Sexism and Ingrained Misogyny

It’s interesting the way MEN who’ve never had to face the immersive totality of sexism and culturally ingrained misogyny feel so confident condemning the very idea of such ingrained gender discrimination. Look… I get it. No guy thinks he is a misogynist. No guy who considers himself an honorable person wants to accept such a glaring defect in his social intellect. That’s why misogyny still exists. And yes, women can be culturally ingrained anti-feminist misogynists too. People with the social intellect to recognize the problem and brave enough to call it out are attacked by those who are too squeamish to acknowledge their own ingrained, casual misogyny.

Sure… you guys don’t beat your wife or kids. You don’t make your women wear burkas. You don’t have a problem with women working. You don’t sell your daughters in marriage. Heck… you’re probably even all for lesbian intimacy for entertainment. 

Truthfully, we are all – every single human being – guilty of prejudices both gender and ethnic based. We’ve been taught those prejudices from the cradle. Factually, most of us recognize the wrong of those prejudices and try to overcome them. Ingrained prejudices – whether sexism or ethnic are casual because they are UNINTENDED. No one is accusing people who express ingrained prejudices of trying to oppress anyone. 

For the gentlemen reading this… Benefit of the doubt: You are evolved men who would never think of oppressing women.


That’s NOT The Same Thing As Ingrained Misogyny. 

It’s something even more deeply insidious. Most likely, it’s something you do or say completely unwares. It’s probably something akin to what I personally experienced with my own father. My father loves me and has always been proud of me and my talents. He took me to what I think was an art museum (or some kind of picture exhibit) when I was a child and I looked up at a painting in which the eyes seemed to follow you about the room. I said to him that I was going to learn to paint like that (FYI, I did achieve that goal). However, at the time he responded with what I’m certain he believed to be a kindly response and that he was advising me with what he accepted was a necessary truth. He replied, “But, sweetheart, there are no women artists.”

I believe that most people try to understand and make an effort to think and act fairly. But, see, most folks don’t realize the way culturally ingrained misogyny comes out. You, as men, cannot have the experience of the way that misogyny cuts deep into the psyches of women and girls. You cannot experience the burning injustices of it all. It is not possible for you to understand how the cultural misogyny becomes ingrained even in women and girls. Our societies have been ingrained to live and breathe the misogyny as “just the way things are.”

Yet, consider this… Think of the recent kerfuffle over Andy Murray correcting the ingrained, casual misogyny of the reporter who asked him about “the first US player” (not just the first US man – but, the first US person) to have made it to a major semi-final since 2009 – completely ignoring the FOUR American women who’d done so well before this interview with Andy Murray.

Permit me a pause to extend MUCH kudos to Mr. Murray for his enlightened social intellect.

To continue… Put yourselves into those women’s positions… Those four American women in the world of tennis… The reporter accorded the first man to finally achieve what they had long ago achieved the accolade of being first, of being the best, being prime. Those women and their achievements did not exist for that reporter in that moment. Those amazing women athletes were relegated to LESS than the man who finally caught up with them and made the grade. 

That is sexism and ingrained misogyny.

Here is the video of the referenced interview, 

with Andy Murray’s enlightened social intellect on display…

Trump has already damaged our futures…

The TRUTH of what Trump has already done to this nation: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ELECTION IS OVER?

How do we forget the hate, the bigots who came out in such numbers to support a misogynist xenophobe for whom no one – not even a Native American – is “American” enough not to be targeted by him and his supporters? 

Are we to believe these people will suddenly have a change of heart and stop being bigots against us?

Trump’s rhetoric and his supporters have exposed a deep chasm of hate in our national society. It isn’t something that is just going to go away after Election2016. It’s an evil revealed to be deeply ingrained in today’s GOP voting bloc. But, it’s also been exposed in non-affiliated voters, in libertarian voters, even in democratic voters. It seems half the nation’s decisions are driven by the evils of hate and fear. 

Fear fuels hate. “Hate is an insatiably ravenous and contagious mental illness that will devour us all; it requires substantive and qualified psychiatric treatment.” ~MomzillaNC 

The evils of hate and fear cannot look forward because they lack faith and Faith. They are both backward looking attributes, fixated on some fantasy of a NEVER-WAS-time-when-things-were-better. History has shown us how our divisions may be used against us all: let us be educated by that history. It’s so easy to hate; Fear never takes effort. Fear and hate come from reaching inward to the darkest places in our hearts, the places where evil hides away from our Faith. 

Looking forward… choosing hope… that takes constant work, always reaching outward… looking up… always drawing on a self-renewing well of hope and of faith… faith in ourselves… faith in the better nature of humanity… faith that we truly are Stronger Together… faith in our Faith.

Terror from the right

How – in this “land of the free…” this would-be haven of inclusivity and democracy for all – in these UNITED States of America are so many Americans embracing Trump, making jokes or excuses for his despicable character – or worse, loudly and even violently agreeing with him? How can so many Americans who so proudly and loudly proclaim their perceived constitutional rights to freedom want HIM – that admitted from his own lips sexual predator – for president? 

He revels in the most vile misogyny, sexism, and chauvinism about women – the evidence is from his own lips, repeated again and again for DECADES! His mind, his speech, his behavior toward women and girls – even his own daughters – is the most degrading and pornographic imaginable.

He mocks the disabled. He mocks Native Americans – truly, no one is American enough NOT to be a target of his rampant and despotic bigotry. This man is a pandering, self-aggrandizing, hate-mongering, cheating, thieving, racketeering, mobbed-up, pro-Russian, incest-fantasizing misogynist, isolationist, racist, bigot, xenophobe, serial-adulterer, serial-divorcer, fraud, narcissist, sociopath, and poster child for corporate welfare who delights in profiting off other people’s suffering, and keeps putting forward outrageously UN-constitutional – if not outright illegal – plans for this country and for the world. He is the antithesis of our American ideal.

AMERICANS! We are NOT just electing our own POTUS! We are choosing the leader of the entire free world!

What is so deeply wrong in the hearts of the right that could give rise to someone like Trump for president? How can so many ignore the undeniable parallels between Hitler’s regime and Trump’s rhetoric? How can anyone look at that jaundiced countenance and listen to his demented rhetoric and not realize that he is a very sick man? How can anyone make excuses for supporting someone with whom Skinheads, the KKK, Neo-Nazis, WBC, and even ISIS agrees? When those groups agree with your positions, it’s time and past time to examine your positions and change – it’s time to examine your soul.

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It really is frightening, especially for folks like me and my family. With kids already calling my half Persian, Christian son “ISIS” and talking about Trump sending Middle Easterners to “concentration camps” or the “gas chambers,” the prospect feels like real and present danger to me – My son has already been assaulted and injured by those same bullies. What Trump proposes is TERROR. It is terror on a grand scale – a scale comparable to Hitler… to Mussolini… to Stalin… to Mao…  to Saddam Hussein… to Bashar al Assad.

And, Trump is making the GOP over in his image… orchestrating global terror from the American right. He is making the GOP into the so-called Alt-Right… into a white supremacist party.

For those folks contemplating not stopping Trump, please consider: When you enter the voting booth, remember, you are not – NOT – choosing for YOU when you vote. This election is not some philosophical exercise in democracy. You are choosing with your vote FOR every parent and child in America, FOR every woman and girl who has been or ever will be victimized and oppressed by the self-entitled Trumps of this world… FOR every not white, not male, not rich, not ChristianISH child in America and around the world most imperiled by a Trump presidency… or you are voting against them.

Even when Trump backs off hateful, Hitler-esque rhetoric, as with his “Ban on Muslims,” he really just finds a new way to double down on his plans for targeted marginalization (creating an avenue for genocide) of now EVERYONE from Muslim majority countries. Everything he says and plans specifically targets peoples of already marginalized ethnicities – You are deluding yourself if you believe he won’t ultimately target everyone who are the NOT-white-rich-ChristianISH-men of the world.

Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST women and girls. Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST Americans like my husband and son, Hamid and Graham Mehrzad (“Mehrzad” means “born of love”). Every vote for Trump is a vote AGAINST every ordinary, hardworking Middle Eastern-American family and every immigrant family and every minority family in the UNITED States of America.

This is my plea – When you enter the voting booth, remember these names: Hamid and Graham Mehrzad. 

Hamid is the kindest, gentlest man I’ve ever known. He’s proud of his citizenship and he always tells people that they don’t realize what they have in America; he says there’s an essential “freeness” that exists no where else he’s ever been. And, he traveled throughout the Middle East and Europe, and has lived in three countries. 

Our son, Graham Mehrzad is a brilliant, funny, loving boy whom we are raising Christian. He made his personal commitment to Faith four years ago. He’s just been invited into the Duke Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) for academic excellence. Graham Mehrzad has always had a heart dedicated to charitable service, from personally raising thousands of dollars for the AHA, to charity walks for ALS and Cancer, to homeless outreach, to volunteering in the local food pantry, and more… and he’s only twelve years old.

Remember Hamid and Graham Mehrzad. Remember their faces pictured below when you enter that voting booth. These are the real people for whom you are really voting.

Graham Mehrzad and Hamid through the years