Ray Rice, Bimbo Porn Propaganda, and a Culture of Misogyny or Love Listens

"The two best days in a woman's life are when somebody marries her and when he carries her dead body to the grave."
 ~Hipponax, 580 B.C.


" In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body."
 Ephesians 5

 A Culture of Misogyny

Ray Rice

Last week my neighbor's husband choked her out and threw her across the room breaking her jaw. After a long, abusive relationship, she's divorcing him.

My best friend in college also had her jaw broken by her abusive husband several years ago. She didn't leave until he threatened to kill her.
One in four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime and one third of all female homicides occur at the hands of an intimate partner. More here.

We hate women in our culture. Ray Rice is the most current example of how deep that hate goes and just how much we are willing to overlook.

Rice originally received a two game suspension for a video that shows the aftermath of an attack that knocked out his then fiancee. The NFL deemed this a severe punishment and the media went crazy.

Commissioner Roger Goodell responded: "I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn't get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will."

After the brutal video of Rice actually knocking out his fiancee surfaced, the Ravens cut him from the team and the NFL suspended him indefinitely. But my question is, if you know that he is guilty, WHY DOES THERE NEED TO BE VIDEO?

The reason, I fear, is twofold. We, as a culture, devalue women and Ray Rice is exceptionally good at football. The former is infinitely more important than the latter. The NFL can't be the moral police, but the way in which the entire incident unfolded demonstrates that perception trumps morality. Really, everyone just wants the whole thing to go away.

Sadly, it isn't.

Casual Misogyny

What do you tell a women with two black eyes?  Do you know the answer? If you don't, ask four men. If they can't tell you then it's possible you live in a utopia and you should tell me where it is and how you did that.

Do you know what this is (besides eye candy for all you Supernatural fans)?

 Did you call it an "A" frame t shirt? No. You didn't.

We laugh at or are indifferent/unaware of how deeply ingrained misogyny is in our culture. And then when we can't defend our actions, we go ahead and defend them anyway. 

Cee-lo Green took to twitter last week to - well I'm really not sure what his purpose was. But somehow he ended up defending the idea that consent was not an operational concept if someone wasn't conscious. I'm not really concerned with Cee-lo's legal acumen. What does concern me is the need to defend what is indefensible. I have no doubt Mr. Green would feel extremely violated if another human being drugged him and then he woke up next to them.

 Bimbo Porn Propaganda

Have you ever been on Tumblr? Of course you have. This is the internet and you already know Tumblr is like Pinterest's creepy older brother. What you may not know is there is an entire culture built around the objectification of women.

I'm not talking about porn in general. That is another conversation. I'm talking about Tumblrs where women are tortured for a man's pleasure (not BDSM-I'll deal with Christian Grey another time), encouraged to be sex objects, and turned into bimbos (subhuman sex objects used and abused by men).The tamest thing you might see at one of these places is a woman being compared to a fleshlight. Hipponax, quoted above, would have felt right at home on Tumblr. He's just 26 centuries too late to see it. Look how far we haven't come!  It is all over the top and I really hope that all of it is tongue in cheek.

But it isn't. Ray Rice proves it isn't. There is a rage simmering in too many men and it is boiling over. Think about this: in what context does Ray Rice get to the point where he feels like the best thing he can do in a particular situation is hit his fiancee? The physical violence he displayed is built on a foundation of emotional abuse and neglect. If you don't think that is true let me pose this question: if Ray Rice had restrained himself and never hit his wife, would that mean they should be leading couple's retreats for healthy relationships? Or more general: does the absence of physical violence equate to a healthy, loving relationship? The answers are of course, NO and NO.
 The point of all this is to say that just under the surface of a calm, polite, progressive society is a turbulent male anger at being forced to share its toys. Religion, genetics, politics and every other institutionalized power is used to continue in a practical inequality. How many women are in the senate?

The irony of this is that Paul, the guy everyone thinks is a misogynist, is the guy teaching us about what it means to move beyond anger and venom of the culture: Love as Christ loved. Because the cure for physical violence is not the absence of physical violence.

The first lesson is this:

Love Listens.

"We view approaching another human self as considering their unique personal identity and personal history with care, with attentive respect, or with what the New Testament writers called agape."

If you want a real life example of how this works in a slightly different setting go here. Dan Cathy (owner of Chic-Fil-A) and   Shane L. Windmeyer (Gay Rights Activist) develop a friendship in the midst of Windmeyer's organization protesting Chic-Fil-A. The miracle of the story is what happens when people stop shouting and start listening.  

We don't deal with objects. Not the person working behind the counter at McDonald's. Not the guy on the street asking for money. Not women. Not your girlfriend. Not your wife.

Inside everyone is a fragile dream easily trampled by callous hands and hearts. Love doesn't break battered reeds and it doesn't put out smoldering wicks.

Love listens and is transformed by the Other. But until we learn to listen we will continue to have anger; frustrated that there are objects (people) refusing to bend to our will. Make no mistake: we will continue to break what won't bend until we learn to listen.

This had to be drug, kicking and screaming into the light. As long as people on national television can have a good laugh at violence we are on the wrong track. People everywhere are shouting. People on television, people at work, and people at home. But the volume at which you speak is no guarantee that anyone is listening.

We have to do better.  We have to stop interpreting others before we understand what they mean. And the good news is that listening isn't hard. Men have to start listening. Anne Graham Lotz describes standing up to speak and men turning their backs. Only people who think they have the absolute truth can afford to turn their backs on another perspective. But that attitude is like an apple tree in the early spring covered with blossoms refusing to accept sunshine or rain because it wants to remain frozen in the perfect beauty of the passing moment.

Men have to listen. Love has to move out of the realm of concepts and become a living breathing verb.


Begin this way: love the next person you communicate with by paying attention to the emotional content of the message they are sending, as well as the factual. Ask them why they feel that way about what they are saying. In this you will create an expanding horizon that only gets infinitely bigger.

And Boom. One step closer to eliminating misogyny and all the other forms of hate as well.


"Oppression always has two sides. On the one side stands the master, on the other side lies the slave. On the one side is the arrogant self-elevation of the exploiter, on the other the suffering of his victim. Oppression destroys humanity on both sides. The oppressor acts inhumanely, the victim is dehumanized. The evil the perpetrator commits robs him of his humanity, the suffering he inflicts dehumanizes the victim."
 ~Jürgen Moltmann