On his radio show Wednesday, Glenn Beck let it be known that he does not approve of a new PSA from the group FCKH8.com that features young girls repeatedly dropping the f-bomb in the name of feminism. “It’s despicable,” Beck said of the ad that has successfully drummed up controversy since it was posted online this week…. “No parent says to a six year-old girl, ‘Hey, hey, hey, you can say this,’” Beck said. “Go ahead. It’s cool. Use the F-word. Drop the F-bomb a few times. Nobody says that. Nobody! Nobody who is a decent parent ever would say that.”…. “It’s despicable,” he continued. “This is going to scar them. This is setting their feet on a path. They have shaped these girls and taught these girls something that you will never be able to unteach them.” He predicted that if he spoke to the girls in the video 25 years from now, he would be able to see the damage done.
You might find the language of this video offensive. You might even find the idea of very young girls liberally using the word, “FUCK!!” to be off-putting. If those things are offensive, what about the message of the video, the very simple- yet evidently quite radical- idea that girls and women deserve to be treated as equal to boys and men?
Sadly- yet all too predictably- Conservatives are incensed…INCENSED!!…that young, impressionable snowflakes are employing profanity with such gusto and verve. Right-wing ideologues like Beck are more than willing to kill the messenger, because doing so means that their bluster will completely fog over the real issue. What better way to maintain the status quo and ignore the real problem than by focusing on something shiny?
The real obscenities are things like income inequality, rape, and the war on a woman’s right to control her own body. THOSE are the things we should be focusing on, not young girls using “bad” words. Of course, under normal circumstances, no one would want their daughter screaming variations of “FUCK!!” But what’s normal about a world in which one of every five American women experience sexual assault? What’s normal about an economic system that pays women less than 80% of what women get for similar work? What’s normal about a legislative environment dedicated to reducing women to second-class status as the property of men? Kirsten Powers even equated the video to child abuse:
Conservatives want to focus on the messenger while completely ignoring the truth of the message. When you’re dedicated to maintaining the status quo in which White Males get to take what they want when they want, you truly are the problem. For my part, I salute FCKH8 for creatively spotlighting a very real problem. If repeatedly screaming “FUCK!!” helps to effect change and shock people into understanding the challenges women and girls face in achieving equality to men and boys, we should all be screaming, “FUCK!!”
By the way, if you’re far more concerning that using profanity will scar girls…even as you teach them that they’re “less than” men, you’re a pretty sorry excuse for humanity, don’tchathink?? If you think that teaching girls that income inequality, second-class status, and rape are simply what they should expect out of life, you truly are part of the problem.
