THE ART OF TRASHING

by Ruth A. Sheets

I just finished reading the book Ms Gloria Steinem, A Life by Winifred Conkling.  It presents an amazing worker in the field of women’s rights.  Gloria Steinem has been a hero of mine for decades.  She spoke and wrote about issues I felt were the essence of what women needed, or at least, what we thought women wanted.  Ms. Conkling reminded me of the trashing that Ms. Steinem and her colleagues faced because they stood for those needs.  Due to the misinterpreted media concept of equal time, the trashers got enormous coverage that expanded an anti-feminist movement that was really pretty small at its beginning.  As time went on, it became larger and more personal, virulent, and nasty, although not a majority.   

Trashers become disgruntled that a minority is demanding rights the trasher believes are either unnecessary or undeserved, or might make life different for themselves.  “You don’t need that.  You’re being treated just fine, I know.”  The trasher takes up a position against what many people might think are fair demands.  In order to make such a stand work, however, reality must be manipulated.

Trashers from the trashed group (in this case women), need to be recruited as the spokespersons against the demands.  It would not work as well to have men speaking against women since that is not particularly unusual and would not get much attention.  The anti-Women’s movement hero had to be a woman, tried in the crucible of hate, in her case, anti-Communism, Phyllis Schlafly.  Ms. Schlafly was opposite of what she wanted women to be, but she worked to convince women they wanted what she said they did, like  The right to not work outside the home.  They also didn’t need access to reproductive health services, fair treatment on the job (if they dared to step away from their sphere), or anything but what they already had.  How very white middle-class!  She encouraged conservative women to feel ostracized by those horrible women’s libbers. 

Trashees must always be kept on the defensive, rarely getting to present their message fairly for the general public.  The media orchestrates this by pitting them against the trashers on a one-to-one as though their positions had equal support in the broader society and were equally valid.  The entire interview was spent trying to answer the charges of the trasher egged on by the interviewer.  The trasher’s trumped-up anger (or at least indignation) was seen as justified while the one being trashed was seen as an angry b***h.

The true art comes in when the trasher gets to pin labels, a descriptive term to evoke negative images for the trashee and positive ones for themselves (like “baby killers, man-haters, bra-burners” while for themselves, “pro-life).  The label “pro-life” has lasted as has baby-killer even though neither label is accurate, at least not for the ones to whom it has been pinned.  Listening to the “pro-life”er speeches on the National Mall every January on the anniversary of Rowe v. Wade,  it is clear their “pro-life” stance stops at “pro-birth” or actually,  “pro-forced-birth.”  And, no feminist I know has ever killed a baby, but not wanting to financially support those children forced to be born has led to deaths..

In addition, and maybe most important, the trasher makes trashees appear less than human for even daring to make any demands let alone the particular ones being trashed.  Those feminists were really all lesbians so didn’t deserve even to be heard – they’re not real women anyway.  

Trashing has been used against people for a very long time, possibly as long as humans have been around.  The description of trashing above can be applied to any group that has tried to gain rights:  Blacks, Indigenous persons, LGBTQ persons, Latinex and disabled persons, and so forth.  Just because it has been done forever does not mean we should be participating in it in the 21st century. 

The “Trasher in Chief” is trashing everyone he can before he leaves office next month, keeping up his trashing pace.  His usual targets:  immigrants, people of color, Democrats, women, scientists, people who don’t agree with him, anyone who is not utterly loyal to him.  We know he is trashing people, yet his every tweet, his every rally speech is covered, the excuse, “well, he is the president.”  His followers rarely choose to hear the position of the persons being trashed, but don’t worry, they would do nothing even if they did.  Their trasher must know something that lets him do his trashing, Right?  Wrong!  The truth is he will manufacture a reason so he can practice his art, probably the only thing he is good at (except whining, perhaps).

I admit I have done a little trashing myself now and then, lately directed toward Mr. Trump and the people who choose to follow after him rather than think for themselves.  I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t want to get good at the art of trashing.  I don’t want to call my Trump-loving acquaintances something nasty, short, and crushing.  It is hard sometimes when I find myself with a full trash can cocked hearing one more Trump supporter yelling that the vote was a fraud, even in the face of the truth that this was the most secure election in history, or their complaining that a vaccine can’t be trusted because those evil scientists are going to kill us, when that science is what will ultimately save us from the pandemic.  I mostly hold on to it, but, let’s face it, sometimes trashing is fun.  Being the trashee is not.  It seems to me, there is room in this world for everyone to have basic rights and that those who don’t have the rights need to be heard and believed.  We should be going for rights over restrictions, but weighing both in light of what is best for those who have been denied the rights of full citizenship or even humanity for centuries and more.  

I believe we can do that, but we will need a lot of help.  We need to do away with false equivalencies.  All arguments are not of equal value and some are simply not true.  The media in all forms need to step up on this one and stop putting the trash out there for people to pick through than fling. 

Voters need to hold their representatives accountable when they choose to trash someone with a lie rather than give an honest answer.

I keep wondering what Phyllis Schlafly got from trashing feminists who wanted more options for women.  She did get a lot of attention and a lot of women to support her trashing project.  And here we are  50 years later and women still lack rights that would make life better for most, but Gloria Steinem is still standing up to the trashers.

We don’t need any more trash artists unless it really is an artist who makes awesome things from the trash they find (or hear), changing it into something special that lets us see people as beautiful, worthy of our respect.