I gained a bit of respect for Mo’Nique after her performance in Precious, a movie I had a lot of problems with, but nevertheless gave a pass to largely due to how good she was in it. I would like to take all that back now.
After watching this interview about women’s roles vis-à-vis their husbands, and hearing Mo’Nique’s enthusiastic endorsement of 1950s era servitude, I hate this woman and all she stands for. The word that keeps popping up in this interview over and over again is submission, and how it’s right for women to “surrender” to their husbands. Men are “king of the castle” and women are there to support his dreams.
I know this show was cancelled awhile ago, but I still can’t believe the “thinking” on display here. I felt like decades of women’s rights and progress was being thrown away with every word that came out of these people’s mouths.
This kind of thinking doesn’t extend to BET’s backwash programming either. Let’s not forget there’s also a Republican presidential primary going on. Yes, Rick Santorum is still winning the support of at least a quarter of the Republican vote for standing up for things like being anti-contraception(!), anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, and pro-death penalty (it’s odd how so many “pro-lifers” still support the death penalty, like there isn't this glaring contradiction between the two).
Ten years ago when I was an undergrad, I had sort of hoped these kinds of socially conservative positions on marriage and contraception would have been relegated to the very fringes of society by the time I finished college, or popular to the extent that Marxism still is at the very least. But they still rear their ugly head in daytime talk shows, and sadly, U.S. presidential elections. Wither the nation?
