Enough

What do Daniel Tosh, Anita Sarkeesian, and Jesse Lee Peterson have in common? Practically nothing, except that they have all appeared in news stories this year about women’s issues that have been quite frankly horrifying.

I wrote an article about Reverend Peterson earlier this year when he gave a sermon on why he believes women are destroying America. His sermon was filled with hateful vitriol about women, running the gambit from they can’t handle pressure to they’re all sluts to they aren’t even capable of love. In the article, I explained why we should pay attention to this blatantly bigoted small-time preacher:

We should bother ourselves with people like him because this ugly sentiment is buried deeply in American culture. We see it come out in media figures like Rush Limbaugh, in legislative efforts like the more than nine hundred bills introduced this year alone in state and federal legislature to limit women’s rights, in the thirty-one Republicans who voted against the Violence Against Women Act, and we see it glamorized in media portrayals of women as objects. When almost a third of female homicide victims are killed by their partner and one in five American women have been the victim of rape or attempted rape, we can’t afford to remain silent about this issue.

The events in recent weeks involving Daniel Tosh and Anita Sarkeesian are exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.

Read more at The Inclusive.

The Resurgence of Sexism

A sermon, first posted on YouTube in March, recently made headlines when Fox News host Kirsten Powers protested participating in a panel on Sean Hannity's show with Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, who delivered the sermon. Hannity serves as a member of the board of Reverend Peterson’s organization, Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny (BOND).

The first time I saw the video of Peterson’s sermon about women’s rights, I had to walk away for a few minutes. I didn’t even know where to begin. This sermon is riddled with some of the most hateful, condescending sexism I have ever heard. As a woman in her twenties, I have been blessed to grow up in a culture that, for the most part, accepts me as a whole, functioning, and valuable member of society. I was never told as a child that I couldn’t do science or math because I was a girl. One of my friends in elementary school wanted to be the first female president and no one told her “you can’t do that.” I have been accepted and supported every step of the way. I have been called equal.

But as I’ve grown older and have experienced more, I’ve realized that sexism is far from dead. It’s not something we should sweep under the rug and pretend is a thing of the past. We need to confront people like Rev. Peterson, even if those people are unlikely to change their opinions, because the message needs to be repeated loud and clear: women are not second-class citizens... 

Read more at The Inclusive: http://theinclusive.net/article.php?id=660