O'Neil is talking about Warren's response to this Trump tweet...
Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!... which I blogged about here. I said a few things about what Trump was doing with that tweet, but I ended with:
Trump is toying with sexual innuendo. The woman is "USED!" and she "begg[ed]" and "would do anything."So it didn't surprise me when, later, I saw that Elizabeth Warren tweeted (in response to Trump's tweet):
Are you really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame @SenGillibrand? Do you know who you're picking a fight with? Good luck with that, @realDonaldTrump....That's not Warren slut-shaming Gillibrand. That's Warren seeing the same thing I saw, I believe. I said "toying with," where she used the device of asking a question, and I said "sexual innuendo" where she said "slut-shaming." It's the same point.
O'Neil concedes that Trump's language "does seem sexually suggestive," which I think gets him as far as agreeing with me. So what's different about how Warren put it? O'Neil says the term "slut-shaming" is a way to criticize someone who's "blaming the victim of sexual assault" because she was acting or dressing a certain way, so that would mean that Warren implied that Gillibrand must have been overtly manifesting sexuality and that it was wrong of Trump to react to her expressiveness in a negative way.
I think that's what O'Neil is groping at. I'm trying to help O'Neil make sense even as I think that O'Neil does not make sense and that whatever shred of sense there may be is used at the price of looking as though he'd just do anything to attack Elizabeth Warren.
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Long ago, when I was a cub in IT help desk, back when that was a decent job for Americans and a leg up into the tech world, our team had an outing, including our boss, Lisa, who was a lovely tell Fri K of water from Boondocks, PA somewhere. Very innocent and naive, may e not as much as she let on... The wine was red, or whatever we were drinking - probably gimlets, me. I said something, who even remembers what, and she said, Are you saying that you would sleep with someone without being married to them? And I said, Is that an offer? And we all, men and women, or boys and girls, best out laughing-I rolled the table.
OTOH, later I said that the sluttiest thing I ever saw was these fashionable boot-cut jeans. It happened my partner on the desk favored that look and was wearing some that very night. Happily everyone erupted in idle talk and my gaffe was underrugged. Too many gimlets. It never came up again.
Dude, babe, professor... It's wordplay! Lighten up!
It was a very good year...
Could be Fauxcahanta is learning the persuasion game.
Can Trump unstick the label?
Many bird with one tag!!!
Food for thought:
Prostitution - sex in direct exchange for money - is already completely legal in this country as long as you're willing to have it filmed and posted on the internet.
The only essential restriction against paying money for sex is that you may not do so in private. Everybody gets to watch, and we call it porn, and that makes it 100% legal. Or, it's done without cameras, and is therefore illegal. Privacy during sex is the crime.
Discuss.
Someone posted here that Trumps tweet was sexual harassment (before Althouse put up her update) and I had no idea what she was talking about. Total insanity.
I see now that insanity is the order of the day.
Hey, crazy people? He has used this exact phrase, and something close to this exact phrase, several times in several different tweets about other people, most all of them men. Trump has a pretty limited repertoire of insults and relies on stock phrases...maybe you've noticed.
But hey, someone FELT like it was sexual harassment, and even though those people have motive to FEEL a certain way about things we all have to respect their feelings and treat their motivated reasoning/assertions as valid.
In short: you people are all fucking nuts and I hope the insane hysteria you're cheering on consumes you all.
Hoodlum: If you actually count the responses, very few are on board with this crap. Ann, Inga. Not many others. Some of the best defenses of Trump on this thread have been from women, especially Florence who provided 3 similar quotes about men.
I note that I predicted such quotes would make no difference to Ann, Inga, or anyone else who saw "innuendo" witbout knowing about those quotes. So far, I appear to have been correct.
Both you and Warren are right. The innuendo in Trump's tweet was obvious. But I think that Warren put it, maybe, more indelicately.
Blogger Bay Area Guy said...
Also, as a reminder, not to sound like Mr. Rogers, but when we stray too far from substantive issues:
1. Desirable tax rate
2. Appropriate immigration policies
3. Appropriate response to Islamic terrorism
4. Defense policy towards North Korea
5. Trade policy
6. Replacing Obamacare
..we are stuck in the leftwing playground.
--
Feeelz great, don't it?
Those things you list must be mansplaining..or worse..
There are male and female sluts, slovenly and incongruous. However, there is only one feminist-sponsored slut walk. Why the diversity?
Can anyone deny one read of Trump's comments is that the Gillibrand is being payed to perform a service for the buyers? Let's assume for sake of argument it is true (and I would assume it is true at least in the sense she grants access for money).
Two points. What's worse, what Gillibrand does or intentional sexual innuendo by Trump?
Second, as I read through the comments I wrote trying to characterize Gillibrand's possible actions, what I wrote had no intentional innuendo. I see how hard it is to separate a woman being paid for her wrong actions and innuendo those wrong actions are of a sexual nature.
Qwinn said...Hoodlum: If you actually count the responses, very few are on board with this crap. Ann, Inga. Not many others. Some of the best defenses of Trump on this thread have been from women, especially Florence who provided 3 similar quotes about men.
I hear you, and I appreciate the lack of unanimity, but just from reading around (news articles, Twitter) it seems like a sizable portion of the nation agree with Warren and Gillibrand's take. For them I get that it's a political posture and I fully understand that "low information" people who are only getting the news from third hand accounts (the daily show, nightly comedy shows, whatever) will lap up whatever biased interpretation they're fed...but that still leaves an awful lot of people who likely read Trump's tweet and jumped to the same conclusion. Possibly I wasn't THINKING DEEPLY about it but I just didn't see that reading at all.
It does look like the Dems are going to land on Gillibrand as a champion. From what I've seen she was pretty firmly pro-gun and anti-immigration when first elected to the House in '04 or '06, and of course like most back then she was (at least nominally) anti-same sex marriage. Everyone forgives any Dem who flipped on that issue, of course, but it'll be interesting to see how she defends her swing from anti-immigration to full throated support for amnesty. I guess if she's running against Donald Trump it'll be difficult for the Repubs to hurt her with charges of flip flopping, but against a more principled/less changeable candidate that should really hurt, I'd think. I have to like the chances of a Nikki Haley against Gillibrand...but Gillibrand v. Trump might be tough (understanding that it'd be Gillibrand + the Media + a sizeable portion of the GOPe/NeverTrumpers, etc).
I still think, though, that latching onto "victim of sexual harassment via Presidential tweet" is a stupid, stupid move, but since so many people seemed to see it that way when I utterly failed to I have to allow for the possibility that I'm the one out of touch here. Sad!
Maybe it would help: can someone lock down a definition of "slut shaming?" Or is it just a shibboleth to be intoned, without a definite underlying meaning that would apply in a given situation?
I understood "being against slut-shaming" to mean supporting the choices (of women) to engage in otherwise-morally-frowned-upon behavior (sleeping around, sex before marriage, etc) that feminists were "reclaiming." Being against slut shaming in that sense would be resisting the stigma that exists against promiscuous behavior (by women) and telling women that their choices (of what to do with their body) should not face social opprobrium.
That definition doesn't make sense here, of course, since even if Trump WAS implying that Gillibrand was willing to engage in sexual activity in exchange for donations in order to oppose that on grounds of anti-slut shaming we'd have to agree that it would be OK for a woman who so choose TO engage in sexual activity in exchange for donations! Like, that'd have to be "just one of the choices" that we think shouldn't face social stigma. But that cant' be what Warren means, right? That, I guess, is what O'Neil is saying--that by casting opposition to Trump's statement as anti slut-shaming Warren is implying that IF Gillibrand or any other woman DID choose to offer sexual access in return for campaign donations THEN we as a society would have to respect that choice/decision. But that's nuts!
Eh, forget it. As a man I'm sure my attempt to apply logic and firm definitions to this problem is both insulting (for trying to mansplain) and useless (since I'm just incapable of "getting it"). I really try to think deeply about some of these things but just come away frustrated--the outcome seems wholly driven by appeals to identity (appeals to authority based on identity, I guess) and I just don't have the correct identity myself. Of course, if I started IDENTIFYING as a female feminist (part Native American, etc)...
It’s an Alinsky Delusion. Of course she didn’t call her a slut. But Mitt Romney was also extremely progressive in hiring women when he was governor - and yet all we remember was the unfare label of “Binders Full of Women.” So, yes, it’s a delusion. But it’s also a delusion the Left would use for every advantage if a Republican said what she said.
This is the level of our national discourse. Be proud.
Trump wasn't slut-shaming her; he was only sleaze-shaming her!
"I see how hard it is to separate a woman being paid for her wrong actions and innuendo those wrong actions are of a sexual nature."
It is pretty much impossible without having a specific quid pro quo to talk about. Any variant of "would do anything for money" can and will be sexualized, when said about a woman, by a percentage of the women who hear it. The only way one could try to avoid it would be by saying in some fashion "I'm not talking about sex", which is of course talking about sex.
The only possible way I can think of to disprove that intent would be to show that the same statements were made about a man in a non-sexual way by the same person. Trump said the same thing, down to the specific word "anything", about Jeb Bush, for God's sake! And Ted Cruz! And the same people complaining now didn't complain about Jeb or Ted being assaulted with "sexual innuendo".
That selective accusation says everything about the accusers, and nothing about Trump.
The funniest thing in all this is that the reality underlying the complaint is that attractive women are so privileged that they *can* sell sex for tremendous amounts of money and even being choosy of who they sleep with - as in just the men they would've liked to sleep with anyway! It's a pretty fantastic deal that quite a few men would take up if they could! Unfortunately, our only option is to work until we die.
Are we really supposed to feel bad for women that they *can* go out and get laid and *receive* $200 / hour, instead of *pay* $200 / hour for the same "privilege"?
Yes, I know, "not all women". And the women I hear screaming the loudest right now are the ones that no one would offer $1 / hour to be with, and who can only compensate emotionally for the devastating rejection that is implied by never being flirted with or "sexually harassed" by pretending that they'd hate it if it happened to them.
And, of course, our recurring PSA on How To Avoid Committing Sexual Harassment:
1. Be handsome.
2. Be attractive.
3. Don't be unattractive.
How many *good looking* men have gone down in the Reckoning so far, compared to ugly ones? Has an analysis been done yet? Ben Affleck was briefly implicated and then forgotten about, if I recall correctly. Same with Matt Damon. Ken Spacey doesn't count for obvious reasons. Everyone else I can think of that's been destroyed so far is not generally considered attractive by women, and the uglier they are, the harder they've fallen. If I were a sociology student looking for a thesis, I'd make a chart out of that.
Er. Kevin Spacey, sorry.
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