Let's play a game of "who said it?" Ready? Let's go:
Trump or the Weekend?
Ask me if I do this every day, I said, "Often."
Ask how many times she rode the wave—"Not so often."
Bitches down to do it either way, often
Baby I can make that pussy rain, often
Often, often, girl I do this often
Make that pussy poppin', do it how I want it
Often, often, girl I do this often
Make that pussy poppin', do it how I want it
Often
Answer: The Weekend!
How about this one: Trump or Beyonce?
Over there I swear I saw them cameras flash
Handprints and footprints on my glass
Handprints and good grips all on my ass
This would be the woman that Michelle Obama called a "role model" for her girls...*drum roll*
Queen B!
And here's another: Trump or Kesha?
Don't really care where you live at
Just turn around boy, let me hit that
Don't be a little bitch with your chit chat
Just show me where your dick's at
Answer: Not Trump.
OH! And another: Trump or Drake?
Bust that pussy open, then I tell her bring it back. Make sure you don't fall in love, Cause I don't have time for that. Only thing I chase is money, if you tell me where its at.
A: Drake himself, ladies and gentlemen!
Now, this is not to excuse Donald Trump or his comments in any way, BUT it is to open up your eyes to how absolutely hypocritical the world is on the issue of the objectification of women. Hillary herself objectified women everywhere by letting her husband, who she had even Biblical grounds to divorce, trample all over her, manipulate her, commit adultery with several women, and lie to the whole world about...Not quite the message you want to send to young girls and women alike.
Car commercials are famous for having scantily clad women showing off more of their body than the car they are trying to sell. Victoria's Secret screams at women, "Be SEXIER! Be SKINNIER! You can't be confident unless you dress like THIS for a man! Buy our clothes, men WANT you to be wearing this!"
And you know what? They are absolutely right, and that is how they make their money. And should we, for a minute, mention how porn makes women look? Joshua Knobe, from psychologytoday.com, writes, "It doesn't look like pornography is leading men to treat women as mere 'objects' (like a table). Instead, we seem to be getting something that might be called animalification—treating a woman as though she lacks the capacity for complex thinking and reasoning."
Lacking. Animal. Object. Would you say those words to a girls face? I'm not a table. And I'm definitely not an animal.
What does the popular TV show How I Met Your Mother say about porn and relationships? From Barney himself (who goes through sleeping with over 200, (TWO HUNDRED) women on the show... (from a prerecorded sex tape): "Hello, Ted. If you're watching this tape, and I knew you'd pick this one, you're now in possession of my porn. And this can only mean one of two things: either I'm dead or I'm in a committed relationship. If I'm dead I want you to honor my memory by taking my body to the Hamptons and recreate Weekend at Bernies. I want to dance, go fishing, and I want to have sex with a girl. If on the other hand I'm in a committed relationship, as your best friend I have only one request... for the love of god get me out of it."
Wow, so a popular show tells us, "Porn videos are normal to have and make, and committed relationships are hell."
In the popular show, New Girl, main character Jess is stuck in a debacle at one point in the show because she hasn't slept with her boyfriend yet, so she watches 5 HOURS of porn to figure out "What he wants." And in another episode, the friend group has "Bangsgiving" where instead of having a meal and celebrating the actual holiday, they pick a friends name out of a hat and are in charge of bringing that person someone to bang, on Thanksgiving. Lets just make this clear: You and all your friends having sex at the same time with random strangers IS NOT NORMAL, OR HEALTHY. OR SANE. It's weird, it's objectified, and it makes sex look like trash.
Did you get that?
Modern society tells us, "Sex is for satisfying men. Women are objects. Porn should be normal and won't do anything to your brain. Sleeping with as many women as possible is the best way to go, and for the love of god, don't commit to one person."
Also, if for a minute, can we examine gender roles? What culture is telling us right now is,"Be anything you want! You don't have to conform to a gender! You don't need to be a woman or be a man!"
This is how it is absolutely BACKFIRING. Because it is hypocritical. To the absolute CORE. Because we have people like Lena Dunham, who sexually molested her little sister by pulling apart her vagina and "exploring it" and is praised for it, and somehow that is just her being herself. We have women who go around thinking that because they don't like to wear dresses or do "girly" things, they must be a man. There is a reason Johns Hopkins stopped doing gender reassignment surgeries (article link on bottom of page)...because it doesn't work. It isn't a problem with our bodies, it's a problem with our minds.
Josh Duggar admits to molesting his sisters when he was younger, which led to various marital issues later, and he goes out of the public eye and into intensive rehab. Lena Dunham sexually molests her sister and openly talks about her sexual encounters, and she gets a book deal. Case in point.
Essentially we live in a society that objectifies women, and then praises them for talking about graphic sexual experiences. And we objectify men for praising sexuality, but degrade them when they talk about their sexual experiences.
Now, that being said, I don't excuse Donald Trump for ANYTHING he said. At all. Especially being a candidate for presidency, it's time to grow up. The point here is, can you really blame a man for saying what he said, when our very own culture is saying, "Yeah, that's not OK, but we're all buying it."
Apparently not when a republican says it. But I don't need to defend Trump in order to vote for him.
Why on Earth are we shocked by the content of what Trump has said? This should not be new to us because WE are the ones who promote this kind of talk. We buy the music, we watch the shows, we read the books. Porn would be nothing without millions of people subscribing to it, who are really searching for something much deeper. Lyrics like the ones above would be nothing if we stopped buying it and said, "It's time to stop degrading HUMAN BEINGS through music." Women, we should be absolutely APPALLED at the way society talks to us. Because we are better than this. Men, you should be absolutely ASTONISHED at how manipulated you are by anything sexual, to get you to buy or sell something. The worst part is, we are already so far deep, America. We've gone so far into the locker room, we can't see the exit door.
Locker room talk is absolutely E V E R Y W H E R E. everywhere. And you do have the power to change it. YOU have the power to start saying, "No." You are not going to condone pornography because it absolutely promotes violence towards women and has extremely harmful effects on the brain that lasts for YEARS. Do you want your son to have erectile dysfunction by 30, along with commitment issues because he modeled his life after Barney Stinson? I hope not. You want him to be a decisive man, who keeps to his word, and respects every woman around him. Do you want your daughter exploring different avenues of what it means to be a woman because all she knows is what Victoria's Secret images and woman-in-the-kitchen jokes are telling her? No. You want her to know that she is strong, and she was meant to be bold and courageous, and she can still be a WOMAN who likes tools or trucks or baggy flannels.
But still, WHY. Why are these things harmful to us? What makes porn bad? What makes objectification bad? We know that sex has a time and a place where it is appropriate and brings two committed people closer together and creates that bond of oneness. And I do hope you understand that I by no means am saying sexuality is bad. It is a very GOOD thing. But like any good thing, it can be mistreated and twisted.
Essentially, anything that is harmful to the brain or the physical body, would be not good for you. Why is it not good? Because we believe in the value of human life, and in the value of a life lived to it's fullest potential. We as a culture, have built hospitals, insurance companies, schools, playgrounds, houses, food banks, massive grocery stores, customer service companies, restaurants, the list goes on and on...because we as humans WANT to flourish. If you go to a hospital with an emergency, you are expected them to value your life and do whatever they can to save it. If you go to a school, you expect them to do what it takes to get you the best education possible. If you go to the grocery store and see sales and ads and all that marketing so you will buy more, it's because your body NEEDS food and needs food in order to live, in order to flourish. We exercise because we know that that is what it takes to be able to do more, and live longer and better.
It all goes back to whenever we started to devalue life. Because then we started to devalue ourselves. Maybe it started in 1973 when it became legal to get rid of humans because of their inconvenience. Maybe it started when white men went and stole black men from their homeland and told them, "You are worth nothing, and you will work for me." Maybe it started way back in the dark ages when medieval torture was invented.
Wherever it started doesn't have to matter as much as when it stops. It started with humans not respecting each individual life. And it can stop with each individual life respecting humans. It starts and ends with you. It's time to stand up and say no. Stop telling our daughters and mothers that they aren't good enough the way they are. Stop telling our sons and fathers that they are weak,a and sex is the only thing that will make them "men."
What kind of a twisted message is that? When are we going to get serious about changing this cultural sickness?
It's time to put aside the childlike behavior. Locker room talk has got to stop, but it starts with us. It starts with us growing up and holding back our tongues from saying everything that comes to mind about someone. It starts with owning up to our share in the madness. By owning up to it, we are taking responsibility for it. Saying, "Yeah, me too. I have supported artists who have sexually explicit and objectifying music. I have been one of the 30,000 watching porn every minute, promoting violence on women and distorting my brain to think that sex is something I do for me and me only. I bought that book that talked about sexually molesting your own flesh and blood sibling. I bought that magazine with those images and supported that company. I bought seasons of that TV show and legitimately thought it was no big deal that they slept around so much. But I'm not going to anymore."
Have you ever thought what the show F.R.I.E.N.D.S. would be like in real life? Imagine a friend group you have now...because if F.R.I.E.N.D.S. was real life, you probably wouldn't have that friend group still. It would have been torn apart long ago. Ripped to shreds by jealousy. Lies. Unwanted pregnancy. One night stands. Feelings being trampled on again and again. Hot tears. Feeling like you are never enough because they keep going back to that person. Seeing your friend in a couch at a coffee shop and being ashamed, feeling embarrassed to look them in the eye. It would be Ben and Emma growing up with emotional attachment issues. F.R.I.E.N.D.S. is not real. It just doesn't work that way...and it's about time we see that.
I want to see a Disney show where the parents are not made to be stupid but are smart and witty and watch their children carefully, because that's what a parent is supposed to do. I want to watch a reality TV show where the kids aren't gossiping about their so-called friends behind their backs, but lifting each other up in encouragement. I want to see men committed to protecting and providing for the women in their life, with no strings attached. I want to see a car commercial that ACTUALLY SHOWS ME THE CAR.
How much different could we look, America? It is all one big IF. It's up to each one of us to start saying NO. Unsubscribe, exit the page, delete the music and stop downloading it, seek real relationships and take a risk instead of seeking a click on the internet.
Because if we don't, IF we do not start to say no and get it through our heads that we ourselves are the ones who contribute to the madness, we become, (ahem)
We start fighting. We get divided. It's us vs. them. It's pushing and shoving. It's all-out brawls. Sound familiar? And why is this revolving around sexuality? Because sexuality goes right to the core of every human being.
I refuse to be degraded to an animal. I'm not an animal. Do yourself a favor and look yourself in the mirror and say it. Say that you are not an animal.
Because it can stop, and it ends with us. This generation. We need to adopt a stronger mentality. We need to learn to say no. We need to want better for ourselves. We have to raise the awareness, we have to pick a better fight. We have to be the ones that are not willing to sacrifice another generation to this hypocrisy. We have the whole world accessible at our finger tips. It's time we leverage all of it and throw it around for a good reason this time. Because we want to be better. Because we know that WE CAN be better than this.
Like I said earlier, locker room talk is inexcusable. But so is not doing anything about it. It's time we as a collective nation to individual responsibility for our part in the madness. It's time to say, "Me too, I supported this. But not anymore." We have an exit, it's there because we value life, remember? Wherever you go in there are clear exit signs, just in case we need them. And in this case, we do.
Additional resources:
fightthenewdrug.com
http://www.mghclaycenter.org/parenting-concerns/te...
https://gotquestions.org/what-is-the-gospel.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgende...
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/lena-dunham-descri...
If you feel led, share your stories of how you are going to stop this cycle of madness and start valuing life and others with the hashtag #imnotananimal
