A man called a woman a hooker, another woman defended her, and some “feminists” are pissed.
Don’t get your hopes up, though. They’re mad at the women, not the man.
New York Times reporter Jacob Bernstein — iconic reporter Carl Bernstein’s 38-year-old son — said first lady Melania Trump is a hooker while at a New York Fashion Week event Feb. 12. He was sitting next to Victoria’s Secret model Emily Ratajkowski. Although she didn’t name him, she attacked him for “slut shaming” in a series of tweets the next morning. Melania later tweeted a “thank you” to Ratajkowski, and Bernstein since been reprimanded.
Slate copy editor Heather Schwedel, who should have copy edited her story into nonexistence, described the incident as an “annoying nontroversy” Feb. 14. It’s a non-issue presumably because Melania is by default not a woman, and barely a human being, thanks to her surname.
“On Monday, Ratajkowski tweeted that a journalist she sat next to, presumably at a private event, had told her that Melania was a ‘hooker,'” Schwedel wrote. Note she defends Bernstein by writing that his sexism is OK because the event was “presumably” private.
Her second argument for why this is really not that big of a deal? Donald Trump.
“While protesting slut-shaming is a valid stance, if this seems like an annoying nontroversy, well, that might be an even more a valid stance.” she explained, as if being married to Donald strips Melania of all dignity and self-worth. “When defending Melania, why not also point out how much her husband’s administration’s policies stand to hurt women’s rights and safety?”
Vogue’s Michelle Ruiz wrote Feb. 14 that Melania’s appreciative tweet to Ratajkowski using the hashtag #PoweroftheFirstLady was “ironic.”
“This type of female support is a nice sentiment, of course,” Ruiz said, “but it reads as more than a bit ironic coming from Mrs. Trump.”
Ratajkowski, who’s a Sen. Bernie Sanders fan, stood up for the wife of a man she’s most definitely not a fan of, President Donald Trump. She stood up for Melania because feminism bypasses political ideology, and when one woman is being targeted, another should be there to fight back. Melania’s value is not negated by the man she’s married to or how active she chooses to be as first lady, and Schwedel and Ruiz demanding caveats when defending her is the worst kind of feminist failure.
Make a note that both the Slate and Vogue writers are women.
This isn’t the first time women have tried to delegitimize Melania. They’ve found particular pleasure in ignoring her while she’s mocked, mocking her in front of millions, and making fun of her because she isn’t fitting into the “traditional” first lady role. (RELATED: Feminists Love To Hate Melania Trump, And It’s Hurting Their Cause)
It’s similar to the petty assumption women make that a woman who is quiet must actually be a bitch, or that a beautiful woman must be mentally deficient. These brain stem snap judgments reveal how shackled women are to our competitive, eat-or-be-eaten struggle for desirability. We’ve yet to grasp the notion that we can all succeed without using the bodies of vanquished foes as leverage.
Slate hauls in around 25 million uniques a month, according to Quantcast, and that’s why this is concerning. That’s 25 million people who are being exposed to its special brand of stupid. Twenty-five million that may now be infected with Slate’s twisted version of feminism that defines a woman’s worth by her political affiliation. Let’s hope they have all their vaccinations.
Modern-day feminism has a lot of problems– a lot. It’s especially difficult to tackle these while a number of its self-designated champions refuse to acknowledge the problems exist, or worse, try to use them to create divisions. But Ratajkowski’s staunch defense of the first lady gives reason for confidence that there are still women capable of seeing past partisan divides to point out sexist garbage when they see it.
