Blame BuckeyeDonYesterday I was minding my own business when BuckeyeDon stopped by and shared his surprise at me not having posted something about / becoming involved in the latest "AH shitstorm."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

Using my finely tuned detective skills, it took approximately 5.3 seconds for me to discover what he was referring to. I saw the apology about the 'Connect the Hots' comment on the latest RT podcast and deduced the rest from there.

I remember listening to that portion of the podcast and thinking, "Man, that's really creepy." However, since it was Gavin who said it, I didn't put much more thought into it. Gavin has a history of saying r...

Blame BuckeyeDonYesterday I was minding my own business when BuckeyeDon stopped by and shared his surprise at me not having posted something about / becoming involved in the latest "AH shitstorm."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

Using my finely tuned detective skills, it took approximately 5.3 seconds for me to discover what he was referring to. I saw the apology about the 'Connect the Hots' comment on the latest RT podcast and deduced the rest from there.

I remember listening to that portion of the podcast and thinking, "Man, that's really creepy." However, since it was Gavin who said it, I didn't put much more thought into it. Gavin has a history of saying really creepy, inappropriate things and a marked legacy of having a lack of understanding / empathy for others. Also, Gus and Barbara challenged him on the spot - which definitely was appreciated.



I was talking to my husband (yes, this crazy man-hating feminazi is married... to a man) about the whole debacle and was really struggling to find some kind of example to express my discomfort. I always try to think of some very concrete, very easy way of explaining WHY this kind of thing is SO inappropriate.

[Aside: My husband is wonderful and amazing and prides himself on being a feminist. He was made uncomfortable by the Gavin's comment same as I was and was helping me put words to my feelings/thoughts.]

And my husband came up with a great example.

"It's like when you go to the zoo. You don't think twice about watching the giraffes, the elephants, the gorillas. It's what you go there to do, they don't mind. They don't possess human intelligence or human rights. That's how guys like Gavin treat women - like animals at a zoo, bodies without intelligence, personhood, or rights."

Brilliant!!

When a human being views other human beings as less than human (see any literature on discrimination for empirical support), it suddenly becomes okay to treat them as less than human. That's how slavery - of Africans, of Irish, of South Americans, etc. - was explained away (I actually read a textbook from 1900 where slavery was described as a favor to the black man, helping him come into society and become almost fully 'human'). That is how genocide is rationalized - they're not REALLY human / as human as I am.

Let me be clear, I AM NOT saying genocide, and slavery, and eugenics and all the other horrible things that have been done in the name of us-vs-them is equivalent to modern day sexism. I site those examples because they are extremes of what could be, of what is possible, and where the idea of dehumanization can lead to.

Dehumanization is exactly what Gavin described in his "Connect the Hots" game. The girls he followed were nothing more than animals in a zoo - without rights, without thoughts or feelings of their own. Those women exist solely in Gavin's mind for Gavin's pleasure and they cease to be living, breathing human beings. THIS is the problem with objectification of women. There is nothing wrong with admiring the human form, but respect MUST be given to the human who possesses that form.



Women do not exist to please men. To be objectified by men. To be followed around Austin by men. To be oogled or slandered by men. And no, it doesn't matter what we're wearing. There is no such thing as "asking for it." Period. If you have those kind of thoughts, please keep them inside your head where no one else need hear them.

So while all the people rage in the comments about how this has been blown out of proportion, I applaud RT for recognizing that what was said was inappropriate and down-right disturbing. Not quite as disturbing as Gavin stating he'd go around raping women if he could freeze time, but still disturbing.