Dr. Kellie Bean OpEdNews.COM
Reading the news online last week, I came across two headlines which, had I been from Mars, would have taught me much about the U.S., Britain, and the Western half of the planet in general. The first headline celebrated U.S. capitalist muscle: U.S. site triumphs in bimbo bout; the second blandly reported on British atrocities in Africa: Kenyan women stage rape protest. As I am not from Mars (or, is it Venus? I forget how it goes), these headlines simply reminded me again of the glaring injustices fueling the world we live in.
The first story explained how the American owner of a contested domain name successfully secured ownership of that name, despite a Spanish company's claims to exclusivity. The Spanish company, Bimbo S.A., sells baked goods and Bimbo refers to a bear featured in that company's logo. Having promised not to sell cake or bread, the American was granted the right to use bimbo in his domain name, bimbo. biz, which in this case refers to a morally loose woman. (Reuters helpfully included this definition.) The American website owner has yet to put anything on his site, but now that the term bimbo is safely his own, he is free to create a site appealing to the adult, novelty and humor market code for soft core images and misogynist humor appealing to anyone comfortable with the term bimbo. A victory for misogynist capitalists everywhere!
The second story reported that Kenyan women organized a courageous protest against sexual violence fostered by continuing Western imperialism. The women marched before the British mission in Nairobi, leveling allegations of rape against British soldiers who have been training in their northern rural home for the past 30 years. Fed up with the misogynist colonialist presence, these women carried children produced by these rapes and rightly demanded the resources needed to educate and care for their sons and daughters. In language reflecting the British imperial machismo that would certainly account for the rapes of hundreds of African women, the Ministry of Defense claimed to be conducting a robust and vigorous investigation.
These two examples demonstrate how the strapping antagonism of the still-colonizing West and its politics are iniherent in the language of reporting. That is, only in the media of late capitalism (a western invention) does an overheated headline like U.S. site triumphs in bimbo bout make sense. Combining the machismo of a boxing match, the capitalist fantasy of rough competition ensuring honorable outcomes, and that solidly western cherry on top, the contested woman, this tidbit of reporting lays bare the bitter misogyny at the heart of the imperial west and carried out, in this case, upon the bodies of African women.
Is it any wonder, then, that at a time of rising unemployment, deadly and spurious foreign policy, and unprecedented suffering in Africa, images of Arnold Schwarzenegger and his prim, grinning wife dominate print media in the U. S.? Is it any wonder that this man, who made his fortune in films celebrating the myth of the Great White Male, and famously befriended a known Nazi sympathizer, is the frontrunner in the race for governor of California? Were I a visitor from another planet, a quick scan of the news might persuade me that white powerful men possessed of passive women and smirking wealth controlled western politics and the media. I might think, correctly, that those in control of information and politics worship at the altar of wealth and celebrity. I might assume, finally, that women, virtual bimbos or flesh and blood human beings serve frequently as the victims of this group.
Dr. Kellie Bean, d_baron57@yahoo.com. Associate Professor, English, Marshall University, who teaches feminist theory and cultural studies. Currently writing a book, "The Vexed Body Politic: Feminism and the Media." This article is originally published at opednews.com. Copyright Kellie Bean, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
