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He goes on about women in sex shops, young girls having sex, young women in swingers' bars, for EIGHT paragraphs. Finally he says, "Nor is it just in the bedroom where gender relations are undergoing a metamorphosis. Women are making their presence felt in the workplace." He gives that short shrift, then says, "Chilean woman might not be burning their bras but they are certainly loosening the shoulder straps. So why the sudden change? "
THIRTEEN paragraphs into this article, he finally mentions PRESIDENT Michele Batchelet: In answer to his own question, "So why the sudden change?", he writes, "Women's rights groups are almost unanimous in their response: the Bachelet factor. Chile's first-ever female president, 57-year-old Michelle Bachelet, is credited with pushing gender issues up the political agenda."
You can be sure that Michele Batchelet did NOT get to be president of Chile by pushing dildos and young girls having sex! Her effort has been to free women from economic slavery and from limits on their ambition. It is THIS WRITER who decided to place eight paragraphs of little vignettes of giggling young women in sex shops as the overwhelming CONTEXT of Batchelet's accomplishments. And his question, "So why the sudden change," is so vague that we have NO IDEA if HIS discussion of sex topics for eight paragraphs is what he put to the "women's rights groups" who were "almost unanimous" about Batchelet's impact on improved equality for women in Chile. Would they have trivialized her accomplishments in this way?
I don't think I've ever read a more offensive article on the subject of women's equality.
I have nothing at all against sexual freedom for women. It's an important topic. And to the extent that men define women as sexual objects and as baby-machines, women have had to free themselves--often with great difficulty--from those constrictions. But to define women's struggle for equality in these terms--dildos, sex shops, mini-skirts--is to make the male chauvinist mistake all over again. Women's equality is about women's brains and skills. It's about being respected as a whole human being. It's about equal pay . It's about stipends and pensions for homemakers, whose work is devalued because it is not paid for. It is about the high incidence of poverty among women. It is about women with children getting stranded. It's about equal education and opportunity. And, finally, it is about a fair and equitable and BETTER society than one in which the brains and skills of half the population are not smothered and atrophied or left unrewarded.
This article is like Brutus' speech about Antony, praising Antony as "an honorable man" and meaning the opposite. What is worse, I think the author of it, Oliver Balch, in unaware of his own irony.
Imagine that you are Michele Batchelet, just having completed a very successful term as the first woman president of Chile (with an 80% approval rating!). And you open the pages of the Guardian, and the first words you read, of an article entitled, "The Bachelet factor: the cultural legacy of Chile's first female president," are these: "In the heart of Santiago's shopping district, a giggling group of professional young women are comparing plastic dildos. Their laughter continues as they browse the sex toys and lubricant gels in the Solo Adultos sex shop. After lengthy discussion, they settle on some fluffy handcuffs and a pair of Penthouse bunny ears...".
One more thing: Michele Batchelet has had an enormous impact on the politics of Latin America--from her brilliant chairing of UNASUR during the U.S.-supported white separatist insurrection in Bolivia, to her championing the cause of the victims of Pinochet's brutal (U.S.-supported) regime (she herself having been one of the victims of it) and her opposition to any more such coups, including the recent one in Honduras. She also teamed up with the other woman president, Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, to cool male tempers after the US/Colombia bombed Ecuador, and helped to prevent a war. She is a superb diplomat, who has learned from her own experience of torture and exile, and losing family members to rightwing death squads, just how important democracy and unity are to Latin America.
But, hey, women can now buy dildos in Chile. Jeez. The Guardian should be ashamed of itself!
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