Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Defending Conservative Women: Playboy, hate f*cking, and misogyny

This all happened last week, but I'm just catching up to it now:

Apparently Playboy put an article by Guy Cimbalo on its website titled "So Right It's Wrong: Ten Conservative Women I’d Like to Hate-F*ck," which was removed 24 hours later. I wasn't able to read it, but Jezebel caught the list and addressed the utter horrific nature of the piece. Feministe also responded based on the Jezebel piece. The list included Michelle Malkin, Megyn Kelly, Mary Katherine Ham, Amanda Carpenter, Elisabeth Hasselback, Dana Perino, Laura Ingraham, Pamela Geller, Michele Bachman, and Peggy Noonan.

While I've made it clear I'm no fan of Michele Bachman, it's always been that I've disagreed with her politics.

If we defend liberal women from sexist attacks, we sure as hell better defend conservative women from sexist attacks. Like Sarah Palin, like Ann Coulter, we can't let any woman be attacked.

Elizabeth Hassleback responded on The View:



In the clip, Hasselback details her actions and thoughts regarding the piece, and Sherri Shepard equates hate f*cking with rape - a point that some people have a problem with. Amelia McDonell-Parry argues that hate f*cking is consensual sex with someone you can't stand, maybe want to call names, but want to have sex with them regardless. I've enjoyed McDonell-Parry's articles and posts regularly, but I'm going to push back on this and suggest that none of the women on this list want to have sex - hate f*cking or not - with Cimbalo. And what do we call nonconsensual sex? RAPE. I think her suggestion that calling it rape is wrong contributes to our rape culture. She admits that the piece was offensive and misogynistic but that it's a different viewpoint for Cimbalo and the women on the list. In my opinion, it just perpetuates that if you don't call it rape, then it isn't rape. And that's just wrong.

So to Michelle Malkin, Megyn Kelly, Mary Katherine Ham, Amanda Carpenter, Elisabeth Hassleback, Dana Perino, Laura Ingraham, Pamela Geller, Peggy Noonan and yes, even Michele Bachman - we will not stand for this. You deserve better. As a liberal to a conservative, I'm sorry we let this happen.

2 comments:

lindsay said...

My point is Cimbaolo is calling it hate f*cking while these women probably wouldn't want to have sex with him at all (especially after the article came out). Since their consent is, at best a tenuous yes, at worst a flat out no, I'm going to guess that they're not consenting to this supposed consensual act. And that's rape.

True, this is all my thoughts on the subject, but the article and claim of hate f*cking was all Cimbalo's thoughts on the subject, so I call it a draw there.

kb said...

but I think the point is that saying you want to have sex with person x isn't the same as actually having sex with person x. Otherwise many movie stars would be raped all the time. So yes, actually having sex with them would be rape, you're right. I think the odds of any of those women consenting are tiny. but that's not what the article did.
I dislike it and feel disrespected when guys say how "they'd totally do me". It's inappropriate, offensive, and meant to be dismissive of me as a person-and all of those are totally valid critiques of the playboy article-but I'd never, particularly near someone who has experienced sexual assault, pretend that it was the same as rape. It doesn't even begin to compare to their experiences.