Update: Carlsbad, N.M., City Council member J.R. Deporto has been fired from his private job as a network engineer for an oil company called HollyFrontier Corporation. He STILL maintains his position as city councilor.
Carlsbad city councilor J.R. Doporto received nationwide attention after a recent public post on Facebook mocking the National Women’s March, saying that women had the right to serve men and that they also had the right to “get slapped” if they didn’t quit their “bitching/protesting.” He later deleted the post but not before it had been screenshot and circulated around social media.
Despite the criticism he got from social media as well as the Associated Press when his post went viral, Doporto has steadfastly defended his remark, making the clichéd excuses of it having been “just a joke” and that people are “too easily offended nowadays.”
According to the press, the local Carlsbad government does not plan to take any disciplinary action against Doporto at this time.
Doporto occupies a government position in a state that is placed among the worst in violence against women. New Mexico ranks ninth in the entire nation for prevalence of rape, third for domestic violence, and number one in human trafficking. Native women in New Mexico are far more likely than any other ethnic group to experience intimate partner violence and murder by their male partners.
This controversial post comes only days after the inauguration of Trump, whose administration has already signed several legislative bills attacking reproductive and bodily autonomy rights of women. One such bills is HB 7, which prohibits any taxpayer money from being used to fund abortions, leaving poor women to either accumulate thousands in debt from medical bills or carry a child to term who they are not prepared to care for.
The Trump administration has also removed the White House’s page on violence against women, winking to misogynists everywhere that gendered violence is sanctioned by the state.
Doporto’s excuses are pitiful. There is nothing funny about violence against women, and his resilience in the face of mass criticism shows how deeply ingrained patriarchal ideas remain within the system.
However, his misogyny does not exist within a vacuum, nor is his post an isolated incident. As the reactionary alt-right rose to power, bigots began to feel emboldened and finally come out of hiding. Cases of racist and sexist violence have been on the rise throughout the country, a reflection of the state power that now openly legitimizes and even advocates for it.
Humans are shaped by the environment around them; reactionary sentiments among the people are an imitation of those of capitalism, an inherently reactionary system, which is built and maintained by the oppression and exploitation of the people.
Bigotry in every form must be fought at every turn by a unified working-class force, not only to denounce the bigotry itself, but to also combat the very system that continually perpetuates bigotry, regardless of whether the Republicans or the Democrats hold state power.
