Remarks from the Fray:
Condemning a heterosexual woman for the extra-sexual conduct of her husband is just as outdated as insisting she stand by her man. You may think she should have cut and run in her marriage, but that ethic is also clearly a product of the one man, one woman formula. So it's a wash who is feministically correct. It's her choice and it's her business who she sleeps with and lives with. Especially given that she's not out prosecuting sex crimes and has NOT committed a crime by staying with a philanderer.
Your analysis reeks of the double standard. Obama can "pass" as black or white, and does so when he so chooses, and he is adept at it. No woman can switch hit at will, by passing as a man or a woman when the situation demands it --the majority of this nation's citizen's voters will not let her. That is the number one reason so many hate Hilary--not misogyny, but gender stereotyping. As a woman you are taught that you can have one or the other but not both. You can have a career but you must be willing to be a castrating bitch. Since she was the supportive wife and mom therefore we MUST deny her this opportunity. That's how the gender mythologizing goes. It's not that different from demanding that non-American WASPs give up their unique cultural identity.
It is an illustration of how and why gender roles are MORE primary to our culture than race, because we are forced into an appropriate gender role before we even leave the home or womb...
Maybe some women see Hillary as hopelessly loyal to her role as wife/victim or duplicitous for desiring both roles. If so, you have been swallowing the conservative religious repackaging of her hook line and sinker. We are all complex beings and marriage for life is a difficult task under the best of circumstances.
You can expect more from women, but that does not mean you should hold them to a higher standard of punishment just because your ideals for them are higher.
--esya
(To reply, click here.)
As a wife, I can imagine the pain of infidelity and what mental block that must require to keep a marriage together. Seeing her and Bill with Chelsea, it is clear that they would keep their marriage together for their daughter, any political advantage is secondary. Her attacks on the "other women" are understandable, and not clearly evidence of hostility to women, or willingness to run roughshod over them.
The reason she can't give a speech on sexism is that, despite having her own impressive accomplishments, she insists on selling voters her husband's experience. Not an act of women's liberation by any stretch of the imagination!
--awsh
(To reply, click here.)
Senator Obama's tour de force speech on race in America was impressive. It was made possible in part because the Constitution was amended to give all races equal protection under the laws and [those] ideals have been given the teeth of enforcement. It was made possible because society no longer tolerates bigotry on the basis of race. With that achieved, Obama was able to take the next step.
Women haven't come quite as far. There is no Constitutional amendment guaranteeing them equal rights. The social opprobrium for using sexist slurs is far lower than that for using racist slurs. In general women are valued much more for their attractiveness than for their skills. Generations of inculcation from many homelands and religions often give the impression that women should be subservient to men.
Society needs to reject these and other ingrained ways we devalue women before we can move out of what Mario Solis-Marich called the post-racist, pre-post-sexist era into the post-sexist era with a similar speech.
--Calvados
(To reply, click here.)
The problem with the race-gender 'debate' is not that it is banal and insoluble. The problem is a much more difficult one. The debate can only ever favor Clinton.
Over the course of the campaign we have heard from various feminist theorists and bloggers, Clinton campaign staffers, and most recently Geraldine Ferraro, that the coverage of Clinton is sexist - not for any particular story, but in overall tone. This is clearly and regrettably true. But it is also true, as is probably clear to anyone living in America, that calling someone out as sexist is fairly harmless, especially when compared to the charge of racism, which is normally acknowledged as just the most serious and damning adjective we in the US share. This is a shame, because it means that the impact of a charge of sexism is far less than it reasonably ought to be. If one is called sexist at a dinner party s/he smiles and protests. But call someone racist and it leads to outrage, an end to friendships. Clinton can charge the media with sexism in general, because it is as true as it is nebulous and unthreatening. For Obama, there can be no racism in general; claiming so would be to cast himself as an 'angry black man' – it would be an act of suicide. Both campaigns are aware of this.
The numbers support the logic of the Clinton campaign. Women are aware that they are discriminated against not just concretely, but in a million different nebulous, general ways. They understand her campaign's complaints, and their sympathy is reflected in their support of the Clinton candidacy. African-Americans are equally aware of the general, abstract forms of discrimination they face, along with the obvious and shocking forms of material discrimination. But women are more than half the population, which matters a great deal in a democracy; African-Americans number only 12.8%. These numbers, along with the extremely unequal impacts of racism versus sexism as terms, tell us far more about how charges of bias are deployed than do any count of mentions of Clinton's décolletage.
--scotevan
(To reply, click here.)
(3/22)
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Remarks from the Fray:
Condemning a heterosexual woman for the extra-sexual conduct of her husband is just as outdated as insisting she stand by her man. You may think she should have cut and run in her marriage, but that ethic is also clearly a product of the one man, one woman formula. So it's a wash who is feministically correct. It's her choice and it's her business who she sleeps with and lives with. Especially given that she's not out prosecuting sex crimes and has NOT committed a crime by staying with a philanderer.
Your analysis reeks of the double standard. Obama can "pass" as black or white, and does so when he so chooses, and he is adept at it. No woman can switch hit at will, by passing as a man or a woman when the situation demands it --the majority of this nation's citizen's voters will not let her. That is the number one reason so many hate Hilary--not misogyny, but gender stereotyping. As a woman you are taught that you can have one or the other but not both. You can have a career but you must be willing to be a castrating bitch. Since she was the supportive wife and mom therefore we MUST deny her this opportunity. That's how the gender mythologizing goes. It's not that different from demanding that non-American WASPs give up their unique cultural identity.
It is an illustration of how and why gender roles are MORE primary to our culture than race, because we are forced into an appropriate gender role before we even leave the home or womb...
Maybe some women see Hillary as hopelessly loyal to her role as wife/victim or duplicitous for desiring both roles. If so, you have been swallowing the conservative religious repackaging of her hook line and sinker. We are all complex beings and marriage for life is a difficult task under the best of circumstances.
You can expect more from women, but that does not mean you should hold them to a higher standard of punishment just because your ideals for them are higher.
--esya
(To reply, click here.)
As a wife, I can imagine the pain of infidelity and what mental block that must require to keep a marriage together. Seeing her and Bill with Chelsea, it is clear that they would keep their marriage together for their daughter, any political advantage is secondary. Her attacks on the "other women" are understandable, and not clearly evidence of hostility to women, or willingness to run roughshod over them.
The reason she can't give a speech on sexism is that, despite having her own impressive accomplishments, she insists on selling voters her husband's experience. Not an act of women's liberation by any stretch of the imagination!
--awsh
(To reply, click here.)
Senator Obama's tour de force speech on race in America was impressive. It was made possible in part because the Constitution was amended to give all races equal protection under the laws and [those] ideals have been given the teeth of enforcement. It was made possible because society no longer tolerates bigotry on the basis of race. With that achieved, Obama was able to take the next step.
Women haven't come quite as far. There is no Constitutional amendment guaranteeing them equal rights. The social opprobrium for using sexist slurs is far lower than that for using racist slurs. In general women are valued much more for their attractiveness than for their skills. Generations of inculcation from many homelands and religions often give the impression that women should be subservient to men.
Society needs to reject these and other ingrained ways we devalue women before we can move out of what Mario Solis-Marich called the post-racist, pre-post-sexist era into the post-sexist era with a similar speech.
--Calvados
(To reply, click here.)
The problem with the race-gender 'debate' is not that it is banal and insoluble. The problem is a much more difficult one. The debate can only ever favor Clinton.
Over the course of the campaign we have heard from various feminist theorists and bloggers, Clinton campaign staffers, and most recently Geraldine Ferraro, that the coverage of Clinton is sexist - not for any particular story, but in overall tone. This is clearly and regrettably true. But it is also true, as is probably clear to anyone living in America, that calling someone out as sexist is fairly harmless, especially when compared to the charge of racism, which is normally acknowledged as just the most serious and damning adjective we in the US share. This is a shame, because it means that the impact of a charge of sexism is far less than it reasonably ought to be. If one is called sexist at a dinner party s/he smiles and protests. But call someone racist and it leads to outrage, an end to friendships. Clinton can charge the media with sexism in general, because it is as true as it is nebulous and unthreatening. For Obama, there can be no racism in general; claiming so would be to cast himself as an 'angry black man' – it would be an act of suicide. Both campaigns are aware of this.
The numbers support the logic of the Clinton campaign. Women are aware that they are discriminated against not just concretely, but in a million different nebulous, general ways. They understand her campaign's complaints, and their sympathy is reflected in their support of the Clinton candidacy. African-Americans are equally aware of the general, abstract forms of discrimination they face, along with the obvious and shocking forms of material discrimination. But women are more than half the population, which matters a great deal in a democracy; African-Americans number only 12.8%. These numbers, along with the extremely unequal impacts of racism versus sexism as terms, tell us far more about how charges of bias are deployed than do any count of mentions of Clinton's décolletage.
--scotevan
(To reply, click here.)
(3/22)