choices of nurse and teacher, and were mocked for using “ms.” It was not easy for them either.

Change is never easy. It’s never easy to break from the pack.