Fiat Lux

They say you should never blog while angry, but I am going to make an exception this morning. The Washington Post has an article out today by one Charlotte Allen that’s about the most pathetic excuse for woman-bashing I’ve seen for a long time.

It doesn’t matter that the author is herself a woman. Comments like this:

I don’t understand why more women don’t relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.

are so thoroughly ignorant and sexist that I’m amazed the Post actually published it. What the hell were they thinking?

I just read that Mexico City has now joined several other locations, including cities in Japan, India, and Brazil, in adding women-only buses and subway cars to combat the ongoing problem of male sexual harassment of female passengers.

According to the article, the women seem to love it, and frankly, I can’t blame them. There’s scarcely a woman on this planet who has not been groped, pinched, handled, or leered at against her will at some point in her life (myself included), and not having to worry about that as you go to work every day would be a welcome relief.

But there’s another part of me that is angry, too. Why do women have to be segregated from men in order to be safe? Why do so many men seem to lack even the most basic sense of courtesy or respect when there is a breast or a butt in their vicinity? In short, why is is so damn hard for men to just keep their hands to themselves?

And please, spare me the “ohhh, they just can’t help themselves” bulls***. Men are perfectly capable of self-control. They are choosing otherwise. And these kinds of actions, however, well-intentioned, just reinforce the perception that a woman outside the ’safe zone’ is an acceptable target.

It’s Friday night and I should be kicking back with a glass of wine after a long hard week, but this caught my eye and I had to pass it on:

A striptease of sorts at a federal courthouse has an Idaho woman fuming.

While passing through security, the woman was asked to remove her bra because it had an underwire. The undergarment set off a metal detector.

The woman says she had no choice but to have her husband shield her from others so she could take off her bra. However, the embarrassment did not end there.

“I had to place my bra on the conveyor belt to go through the X-ray machine,” says Lori Platto. “When I got to the end, well, one of the security officers said to me, ‘That’s a girl. Now you can go put it on.’ I was humiliated. I feel demeaned, because I was just… what was I to do?”

The U.S. Marshal’s office says its guards followed appropriate security protocol.

Considering how common underwire bras are, I have to wonder why this particular woman got asked to remove her bra; this can’t possible be the first time they’ve had a woman go through the metal detectors wearing an underwire bra. Were the guards looking for a a cheap thrill at her expense? If so, they should all be fired.

Hat tip, Peter at PR Differently.