generalspeaking

Misogyny's Solid Core

This is not the photograph of a stunned and broken man who realizes that all that he has worked to attain in the world of politics is now behind him. Not that it would occur to him that his brutally undignified, rash, insultingly predatory behaviour is responsible for any of this. Merely ill timing and bad, bad luck. The other photographs that were widely disseminated of Dominique Strauss-Kahn showed a dishevelled, drawn man decidedly not in full control of a situation he had choreographed.


This newer photo, however, with DSK and his wife leaving the New York Supreme Court with the state prosecutor's weary resignation that the case against wealth and prestige and power was falling apart, is one of a man revelling in the triumph of having escaped the misery of a long prison term. He has not escaped, however, the ignominy of shame, of having exposed himself to the international community as a serial sexual predator of long standing.

The smug smile that his face hosts so naturally is that of a man who has always managed to have his way, never held to account for irritating little items of behaviour by a naughty boy that are of no real account. A hotel maid who had entered the United States as a refugee telling a story of grim survival and atrocities suffered becoming a hapless victim of a sexual predator fixed the attention of the world on this sordid saga.

Free to leave now, however. No need any longer for bodyguards, or restraints. And his political future? France hasn't the same delicacy of apprehension with respect to amour. In most civilized countries amour is not equated with force and degradation. By uncovering some facts that express the reality of one situation, the judicial system is suddenly facing disbelief in the reality of another situation.

It is the word of a formerly esteemed politician of elite rank against that of a lowly hotel maid. Who did lie in the past and continued to demonstrate her comfort and familiarity with dissembling to the authorities who questioned her after what she contends was a violently coercive sex act. But of course Mr. Strauss-Kahn is a womanizer, an violator of women, verified by other women, of his own class, who have since come forward to testify that they too were abused by him.

Equality's thin veneer reveals misogyny's solid core. Women may venture hesitatingly forth in revealing their disgust and shame at their vile treatment by powerful, influential and wealthy men, but if a woman has the misfortune of having in her background personal questionable conduct adversarial to social mores, she stands mired in the quicksand of public censure.

Misogyny's solid core.

Labels: Security, Sexism, Social-Cultural Deviations, That's Life

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 05, 2011