I was thinking about a C&L post I did a few years ago, where I mentioned that something like 80, 90% of the women I knew had been sexually assaulted or raped.
I didn’t think that was controversial. Silly me! The commenters went crazy, saying I was making it up “to push a feminist agenda.” I was called an unscrupulous liar, and these men were furious with me.
But I wasn’t lying.
In the past few weeks, you might have gotten some sense of just how commonly women are sexually abused. I guess I was just ahead of my time. Again.
100% of us have at least been sexually harassed or experienced gender-based discrimination.
Who in the working-class hasn’t been abused in one form or another by those in a position of authority?
This is a class issue.
Sorry Im, this isn’t a class issue, it is a power issue. Would you have any doubt that a woman—say Hillary, for example, hasn’t been sexually assaulted or discriminated against in some way, even as recently on nationally-televised debates over a year ago? And where would you suppose she fits in the class structure?
In years past, I’d be the first to admit that I, myself, was more or less ingrained with the notion that women were generally “less than” men. Period.
And the fact is that in most every definitive tier of comparison you’d care to review, woman—regardless of ethnicity—are ALWAYS lined up behind men. If you find something different, please advise (men are POWERFUL, women are CONTROLLING).
“Women are the nigger of the world.”
Lennon was speaking in in the context of a class struggle and of sexism.