This is where it falls apart:
By Cheezy’s own frequent and very emphatic pronouncements elsewhere on CFC:OT, one person insulting or denigrating or demeaning another can never be sexism. The only form of sexism that matters, the only one deserving of the term, is institutional sexism. Eric Bolling is not part of an institution preventing Miriam Mansouri from getting a job, or moving up within a company. No institutional sexism, no sexism, by my opponent’s own favored definition.
I didn't say that, and I've repeatedly clarified that this is not what I said. I said that
by itself, independent of anything else in the universe, it is not sexism or racism (or heterophobia, or whatever other counter-discrimination caricature you can dream up). Bolling is a man, and as correctly asserted earlier in the thread, a woman saying that joke (boobs on the ground) has a very different connotation, just like a white guy saying the N-word has a very different connotation than a black guy saying it. Thus, as a man, he is perpetuating sexism by reducing a woman to a body part. A woman saying the joke about another woman is still perpetuating sexism, but it doesn't have the same force that a man saying it does, since she isn't asserting her own dominance in the act of utterance. His purpose in making the joke was to cut the female pilot down after being praised. We might reword their exchange like this:
"She did a great job carrying out an historic mission!"
"Yeah, but she's still a woman."
It's the exact same meaning, and this is demonstrated by the fact that his joke is irrelevant: they
weren't on the ground. If the joke had relevance to the situation; like, say, she were a sniper and presumably had taken out some high-profile target while laying on her belly (and thus boobs), then hey, it's a play on words relevant to the situation. But nope, he just grasped at the only joke about a woman's body he could think of at that moment. That's the difference.
Sexism, in short, is never “simple.”
Really. You
actually wrote that. I didn't think you'd actually physically state so plainly that this post is mansplaining. You wrote the whole smartassed post just to lecture me about a turn of phrase that doesn't even mean what you think it means. Because it's really beyond you to
just admit that I'm right, no, you first have to reclaim what I already said as your own, then lecture me about how I'm supposedly oversimplifying the issue, when it's clearly you who's lacking an appreciation for nuance.
I am astounded.
To be completely honest, I think both of the comments could have been funny depending on the context. For example, someone mentioned Dolly telling that boobs on the ground line as a joke, I believe? She's always been more than happy to engage in humor about her breasts, so that's not beyond the possible, and would be a good example of a funny situation.
What's really irritating about this situation is that the lady was being praised for her breakthrough position and authority and the two guys crassly chose instead to tear her down. They were not, IMNSHO, trying to do it in a joshing way, they were being mean and petty. Even their co-host thought so.
Thank you.
Won't someone think of the men!
and cavalier flyting (“You got bombed by a woman!”
