I’m gratified to see the outpouring of support (from men and women) for UAE Major Miriam al Mansouri whose heroism and aviation
skill Eric Bolling reduced to “boobs on the ground.” Watching him say it, I wondered how long he
had been saving that clever little tidbit, he looked so pleased with
himself. And my heart sank.
Before you start hashtagging #notallmen, let me start by
saying of course not all men. But
there are still plenty of men who consistently see women primarily as potential
sex partners and evaluate them accordingly.
This means that women who are young enough, thin enough,
attractive enough and willing enough have value, communicated by an approving
look or an inappropriate comment. Of
course, anyone this man doesn’t want to have sex with—older women and
overweight women, especially—and anyone who won’t make herself available to
him—educated women and feminists, especially—doesn’t have value. Just look around at our culture or read the
comment section on any popular blog and tell me I’m wrong.
These men fly below the radar because they can be very
affirming of women and can successfully
act as professional mentors for women as long as those women are younger,
attractive and appropriately deferential.
And they will be perfect gentlemen as well, not expecting sexual
favors. They are often married
and well-respected.
But you will never see them championing a woman they
wouldn’t want to sleep with, because why would they? Instead, they will ignore her, rendering her invisible. Or they will make comments about her
appearance, her clothing, her aggressiveness or her sexuality and then they
will say that they were just kidding. If
she or other women protest further, then they are blamed for being humorless or
strident.
As Bolling said himself, his words were “not intended to be
disparaging of her but that is how it was taken.” The fault was not his for reducing a heroic
woman to her physical form; the fault was ours for taking him wrong.
When a US senator has to routinely field comments about her
weight and her appearance from her colleagues, when a secretary of state is
routinely disparaged for wearing unflattering pantsuits as she brokers
international peace, when military women are in more danger of being assaulted
by their colleagues than they are by the enemy or the general public, when the
top television news anchors are wearing sleeveless, short shift dresses tugging
at their hems while their male colleagues are wearing the full coverage of
business suits . . . well, suddenly Eric Bolling makes a little more sense.
