Kanye's wife: a (naked) handmaid

Kanye’s wife: a (naked) handmaid

Why isn’t anyone intervening in what seems to be an abusive relationship? This is why #MeToo fizzled.

I feel so uncomfortable. These images are unsettling. She seems numb or terrified.

I understand progress has come to mean: ‘you do you, I do me’, ‘as long as you’re not hurting anyone, your body your choice’, and ‘it’s your life, do you’. Beautiful, lovely liberalism.

But it’s not that simple. No one lives on an island. We are part of a group, be it family, neighborhood, community, society, and nation. Today, community can also mean global and digital thanks to all the technologizing we managed, although at what cost? Either way, admit it or not, we affect one another with our actions or lack thereof.

So, in a world saturated by celebrity mental health activists and empowered feminists, I am finding the silence around Bianca Censori’s current predicament puzzling. This woman looks distressed and uncomfortable. This isn’t what a happy stroll with your man looks like.

She has frequently been paraded like a human sex toy by Kanye West (this guy…urgh), someone who’s known for making women feel insecure about their bodies and wardrobe choices. His delusions of grandeur have compelled him to insist on dressing his women as he sees fit, which never ends with these women looking…sane, to say the least.

Many have expressed concern over his abusive behavior toward his ex-wife, in public without repercussions, as well as his threats against her then partner. More recently, he’s been banned by an Italian boat rental company in Venice for lewd acts in public; she was performing the ‘obscenities’, of course.

This woman is not OK.

So, where are the feminist mental health and self-care activists when a woman is clearly, visibly, and commonsensically unhappy to be paraded wearing body stockings and holding a pillow to cover her breasts? And please let’s not do the easy-way-out ‘well, you don’t know whether she minds or not, let’s not infantilize women’ song.

Asking about the well-being of a fellow human being should not be considered interference in private affairs or causing nuisance. Nor infantilizing or paternalistic. That’s what we used to believe about domestic violence: private affairs.

We can see Bianca’s uncomfortable so let’s at least agree on that, without delving into ‘how do you define uncomfortable’? One in three women worldwide suffer from physical or sexual abuse, and that’s just what’s reported. There are various other forms of abuse and they may not all leave visible marks or scars. Public humiliation and degradation is one.

I suppose I’m just hoping to see a sense of community and some basic humanity. I hope that’s not controversial. Everyone is active when it’s too late, when it’s time to virtue signal, after a crime has already been committed, when a woman reveals she’d been abused all along. See Britney Spears. See Harvey Weinstein’s victims.

There’s no sense of community, basic care toward a fellow human being, or any sense of belonging because we’re more connected to our gadgets than our neighbors, much less anyone else in the wider community. So when a viral story shows up on our gadgets, everyone is suddenly available and ready to march. But intervening beforehand because of shared humanity and sense of community, especially in such a well-connected world? Umm, less appealing. We’re well versed with indifference now.

I suspect part of the reason why the #MeeToo phase fizzled out was because it did not seem to be about recognizing a woman’s inherent dignity and value; it seemed to generally be about the abuse perpetrated by some men toward some women in some spaces. It never addressed abuses against children nor the objectification and sexualization of women and girls in the industry and in society at large.

So it’s easy to go through something like #MeToo, something shiny and viral, followed by a general silence in cases such as Bianca’s. But it’s confusing because it presented itself as a communal movement based on solidarity and shared interests. Was it about ‘let her stand up for herself’?

Anyway, I thought I’d hear from that crowd at times like these. I don’t know, maybe she’s fine, I’ve misunderstood, and this is what is passing as performance art. I just don’t know anymore.

Culture

Society

Media

Feminism

Celebrity

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