One of the worst things anyone can say to me is to tell me to relax, or calm down. I find it insulting in the extreme. I don't get all 'het up' about daily life stuff, so when I do get upset you can be pretty sure there's a damn good reason. I was recently told to 'lighten up' while talking about Ted Nugent's predilection for sex with minors. This set off all my anger reflexes. The conversation veered to Jerry Lee Lewis and Woody Allen, neither of whom have any more of my respect than does Ted Nugent. They fall in the same bucket of crap in my mind that Hitler falls into.
If you don't know you're history, I'll need to explain the Hitler remark. Hitler apparently had an affair with his young half-niece. They lived together in 1925, when she was seventeen. Ted Nugent obtained guardianship from the parents of a seventeen-year-old girl so that he could have sex with her, because she was too young to marry him. Jerry Lee Lewis married a thirteen-year-old, who happened to be his first cousin, once removed. Woody Allen married a girl who had basically been living as his daughter, whatever he says to the contrary - there was a great deal of information leaked to the media about the inappropriateness of his behaviour with her, right from the beginning - if he'd been anyone other than Woody Allen, most people would have wanted to castrate him.
So, as to my disgust of Ted Nugent, being told to lighten up was not something I appreciated. One in four women are raped or molested in their lifetime. That's 25%. Chances are you know several of them, or happen to be one of them. It happened to me, along with approximately 4.75 million other Canadian women alive today, and around 45 million American women. This is based on the known statistics, and doesn't take into account the women who have never been able to talk about it, or the women who are dead now as a result of it.
If you stop and think about these numbers, is this a subject where people are really supposed to lighten up? I would propose that as a society we have already been far too relaxed about this. Sex between an adult and an underage girl is illegal for a reason. It's extremely damaging on multiple levels. First, she equates sex with self-esteem and love. Second, she's not ready for a sexual encounter, and only thinks she is, but she will reap the psychological fallout later where she will most likely feel guilt and/or shame for her own actions - despite the fact that she should have been protected from this sort of contact. Third, it will affect all of her subsequent sexual relationships.
In the case of Ted Nugent, I actually feel the worst offenders in the deal are the girl's parents. Who the hell allows someone like Ted Nugent to take virtual ownership of their child? Real parents know very well that, no matter what their seventeen-year-old daughter says, there is no way their child should be involved in a relationship with a much older man. It doesn't matter how much your child professes to be in love with someone. It's a parent's job to protect children from their own damaging actions until such time as they are to be considered a full-fledged adult.
Nugent is a predator, not just of animals, but of teenage girls. He brags about his 'sexual conquests' with underage women. How is it any kind of a conquest to manipulate such malleable souls into an illegal sexual encounter with someone famous? In my opinion, he doesn't just go after the young girls because of their youthful appearance, either. I think it goes deeper than that. I think it's likely he's afraid of how he'll stack up with a real woman. After all, a teenage girl is much less confident in her own skin, and is less likely to complain when she doesn't achieve orgasm. The whole thing about being starstruck only makes it worse in their case.
This whole jail bait scenario reflects the attitudes of society toward females and sex. If a man can do what Nugent did, and not end up in prison for it, society has some very bent attitudes. How is it that what he did was okay in any way? How did the courts allow this? Well, obviously money and fame talk. What he did should have been blatantly illegal, but he either fooled the judge who signed the order into thinking he only 'wanted what was best for the girl', or the judge was a corrupt piece of crap. The parents of the girl should be in jail, too, for child endangerment.
Yes, I have a virulent reaction to these sorts of situations. They make me really, really angry. With the Republicans constantly trying to take away women's rights in the US, it's no surprise they would use a moron like Nugent to further their cause. He certainly isn't the poster boy for the rights of anyone but his own self. I won't get too much into the animal cruelty stuff, because this post would be far too long, but suffice it to say he's a heartless bastard. He's stated that animals are supposed to suffer and feel pain. It's what...their job? Just to feed an overcompensating, overweening ego? This is a man with a falsely inflated sense of entitlement, and I thank every spiritual power that might exist that I was never one of his fans.
No, I won't relax, no matter how much it sometimes hurts to speak out. No matter how scary it might be. No matter how much my voice might shake from fear and anger. If I stood down to those who told me to relax, it would hurt me even more to know what a coward I had become.
agreed on all counts!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sue!
Delete