It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
The women’s liberation movement (WLM) can only produce its positive goal of autonomy if the woman question is not reduced to any principle or system of thought. This paper advances a feminist philosophy as a critique of civilization, understood as capitalist-patriarchy. The introductory section, entitled “Capitalist-Patriarchy and its Discontents”, elaborates on the theory of capitalist-patriarchy (developed by Maria Mies) and outlines modern philosophy, from the Enlightenment to Marxism to postmodernism, as its theoretical reflection. This critique of modernity follows from the contributions of Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School, with his conception of 'negative dialectics' as dialectics without identity or system. “’Subjection’ and ‘Subjectivization’” responds with an alternative theory of the subject that escapes the impasse of the object-relation which characterizes patriarchy. The feminist subject is established without object-relation, but as a radically solitary embodiment of the real, borrowing from the contemporary theoretical work of Katerina Kolozova, Alain Badiou, and Francois Laruelle, as well as from the psychoanalytic discourse of Jacques Lacan. “Feminist Theory and Practice” expands on the theory of the subject to explain the implications of the patriarchal object-relation in the concept of labor and inthe separation of revolutionary theory and practice. The section furthermore discusses feminism as the invocation of “the feminine” as a virtual reality in which the subject appears without object, but as the instance of the real. The final section "The Body in Pain, Care of the Self" considers blackness as social death in relation to the feminist critique of capitalist-patriarchy. Black women occupy an especially vulnerable space incapitalist-patriarchy which is often taken for granted in the WLM. "The Body in Pain" advances a thesis that the critique of capitalist-patriarchy must be enacted with concern to the designation of black bodies as sentient but dead. This paper proposes to struggle with the persistence of the real against identity-thinking.
Two blogs at opposite political polls make the point that patriarchy hates women. April Reign reports on the right wing Catholic attacks on womens right to choose in Nicaragua and Poland, and the sexist comments of a Mulsim Cleric in Australia admonishing women to avoid dressing provocatively or they invite rape.
At the other end of the political spectrum Big Blue Wave complains that people, men, are sexist in believing that social conservative women are dumb. Well they aren't dumb, but they are agents of patriarchy. Which is worse. Because they are women they think they can speak for all women, while denouncing feminists for doing the same thing.
In reality they are the womens voice FOR patriarchy, which is anti-women always has been always will be.
Unfortunately the pews, temples, and synagogues are filled with women. Without women the patriarchical religions would collapse. Like Hegels 'slaves'; whose existence is justfied through their bondage, conservative women act against their own best interests for the interests of their masters. Thus the right wing can justify their attack on individual rights by saying not all women support feminism.
The war on women is the inherent misogyny of patriarchy, the battle for womens rights which is the battle for individual rights means that patriarchy needs to be abolished. Since all monotheist religions are patriarchical and conduct their moral war against human rights and individual rights means that we must abolish religious institutions and their political power.
This past week, the blockbuster movie Barbie was released in theaters, breaking the opening weekend record for 2023 and the first-weekend record for a film directed by a woman, with $337 million in global ticket sales as of Monday.
It surpassed movies like 2008’s Dark Knight and its release date twin Oppenheimer, both directed by Christopher Nolan.
However, in Indian Country, the movie is leaving a different impression.
The movie itself is a commentary on patriarchy and the effects it has on women and femme-presenting people in society. In “Barbie Land,” the Barbies run everything. There’s a President Barbie, a Doctor Barbie, a Pulitzer Prize Winning Barbie, and more — all Barbies that have actually been created and sold. The Barbies represented multiple identities as well, with multiple Black characters, Asian characters, characters with disabilities and various body types, but not one Native Barbie was in the movie.
Despite the lack of Indigenous representation, the movie didn’t stray away from making an off-hand one-liner about the genocide of Native people. Mid-way through the movie Ken (Ryan Gosling) comes back from the “real world” and introduces patriarchy to the Barbies, disrupting their harmonious Barbie Land. America Ferrara’s character, Gloria from the human world, compares Barbie’s lack of immunity to patriarchy to Native people and the introduction of smallpox.
Although the movie included no Indigenous representation, this does not mean that there are no Native Barbies released by Mattel, the doll’s manufacturing company. Let’s dive into the history of the Native American Barbie.
The first Native Barbie was E**imo Barbie, using a derogatory slur for the Indigenous people who reside in Alaska and the Arctic regions, released in 1981 as part of the Dolls of the World International Series. She stood alone for over a decade until “First Edition Native American Barbie” was released in 1993 as part of the company’s “Dolls of the World” Collection. She was dressed in a white “buckskin” top and skirt with white fringe and adorned with long black hair and tanned skin.
Multiple Native Barbies have been released since then, including second, third and fourth editions of the original and a Barbie line titled the “Native Spirit Collection.” The first Barbie in that collection was Spirit of the Earth Barbie. There is even a Barbie at the Smithsonian, the Northwest Coast Barbie, released in 2000.
The dolls are always accompanied by an introduction of who they are and an explanation of their clothing. Third Edition Native American Barbie (1994) is described like this:
“My dancing outfit is an updated version of a tribal princess costume. It’s a mix of traditional style with the latest colors and accessories of today! I’ll be pretty in my pink tunic and skirt with geometric patterns, white fringe, and ribbon trim. My moccasins, beaded necklace, turquoise earrings, and ring complete my modern-day powwow look!”
The Native American Barbies are described as “princesses,” fueling the “Indian Princess” stereotype that we see every year during Halloween. It reduces Indigenous women’s experience to that of a costume, effectively eliminating the spiritual, cultural, and traditional importance of regalia and the sacred nature of what we wear and why.
Barbie herself is a product of patriarchy and colonization. Barbie movie explores the sad reality of women in a patriarchal society, and the movie pulls heartstrings. It shared the experience of growing up as a woman, the experience of constantly being told what to do, what to look like, what not to do, what not to wear, and overall just living a life policed and dominated by men.
As Indigenous women, we have a unique relationship with patriarchy and colonization, as the two go hand in hand. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) found that more than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 56.1 percent who have experienced sexual violence–trauma that has been ongoing since colonization.
The male gaze created Barbie, and the colonized gaze continues to misrepresent the Indigenous experience in both the product line and film inspired by it.
While doing a successful job of portraying the general experience of women under patriarchy, the film fails to include the intricate and unique experience of Indigenous women within the patriarchy–and under the colonized gaze of women and men alike.
Without this, the story is incomplete.
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Taliban & Hindutva Patriarchy: What’s Similar, What’s Different
The degree of patriarchal control and abuse of human rights is not yet seen under Hindutva nationalism ruling India today. but the seeds of rigid patriarchy are very much thriving.
Amir Khan Muttaqi. Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
When the government of India gave a red-carpet welcome to the Taliban delegation led by their Minister of Education Amir Khan Muttaqi, Army veteran Lt. Gen Prakash Katoch asked: “Should India be seen deferring to the Taliban? Taliban’s human rights record, particularly its regressive misogynistic policies are well known. No doubt, developing relations with the Taliban is a geostrategic requirement.”
The women of Afghanistan who are deprived of human rights, particularly education and assembly, must be feeling betrayed, particularly after women journalists were denied entry into the first press conference held in the Afghan Embassy in Delhi. Of course, due to heavy criticism, women were allowed to attend the next press conference.
As the Taliban came to power, their edicts came as a shock to the world at large. This is the same group that had destroyed Gautam Buddha’s majestic statues, 53 and 35 meters tall, despite requests from various powers in the world. The world is watching the gross abuse of human rights. It is the same Taliban which had imposed jizya (a tax) on non-Muslims.
The Taliban is an outcome of the youth (then) who were indoctrinated in a few madrassas in Pakistan, including the famous Lal Masjid in Pakistan. While now it has not only assumed its own agency, the circumstances in which they came up need to be recalled.
The Taliban has been indoctrinated in a particular version of Islam put forward by Maulana Wahab. When the erstwhile Soviet Union army occupied Afghanistan (1979-89), the US was not in a position to send its own army as their forces were demoralised due to their defeat in Vietnam.
The Kissinger (former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) Doctrine was implemented, which aimed to fight the enemy (the communists) by using Asian Muslim youth. The madrassas were promoted and funded by the US. Academic and author Mahmood Mamdani in his book, Good Muslim Bad Muslim, on the basis of CIA documents, tells us how the Mujahideen were “indoctrinated and supplied with $8,000 million and 7,000 tonnes of armament”, including the latest stringer missiles.
These trained elements joined the anti-Soviet forces and the Soviet army faced defeat. America got total dominance through war against Afghanistan, and Iraq in particular. The Islam they practice is said to be the most conservative. The concept of human rights does not find any place in this version and women and subordinate sections of society face worst violations of human rights and their subjugation, as per various reports.
This degree of patriarchal control and abuse of human rights is not yet seen in the Hindutva nationalism ruling India today. As such, the seeds of rigid patriarchy are very much there and concept of human rights is gradually being replaced by ‘rights for the elite upper caste and rich’ and ‘duties for the poor and marginalised’.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtra Sevika Samiti, dealing with women, is an exclusively male organisation. It is based on the Brahminical version of Hinduism, in contrast to the liberal and inclusive Hinduism of Mahatma Gandhi, the one who was killed by a person steeped in Hindu nationalist ideology.
When B R Ambedkar was burning the Manu Smriti, the second RSS chief, M.S. Golwalkar, was writing eulogies for books like Manu Smriti. After the Indian Constitution was implemented, the RSS’s mouthpiece came out with scathing criticism of this book saying it nothing Indian about it.
“Consider how Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, regarded as the most consequential head of the RSS, believed women were misled by modernity. Citing a couplet that states that “a virtuous lady covers her body”, Golwalkar, according to Caravan, lamented that “‘modern’ women think that ‘modernism’ lies in exposing their body more and more to the public gaze. What a fall!”
When Laxmi Bai Kelkar (1936) wanted women to be incorporated in RSS, she was in turn asked to start the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, a subordinate organisation. In its very name the word, swayam, is missing, which stands for self.
Later Vijaya Raje Scindia (the then Vice President of BJP) went on to glorify Sati (wife immolation on the funeral pyre of husband). BJP leader Mridula Sinha also advised women to conform to the norms of family where husband is supreme. (Savvy, April 1994). The RSS progeny has been opposed to women wearing jeans, and celebrating Valentine’s Day.
As the feminist movement came up, it went on for reforms like abolition of dowry, female infanticide and other abominable practices against women. RSS never initiated any of these struggles, but did not oppose these reforms. But, it was against the Hindu Code Bill giving women some semblance of equality to some extent.
As India has some democratic space after Independence, though it is going for a free fall since the past few decades, the admirable struggle by women did get them a better place in the society. The march toward equality did take a few steps.
Today, the RSS has Rashtra Sevika Samiti, Durga Vahini and the BJP women’s wing, whose values derive from the core RSS ideology of graded hierarchy and gender inequality. Here Manu Smriti has an important place, as their basic philosophy is rooted in understanding where a ‘Muslim man’ is the culprit while not challenging patriarchal values.
It is true that the condition of women in Afghanistan and some other Muslim countries affected by communal/fundamentalist Islam is bad. The Taliban sits at the bottom of this list.
In India, as the grip of Hindu nationalism increases, the patriarchal ideology is not being challenged by the RSS stable, while the feminist movement is doing its best to challenge the prevalent patriarchy. So, currently the degree of Taliban patriarchy is at the bottom. Hindu nationalism has basic similarity with them at the ideological level, but the women’s movement has made some significant yet inadequate strides.
What is similar between these two is the seed of patriarchy, while the degree of its social manifestation is diverse. Politics hiding under the garb of religion uses the identity aspects of the religion to retain feudal values with the added spice of hate for people of other religions. Christian fundamentalism in various places reportedly also propagates the same. Nazism, a full-blown fascist regime, also defined the place of women in the kitchen, church and children.
While we condemn patriarchy and non-recognition of the concept of human rights, we should be aware that every sectarian nationalism structured around the identity of a religion or the superiority of one race, shares many of these despicable norms.
The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.
Sunday, September 07, 2025
At NatCon, an effort to make Christian nationalism a more inclusive movement
FOR WHITE STR8 MALES
(RNS) — Speakers and organizers alike worked to craft a vision for a Christian America that steers clear of anti-Catholicism and, especially, antisemitism.
Pastor Doug Wilson addresses the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
WASHINGTON (RNS) — During the “Bible and American Renewal” breakout session at this week’s National Conservatism Conference, Josh Hammer stood out as the lone Jewish person on the panel of otherwise conservative Christian activists: a pastor, the editor of an online Christian magazine and a self-described Christian nationalist.
Yet, it was Hammer who told an audience member that “America was founded as a Christian country.”
“I’ll be the first to say that,” Hammer added. “There is very little doubt in my mind about that.”
The exchange was a window into a curious dynamic that permeated “NatCon,” as attendees call the conference, where speakers and organizers alike worked to craft a vision for a stridently conservative Christian America that somehow steers clear of anti-Catholicism and, especially, antisemitism.
A right-wing gathering that was once considered fringe, NatCon now boasts among its alumni Vice President JD Vance and this year featured a number of Trump appointees and allies, including Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget director; Kelly Loeffler, director of the Small Business Administration; and Steve Bannon, a longtime podcast host and former chief strategist for President Donald Trump.
Office and Management and Budget Director Russell Vought speaks during the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 3, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
Hammer was hardly alone in appealing to America’s Christian roots at the three-day conference, held in downtown Washington from Sept. 2-4. Idaho Pastor Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist, declared from the main stage, “We were in fact a Christian republic at the founding.” At a breakout session on “The Threat of Islamism in America,” one panelist declared “we are a Christian nation,” and another titled his talk, “Creating Islamic Communities in Christian America.”
But those declarations were made even as speakers openly voiced concern about the potential fracturing of NatCon’s fragile right-wing coalition. In an opening plenary session, Yoram Hazony, the Jewish chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, said early supporters of NatCon skewed heavily Catholic, so he brought in more Protestants — only for Catholics to fret that the movement had, in turn, become anti-Catholic. He has since wanted to bring in more Orthodox Jewish leaders, but is facing a problem: a rise in virulent antisemitism on the right, especially after the attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, in southern Israel.
“I didn’t think it would happen on the right, and I was mistaken,” Hazony said. He pleaded with the group to avoid antisemitism, noting that he is still willing to negotiate disagreement about Israel’s policies as well as have an “honorable conversation” about rethinking “the relationship between Jews and Christians in America.”
Hazony didn’t detail what that relationship looks like, exactly, but several conference speakers appeared to navigate the divide by referring to shared “Judeo-Christian” principles. Vought declared that the U.S. was founded on “Judeo-Christian worldviews.” Gene Hamilton, head of America First Legal, similarly described the U.S. as a “country based on Judeo-Christian values,” and Loeffler referred to “the moral foundations that built this country” — namely, “Judeo-Christian values.”
What’s more, Southern Baptist theologian Albert Mohler insisted that a conservatism that honors “prophets and apostles and patriarchs” can “unite Jewish conservatives and Christian conservatives, Catholic conservatives and Protestant conservatives, Eastern Orthodox conservatives, all in a shared conservatism of principle and conviction, mutual respect and mutual assistance, mutual commitment and commitment to shared conservative principles.”
The Rev. Albert Mohler speaks during the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
But more often, NatCon attendees seemed to mitigate their differences by trying to find common cause. Asked about the dynamic, Wilson derided antisemitism but acknowledged the tension between advocating for a Christian America and holding together a coalition that includes Jewish people.
“Jesus either rose from the dead or he didn’t — I’m a Christian,” he said.
But in the “political sphere,” Wilson said, there are pathways for extreme right Christians to find commonality with Jewish conservatives.
“I think it’s good for them to see that there are Orthodox Jews who hate pornography as much as they do,” he offered by way of example.
But in practice, the common enemy that emerged to unite Christian nationalists and Jewish allies at NatCon wasn’t pornography, but Muslims. Several speakers made a point to single out Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim American and leading New York City mayoral candidate.
“New York, our greatest city, is on the precipice of being run by a Zohran Mamdani — I think we realize that something has gone absolutely wrong,” Jack Posobiec, an alt-right political activist who has promoted Christian nationalism in the past, told the crowd. He then added: “As I stand here today, we are less than 10 years away from one of America’s great cities being run by a Muhammad.”
Jack Posobiec speaks during the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
Steve Bannon addresses the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
Posobiec was echoed later that day by Bannon, the onetime adviser to Trump. Referring to Mamdani, Bannon insisted “the existential threat to Israel — the Jewish people — is not in Tehran,” but rather “is right in New York City.” He then denounced Mamdani as “a Marxist and a jihadist,” while acknowledging Mamdani is likely to win the election.
Whether a return to the anti-Muslim sentiment — a flavor of vitriol that once helped bolster Trump’s 2016 election coalition — will be enough to help NatCon is an open question. But if this year’s gathering is any indication, it appears to be the chosen path forward for Christian nationalists hoping to expand their tent: In his own address, Wilson argued that while America was “deeply Christian and Protestant at the founding,” it also “did successfully adapt to the presence of Catholics and Jews.”
But accepting large numbers of Muslim immigrants in the U.S., he said, is a bridge too far.
“Millions of Muslims without any commitment to, or mechanism of, assimilation is another matter,” said Wilson, who has previously said that Muslims would be barred from holding office in his version of a Christian America. “There’s only so much white sand you can put in the sugar bowl before it isn’t the Sugar Bowl anymore.”
Pastor Doug Wilson attends the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
At NatCon, a confusing resurgence of anti-Muslim sentiment
WASHINGTON (RNS) — NatCon’s negative focus on Islam makes for a potential preview of what conservatives will be concerned with in the next year.
Josh Hammer, right, addresses the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 3, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
WASHINGTON (RNS) — During a breakout session at this year’s National Conservatism Conference on Wednesday (Sept. 3), one group of panelists was asked an unusual question: Did they consider the U.S. to be a “Protestant tree” in which “Jews and Catholics are allowed, as birds, to nest in the branches”?
Josh Hammer, the only Jewish member of the panel, eschewed the arborial analogy but replied that he believes Jews and Catholics “have always been a part of the American story.” A “more interesting question,” he offered, is what Founding Fathers had to say about “Mohammedism” — a reference to Islam.
Fellow panelist William Wolfe, head of the Center for Baptist Leadership and a self-described Christian nationalist, interjected: “I’m happy to cut that branch off, Josh.”
The crowd burst into laughter.
The episode was one of several derogatory mentions of Islam at the conference, a three-day convening at a hotel in downtown Washington. Once considered a far-right fringe gathering and still deeply associated with Christian nationalism, NatCon, as it’s known among its regular attendees, has become a major waypoint in the conservative calendar. The ideas germinated here increasingly shape the ideological framework of the Trump administration, as speakers at past conferences have gone on to become MAGA stars, including Vice President JD Vance.
This year’s lineup had no lack of administration officials, from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to border czar Tom Homan.
NatCon’s negative focus on Islam, therefore, makes for a potential preview of what conservatives will be concerned with in the next year, especially in midterm election campaigns. Already, New York’s mayoral election in November has attracted dire predictions in conservative circles about the front-runner, Zohran Mamdani, and his Muslim faith, should he win.
William Wolfe speaks during the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 3, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
The topic was a focus of the conference’s first panel on Tuesday, titled “The Threat of Islamism in America.” Ryan Girdusky, a onetime CNN commentator who was banned from the network last year after he jocularly implied that Muslim journalist Mehdi Hasan had ties to terrorist groups, was among the panelists. (“I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” he said on air, in an apparent reference to the 2024 attack directed at Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, when beepers across the country, planted with explosive charges, suddenly ignited.)
At NatCon, Girdusky argued against mass immigration generally (“The best part of immigration is scarcity,” he said), and Muslim immigration in particular. Echoing a theme aired in speeches in recent months by Vance, Girdusky said Mamdani, a naturalized U.S. citizen, drew crowds at his rallies whose “ancestors did not come on the Mayflower. Most did not come on Ellis Island. Most didn’t come in the past 30 years.”
Another panelist, Wade Miller of the Center for Renewing America, a think tank founded by OMB Director Vought, was even more explicit. “Islam is anti-Christianity, authoritarian and against our entire constitutional order,” Miller said. He insisted the progressive left in the United States has embraced a “woke-Islamist alliance,” pointing to the pro-Palestinian activism that swept college campuses as Israel invaded the Gaza Strip. He later declared that “we are a Christian nation.”
Wade Miller speaks during the National Conservatism Conference, Sept. 2, 2025, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
Another CRA activist, senior fellow Nathan Pinkoski, warned that the U.S. could become like Europe, where, he argued, the continent’s “trashed civilizational immune system” allowed “Islamists to make inroads into European nations.”
Anti-Muslim sentiment is hardly new among American conservatives, nor is it unusual for it to appear at NatCon — the 2024 iteration of the conference also featured a talk on “The Islamic Supremacist Challenge to America.”
But when questioned about the urgency of their message, at least one of the panelists could give no rationale for the timing of their warnings, or why Islam was on the agenda at all. Miller said he wasn’t sure, guessing only that “maybe” it was because of recent U.S. strikes in Iran.
Nonetheless, Islam was a recurring component of the larger discussion of immigration. Bo French of Fort Worth, Texas — who chairs the Tarrant County Republican Party and has himself been accused of anti-Muslim comments — said he came to the Islamism panel out of concern that the U.S. will end up with an influx of Muslim immigrants such as countries in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, have experienced. “I think we’re probably 10 years behind where they are, but I think it is accelerating,” French said. Hammer, senior editor-at-large at Newsweek, also tied his concern to immigration but insisted the issue is of immediate importance. “I think that Islamic immigration should be zero today,” Hammer told RNS. “It is a pressing concern.”
Muslims represent around 1% of the U.S. population, according to Pew Research, and the Trump administration has dramatically restricted immigration in various ways that include banning entry from many Muslim-majority countries. A 2022 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute found that while a slim majority of white evangelicals believe the U.S. should “prevent people from some Muslim majority countries from entering the U.S.,” majorities of every other religious group polled said the reverse.
Trump courted Muslim votes in his 2024 presidential campaign, capitalizing on Muslim disenchantment with the Biden administration’s support for Israel.
Miller acknowledged the growing Muslim interest in Republican ideas in his panel presentation, saying, “Some on our side … insist that we should see Islam and Muslims as political allies,” he said. But Muslims, he summed up, “are not our friends.”
The degeneracy of Christian nationalism and the demolition of culture
(RNS) — Trump's assault on art and culture is only outdone by his debasement of his fellow humans.
Rigoberto Gonzalez’s “Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas.” Photo by Difference Engine/Wikimedia Commons
(RNS) — The United States exists in a new-old universe. After nearly 250 years of democracy, it seems infected with totalitarianism, racial superiority, anti-communism and all the petrified theories advanced by another populist politician, Adolph Hitler.
Donald Trump did say he would be a dictator on day one.
History will be the judge, but things look rather bleak right now for the democracy side of the equation. Take art and culture.
During the 12 years of Hitler’s corruption of the concepts of law and order, he also attacked what we now call “creatives” and cultural institutions. The backlash against artistic Modernism had begun earlier in Germany’s Weimar era, but the Führer fully enforced his own ideas of what comprised art. He banned “degenerate art”: Bauhaus, Cubism, Dada, Expressionism, Fauvism, Impressionism and Surrealism. And the regime supported only official painters, sculptors, architects, writers and even actors.
Things are trending in the same direction in the 21st-century United States. Trump, having gotten himself elected chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has vowed to end “woke political programming” at Washington’s premier arts venue.
As an example of what this means, the Kennedy Center hosted a screening this week of “The Revival Generation,” a documentary about a “nationwide campus revival movement” drawing Gen Z Americans. Billed as a “call to faith and a message of hope” that “(c)aptures a spiritual awakening among today’s youth,” the program included a one-hour worship service with “a local worship collective.”
Next Trump ordered a review of exhibits at the Smithsonian Museums that has sent curators scrambling to “fix” exhibits Mr. Trump finds too woke. The list of things needing repair at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of the American Latino focuses on mentions of race, slavery, immigration and sexuality.
The artwork that offends the curator-in-chief is not Cubism or Dadaism or Impressionism. Unlike Hitler, Trump has not put Picasso, Duchamp and Monet on the banned lists. Rather, it is Rigoberto Gonzalez’s extraordinary “Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas.”
The list goes on. Some of it is, well, edgy. But it is not of the order of “Immersion (Piss Christ),” Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph of a crucifix submerged in a container of his own urine. Despite an outcry from politicians who tried to defund its sponsors, the piece won an award in a competition partly sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Ronald Reagan was president then.
If only Trump would confine his new strictures to art and culture, his populism would be an affront only to the pursuit of beauty. But they cross several lines, assaulting truth as well.
As several mainline faith leaders and the U.S. Catholic bishops have pointed out, the derisive oppression of poor immigrants by members of the current administration is sickening. That some administration officials continue to publicly espouse Christian ethics is mind-boggling.
Government spokespeople bend the truth and present an alternate reality. Then, there are the humorless bureaucrats who can change numbers to suit the master’s will. The administration is efficient and punctual, and its leader can do no wrong.
The American republic is aiming for a head-on collision with democracy, and not incidentally is becoming an enigma, if not a laughingstock, to the rest of the free world.
It has to stop.
EVEN THE CRITICS OF PATRIARCHY ARE PATRIARCHS
After challenging Doug Wilson, podcaster’s confession shakes anti-patriarchy movement
“Women have been declaring the damage for years,” she said. “But something about a man holding the mic — even when it was women survivors talking into it — made the warnings more palatable to people who were steeped in Christian patriarchy.”
(FāVS News) — Podcast host Peter Bell’s admission came shortly after a Moscow, Idaho, community event where he and others spoke about the impact of Wilson’s teachings.
“Sons of Patriarchy” podcast logo and host Peter Bell. (Courtesy images)
(FāVS News) — Days after challenging Pastor Doug Wilson to a public debate, Peter Bell, producer and host of the podcast “Sons of Patriarchy,” made a social media confession that has forced a reckoning within the community he helped build around exposing abuse in patriarchal churches.
Bell, whose podcast investigates Wilson’s Moscow, Idaho-based church movement, said in a since-deleted Aug. 23 Facebook post that he struggled with pornography addiction for nearly two decades, was fired from multiple jobs for lying and experienced marital separation during his podcast’s first season last year.
The confession came shortly after Bell appeared at a Moscow community event Aug. 8 at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center, where he and others spoke about the impact of Wilson’s teachings. The podcast producers scheduled their first Moscow visit to coincide with Grace Agenda, a weekend conference hosted by Wilson’s Christ Church that serves as a major recruiting event for the church. After the Kenworthy event, Bell and “Sons of Patriarchy” staff approached Wilson at the conference, and Wilson agreed to a one-on-one conversation with the podcast host, who has spent months documenting abuse allegations within Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.
Bell acknowledged to FāVS News that the timing of his Facebook post was deliberate.
“With the recent airing of the CNN interview with Doug Wilson” — a profile that examined Wilson’s Christian nationalist movement and connections to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — “our team began receiving far more media inquiries, survivor stories and ‘interest’ after Doug agreed to a one-on-one with me,” Bell said in an interview.
“This compounded with the kinds of messages we were receiving, mostly coming from women, who were praising me. They wanted to let me know that they wished their husbands could be like me, their sons would grow up to be like me, and their pastors cared like me,” Bell said. “I couldn’t handle the praise, knowing that if those who were messaging us knew the truth about me, maybe they’d be less inclined. I had told parts of it before, but I needed everything out there.”
A crowd attends a “Sons of Patriarchy” live event at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center, Aug. 8, 2025, in Moscow, Idaho. (Photo by Tracy Simmons/FāVS News)
The confession sparked tension within the “Sons of Patriarchy” team. Bell’s co-host and majority owner of the podcast, Sarah Bader, responded with a social media statement distancing the team from Bell’s post.
“He did not run this post by the team. And we are holding him to account for it,” Bader posted. “We apologize to our survivor community for his actions and are putting measures and controls into place so that it can’t happen again.”
In Bell’s confession, he revealed he had been “addicted to porn for a little less than 20 years” and continues to struggle “to this day.” He also said he was “fired from two or three full-time ‘secular’ jobs … for lying, and covering up other things, in rather large ways” and was “kicked out” of ministry positions for dishonesty.
The issues led to separation from his wife during the production of his podcast’s first season just about a year ago, Bell wrote. The couple has since reconciled.
“I write it both to get it off my chest, to give Doug Wilson and his people the dirt they’re probably looking for, and to dissuade anyone from thinking I’m the ‘anti-patriarchy’ hero they might think I am,” Bell wrote in the Facebook post, which garnered hundreds of comments. “There was this picture/aura forming about and around me, that I was the ‘anti-patriarchy hero’ so many in these circles were looking for.”
The confession particularly stung trauma survivors who trusted Bell with their stories of abuse within patriarchal church systems, several alleged survivors wrote on social media. As Bell interviews women who have left these environments, his admission raised questions about his fitness for the role.
“I totally and completely understand if survivors no longer desire to be interviewed by me,” Bell said. “My goal isn’t to get someone behind a microphone — my goal is for them to be heard.”
Peter Bell, left, and Doug Wilson, right. (Video screen grabs)
However, Bell defended his continued involvement.
“I haven’t had the chance to interview survivors” since the confession, he said, “but to be transparent, it hasn’t changed much. I didn’t change after the confession. I said what I said because I’ve already come to terms with everything.”
Bell described how leaders can maintain public ministries while struggling privately — an insight that parallels cases his podcast has investigated.
The issue of pastors struggling with pornography while maintaining public ministries has been a recurring theme in allegations documented by “Sons of Patriarchy.” Tim Meshginpoosh, a longtime observer of these churches, wrote in a Substack post that when such issues have surfaced, “the response of the elders was soft, and when the marriages blew up, the wife got blamed, shunned, and ostracized.”
Bell said churches often handle these issues differently based on one’s status.
“A high-ranking leader with decades of experience and beloved by the congregation? You get a slap on the wrist, a cover-up and pass right on through,” Bell said. “A no-name member who will put a blot on your reputation? You’ve got two choices: Make sure no one ever hears about it and your ‘sterling’ reputation is saved … or, strike them down with the fury of the Lord as an example to those watching.”
Patterns of institutional response Bell described played out in reaction to his own disclosure. Bader’s response seemed to split the podcast’s following, with some calling her statement “woke” while others said they appreciated her consideration for triggered survivors.
Meshginpoosh questioned whether Bell should have been the face of the anti-patriarchy effort given his recent struggles.
“The concern I have — it was way too soon,” Meshginpoosh said in an interview. “He recorded the first season while he was still separated from his wife. … If you have that kind of recent past, you need to take some time to do the hard work.”
Meshginpoosh also noted a tactical disadvantage, should there be a debate with Wilson.
“If you’re going to go up against Wilson, you’re going to have a hard time grilling him about the Steven Sitler disaster if you’re trying to pick up the pieces of multiple integrity fails on the job and a 20-year porn addiction,” he said
The Sitler case has long been a source of controversy for Wilson. In 2005, Sitler, a student at New St. Andrews College, a private college founded by Christ Church, confessed to molesting multiple children. Sitler pleaded guilty to lewd conduct with a minor and was sentenced to prison. Wilson wrote a letter to the sentencing judge describing Sitler as “most responsive” and “completely honest” and asking for leniency, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center report — despite Wilson’s own writings advocating death penalties for such crimes. Wilson officiated Sitler’s wedding, and Sitler was eventually found to have sexually abused his infant son, leading to legal protections.
Cases like Sitler’s are what “Sons of Patriarchy” was created to expose. But some worried Bell’s confession overshadowed that mission. Author Sarah Stankorb, who has covered Wilson’s movement and was on stage at the Moscow event, wrote in a statement to Baptist News Global that the confession was problematic in its timing. “I worry, in light of Peter Bell’s post, we’re losing the thread,” Stankorb wrote. “It blindsided a lot of survivors and other advocates whose trust is already fragile. It also has created a huge distraction from the work of making Wilson’s impact visible.”
Stankorb also noted a troubling pattern in responses to abuse allegations. “Women have been declaring the damage for years,” she said. “But something about a man holding the mic — even when it was women survivors talking into it — made the warnings more palatable to people who were steeped in Christian patriarchy.”
Bell acknowledged uncertainty about his continued role as the podcast’s host, saying he serves “at the behest of the volunteers and those who support the work.” He suggested Bader could lead the podcast.
“Whether or not I lead this podcast in the future has no bearing on my own personal desire to see movements founded and influenced by Doug Wilson to be toppled,” he said. “This is personal for me, and I care, regardless of a microphone being in front of me or not.”
However, supporters believe the “Sons of Patriarchy” mission remains vital. Meshginpoosh said the podcast serves as a “force multiplier” for survivors who have waited years for someone to advocate for them.
“Ultimately, they are doing good work,” he said. “They are exposing the abuses and systemic dynamics within the Presbyterian/Presbyterian-ish world. I want SoP to continue to do good work.”
Attempts to reach Bader for comment were unsuccessful.
Sunday, March 10, 2024
From cast to teens, 'Barbie' film's view on patriarchy resonated
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Simu Liu, who played one of the Kens in the Oscar-nominated "Barbie" movie, experienced a revelation when he first read the script and its commentary about the harm inflicted by patriarchy.
"We all like to think that we're different, that we're progressive," Liu said in an interview with Reuters. "And then we read a scene that calls us out so fully and utterly, that I'm like, 'Oh yeah, I'm part of the problem.'"
Actor Simu Liu poses on the pink carpet during the World Premiere of the film "Barbie" in Los Angeles, California, U.S., July 9, 2023.
The "Barbie" movie, which will compete for best picture and other honors at Sunday's Oscars, generated a chart-topping $1.4 billion at global box offices in 2023. Co-written by married couple Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, it also changed some attitudes about men and women.
Reuters 'Barbie' movie's feminism continues to resonate View on Watch Duration 2:14
The film moves between Barbie Land, run by President Barbie and other female dolls, and the Real World - a patriarchy ruled by men who provide few opportunities to women.
Liu pointed to scenes in which the Kens try to impress the Barbies by playing Matchbox Twenty song "Push" on guitar while the women stare into their eyes. "I'll play guitar at you," Ryan Gosling's Ken says to Margot Robbie's Barbie.
"My mind instantly flashed to 19-year-old me in college," Liu said of the scene. "Yeah, that's definitely me."
The actor said he felt the movie's aim was to show that patriarchy "is just bad for everyone."
"It affects men because it puts this weird shit in our minds about what we have to be and who we have to be," he said. "And then, obviously, makes it really tough for women."
Dr. Ellen Rome, head of adolescent medicine at Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital, sought reactions to the film from about 100 tweens, teens and their parents who visited her clinic after the movie came out.
TEENS GET IT
Most of the kids "picked up on how normative society's patriarchy is, and how it can negatively impact both women and men," Rome said. "Kids at 11, 12 and 13 got this."
Boys "saw and could pick up on how inappropriate it was to treat women as objects, or to make negative comments about them," she said.
The boys also wanted a more empowered Ken, she said.
"That he was an accessory wasn't lost on the boys," Rome said. "They wanted Ken to be able to have his own agenda."
Rome said she appreciated that the movie tackled mental health directly. The "stereotypical Barbie" played by Robbie dealt with depression and thoughts of death and worked her way through it.
"They did beautifully addressing the fact that mental health challenges can affect anybody, and that you can do a hero's journey to face that depression and figure out how to empower yourself," she said.
Rome did have some critiques. She said the movie showed little body diversity among the Barbies or the Kens. There were no Kens with obesity, for example.
And, the "weird Barbie" played by Kate McKinnon, "is valued but isolated," Rome said.
Barbie maker Mattel Inc said its consumer research showed that 87 percent viewed the Barbie brand as empowering for girls after the movie's release, and 80% said the brand "showcased body diversity."
One outside survey found the film altered some perceptions about men and women in the workplace.
Resume Builder, a website for job seekers, commissioned a poll of 300 Americans who had seen "Barbie." Fifty-three percent of all viewers said the film improved their opinion of women in the workplace, and 63% of men said the film made them more aware of the partriarchy at work.
Actor Ariana Greenblatt, who played a Barbie-skeptical teen in the film, said girls have thanked her for putting a spotlight on the issues they face.
"I think people will look at things differently forever," she said. "And that's the coolest thing in the world. Hopefully we change the journey of society."
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Rollo Ross; Editing by Mary Milliken and Jonathan Oatis)
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Let’s call the Nova Scotia mass shooting what it is: White male terrorism
THE CONVERSATION
Published: April 24, 2020
While the mainstream media has been quick to situate the deadly recent events that unfolded in Nova Scotia within the context of Canadian mass murders, no one seems to be drawing attention to the most prominent link connecting Canadian mass killings: all of the accused perpetrators have been men, and most of them have been white.
White men were responsible for or currently face charges for the mass murders at the École Polytechnique in 1989, Mayerthorpe in 2005, Moncton in 2014, Calgary in 2014, Québec City in 2017, Toronto in 2018 (a van attack) and Fredericton in 2019. Those in Vernon, B.C., in 1996, Edmonton in 2014, and Toronto in 2018 (the shooting in the city’s Greektown neighbourhood) were perpetrated by racialized men.
Given this explicitly gendered pattern of perpetration, why don’t we talk about these mass murders as male terrorism?
When speaking about the mass murder during his regular COVID-19 update on April 19, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau referred to the violence in Nova Scotia as “senseless” and proclaimed that “violence of any kind has no place in Canada.”
A woman pays her respects at a roadblock in Portapique, N.S. on April 22. RCMP say at least 22 people are dead after a man went on a murder rampage in several Nova Scotia communities.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
As a survivor of multiple forms of violence with more than 20 years of researching and responding to gender-based violence in my academic and professional career, I beg to differ. Male-perpetrated violence underpins Canadian society and is by no means “senseless” — instead, it serves to reinforce patriarchy and male social domination. The mass shooting in Nova Scotia reportedly began with domestic abuse incident against a woman.
As long as we are unwilling to name, acknowledge and address male violence, the lives and well-being of people in Canada, especially women and children, are at risk. The normalization of male violence
Regardless of specific motive, the fact that Canadian mass murders have been exclusively committed by men makes this violence explicitly gendered. This is male violence and, as such, must be linked to other forms of male violence and understood as gender-based violence.
People hold photos of the victims of the mosque shooting in Québec City that left six people dead during a vigil in January 2020 marking the third anniversary of the carnage.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
Patriarchy establishes what we refer to as “hegemonic masculinity” — the dominant social definition of what it means to be male, and violence is an essential part of this. In fact, violence plays a fundamental role in securing male social dominance: because patriarchal domination is predicated on unfounded claims to male supremacy, violence serves to reinforce this illegitimate claim to social supremacy by force
. Toys guns are popular toys for boys. (Markus Spiske/Unsplash)
To be a dominant socially acceptable man, then, involves the use of violence and aggression and, from birth, males are socialized into this violent hegemonic masculinity. For example, in addition to action figures of superheroes who regularly use violence to “save” the world, my six-year-old son received two toy guns for Christmas last year.
Patriarchy normalizes this violence by ignoring, exonerating and enshrining the right of men to commit violence. Think of all the times you’ve heard someone dismiss male violence with the phrase “boys will be boys.” This phrase is a tacit acceptance of male violence and the right of men to be violent.
The phrasing is frequently echoed in court cases of young men who have committed sexual assault or murder or both. The perpetrators are portrayed as good boys who simply took things too far. Courts, for their part, are notoriously lenient on male perpetrators of violence, reinforcing the right of men to do violence.
Mass murder is white male terrorism
In addition to being an explicitly gendered crime, mass murder in Canada is also explicitly racialized. The perpetrators are overwhelming white males and we must consider how race, and particularly whiteness and white privilege, operate here.
While hegemonic masculinity and the right to use violence is open to all males, race and racism shape that tendency. To establish white male social supremacy, racist discourses portray all racialized males as inherently violent and a perceived threat, justifying white male violence.
This principle is exemplified in policing and the greater likelihood of BIPOC males to be killed by police. While violence is used to pathologize racialized males and justify social domination and violence perpetrated against them, the violence of white males is justified, excused and erased.
So why are white men more likely to commit mass murder? American masculinities scholar Michael Kimmel suggests that social justice efforts aimed at dismantling the social hierarchies that white men sit atop are creating “angry white men” with “aggrieved entitlement.”
Three women hug each other after laying flowers in front of École Polytechnique at Université de Montréal three days after a mass shooting that left 14 women dead. Until the recent Nova Scotia mass shooting, it had been the worst in Canadian history.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Shaney Komulainen
As hegemonic masculinity makes crystal clear, if your existence is being threatened you have the right — indeed, in the minds of some mass killers, the responsibility — to use violence and set things right.
Addressing mass murder means taking a hard look at white masculinity and the normalization of violence. It requires that we refuse to dismiss mass murderers as mentally defective or a few “bad apples.” Instead, we must understand that the entire system of white masculinity is rotten. Because until we do, aggrieved white men will continue to commit mass murder and we will all continue to pay the price.
Author
Robyn Bourgeois Assistant Professor, Centre for Women's and Gender Studies, Brock University
Saturday, August 27, 2022
'The Invitation': Jessica M. Thompson is 'smashing the patriarchy' in Dracula bride horror movie
Director Jessica M. Thompson is making her mark in horror filmmaking with The Invitation (now in theatres), starring Nathalie Emmanuel and Thomas Doherty, an eerie, feminist vampire tale that is fun and tense storytelling, but is ultimately hinged on the concept of exposing and “smashing” the patriarchy.
“Women filmmakers can tend to sometimes be really pigeonholed into certain things, so I didn't want to get pigeonholed into drama, even though I love drama,...I really want to get into genre, I really wanted to make a horror,” Thompson told Yahoo Canada.
“[Genre] reaches more people and has a broader audience, so therefore, you have the ability to kind of make social commentary without knocking people over the head with it.”
Essentially loneliness is what starts Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) off on her path. After recently losing her mother, Evie takes a DNA test leading her to a long-lost, rich family in England. When she gets invited to a wedding by this newfound family, what seemed like a generous offer turns far more sinister, eventually being revealed that their intentions are based in continuing this prestigious bloodline.
“I was sent the script by Sony in January 2020 and I read it really quickly, it was a page turner,” Thompson said. “I was really drawn to this idea of the origin story of a bride of Dracula set in the modern world and I felt like that hadn't been told before.”
“I wanted to rewrite some of the things, I wanted to create a bit more of a blend of subverting the romance, so I kind of added more to the romance, I really love mashing genres... I kind of pitched them ideas and literally, it was March 15, 2020, just the day before the world shut down. I was the last meeting that Sony took, the last meeting I had in person with anybody.”
While the COVID-19 pandemic became a never-before-seen hurdle, Thompson says it allowed her to really, “spend time with the script” before production started in 2021.
Thomas Doherty, Jessica M. Thompson and Nathalie Emmanuel on set of "The Invitation"
'It's all about smashing the patriarchy in this film'
Aesthetically, The Invitation looks like everything you could want from a gothic, vampire movie, with the message of the film really focused on patriarchal issues.
“To me, it's all about smashing the patriarchy in this film and it's about the old world order, and how it's upheld not just by men, but by women who become complacent, and you could argue are victims of that, but also end up supporting it,” Jessica M. Thompson said. “That was really important to show because I think we all can point fingers at the bad men in the world, but there are also a lot of women that prop those men up.”
“I felt like exploring that in this kind of old [hierarchy], these bloodlines,...getting into the story through DNA, through blood, I think is a really unique motif. It just shows, what does blood mean? What does that heritage mean and can you break tradition? I argue, yes. Whenever somebody says, ‘well it's tradition,’ I'm like, ‘well that doesn't mean that it's good.’ That doesn't mean that it's healthy for society. Let's examine those old world orders. We've done it in vampires, but you could apply it to corporations, political structures.”
Thompson also is really exploring this idea of men using women for property, something she highlights audiences have really responded to already.
“There's that moment, which I love, that I've seen with a couple of audiences now, and when her great uncle...gives her a kiss on the cheek at the wedding, the whole audience goes ‘ew,’” Thompson said. “I just love that it's working, the audience understands this is men selling off their daughters, it's gross.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 08: (L-R) Director Jessica M. Thompson and actors Nathalie Emmanuel and Thomas Doherty attend THE INVITATION New York Friends & Family Screening at Crosby Hotel on August 08, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Sony Pictures Entertainment)
Finding 'The Invitation' leading cast
Of course, every great filmmaker needs great actors to collaborate with to bring the story to life, and Jessica M. Thompson had that in Game of Thrones actor Nathalie Emmanuel, leading the story as Evie.
“I always had Nathalie in mind,...originally the script was not for a woman of colour and I felt, because it's a story really about the patriarchy, the most disenfranchised people are largely women of colour,” Thompson said. “She's just such a gracious, incredible actor, throws herself into every moment, and horror films are particularly hard. You've got to put yourself through trauma, you've got to scream and cry, and she did all of that.”
“We watched the film together…and she was so moved, she was crying afterwards,...I'm glad she's just so proud.”
In order to balance that suave, aristocratic, but then deeply terrifying male aspect of the story, Thomas Doherty (Gossip Girl, High Fidelity) as Walter takes the lead in that respect in The Invitation.
“In my mind he’s the next Leonardo DiCaprio, he's honestly fantastic,” Thompson said. “He's really playing multiple characters, first of all, he comes in playing the lord of the manor…and then he realizes that doesn't really win her over, she doesn't give two hoots about his money, and so he has to kind of adapt to what she sees as a leading man.”
“Once the penny drops, he's obviously the complete villain… When he has some of those sneaky grins or those kind of mischievous, all-knowing kind of looks, the audience…could be like, ‘Oh, that was his true nature shining through.’”
Jessica M. Thompson
'It's strange to me that we have been cut out of this world'
Jessica M. Thompson really dove into her love of horror in this film, studying the tensions in her favourite movies in the genre, but also putting in a ton of Easter eggs for the aficionados, including 90 references to Bram Stoker's Dracula and other nods to The Shining. There was actually a moment, that was ultimately cut from the film, where, after Evie has nightmares, a maid says, “I tend to get nightmares after I eat rich food too,” because Stoker said he wrote Dracula after eating too much dressed crab.
This deep dive into horror exemplified in Thompson’s film further establishes the illogical, rage-inducing nature of women historically feeling like they didn't have the support and the space to create this type of genre-based story.
“It's strange to me that we have been cut out of this world, up until recently, and I'm so glad that Jennifer Kent,…[other women] of the world have opened that door to allow people like me in,” Thompson said. “I'm so sick of horror films, and any genre film,...[where] we're just rehashing old material."
"As soon as you open the door to more diverse people, women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, you're just gonna get a fresh perspective that you haven't seen before and that's going to give you something brand new. Unfortunately, of course, we're judged a little bit more harshly,...I think the audiences are too smart now, they want something fresh, they want something unique... I think there's a lot of room to grow but I think we're also definitely making our mark.”
