Sure, jokes are great, but I missed the point for the punchlines.
We need to talk more about the normalization of violence against women in the Republican Party. And by “we”, I mean me.
I have to call myself out on something.
For all of the jokes I’ve been making about Moms for Liberty homophobe Bridget Ziegler being exposed as a bisexual ménage à trois trysting hypocrite, there is a much, much darker component to this sensational story that I confess, I personally didn’t emphasize enough, or frankly, even at all.
That was a failing on my part. I woke up this morning and it hit me. Fuck, I thought — I was so busy piling on the jokes, that I never even mentioned the fact that we only know about this story because a very powerful man has been accused of rape. Accused of raping a woman he and his wife have had sexual encounters with in the past. In her apartment. After she declined to have sex with him alone in what was originally planned as another threesome.
I think in my choice to frame this story as an opportunity to crack wise, I may have actually accomplished the very thing I strive daily to call out — I overlooked the violence for the laugh.
And I have to own that.
As a victim of rape myself, I really, really need to do better. I certainly can’t lecture ANYONE else if I don’t do better.
There was room for jokes, given the nature of the inclusion of a Mom for Liberty, that’s just inherently true, but not at the expense of the larger issue. And the larger issue is not the hypocrisy of some Karen secretly liking women. The much, much larger issue is the often overlooked, frequently downplayed violence against women.
And while I’m pretty Fucking mad at myself and disappointed for just taking the ‘fuck around and find out revel in the schadenfreude’ approach to the story, I’m going to take this opportunity to apologize for what may have seemed to some, I can only guess, like I was downplaying the sexual assault in favor of the punchlines, and focus on what is undoubtedly more important when it comes to this story, and that is the general trend towards the increasing emboldening of, acceptance of, and even expectation of Republican men committing acts of violence against women. Violence of all kinds, but particularly against women.
Because, while I can only speculate, I most certainly can surmise, that Christian Ziegler, the Chairman of the Florida Republican Party, believed that his powerful status in his party would protect him from all of this. That he could commit the rape he is alleged to have committed, because the good ol’ boys down in the Capitol would shield him from consequence.
That it would all be ok. For him, and any other powerful white feller after him.
So he could receive the disappointing text from the woman he and his wife had been having a consensual three-way affair with, and decide that if promised sex was going to be withheld from him, that he was just going to take it instead.
His wife said she wasn’t able to participate in the scheduled tryst for whatever reason, and the alleged victim said that she was only willing to participate if Bridget was there. She said she was really the only reason she ever wanted to have sex with them.
Not long after she sent that text, Christian was outside her apartment. And she alleges that he forced her inside, where he then raped her over a bar stool. The police know his truck was parked in her development at the time of the alleged assault, and there is video of him leaving 38 minutes after he arrived.
The victim called her sister after the attack and went to the hospital where a sexual assault kit was administered.
The police have launched an investigation, and that is how we learned about the more salacious component of the notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ Moms for Liberty cofounder having sex with a woman. But since then, we’ve learned more about the alleged sexual assault. A woman was allegedly raped in her own apartment because she didn’t want to have sex with a man without his wife there.
And what is Christian Ziegler’s response to all of this?
Well, it’s rather predictable for today’s GOP. He’s “innocent”, this is the “leftist” media, and he’s not going anywhere.
And I’m not saying it’s not possible that he is innocent. He’s innocent until proven guilty. But I’ll say I highly doubt it, and based on what we’re learning about the attack, it seems quite likely that he’s not innocent. His brazen response certainly does track in a party where this sort of thing has increasingly become par for the course. Not only is it NOT disqualifying, on the contrary, it actually feels as though it’s seen as an accomplishment. A “test of manliness.”
Toxic masculinity is so pervasive in the so-called Conservative world now, that violence of all stripes is expected. If you’re a man who doesn’t pound his chest in Committee hearings, you’re somehow “less of a man.” You’ve gone “woke” or “soft’” And that same thinking applies to sexual assault.
And we don’t have to look very far for the when, why or hows of any of this.
The fish rots from the head down after all.
And that rotten fish-head was rewarded for bragging about grabbing women by the pussy with the most powerful politcal office on the planet.
And while at the time, even that evil, sexual predator asshole thought he needed to “cleanup” his history of sexually assaulting women by downplaying it as “locker room talk”, what he’s done in the years since, is double down on the fact that he was allowed to grab women by their genitals. He was a star after all. And when you’re a star, “you can do anything.”
He knows he’s normalized it now. He knows Ma & Pa and Billy Bob MAGA don’t think it’s such a big deal for a rich and powerful man to take sex from a woman. If anyone is in the wrong, it’s the woman for being so “dramatic.”
So, where do we end up?
The only place we could end up when we’re talking about a party of white bros of privilege notoriously obsessed with raw power, and infamously averse to accountability.
We end up with Ryan Fournier, the Co-founder of Students for Trump charged with assaulting a woman with a firearm. We end up with accused pedophile Roy Moore in Alabama, and Herschel Walker in Georgia despite a long, long history of horrific violence against women. We end up with Matt Gaetz and Matt Schlapp and we end up with Christian Ziegler allegedly raping a woman and then digging in on how he’s not going anywhere, and we can’t make him.
But none of that is helped when people like me ONLY make jokes, and miss the point entirely.
I need to do better. I’m not sorry I made wise cracks while dragging Bridget for her blatant hypocrisy, I often say that laughter is the best remedy during dark times, but it’s not a remedy of any kind when it eclipses the reason the times we live in are dark.
And what is becoming increasingly tolerable if not required in the Republican Party when it comes to acts of violence against women, against minorities, against the already marginalized, and against politcal adversaries, is very, very dark.
And I’m going to try harder to shine a light on all of that. That doesn’t mean the jokes will stop, it just means that I have to make sure I’m still making the larger point.
Because that is how we stop these fuckers, and stop the violence. By calling it out. By not missing it. Not letting it pass by.
Thank you for letting me correct myself here. I know what I am and what I’m not. I know I am very Fucking far from perfect, but I also know that I can admit when I missed the mark. When I made a mistake. I can own it, and I can learn from it. And that’s what I’m trying to do here.
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First of all, thank you for acknowledging that. All of us overlook things and can do better. I suppose my thought is that this is proof there can be more than one story within a story. They both need exposure.
I hadn’t followed this sordid story other than headline scanning, so the story for me was the unsurprising hypocrisy of Mrs. Bridget. I didn’t know about the rape within the ménage a trois. The fact that the moms of liberty are basing their nasty little movement off of these people was the punchline for me. But you uncover another component, also known but discussed in passing, of the women who enable these monsters to get away with their crimes, a la Bridget. The republican women who blindly believe in these MF’s are a blight on our gender. They are the ones who shouldn’t even be allowed near our children, who should be banned and made a mockery of. I’m glad the 3rd woman reported this rape, but my compassion is not all encompassing towards her. I think your outrage is justified Jo. I totally understand how your POV was steered by the blatant hypocrisy of these assholes. Don’t further beat yourself up over this. Your integrity speaks for itself. This follow-up helped me gather the fuller story. Xox