There were some grumblings in the comments about the blogular silence greeting this Rebecca Traister piece about how a lot of male Obama supporters are relishing this opportunity to indulge their sexist side, but I can say in all honesty, I hadn’t blogged it yet because I hadn’t seen it. But now that I have, I highly recommend it. Rebecca, of course, is a remarkably good writer, and she articulates beautifully why privileged Democratic men might harbor hostility towards Clinton, hostility white middle class liberals wouldn’t show Obama.
In today’s United States, racism continues to have more damaging economic and social structural implications for African-Americans than sexism has for women. Especially white and well-educated women, who are catching up to their male counterparts, if not in terms of equal pay or domestic expectations or secure reproductive options, at least in their ability to pursue the education and vocation they desire. And that makes them a more threatening group to the population of white men who have enjoyed unchallenged power — in the White House and other workplaces — since the birth of the nation. Those who feel the army of tough ladies breathing down their necks, competing for jobs and salaries and refusing to drop out of the race, are the population of privileged white men from which the elite portion of the Democratic Party is built.
It’s not just competing for jobs that fuels this. Middle class liberal straight men benefit in a number of ways from the oppression of women. They get their homes cleaned, their laundry done, their children cared for, their egos fluffed, and birthday cards sent to their mothers, or they have the expectation of these things. (To varying degrees, of course. Some liberal men are much more feminist than others, and how much housework gets done by what pair of hands varies from household to household.) If they’re single, they get to take advantage of a dating market where it’s still understood that women are selling and men are buying. Now, obviously the investment from man to man varies on this front—there are a number of good guys who would gladly trade it all for an opportunity to date a woman who hasn’t been crippled with insecurity from all the sexist mandates put on her (i.e., never again glares at her fat ass in a mirror and berates herself)—but there’s plenty enough sexism with liberal dudes, and we all know it. I believe this story, because it just rings true in my experience and from stories I hear from other women about liberal sexism.
But I have to confess—I have not experienced the liberal male hostility to Clinton that has these sexist undertones. Maybe I’m oblivious, but I certainly haven’t had any experiences like the ones described in the story.
Meanwhile, I was getting e-mails from men I didn’t know well who approached me as a go-to feminist to whom they could express their hatred of Hillary and their anger at her staying in the race — an anger that seemed to build with every one of her victories. One of my closest girlfriends, an Obama voter, told me of a drink she’d had with a politically progressive man who made a series of legitimate complaints about Clinton’s policies before adding that when he hears the senator’s voice, he’s overcome by an urge to punch her in the face.
A few weeks ago, my friend Becca O’Brien, a lawyer and policy advisor in New Orleans, visited me. She told me about her experience on the morning of the Louisiana primary. O’Brien had been openly torn between Obama and Clinton, and perhaps as a result, she received five phone calls from male friends around the country, urging her to vote for Obama. They were, she understood, just campaigning for their candidate; they didn’t realize how many calls she was receiving, or that taken together, they were making her furious. As O’Brien saw it, “The presumption was that I was undecided because I was a young woman, and they could talk some sense into me if they were the last ones I spoke to before I went into the voting booth.”
I’ve talked to a number of liberal male Obama supporters, and on the whole, they either castigate Clinton for her war vote, or say nothing about her except that she is a perfectly fine second choice. I’d like to flatter myself and say that it’s because I’m a Known Feminist, but so are a lot of the women in this story that are getting hell from guys they know. What I do suspect might be going on could be called the Ann Richards Factor, though. Richards, of course, was the last Democratic governor of our great state of Texas, and she lost to George W. Bush against an ugly campaign that turned her simple defeat into something close to martyrdom. She’s an icon to Texas Democrats, and in the process of her canonization, our middle class liberal men probably overcame a lot of their hostility to the idea of female leadership. And maybe they learned that just because we had a female governor doesn’t mean the toilets won’t continue to clean themselves.
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I posted about this in my blog a little while ago — not the article, but this feeling, the one described in the linked article. It was when Randall Munroe (writer of xkcd) endorsed Obama. Now, I love xkcd more than words can say. But it was just kind of the last straw: all the hipster/geek bloggers endorsed Obama. All of them. I wasn’t seeing a single Clinton endorsement.
I don’t think the hipster/geek bloggers were necessarily being sexist. xkcd has been one of the consistently anti-sexist webcomics out there. None of them said anything particularly hostile to Clinton. But just for a moment there, I felt the force of the boys’ club. I just felt very aware that I’m a woman and I’m not one of them. That’s happened with every group of men I’ve felt a part of — my physics classmates, even my core group of college friends — there was a moment when I realized that no, they really didn’t see me as truly one of them. As much as they may care about me or respect me, I’m always other.
The hell of it is, I actually have a slight preference for Obama. It didn’t make any sense for me to feel that way. But I was like “Guys, I like Obama too, but it seems strange to me that no one wants to endorse Clinton. What exactly is so wrong with her? I like her fine, I think she’d make a great president, and I would be proud and happy to vote for her if she gets the nomination.”
It’s just like she’s invisible or something, unless someone wants to rag on her. Like no one is taking her seriously as a candidate enough to talk about her — she’s either ignored or a joke. And yeah, there are huge sexist implications there.
Maybe, Caroline.
But that analysis completely leaves out the fact that the #1 issue this election is the war.
One candidate was for it, one was against it. That no one wants to endorse Clinton probably has a lot to do with it, and it’s not strange at all. Liberals want out of this war, badly.
I believe women who report encounters with sexist Obama supporters. What I don’t believe is it’s easy to write it off as a “boys club”, especially since all the female hipster/geeks I know are also supporting Obama. And Robin Morgan’s explanation of that—basically that we’re bimbos doing as our boyfriends instruct us—doesn’t sit right with me. In my house, I was on the Obama train first and worked on convincing my boyfriend to come over from being a reluctant to a enthusiastic-if-skeptical supporter.
My concern is making this all about gender obscures the war issue, which is nothing to sneeze at.
I seriously doubt there is ever a situation where one is “one of such and such” automatically. Some are more lucky and don’t have to struggle as much, other really has to hone in and low tow to group lingo…
The best way to see is how one lies about little things (to include and exclude) Because that’s the mechanism.
So taking that, the race dog wistle, “duck hunting”, or play bowling are attempts to “get down” with the folks. In a leader ultimately it’s about being charismatic. Ability to persuade the nation and express the soul of a nation.
You really haven’t noticed the Take Your Boobs And Go Home Watch, as Melissa calls it at Shakesville?
Two questions; where have you been vacationing? And where can I get tickets?
My girlfriend was big for Obama when I was for Edwards. I thought she was naive.
I just simply don’t trust Clinton. It is impossible for me to know if it’s rooted in sexism, due to the baggage of privilege.
I’ve rewritten this post five times, and I just don’t know what to say. I just don’t like to think I’m being irrationally sexist about this.
The war is one issue, yes, and Obama’s anti-war credentials are not solid. But there are other problems I have too. I don’t want to list them all since it’s getting off topic…
I will note that I do want to punch Lieberman in the face when I hear his voice.
Blue Jean, they do post a lot. I try to read Shakes religiously, though.
Amanda, you totally have a point about the war. That’s the major reason I’m an Obama supporter — that, and he’s charismatic, and I think we need a charismatic Democratic candidate.
I didn’t intend to dismiss Obama supporters as a boys’ club (that designation was meant to apply to male hipster/geek bloggers), nor to say that it was all about gender. It was an ill-defined feeling that I had, but I don’t think it’s based on nothing. I do think that lots of liberal guys are deeply uncomfortable with Hillary Clinton at least in part because she’s female, but it’s being made invisible, like a lot of sexism in the workplace and the larger society is made invisible. Like a woman not getting hired — it’s not explicitly because she’s a woman, and the people doing the hiring may not have any idea that even played a role in their decision, but because of how they’ve learned to think about and judge women differently from men, it did.
Yes, I am aware of the ghoulish irony of dismissing my girlfriend’s opinion as “naive”.
However, in my defense, I have read multiple blogs daily since summer of 2003, protested the war and got in legal trouble for it, majored in government, and read political science books for fun.
My girlfriend avoids current events because they crush her soul. I just can’t turn away.
That is my only contention. Sigh…
seebach, I want to punch Karl Rove in the face. My father stated that he wanted to slap Donald Rumsfeld’s face one day when Rummy was on making excuses for Iraq (back when he was around), and my father has never said such a thing before or since about anyone. It is significantly out of character for him.
Rove and Rumsfeld are justifiably infuriating, though (as is Lieberman),because they say and do totally assholic things and are arrogant pricks about it. I don’t really get why Hillary is that infuriating to anyone. But then, she always was, and I never got it in the 90s either.
Agreed, Caroline. I’m sure that’s a factor, though I haven’t encountered it. Again, I think there’s probably a geographical issue here.
I feel the same way as Seebach, I’m inclined that there IS some sexist privilege in there..but I just can’t see it. Probably because it’s through a certain type of political frame, which for my wife and myself is simply not escapable.
That frame is simply of Clinton as the person drifting from moral panic to moral panic in order to obtain power. No different from say a Joe Lieberman. That opinion was starting to change, but the last month or so slapped me in the face with it.
I definitely see some sexist remarks out there, but not as many as I’d expect. I suggest that sexism has less of a role than the fact that Clinton is seen as the status quo.
I avoid Daily Kos like the plague, but apparently that’s been ground zero for the If Hillary Gets Nominated Our Dicks Will Fall Off! movement. And there’s been some pretty nasty vitriol spewed by supporters of both sides — take a look at Washington Monthly’s comments section if you want to see things get traded back and forth pretty evenly.
As I’ve said before and will certainly say again, the fact that a guy says that he’s liberal or supports liberal causes is absolutely no guarantee that he’ll be a feminist, too. I’ve run into more than enough “shut up and get me a sandwich” liberals (and conservative men who view me as an equal) to know that liberal politics and feminist beliefs aren’t always the natural fit we’d like them to be.
Ya know, I wonder if we’d be having this same argument if, say, Barbara Boxer or Nancy Pelosi or any strong female Democratic candidate besides Hillary Clinton was in the running? Of course, there’s probably no other woman in American politics who could’ve gotten to that level for various and sundry reasons and no doubt plain ol’ raw, naked sexism explains a lot of the vitirol against Clinton, but still, I wonder. The senator’s been in the public eye for 16 years now and, for the most part, the public’s been pounded with the idea that Hillary Clinton is the epitome of the ambitious, ball-busting bitch that would do anything to get ahead, the kind of Michael Chrichton warned us about in that horrible book of his (which one, I know).
My mother hates Hillary Clinton. My apolitical brother can’t stand her. Neither one of them can articulate it, though. I wonder how much of that is specific Hillary hate, how much of it good ol’ American Sexism, and how much of it is from almost two decades of everyone from the mainstream media to goobers selling “Fuck Hillary” bumper stickers screaming “FUCKING CUNT” for nearly two decades. Been reading about hyperreality and it makes me wonder. And then there’s plenty of people who may not think ol’ Bill’s the source of all evil, but they do consider him the platonic model of a sleazebag politician and, therefore, anything associated with him is tainted.
So I wonder if another woman were running for the Democratic nod against Obama, would she engender as much venom as Clinton does. Do we men hate and fear Hillary Clinton because she’s a woman or do we hate and fear her because she’s *DUN-dun-dun!* Hillary Clinton and, of course, Queen Bitch.
Any of that make any sense at all?
Karmakin April 17, 2008 at 6:50 pm
That frame is simply of Clinton as the person drifting from moral panic to moral panic in order to obtain power.”
Hillary has ZERO leadership ability, in my opinion.
related to “panic” moment, it means she didn’t prepare a long term strategy that includes various outcome. Hence a panic moment.
Her failure to knock out Obama on super Tuesday for eg. left her campaign in debt and unable to fight while Obama cleaning the clock with 20% margin. After that she is way behind in delegates count. This is basic primary strategy right?
Obama obviously prepare by saying “I am outgunned” so I have to do rope-a-dope move.
That’s just one example of “strategy vs. moment of panic”
out from campaign: her middle east stance. From there alone one can bet a) the entire middle east will not like her position. because they know how that will play out. b) gas price will be high. c) we won’t get out of Iraq. because she has to get involved with Israel v.Iran conflict … d) $4.00+ gas c) deepening recession…
either all that or she will have to lie and let the entire thing play out upon itself.
It is NOT possible to say “I will defend Israel automatically upon clash with Iran, they cannot have nuke, and I will get out of Iraq”
It’s illogical.
those are VERY obvious and predictable outcome. There are tons of smaller ones i can dump.
In defense of the Kos Official Anti-Hillary Narrative:
In Crashing the Gate, Kos and Armstrong state that electing any democrat is always better than the alternative, nomatter how ideologically impure, because that means that there will be democratic control of the agenda. Now, when you remove ideology, that creates problems, but for the time being, just work from this premise.
This dovetails nicely with the Howard Dean 50-state strategy in which no Republican goes uncontested.
Obama is working well at a grassroots level, which dovetails nicely with the 50-state strategy.
Clinton, who is a member of the DLC (an organizaiton whose leadership’s opinion is there’s no Republican position that Democrats shouldn’t take in order to prove we’re not Dirty Fucking Hippies) opposed Dean as head of the DNC and preferred a DLC flunky. There’s fear that Clinton will stop the 50-state strategy in exchange for a more corporate PAC focused Democratic party.
There’s also the problem that Clinton has lately been using right wing cognitive frames, ie, ‘elitism’, that strengthen GOP narratives. Digby rightly criticized when Obama talked about a social security crisis. The Overton Window has to be moved, and such.
Individual Kos posters can be and have been sexist. But the narrative, I think, is convincing when you remove it from certain personalities.
I know my dislike of Senator Clinton is not rooted in sexism. I respond to her exactly as I responded to President Clinton. Whenever I saw him or heard him my “tourettes like” syndrome exploded and I yelled various bad words at the TV or Radio. I react the same way to Hillary. Equal opportunity disgust!
In defense of the Kos Official Anti-Hillary Narrative:
If people had stuck strictly to the official narrative, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The problem is that the “official narrative” came from “Sanctimonious Women’s Studies Set” Kos, which isn’t exactly a sexism-free source (to say the least).
Which was part of the whole point here — there’s a whole lot of nasty misogyny that suddenly rears its head when Hillary Clinton is mentioned. Suddenly her stance with the DLC disappears so people can start talking about how her voice is like nails on a chalkboard or how they want to punch her in the face. So, clearly, there’s something underlying the official narrative for quite a few people.
Eric Boehlert has a fascinating column at Media Matters about how Chris Matthews is regarded as a major media player because of his misogyny, not despite it. In fact, the only rationale for viewing him as a major media player is his constant misogynistic remarks about Hillary, because his ratings sure don’t support seeing him that way.
Read the column — it’s pretty eye-opening about the currents running under the surface.
If people had stuck strictly to the official narrative, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The problem is that the “official narrative” came from “Sanctimonious Women’s Studies Set” Kos, which isn’t exactly a sexism-free source (to say the least).
No, I understand. I strayed from the topic. Matthews and Carlson and their “vagina-Americans” is really disgusting.
I hate these people.
Individual Kos posters can be and have been sexist. But the narrative, I think, is convincing when you remove it from certain personalities.
i haven’t actually seen a narrative coming out of kos. most of what i’ve seen is frothy and unhinged “FILTHY SOW/PANTS-SUITED BITCH CUNT WHORE BITCH! I HATE HER!” posts followed by 400+ long comment-threads of high-fiving. i guess that’s a narrative. i guess. same thing over at atrios. it’s all over the damn place, and a lot of it is not coming from her war vote, it’s coming from the fact that she has a vagina. that’s my guess, at least, since most of the invective centers around her biology. and of course there are the facebook groups.
and i have seen this happening in places other than the internet. it freaks my shit out. i have family members telling me i’m “selfish” for voting for her, that she’s “crossed a line”, that she’s a “bitch”. i have friends who say the same shit. everything from “i can’t say why, AND IT IS NOT SEXISM, but i just don’t like her, and i can’t say why”, to outright wishes for her violent raping and/or murder, framed as jokes. i hear it on campus. i hear it in coffee shops. i hear it on the bus. it’s everywhere.
and then of course there’s the MSM, where the overt sexism is just astounding.
maybe it’s regional, or cultural. i don’t know.
isopluvial: but why do you “react the same way to hillary”? they are two separate people, after all. the whole “Billary” phenomenon seems like a sort of sexism; there are some good posts on it over at Shakesville, actually. where does your hate come from? when did it begin? if you hate her because of who her husband is, or what he did, i’d argue that your hatred might have sexism as a component.
hm. i hope that got modded, and not eaten…
I posted about this in my blog a little while ago — not the article, but this feeling, the one described in the linked article. It was when Randall Munroe (writer of xkcd) endorsed Obama. Now, I love xkcd more than words can say. But it was just kind of the last straw: all the hipster/geek bloggers endorsed Obama. All of them. I wasn’t seeing a single Clinton endorsement.
I don’t think the hipster/geek bloggers were necessarily being sexist. xkcd has been one of the consistently anti-sexist webcomics out there. None of them said anything particularly hostile to Clinton. But just for a moment there, I felt the force of the boys’ club. I just felt very aware that I’m a woman and I’m not one of them. That’s happened with every group of men I’ve felt a part of — my physics classmates, even my core group of college friends — there was a moment when I realized that no, they really didn’t see me as truly one of them. As much as they may care about me or respect me, I’m always other.
The hell of it is, I actually have a slight preference for Obama. It didn’t make any sense for me to feel that way. But I was like “Guys, I like Obama too, but it seems strange to me that no one wants to endorse Clinton. What exactly is so wrong with her? I like her fine, I think she’d make a great president, and I would be proud and happy to vote for her if she gets the nomination.”
It’s just like she’s invisible or something, unless someone wants to rag on her. Like no one is taking her seriously as a candidate enough to talk about her — she’s either ignored or a joke. And yeah, there are huge sexist implications there.
Hillary, in the past, has been a fairly vocal opponent against violent video games and violent movies , which is pretty indicative to me that the demographic she has gone after in the past has never been the Twentysomething hipster type. I think its easy math that she’s invisible to a portion of the population that she never made an attempt to be visible in.
It’s so funny, Jonathan, because I’m a gamer an a supporter of Clinton, which is supposedly an oxymoron.
You’re right, though. I’m not sure what I can add.
… Twentysomething hipster type. I think its easy math that she’s invisible to a portion of the population that she never made an attempt to be visible in.
I think, it’s hillary’s methodology
a) if one is not in poll or statistic, he doesn’t exist (hence her failure to court youth or african american voters. Most youth voters are first time voters in this election. african american are generally out polled in large early primary state.)
b) Gotta pay to play. (so youth and poors don’t have voice. but powerful lobbyist are dominant)
all these are in the beginning of course, before the youth, academic and african american vote shows up in force. Obama was doing invisible/ground-net campaign, while Hillary was using poll-mass media.
That’s why she is doing classic pandering: money source and easy media target group. Everybody else is irrelevant. (rightly so in 90’s style campaign. But this is not the 90’s)
I think I feel what you’re getting at, Caroline. Even if sexism weren’t part of it, I think too much unanimity can be disconcerting, even when you agree with it: to try to use a depoliticized*, male-vs-male analogy: I may or may not think China Miéville is a better writer than Stephen King, but if I were talking about it with fifty of my friends, and every single one of them agreed with me, that might feel slightly odd and oppressive — I might want dissent to at least exist even if I’m part of the unanimous voice.
*Okay. Not quite depoliticized — Miéville is a radical leftist or communist or something, King is a conventional liberal (and probably an Obama supporter.
It’s an awkward position, because what are we supposed to do in situations like that? Switch to supporting Clinton because we feel our cliques are too unanimously pro-Obama? But we like Obama! Try to make Devil’s Advocate cases for Clinton even while we admit to still being part of the Obama camp?
At least, that’s how I see it. Maybe I was completely misinterpreting everything you said and stripped it of any feminist aspect and turned it into a generalized critique of groupthink that was completely different from the point you were trying to make. I guess those thoughts are what resonated most with me, at any rate.
Honest there is enough misogynistic crap out there to curdle your toes. If Kos isn’t the sty you want to wallow in, then read some of the blogs and comment threads in the HuffPo. It is a safety zone for misogyny and sexism as long as you use one of the derogatory Clinton terms in the comment.
To be honest I really see them both as pretty centrist and downright conservative and before someone defends Obama, he could walk on water but nothing I have heard from him indicates that it is much more than an inch deep to start with. I’ve read his website and looked at his Illinois voting record as well as what he has done in his truncated term in the Senate and I remain unimpressed. What does impress me is the phenomenal way that any mention of Obama that is not fawning results in vitriolic spew about Clinton.
I do think that a salient part of the Obamenon is boosted by misogyny. It’s unavoidable, in our current politics. I don’t think it drives the campaign, though, which is a good sign that it wouldn’t drive his presidency. I think it manifests in votes, sure thing, but we shouldn’t presume that too many/most Obama supporters are liberal white men. Many of them are black people who have no. place. in the liberal/conservative divide except in the form of ridiculous cartoon character conservatives, because you can’t say anything good about black people or mention that there *are* black women without being labeled teh Most Liberal Communist OMG. It’s why so much of our narrative is focused on who will get votes from “men” or “women”? Or, “African Americans” or “women”? And even when it gets specific, the only frames are “white men,” often referring to the Reagan Democrats, whom i think are as dead as Roosevelt Republicans, and “white women.” It’s a sad state of affairs.
Julian Elson April 17, 2008 at 8:23 pm
It’s an awkward position, because what are we supposed to do in situations like that? Switch to supporting Clinton because we feel our cliques are too unanimously pro-Obama? But we like Obama!
so you are doing meta poll of some sort? Using opinion from people around you as input?
I don’t really get why Hillary is that infuriating to anyone. But then, she always was, and I never got it in the 90s either.
I don’t find her as infuriating as the people she has chosen to surround herself with and rely on for advice.
I find the entitlement and demands of her supporters infurating, especially when she taps in to the patriarchal and anti-democratic political machines here in the east.
I find her arrogance infuriating, particularly when she uses and dumps people like those workers and vendors that she hasn’t yet paid.
I find her claims of superior leadership infuriating because a real leader knows how to both fundraise and budget spending so that they are not constantly running out of money.
Now I’m tiring mightily of the “Hillary: The Novella” she is spinning and passing off as “Hillary: The Biography”.
Basically, I don’t see her femaleness as making her any different than any of the old guard baby boomer era politicians she is perfectly emulating. Ultimately, it is that same tired DNC package with a skirt on it and the implication that I have sexism problems if I can’t just see how important that skirt is and how different the skirt makes that same annoying and ineffective garbage that drove me away from voting for Clinton.
#
What does impress me is the phenomenal way that any mention of Obama that is not fawning results in vitriolic spew about Clinton.
Sounds like you could use some new friends.
Not as much as I need new media.
To me, Mrs. Clinton is not the archetype of feminism. Further, she did swallow the Bushit and voted for the War on A Different Muslim. Her campaign mailer misrepresented Obama’s pro-choice voting record. In her favor, her speaking voice is magically no longer irritating. But I still favor Obama over her.
Now, am I a self-deluding misogynist? I voted for Feinstein, I voted for Boxer; basically I have voted for any female Democratic candidate I could, with one exception: a candidate for a local office who unfairly smeared her male rival (accused a retired fireman of double-dipping by running for elected office.)
So I just don’t see how my disinclination to vote for Mrs. Clinton could make me a misogynist.
I’ve maintained for quite some time that HRC is a terrible test case for a woman POTUS because a) she’s there on spousal coattails– yes, she probably would have been a quite accomplished public servant had she not married Bill, but the political machine they built (and that she’s now heading) was launched & held together by his charisma, not her electoral potential– which doesn’t exactly forge a useful path for others, and b) the identity issues of the Democratic Party are fraught with both gender and crooked-Clinton stereotyping, and she obviously exacerbates both. And I’d love to hear Amanda’s take on the latter, because while I know that a lot of the cheap shots against Clinton are quite sexist, I can’t in all honesty say that they’re worse than the sum of more predictable pansy-Dem contempt and general Clinton-bashing combined.
And sure, she (and Bill, goddamn him) are pissing off a lot of Dems for a lot of reasons– they’re arrogant, hidebound, dismissive, and do tend to carry a sort of quasi-public psychodrama around with them, one that– however well it works wrt their marital happiness, and I have no reason to believe it doesn’t– tends to put citizens in the crossfire whenever his narcissism or her controlling tendencies aren’t properly countered by the other (billing records, infidelity, healthcare, pardons, etc.). So there are plenty of internal issues that we’re trying to work out as a party, and they ain’t helping with this back-to-the-nineties stuff; in fact, they’re really undermining the efforts of Dean, the blogosphere, and lots of activists who have been trying to rebuild a broad-based party.
I’m just astonished at the idea that the only possible reason people could oppose Clinton is because they’re sexists/misogynists; and that women who oppose Clinton only do so to curry favor with their male coteries.
Sorry, but that is complete and total bullshit.
Clinton is deeply corrupt. She is mendacious. She’s an incompetent manager who rewards loyalty over ability. Her campaign has left a trail of unpaid bills across the country in a really stunning display of class-based arrogance. She cannot, apparently, plan her way out of a wet paper bag.
It’s not sexist to point those things out.
It’s not misogynistic to say those are undesirable characteristics in a President.
What IS sexist is excusing them all, and demanding we support Clinton despite them all, for no other reason than her gender.
It’s also deeply, infuriatingly, insultingly sexist to suggest that women who support Obama over Clinton do so to “prove” our “hipster” credentials to males.
Some of us are long past the age of needing or wanting to prove anything to anyone.
I was prepared to recommend Hillary - she tends to be patronizing and a fan of top-down management, which I dislike but is hardly unprecedented, but she’d be a huge step from any of the GOP candidates and I would have liked to see anyone win after being exposed to the smear-machine for a couple decades. Besides, while I may dislike some of her policies they tend to be at least rational areas of disagreement which, again, would be a night-and-day difference from the Decider’s reign.
After watching her campaign repeatedly lie about Obama and cosy up to the likes of Scaife & Murdoch, well, I’m questioning whether I’d be able to claim she’d be better than McCain. In particular, I used to think of her as intelligent - ethically dubious but not a figurehead - and I can’t say that after seeing her make obvious logical flaws, lie about things which are plastered all over YouTube, etc.
Note that there’s nothing in this post specific to her gender. While misogyny is certainly real, it’s not Hillary’s main problem.
Ms. Kate and CaseyL said it all except for one thing:
HRC is manifestly and proudly a willing and eager servant of our shadowy corporate masters. She has done nothing whatsoever in the last ten years to make life anything but worse for people who don’t play golf. Not once has she taken the slightest risk to use her name recognition and discursive power to take a stand for anything at all, let alone core liberal values.
But I always make sure to preface statements like that with something along the lines of “Even though it’s high past damn time we had a woman president…” not just because I don’t want to be accused of sexism, but because I actually believe that.
Now, Obama isn’t nearly as liberal as I would like. Or more properly, he doesn’t seem as liberal as I would like. Personally, I think he’s pretending to be less liberal than he really is, but that’s beside the point. While Obama MAY be, or end up, a servant of our shadowy corporate masters, Clinton surely is. I liked Edwards a lot better than I do Obama, and I thought Edwards would stomp any Republican in the general election, whereas Obama will have to work for it and Clinton would lose by an epic margin. So I’m not an Obama cultist. And a lot of people are pretty damn irrational about their hatred of Clinton. I’m sure she’d be pretty interesting to have lunch with: I just don’t want her anywhere near the levers of power.
okay, I just finish reading the salon article….
Man.THAT GOT TO BE THE SADDEST most transparent campaign puff. I’ve read recently.
…this is not going to be pretty and people are start going to throw shoes at me. But I’ll slice and dice it anyway…
(wonder how fast I can get ” shut up, shut up. get your own blog.” retort.)
One more thing before I go to bed…
I think this is my “sexist” thought about Clinton. It might be concern trollish, I dunno.
I worry that she’d be a terrible president, and kinda salt the earth behind her..she’d nail shut the glass ceiling. She literally, I think at this point would be a Democratic version of Bush. Not policy wise, but in terms of ineptitude and rewarding loyalty over success? Yeah. I can see that.
First of all, I’m unconvinced that sexism was a motiviating force in the rise of Obama. He was stirring excitement in people long before it was him vs Hillary. And it’s not like this kind of excitement only flows toward a candidate who is only running against a woman. People liked Bobby Kennedy, for instance, in much the same way they like Obama.
Secondly, let’s not fall for an illusory correlation. Sure, most sexist Democrats will prefer Obama to Clinton, but that doesn’t even come close to meaning that most Democrats who prefer Obama are sexist.
Third, I don’t see what there is to recommend Clinton to the extent that misogyny is a prime suspect in dislike for her. She claims a wealth of experience but has been in the Senate a full 2 years longer than Obama (and anyway, “experience” is a poor tactic when the Republican candidate is the highly-experienced McCain.) Her health care plan is fine, but she has taken so much money from insurance companies that I don’t expect it to ever see the light of day. She began this primary with a huge lead in support and money, and has seized defeat from the jaws of victory yet paints herself as the one most ready to govern on day one. Even if she does lose, she is ready and willing to do whatever she can to circumvent the desire of voters, be it calls to superdelegates or going back on her campaign’s agreement vis a vis Michigan (my state) and Florida. And so on.
Finally, if my friend Steve (an Army ranger) returns home from Iraq to his wife and baby in a body bag, I will not for any reason temper my rage against people like Hillary Clinton who thought it a good idea to give George W the authority to conquer a country that was no threat to us, especially not because some of them are women. I find, right now, that I can’t even express adequately how angry I am at people who voted for military force–and are unwilling or incapable of recanting that decision. That is not the kind of decision that comes along once in a person’s life; that is the kind of decision that comes along once every several lifetimes, and Hillary Clinton failed it miserably. I hear she didn’t even read the relevant reports before making that vote. And she has the gall to claim superior ability to answer the Red Phone at 3 AM? If someone can think of Iraqis blown to pieces by car bombs, Iraqis kidnapped and held for ransom, Iraqi girls forced into prostitution because there are no jobs in the country they fled to, and pull the lever for someone who does not regret making that possible, more power to them.
okay..here we come. parts that I don’t get
“A lot of guys just can’t stand Hillary, and it’s the intensity of their irritation with her that disturbs me more than their devotion to Obama.”
I was confused by the saucer-eyed, unquestioning devotion shown by my formerly cynical cohorts, especially when it was accompanied
“There is this Obama-mania, where these young men get glassy eyes and start spitting out vague things about how Barack Obama is going to save humanity. Really, have you seen their eyes? It’s this faraway look. It’s scary.”
If she feels that those are sufficient reason to doubt Obama candidacy, wouldn’t the same trick can be employed to ask about Clinton followers?
a)I am sure in the youtube, one can find sauser-eyed idiots following her (in fact in MO campaign, her operner was saying “I had a crush on her”) b) more importantly, if this is the level of analysis presented to defend Hillary, the quality of her base. WHO ON EARTH want a leader that attracts that sort of simple minded followers?
There are many unpleasant realities about Clinton: She voted for the war; she has taken hawkish stances in defense of Israel; she voted to declare Iran’s revolutionary guard “a terrorist organization”; she sponsored a flag-burning amendment; she has not run a great campaign, waiting until this week to fire Mark Penn; she is a Clinton. But while these are all qualities that might rightly inspire political dislike, or a withdrawal of support, they don’t often incite the kind of hissing fury with which her primary run has been met. Were it her husband -– a man who has exhibited many of these same flaws (and more!) -– in the same place, he might or might not be trailing Obama, but it is hard to picture the kind of seething, violent animosity being flung at him.
unpleasant realities????!!!????? Is that what they call war criminal these days? conspiring to commit war crime under false pretense? “UNPLEASANT REALITIES”?
She should be removed from office, let alone running for president. (again, pretty weak apologist argument.
The war kills a lot of people
The war create massive energy price spike
The war so far is costing $760B
The war is killing 4000 troops
The war has made 2 millions people refugees and nearly 1 million dead
The war is CAUSING economic slowdown and is in the process of bringing down banking system.
“UNPLEASANT REALITIES”
This MOFO is mad. She should be drafted and toss into downtown Baghdad and eat her “unpleasant reality” for lunch.
DUMB FUCK.
she should be voted off the planet along with the rest of war criminal.
using exact same argument by Rebecca Traister
Reasons NOT to vote for Hillary:
Her supporter is too dumb to make real arguments except appeal to emotion, “but she is a woman”, Hills girls are scary, …
yeah…
let’s skip the obvious like she is a warmongering liar, corporatist hacks, lobbyist ass kisser, racist, deadbeat, lie about valor …
Why don’t we nuke Iran, kill 10K troops, bring down the currency another 30%, make the recession worst and add $2T to national debt…. just get it over with.
so far that idiot has picked fight with Iran, China, Russia before she even begun her presidency. All that for few cheap soundbites. Nice going.
OMFG, if you hate Hillary’s cackle and her voice, you are a hater. (my question: which voters doesn’t hate her cackle and voice after this clip.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGeQ6dxGMFA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etk_O-nhlA4
“But I have to confess—I have not experienced the liberal male hostility to Clinton that has these sexist undertones. Maybe I’m oblivious, but I certainly haven’t had any experiences like the ones described in the story. ”
I totally have. I’m living in China for a little while and found an alum that lives here so we decided to meet up cause I was looking for some more friends. Seemed pretty nice and all but then we started talking about politics and HC. He was talking about how much he hates her and he’ll vote McCain if she wins the nomination, and he was making really violent remarks about her. I asked him why he felt this way and he said “it’s just a gut feeling”, no substantive reasons whatsoever. Yeaaaaa, that gut feeling? It’s called sexism. Which of course he denied but from then on, I knew we could never really be friends. I’ve gotten similar reactions from other guys too, but his was the most reactionary and violent.
glad to see that this thread turned into yet another Reasons That Hillary Sucks and Obama is Awesome Educational Opportunity. sigh.
If you want proof that sexism is fueling the media –and web — fascination with Obama and scorched-earth policy with Clinton, you have only to read this entire thread.
It has gone from thoughtful discussions of Amanda’s post to full-out flaming rants against Hillary. There’s your proof.
I think you underestimate the anti-charisma HRC possesses: when she was pitching her medical plan back in the 90’s, there was just something about her that grated. She’s just not that likable, she’s the anti-Bush, who people should have hated but didn’t.
Whereas, Obama simply inspires me. I want to be inspired, not lectured.
(re: trends: those last 3 comments above (at posting time) was “squashed”, and s/he’s insane, so don’t take that as indicative of anything sensible.)
eric: i’m just wondering where that “anti-charisma” comes from i guess. what is it? what makes the dislike so intense? i honestly don’t get it.
Jeez, Ms. Kate, your whole post was already in my head before I scrolled down the thread. So, double ditto on what you said. What infuriates me about HRC is that she falls far, far short of her potential because of her politics. She’s got great policies and terrible politics, especially when it comes to her disorganized coterie of triangulating jackasses. I desperately want to like Clinton as a candidate, but she does her damnedest to guarantee that I just can’t justify it.
Kidlacan, her anti-charisma is captured in her speech patterns:
1) Start with anecdote: “You know, I heard this … + anecdote”
2) State some pablum about how that sums up regular folk
3) Provide small-bore, poll-tested policy that supposedly addressed the problem in the anecdote.
4) Repeat.
She doesn’t trust us with bigger ideas because she’s the one who is supposed to save us. Just trust the Clintons, they deserve it after all … That attitude sucks the air out of the room, suffocating any kind of progressive politics that could remake the way we relate to our government.
But I have to confess—I have not experienced the liberal male hostility to Clinton that has these sexist undertones. Maybe I’m oblivious, but I certainly haven’t had any experiences like the ones described in the story…I’ve talked to a number of liberal male Obama supporters, and on the whole, they either castigate Clinton for her war vote, or say nothing about her except that she is a perfectly fine second choice. I’d like to flatter myself and say that it’s because I’m a Known Feminist…
Or maybe becaus you are being honest and Traister, as she herself admits in the comments on the article, based everything on a few self-serving anecdotes.
This article is no more real or valid than any of those backlash lifestyle articles about “opt-out mothers” and other bogus trends about women which start out with a thesis then find “evidence” in vague stories and quotes from pals to back it up.
Just like the backlash articles it refers to “some women” and “some men” and no actual statistics, and not even one interview with a man or anyone who hasn’t experienced this alleged trend. Note also the heavil reliance on friends of friends, instead of interviews with more objectively selected subjects who might not fit the pattern.
Just because this one makes a broad, unsubstantiated claim against men sprinkled doesn’t make it any more real.
I find it kind of insulting you are so willing to call bull on those articles, yet this one which uses the exact same methods is assumed to be true.
I’m just very glad I don’t have to vote again until after the primaries. I was an Edwards girl who switched to Obama just before Edwards dropped out, and never really considered HRC at all. But the misogyny IS out there, and it’s stupid, stupid, stupid.
And having been a right-winger (Canadian right-winger, but still) in the 1990s, I can’t claim that none of that still affects me. I don’t gravitate towards Clinton, and that’s probably why. I wonder what to do about it, now.
The other problem I see with the whole mess, is a complete disregard for the real storylines going on in the primary season. Clinton’s problems are completely her own doing.
Before Super Tuesday, (Actually, to be precise, before SC) , the conventional wisdom throughout the blogosphere is that there are 3 very good candidates, and a debate on the issues will only help to grow brand Democrat. Sure, Clinton had less support, but that was largely due to her vote for the Iraqi war. And that’s fair enough.
After SC, she started spitting in the face of the common themes that you see most places in the blogosphere. It should be no surprise once it became clear how much she was relying on consultants and running a 50%+1 strategy that the opinion of her would drop like a rock, and yes, it would get ugly. It sounds childish, but her campaign really did start it.
Especially that a site like DailyKos, which actually has very firm but if you think about it, reasonable goals (50-state strategy, decentralization of money and power in the Democratic party, less influence of consultants, etc.), would get upset about the way this campaign is going…
What the fuck did you think would happen?
Srsly.
While there are undercurrents of sexism, to be sure. Don’t lose track of the overcurrents, which are just as important.
It is reasonable to argue about the strategies of the two campaigns and the two candidates. Each campaign has a point and even the blogosphere does. There is good reason to work towards the goal of the 50 state strategy while there is also a reasonable doubt as to whether it is at a point where it trumps the disadvantages of the electoral college system that is definitely designed as a 50%+1 strategy. This is where the arguments about Michigan and Florida prove interesting as leaving them out mocks the 50 state strategy while simultaneously making the 50%+1 a more difficult climb.
As for which of these two rubes to vote for each voter is going to come to different places based on their own personal experiences. I have come to the conclusion that I simply don’t know enough about where Obama really stands on some issues to place my faith in his judgement. He has used the Illinois allowed ‘present’ vote too often for me to trust him on certain matters. As far as I am concerned the only value of a present vote is to allow a politician to skate an issue for personal safety and that makes him a weasel in my eyes. She’s a weasel on some issues as well but on balance she is more practical and that counts for something with me.
So some are inspired by Obama and I respect that. I have never been inspired by a pep rally and some specious comments and I never will be.
So ranting and railing at her to me just sounds like people are unsure about their own decisions. The fact that they have to pull her marriage into her political life just makes me feel that they aren’t looking at her political decisions at all. And it all comes down to the same ones and the same vitriol and yes, the same misogynistic slurs because the words are so imbedded in the language that people have never had to really question them before this primary. If people actually start to look at the sexism inherent inour core word choices then something good will have come out of this but I doubt it. So far all I have seen is people defending pathetic language illiteracy in defense of their anger and spite.
Since there’s only one male and one female Democratic candidate left, all the misogynists are naturally siding with the man. That’s going to cause some unease amongst feminist-minded people because yes, all the misogynists are on Obama’s side! I think that’s contributing to the feeling some people here express.
I don’t think the feminist blogosphere* has been doing itself any favours with this primary election though. Shakesville has been getting madder and madder over Obama’s success. That “Take Your Boobs and Go Home Watch” post someone linked earlier is a good example - Melissa posts three news stories about Clinton that don’t even mention her sex.
People want Hilary to quit not because a woman, but because she’s lost the election and can only now steal it through decidedly democratically-dubious methods.
I have to say I think that my first paragraph explains why some feminists seem to think Obama supporters are ganging up on them, as it were. I can see the facile link between “please stop, you’re damaging the party” and “silence, woman!” but that’s all the link is, facile.
What I will say on the other side is that if you want to denigrate a woman (in the context of denigrating a political candidate, which is okay) then there are certain established, sexist ways of doing it. Some otherwise-liberal Obama supporters might slip into those modes when criticising Hilary, simply since they’re so established. For example: I happen to think that Hilary is shrill; but I tend not to say that since there’s no real way of articulating it without playing into misogynistic themes.. Others might not be so careful.
* I hate that word.
* facile? I mean something more like “superficial”.
Eric, Rejector of Memes April 18, 2008 at 12:50 am
(re: trends: those last 3 comments above (at posting time) was “squashed”, and s/he’s insane, so don’t take that as indicative of anything sensible.)
oh definitely insane. so watch out. Anybody calling the war in iraq “unpleasant realities” gonna get it. I’ll promise this. I am ready to grind it all the way.
I hate to say it for what it might reflect on my own biases, but almost all the Hillary hate seems pretty obviously a result of our patriarchy-saturated culture.
I never really supported Senator Clinton. I thought Obama simply represented a greater break with the past, and I feel that is very important at this stage of America’s decline into irrelevance.
However, all this crap about her “anti-charisma”, about how her voice is so “annoying”, about how her laugh is so “annoying”, comments about her cleavage, comments about crying, comments about her choice of apparel, etc. - those things are all straight out of the Big Book of Sexism.
As she is the highest profile woman in the US today, it’s very easy to make unsupported claims that the Clinton haters are only against her personally, and not high-profile women in general. IMO that’s crap.
If it were Pelosi, or Boxer, or Feinstein (funny how they’re all from my home state), it would be incredibly easy to see the exact same attacks in use on them.
Just as I believe our reactions to an Obama candidacy reveal/will-reveal a lot about the current state of racism in the US, the reactions to Clinton’s cadidacy have already said a lot about sexism in this country. And it doesn’t look good.
As I said, I was never a big Clinton fan, although I was more than willing to vote for her if she got the nomination. Bu the part of me who is the proud father of my daughter is really disappointed about what Clinton’s decline says about us…
lorelei23 April 18, 2008 at 12:35 am
If you want proof that sexism is fueling the media –and web — fascination with Obama and scorched-earth policy with Clinton, you have only to read this entire thread.
It has gone from thoughtful discussions of Amanda’s post to full-out flaming rants against Hillary. There’s your proof.”
There is NOTHING thoughtful about this thread. NONE. not even Amanda’s post. Everybody should be outraged about it. Not foaming at the mouth maybe, but definitely outraged. The article only seemingly thoughtful. But it’s deceitful.
The entire argument of the article is nothing but ‘boys has penis and girls has vagina’. It’s “Kindergarten Cop” level of argument wrapped in academic niceties. It has NO relationship to reality or what various policy proposed by candidate will affect everybody’s. It dismiss major flaw in policies and flaw as trivial and brings forward some “groupie” talk as way to decide a vote.
No really…… what is this “middle school”? I vote / won’t vote a president because the popular girl say the boys are not cool.
THAT was the entire argument bought by “Rebecca Traister”. It’s “groupie” argument. Feminism MY ASS. She is nothing but a tool.
MikeEss April 18, 2008 at 8:07 am
However, all this crap about her “anti-charisma”, about how her voice is so “annoying”, about how her laugh is so “annoying”, comments about her cleavage, comments about crying, comments about her choice of apparel, etc. - those things are all straight out of the Big Book of Sexism.
Let me quote Rebecca Traister writing. She USES THE EXACT same criteria as valid means to like/not like a candidate. In fact not the candidate itself but also people around a candidate. So WHY can’t the exact same type of argument be sued? (how eyes move, laugh, how one dress, )
Hey I didn’t invent the argument. I am just using exact Traister trick. (So please explain. You gonna have grand time explaining how eyes movement is not the same as laughing or how one dress. And you gonna hate yourself silly for trying to defend that argument. but I can’t wait…)
“A lot of guys just can’t stand Hillary, and it’s the intensity of their irritation with her that disturbs me more than their devotion to Obama.”
I was confused by the saucer-eyed, unquestioning devotion shown by my formerly cynical cohorts, especially when it was accompanied
“There is this Obama-mania, where these young men get glassy eyes and start spitting out vague things about how Barack Obama is going to save humanity. Really, have you seen their eyes? It’s this faraway look. It’s scary.”
One thing I notice: it seems there is some sort of priesthood around here. If the high priest say something stupid, the idiots lower has to agree and start spinning like they actually believe the idiocy. REGARDLESS how LUNATIC the idea is.
Hillary voted to OK the Iraq disaster.
Nothing else matters. Not a damn thing.
Please see Post #54.
Will- to clarify a simple point of language and procedure. In an electoral contest, lost is defined by failing to achieve the electoral objective by an agreed upon time. In this case a set number of delegates by the final vote at the Denver convention. No one can have lost or won the Primary contest until at least the first vote is held at the convention. Even should she concede at this point, Clinton still would not have lost. He will not have won until Denver and even though we all will be working on the theory that he had won between when (and if) she concedes that will not be technically true. All the delegates could have a drink together before the vote and decide to vote for Elizabeth Edwards and she will have won and be asked to be the nominee. Heck, the contest is still sufficiently close that if enough delegates go with the old style “vote a favorite son” on the first vote this could go to a second when all bets are off.
So just to be clear- with 10 contests and 300 superdelegates to go, no one is at the magic number and so the words win and lose are still meaningless.
Since we’re on the topic of sexist language, can we all take a look at what the word “denigrate” really means? And stop using it forever?
MikeEss:
I agree - there are many good reasons to dislike Hillary (and sadly her highly-paid consultants seem intent on creating more) but it puts you in some really ugly company, particularly with that little nagging doubt about whether the people who are making the same arguments about her track-record actually do believe in the principles or are simply better-spoken troglodytes.
“Clinton is deeply corrupt. She is mendacious. She’s an incompetent manager who rewards loyalty over ability. Her campaign has left a trail of unpaid bills across the country in a really stunning display of class-based arrogance. She cannot, apparently, plan her way out of a wet paper bag.
It’s not sexist to point those things out.
It’s not misogynistic to say those are undesirable characteristics in a President.”
Amen.
For me the deal breaker has always been her association with the DLC.
The only language that we can consistently correct is our own but it is a perfect place to start.
Hey, look, numbers!
http://www.correntewire.com/misogyny_sexism_the_gender_gap_in_the_2008_election
http://www.correntewire.com/misogyny_sexism_the_2008_elections_part_2
http://www.correntewire.com/misogyny_sexism_the_gender_gap_in_the_2008_election_part_3
http://www.correntewire.com/the_poisoned_landscape_race_gender_election_2008
It’s probably okay to skip to Part 4.
I wish the author had done more about “what percentages are attributable to sexism vs. candidate difference” but I do buy the implication that “although Clinton and Obama are not identical, they are much more similar to each other than to McCain, so what on earth causes these huge shifts?”
Political science wonkery! Making me hate the American electorate ever more since 1999!
Rebecca’s article really hit home with me especially the part where she says “They can’t quite explain it but they feel it’s misogynistic.” I’ve had this feeling for a long time but I feel like I can make some groping attempts to explain it. This is not a condemnation of Obama or the majority of his supporters. It’s simply that handful of misogynistic “progressive” people (mostly white men) who are suddenly exposing themselves through their Hillary hatred.
It generally starts when I mention in conversation something positive about Hillary, and they immediately turn it personal. Sometimes it will be as subtle as “YOU’RE not a Hillary supporter are you?” With ‘you’re’ emphasised as if to say, “I used to think you were intelligent, but no one of any intelligence could possibly support Hillary.” Other times it will be much more explicit. Perhaps a curt dismissive, “Well you’re a woman.”
The next step is to repeat the right wing attacks that have been floating around in the MSM. They belong to 3 catagories which can sometimes over-lap and blur:
(a) Explicitly misogynistic i.e. “Bitch” or “Ball-buster”.
(b) Dog-whistle phrases that are not easy to point to as misogynistic.
(c) Subjective non-falsifiable negative character attacks. They’re words and phrases like “tone-deaf” or “entitled” or “ambitious.”
Some people have actual legitimate reasons to not support Hillary but end up falling back on (c) simply because that’s the vocabulary that we’ve all grown to accept. Some people use all 3 in a blatantly misogynistic way. The ones that have hurt me the most are people who use (b) and (c) in a completely uncritical way with no ability to admit that they might in someway be sexist. I suspect that these folks are the ones that are secret misogynists.
As if this post weren’t long enough already, I just have to point to the one example of c. that drives me absolutely bat-shit bonkers: Hillary is “divisive.”
begin rant here:
She herself is not divisive. The crap-tastic right-wing dialogue surrounding her is divisive. And if you think for one hot second that they’re not going to do the same shit to Obama then you sir are an idiot. But I guess the past couple of weaks have already proven that haven’t they. So now freakin’ saucer-eyed Obama man-lovers can you commit to changing the dialogue instead of supporting it because as it stands nobody is going to escape it.
/rant
Thank you.
This comparison occurred to me this morning:
There are many good and sound reasons to despise Michelle Malkin and yet, every time her name comes up, there are at least two or three a-holes who start making Filipino prostitute and ping-pong ball remarks. Every. Single. Time.
Same thing with Hillary. There may be many reasons to not like her candidacy, but when those reasons devolve so quickly into her personal characteristics, there’s something more going on beyond a policy dispute with someone who’s pretty much on the same side.
“…there are many good reasons to dislike Hillary…”
Very true. There ARE plenty of reasons not to support Clinton, but opinions about her are usually so bound up in sexist language and talking points, it’s often incredibly difficult to separate them.
Take Ann Coulter for example. Coulter is one of the most incredibly vile people walking free on this earth - and yet when her name comes up, inevitably somebody will immediately imply she’s transgendered, or a slut, or she wears the same little black dress just to manipulate the media, etc.
All of those attacks are based in sexism, and really have nothing to do with Coulter’s political and cultural stands, which is what the real focus of criticism of her (at least from the Left) should be about.
I desperately wish we lived in a world where Senators Clinton and Obama could be fairly evaluated on their positions and their merits, but thick layers of sexism and racism make that impossible…
Well, I’d trace it back to her coming to public prominence as the harder-nosed, more disciplined, brass-knuckled partner of a highly charismatic, genial, undisciplined candidate. He needed for her to be that way, of course– her reining him in & lashing out at opponents was the only way his own deficiencies could be overcome– but it set up a very stark contrast that persists to this day. It’s not like it was an accident, nor is it inaccurate based on over a decade and a half of near-universal recognition.
Fair enough; I’ve never been inspired, or even mildly impressed, by the tired political hacks Dems have been trotting out as long as I can remember, the ones that see the presidency as the mother of all management jobs instead of the leader of the free world, and who scurry around like they’re afraid of missing a promotion or [after election] getting laid off.
Maybe it’s because I’m an old theatre geek, but the unpleasant truth is that women do have some public-presentation challenges– even leaving aside the wildly uneven physical-appearance standards that we all know so well– that men can clear more easily. A higher voice is more difficult to modulate when projecting for public speaking, which makes ’shrillness’ a problem (and my own voice is not dissimilar to HRC’s, with a mid-high range & almost no vibrato, so I heard a lot about it in college). Height helps with physical presence, and women are shorter on average; men’s relatively broader shoulders also keep the visual center of gravity higher. And to be fair, men can suffer from physical & vocal limitations as well, with Dennis Kucinich being a prime example of a man of small stature & a less-pleasant voice who’s undermined by both. In any case, the standards aren’t different so much as they’re likely to favor men overall; to be blunt, Obama may very well benefit additionally from his race in this regard.
Opposing the Iraq War in 2003 put me “in the company” of various Milosovec-supporting riff-raff, but I got over it.
Supporting Hillary puts you “in the company” of Sean Hannity. Of Rush Limblaaargh. The “in the company” argument is bogus.
A hint: Hang out with cooler people. Stop degrading the very solid argument against HRC just beacuse your friends suck.
(d) War-supporter at the beginning. Every single one- EVERY SINGLE ONE- who falls under this category deserves my scorn. Attack that for being unreasonable if you wish, but if you file me under The Same Old Patriarchy, you’re simply not being fair.
Wow.
…or you know what MikeEss said.
And the reason that men can clear those “challenges” more easily, or have their personal characteristics accepted at face value without having to try and make themselves more like the “ideal” public speaker? Starts with an “s.” Because those specific “challenges” you speak of are much more specific to American culture than you seem to realize.
Second that amen.
Some people have irritating voices. Couple a grating voice with bad policy or IDiotic opinions, and you have someone who badly needs to be smacked.
Ben Stein, he of the IDiot design movie, is begging to be kicked in the head until dead. And Bush, oy, the sound of his voice makes my head spin Exorcist style.
In comparison, Hillary’s voice only gives me a mild eye twitch. But it still bugs.
Dame Judi Dench is an awesome presence, despite being female. Granted her voice is lower than some women’s, but when she’s on screen, you pay attention to what she says and believe she means it.
Casting her as the current “M” in the recent James Bond films was genius. She fills that role far better than her predecessors.
I realize she’s just one woman, but it IS possible for women to overcome many of the traditional limitations imposed by centuries of sexism…
We just need to get over any qualms (conscious or unconscious) we have regarding powerful women. My god, after all these years isn’t it about time we grow up and accept women as being equal?…
I will cheerfully vote for Hillary if she gets the nom, but I would prefer Barack. I believe he is a little less corporate-friendly and he is a better manager based on the campaigning performance to date (I was especially disappointed in how Hillary flubbed Health Care reform in the 90’s - she did not have all her ducks in a row before moving on it, a mistake she has repeated on other initiatives).
If that makes me a sexist, then I suppose I’m a sexist.
I have to say that I’m very feminist and very liberal and I just do not like Hillary or the company she keeps and the “advisors” that she has that are apparently advising her to play dirty and pander to everyone. The difference between her comments and Barack’s comments at that daft “values / xian” bullshit press conference last week was night and day. Hillary kissing ass and saying what she through they wanted to hear (98% of what comes out of her mouth is just that) and Barack’s answers saying the TRUTH- sugarcoating it a wee bit but SAYING it.
I really don’t like the person that Bill seems to have become stumping for her either.
I’m sure she’s nice- for about 5 minutes- but really the company she keeps (Mark Penn).
She all but said that Barack went to a muslim school when she knew it was b.s. AND that she said that McCain would be a better president than Barack was just appalling. She made me nudge over the line into active hate with those few sentences. It’s dirty politics and nothing but from her end.
I have a vagina and I don’t like Hillary Clinton. There are also other women I don’t like- this does not amount to sexism. This argument from Hillary and her supporters is becoming very tedious and taking away from REAL issues of sexism.
Hillary needs to concede that most of the country likes Barack more than her (and consistently gives him more money than her- and he manages to PAY his campaign staff!) and get out NOW so we can start fighting McCain. That creep has a head start and we need to start fighting him rather than infighting.
Play along with me a minute here, DN:
In 2004, John Kerry was the guy who voted for the war, and Howard Dean was the one who was against it.
How many people do you remember saying that if Dean did not get the nomination, they would vote for Bush instead of Kerry?
How many people have you seen saying that if Obama does not get the nomination, they will vote for McCain instead of Clinton? (Hint: the number is not zero. Not even close. Take a look around on Kos.)
As everyone has said multiple times in this thread, there are legitimate, non-sexist reasons to not want Hillary to get the nomination. Please explain a legitimate, non-sexist reason to change parties and vote for McCain over Hillary in this election.
MikeEss:
I could not agree more. I really wish that Hillary’s campaign wasn’t straight out of the Democratic lose-by-following-the-guidebook tradition: it would have been wonderful if she’d simply take a more aggressive tack: “Haven’t the last 8 years taught as anything about judging someone’s fitness to lead based on their anatomy?” Unfortunately, she can’t do that without raising questions about her judgement with the business-as-usual “bipartisan” approach.
Danica:
That was what got me to move from thinking that he was a decent candidate to the most important one in recent memory: there are so many occasions where he had the opportunity to repeat the usual consultant-driven pablum almost all politicians offer and instead he took the risk to actually say something real (and usually something he personally wrote, rather than a carefully balanced, focus-group-approved muddle). This is also why I’ve been so quick to drop Hillary as the contrast is quite unflattering.
“Please explain a legitimate, non-sexist reason to change parties and vote for McCain over Hillary in this election.”
There aren’t any, and it’s silly to pretend there are. Lieberman? Maybe. Clinton? Don’t be ridiculous. In our wildest nightmares, she couldn’t be worse than 4-more years of Cheney/Bush/McCain…
Well, if your most important issues are the war, corporate sponsorship, governance style, personal attack style politics driven by dubious parsing, and lobbyist advisors, then I can’t think of any reason to choose Clinton over McCain. Is flipping a coin sexist?
Those aren’t my only issues; I’ll vote HRC. But I also think HRC supporters should acknowledge that there will be very legitimate anger among a lot of Dems if she pulls off convoluted and democratically dubious BS in order to get the nomination. That anger will not be sexist and those voters will have a legit reason to vote McCain. I don’t see why you need assert sexist motivations for those voters to get an explanation. I stay out of Kos for the same reason as Hillary supporters here–it’s a cesspool. But there will be some serious and legit anger if Hillary wins now. (Do Clinton supporters not realize that the Democrats will lose serious African-American voters for a generation if HRC pulls some dubious crap?)
If she wins fair and square, which is just about impossible now, then not voting for her will be mostly sexist.
Hawise, Dame of Deep Fried April 18, 2008 at 7:06 am
There is good reason to work towards the goal of the 50 state strategy while there is also a reasonable doubt as to whether it is at a point where it trumps the disadvantages of the electoral college system that is definitely designed as a 50%+1 strategy.
“good reason”? you can say that again
a) stop the corrosion of state /county level party administration
b) stop dependency on lobbyist, pollster, and corporate media (radio/tv)
c) door to door grassroot
d) small donation
essentially, STOP feeding DC political machine beast. The very thing that Hillary can’t stop doing because that’s her methodology. She needs the ‘lobbyist/money’ - ‘media machine/pollster’ - ‘devided voters’
That’s how she does politics.
This is where the arguments about Michigan and Florida prove interesting as leaving them out mocks the 50 state strategy while simultaneously making the 50%+1 a more difficult climb.
Hillary undermines PARTY mechanics by cheating and going back on her own words on Michigan and Florida. SHE IS A CHEATER, gaming the schedule to get what her want. Again, she agrees on ignoring michigan and florida initially, then plays stupid when she lost and need the delegates. If this keeps happening, the party cannot enforce primary schedule, and the political process will collapse in the future. (but what does Hillary cares… she is pragmatic right?)
I simply don’t know enough about where Obama really stands on some issues to place my faith in his judgement.
such as …? name the issue.
He has used the Illinois allowed ‘present’ vote too often for me to trust him on certain matters.
let’s check on Hillary triangulation on top issue for this board. I mean if ya just want to look for something, anything… I can do that too. Nevermind the larger picture.
http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Hillary_Clinton_Abortion.htm
Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion
I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard.
Source: Remarks at NARAL, Washington, DC Jan 22, 1999
She’s a weasel on some issues as well but on balance she is more practical and that counts for something with me.
She is warmongering LIAR, nevermind a weasel. (not that I think the war ver matter to Hillary voters)
wanna start endless link battle? I can win this easy. For each Obama link, I’ll supply you with 2 Hillary links.
Wait, you’re kidding, right? You really think that Hillary Clinton and John “Hundred Years in Iraq” McCain will make the same decisions? Appoint the same judges? That Hillary Clinton is more corrupt than John “Keating Five” McCain? That Hillary Clinton has more anger problems than McCain, who called his wife a “cunt” in public in front of reporters?
You may want to actually look at McCain’s actions and not what the media tells you about McCain.
I’d love to hear about the societies, preferably modern/developed ones, that exhibit a strong preference for performers of small stature & higher voices. Even among men, those traits are for clowns & character actors, not leads. But my larger point should probably be that GOP stagecraft routinely beats the crap out of Dem analysis and theories about how we should see things, and that should be something we’re willing to address eventually.
Her voice is actually quite low and resonant for a woman, and her physical presence is very still and centered. I’m reasonably sure she’s put some effort into both, as do most actors, male and female; it happens to work quite well for her given her sharp, intelligent delivery. She’d be a good study model for female politicians, actually… there’s no way for most to get away with being that brusque, but calm authority is a demeanor worth learning for most people.
And last I looked, even more Clinton voters, percentage-wise, say they won’t vote for Obama should he win the nomination. The stakes are very different this cycle; in 2004, the top priority was getting rid of GWB before he could do more damage, but this is a realigning, party-defining election that puts more than the next one or two presidential terms in focus. IOW, we have to decide if we’re a Clintonian/DLC/corporate/’national security’ party, or something less thoroughly defined by the right’s longstanding frames. Sometimes a banana’s just a banana… and sometimes, the banana’s a bit more, but is chopped up (heh, that’s problematic) in a fruit salad and can’t really be examined independently of all the other ingredients.
Mnemosyne April 18, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Wait, you’re kidding, right? You really think that Hillary Clinton and John “Hundred Years in Iraq” McCain will make the same decisions?
yes essentially
hillary promise:
- making plan
- start withdrawing
she did NOT say she will pull all troops out of iraq by certain deadline.
She can’t, because our existence in Iraq is the only one holding Iraq implosion and spreading to Jordan, hence Israel. Why do you think Israel backers/neocon keep yapping about Syria and Iran vis a vis Iraq?
It’s the same promise as Bush. I will drawdown.. next year..maybe, maybe I’ll make plan, maybe I listen to generals… la la… (lo, 140,000 troops are STILL there, despite about 10 promises to drawdown.)
Hillary WILL BE THE SAME. 100 yrs war. Because her aipac base and money. She has sold her soul, and no way she can escape the string. (notice she promise ‘automatic deterrence on Iran’) Do you even KNOW what that means except nice sounding words?
right, chew on that.
I think that’s the problem right there: does every other country pick their leaders based on how well they “perform” their speeches? is Angela Merkel usually tall and/or have an unusually low voice for a woman? Was Gordon Brown considerably taller than Tony Blair and so that’s why he was able to oust him as Prime Minister?
It’s kind of what we get for choosing a system of government where we rolled the Head of State and Head of Government into a single person, but I’d be curious to know if every other Western country has metrics like the one from the last election that said that the taller man usually wins (IIRC, John Kerry was the first candidate in a long time who lost despite being taller than his opponent).
@DN Nation
You have just perfectly followed exactly what I laid out. The first response to expressing Hillary support is a personal attack on the supporter. No it is not just my “sucky” friends. The article in question, as well as many others, illustrates that people other than myself are experiencing this.
A hint: If the shoe doesn’t fit don’t wear it.
I show three examples of the kind of unjustified character attacks that are leveled at Hillary by the MSM right-wing machine. You gave an example of a legitimate reason that someone might not support Hillary. If that is your reason then you are not the people I am talking about, so relax.
Truthfully I shouldn’t have name called any Obama supporters. I feel though that I made it abundantly clear in my post that I was not referencing all Obama supporters just a handful. The reason why the “divisive” argument bothers me is the naiveté of thinking that Obama might magically be able to escape the same level of constant divisive attack. We better start being nicer to each other and not letting this sort of discourse run the election. ‘Cause they’re gonna’ try with some level of success no matter who the nominee is.
ok. In case anybody still thinks the war is just some cute adventure with bunch of dead people in it.
It’s time to think : you can’t get a job, and your bank is about to go bankrupt mode of thinking.
nevermind whining about $4.00/gal. gas.
Here are some chart.
this is “interbank” loan spread. (notice after 8/07 things spike? that was the start of banking panic. before that, the chart is flat line all the way back to WWII.)
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/ois-libor.png
ISM survey
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/ism-plunge.jpg
oil price
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/real-oil-price.png
Nope.
No, I don’t. But I do believe they made the same decision when it counted most. Didn’t they? She didn’t even read the intelligence report all the way through before she decided to vote with the Rethuglicans. Either that means Hillary has a terrible, horrifying vision of how to use our military or Hillary voted for war to look strong. And the latter would be a rather sexist thing to do, no?
I did say I would vote for her, didn’t I? But the question was for legitimate reasons to vote McCain. If those were your only issues—they aren’t my only issues—then it would be a toss up. My point, perhaps left too implicit, is that Hillary supporters often don’t recognize the extent to which Obama supporters value politics, meaning how people get and maintain power. Clinton’s politics are Republican light; the lesson she learned as a ‘fighter’ was to act like her attackers. I don’t want that and we don’t need it as a nation. Her policies are left-center and politics are awful. If you value politics and not just policies, then as a progressive you should vote Obama and be very disappointed in Hillary’s campaign.
The dude is a thorough-going shitwad, no doubt. But again, if you care about politics the most there aren’t all that many differences between the two. The cunt thing is about personality, not politics.
Like I said, I got sick of the Kos crowd and their toxic sexism. But chew on the fact that long before this election, DailyKos has been hammering home the point that politics matters—it matters all the way down from Prez to city councils. The Clinton machine is pure DLC, which has been terrible for progressive causes. Obama has been the anti-DLC candidate all along. If your biggest concern is politics, and the only way Hillary can win to use dubious anti-democratic tactics and embody DLC politics, then isn’t some righteous anger legitimate?
This start to sound like latest pathetic Hillary campaign ploy. (variation of Wright attack. Go after people around Obama. manufacture something)
man, this is sad. They must run out of idea in Hillz cube, writing about pussy and penis.
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2008/04/17/i-was-a-clinton-volunteer
HRC Philly Staffer: ” I can’t f*cking stand Obama people”
I gradually learned more about why the other volunteers were delayed. “Actually,” Lara said, “we were kind of late because we saw all the bombed-out houses and we were scared to park [the volunteer captain’s] really nice car near them.”
She studied my face. “We were scared.” At Broad and Ridge.
loneoak April 18, 2008 at 1:24 pm
You really think that Hillary Clinton and John “Hundred Years in Iraq” McCain will make the same decisions?
No, I don’t. But I do believe they made the same decision when it counted most.
actually what Hillary has said in public is far more hawkish than McCain. She gives guarantee of automatic deterrence to Israel. That alone will make us stuck in Iraq for 100 yrs.
I personally think Hillary is just promising something that she can’t keep. (ie. she is lying to appease aipac crew) Because from what I understand, no expert suggest automatic deterrence. The rist is too high for zero strategic returns. (nevermind things like economy or oil price)
In that regard Hillary is far more hawkish than McCain.
But there is fundamental difference. At least I don’t believe Hillary will be as corrupt as GOP/McCain machine. I think she will try to reorder budget and reign in spending (not sure how with massive war spending, economic slowdown, and new healthcare expenditure)
Bottom line Hillary defense posture is either not sustainable or she is lying (promising something she can’t keep) Her total statements aren’t making any sense.
I don’t hate Hillary, I just can’t connect with her. The lack of genuiness and level of contrivance is just too much for me. I will happily vote for her in November if she’s the nominee (like there’s a choice). I think, however, that there was every reason that she was called “Shillary” in these pages not so long ago.
You know what? Fuck all this.
I was for Obama from the moment he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 DNC, with a whole lot of caveats that put me tentatively in Clinton’s camp.
Then I read both of Obama’s books. From that point on, I was totally behind Obama. Not because my boyfriend told me to (what boyfriend?!). Not because it seemed like what all the cool kids were doing (everyone I knew was either on Team Hillary or Team Edwards and told me I was naive to think a black freshman senator could be president). Not to get in with some boys’ club (see above). I chose Obama because he seems like the best candidate in terms of his stances on the issues. I also get a sense, mainly from his first book, that he really gets us liberals, in a way that Clinton just doesn’t.
Up until Iowa I was pretty torn, though, because it seemed inevitable that Hillary would pull a Kerry and leverage important early victories into a coronation. At that point I was fully prepared to get behind her if this were the case. And then it didn’t happen. And Obama pulled ahead.
Then all the shit came out. The race baiting. The blatant lies. The Orwellisms (”I criticized the war before Obama did!”). Hillary showed her true colors. Then Obama pulled further ahead, to the point that it turns out Hillary can only become the nominee if she pulls a back-room deal with the superdelagates to thwart the wishes of the majority of the country. Which is beyond the pale for me, sorry.
There was a moment I supported Hillary, and she shat all over that by flushing basically everything I stand for down the drain. She has only herself to blame for losing, and it has NOTHING to do with her gender.
Now I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to say I won’t vote if Hillary armwrestles herself the nomination, because I know that’s just a recipe for a McCain administraion. But I certain can’t say that I like her or support her or want her to be president. And I’m pretty sure that if Obama isn’t the nominee I’ll be taking a break from the US come January.
And it makes me sick at heart to see so many of the old guard standing by her, simply because she happens to lack a Y chromosome. Would they be doing this for Liddy Dole or Condoleeza Rice? The sad thing is, I think they might…
Well, I’m not going to do that. I live in a red enough state that my vote won’t matter for much, but if it’s HRC/JMC, I’ll make the decision later whether I write Hillary’s name in or just write Obama’s as a protest vote.
Relax? Are you serious? You’ve successfully glossed over Hillary’s thumbs up to an appalling travesty of a foreign policy disaster under the guise of stopping mysognism. I’m sorry, this is unacceptible. I will not relax. You can’t just play it like that.
somegirls April 18, 2008 at 9:53 am
Hillary is “divisive.” // She herself is not divisive. The crap-tastic right-wing dialogue surrounding her is divisive
she is has no qualm doing racist dog whistle, implying this or that city is elitist, some states are insignificant,…etc (I can start compiling the list and dump it here if you want)
She was pulling southern strategy/dixiecrat, how is THAT not divisive? She herself and her proxy are throwing junk in the air wave all sort of innuendo and suggestions.
I say BS. She is a product of DC politics. That’s how she plays the game, she doesn’t know how to do anything else.
(Time to start compiling youtube clip and flood my fav sites with it. Thank gawd Hillz crew is pretty pathetic when it comes to net.)
John Kerry voted for the war in order to look strong. So did John Edwards. In fact, pretty much every Democrat — male and female — who voted for the war did it because they were afraid the Republicans would call them cowards.
And yet Hillary is the one who gets excoriated for making that vote to “look strong.” Almost like there’s some kind of reason a woman might need to go overboard to look strong, but the people complaining about it just can’t quite make that connection, so all they can do is point the finger at her and ignore all of the male Senators who did it for the exact same reason.
Which is what I keep trying to get an answer for: why is it a toss-up that is making people who claim to be Democrats land on the McCain side and not the Clinton side? What could possibly be weighing on one side of that toss that would make people cross over and vote for McCain instead?
People keep trying to turn the conversation to Obama without answering my question: why are there very vocal Democrats online declaring that they will vote for McCain over Clinton? What is their rationale?
I used to be open to either Barak or Hillary. I honestly did not see that much of difference between their policies and thought they were both a step down after Edwards but decent choices nonetheless. However its become increasingly clear to me that Hillary’s campaign is a disaster for Democrats and progressives. Her use of right wing talking points and campaign tactics is reprehensible. Bitter Gate really sealed the deal for me, I really question her loyalty to anyone but the Clintons, screw the Democrat party. She is quickly turning into the new Nader.
So my strong dislike of her has nothing to do with her sex organs and everything to do with her campaign. Also I have found as much if not more coded and barely coded racism among some Clinton supporters as sexism behind some Obama supporters.
Mnemosyne April 18, 2008 at 2:17 pm
John Kerry voted for the war in order to look strong. So did John Edwards. In fact, pretty much every Democrat — male and female — who voted for the war did it because they were afraid the Republicans would call them cowards.
hmmm …. do you even NOTICE how misleading your argument is? are you forgetting something?
come on, your argument has to be LEGIT to convince people. You can’t lie, parse, mislead, hiding, bla bla…
YOU CANNOT HIDE from Iraq war.
And you reinforce public view that Hillary and crew are basically liars.
I can’t top the last two comments; both are really excellent points.
I just wanted to mention the interesting voting dynamics of the Granger household. We live in the great city of New York, but I’m still registered in PA (due to laziness/insane schedules). Mr Granger went to vote though, and wouldn’t tell me his vote before or after the day. He knows I’m a huge Obama supporter, so I freaked out a bit that he might have jumped ship. Turns out he voted for Clinton. My white, middle-class Mr. Granger!
That’s all. just wanted to point out that Traister makes a good argument, and that my bf isn’t a misogynist ass.
Time to figure out if I can skip work and infiltrate the bitter inner sanctum of PA primaries. Thank God I grew up near Philly and not Amish country.
Fair point re: differing systems of government, since Merkel’s voice or the fact that the new French president is really short tend to be nonissues in a parliamentary system, where voters choose the party and the party officials choose the leader. But we don’t have such a system– our presidency is highly, almost embarrassingly weighted with symbolism– and I doubt we will, at least until our superpower status is only a memory. So best to work with what we have, and that involves some casting skill and performance savvy.
I’m not sure there is a rationale, but there is a cause: anger. Legitimate anger at that. One might say a projected ‘bitterness’ at the prospect that Hillary’s campaign would have to de-legitimize the well-run, grass-roots, 50-state campaign run by Obama. Anger that she seems to think that ‘because the Rethuglicans will say it’ means ‘I have to say it first’ is an appropriate tactic against another Democrat. Anger that the Clintons are all about the Clintons.
And you reinforce public view that Hillary and crew are basically liars.
Good thing I didn’t vote for Hillary, then. Why, were you assuming otherwise just because I think that directing virulent misogyny against her is wrong?
In other words, a childish temper tantrum that throws the country back to the Republicans because they can’t stand Mommy Hillary.
Nice.
I say: Misogyny has played a role in this election.
You say: Hillary Clinton voted for the war, that’s why I don’t support her. And I imagine that’s why most people have turned to Obama.
Totally legit argument, for which I tend to agree with.
I say: Misogyny has played a role in this election.
You say: Your friends suck and you’re fabricating misogyny to support a war criminal.
Not legit.
You do not have to support Clinton to see that there are misogynistic forces at play. You do not have to support Obama to see that there are racist forces at play.
Something struck me as I was reading the Salon article — there’s these newsmax “vote now” ads that rotate through on the pages. One of them says “Should Hillary Quit? Vote Now” and the picture of her is an extremely unflattering one with her lips pursed, kind of sour-faced looking. And I thought of how much I see that, the deliberate (I believe)choice of unflattering photos for her to accompany ads, articles, etc. The Obama version of the newsmax thing says “Can Hillary Stop Him?” and the picture of Obama, while not a glamour shot, is just average-nice looking. This is the sort of thing that gives me the sexism-uneasiness in this campaign, something about how her photos often seem to be chosen for which ones best make her look “shrewish” or “uppity” or whatever-sexist-stereotype-adjective.
I’m not sure there is a rationale, but there is a cause: anger.
Anger is a reason to destroy your ballot, write in Obama or even your mother. How does that become ‘turn on your party’ and vote in the opposition?
If all we do is search our own hearts and mend our ways then we have a beginning.
latts- correction- in other democracies, the party choses its leader. The registered members of the party, better known as the party faithful, are the ones who chose their leaders. The candidates are usually, but not always, from among those already holding a seat in government or opposition. To a large extent the problem with the American system is that leaders are chosen based on criteria that are not necessarily related to what the party represents. Instead it becomes a question of electability, ability to convince the undecided that they are a ’safe’ choice and avoidance of the appearance of being, in the case of the Democrats, a Democrat. Obama disavows being liberal and talks about building bridges with the ‘other side’. Clinton votes tough and plays politics. None of us will know what they really mean by all that until at least a year after they take office and their policies start to take hold.
What I do know is that I am totally disgusted with the bulk of the online commentariat and their lack of common sense.
I honestly think that if Obama had been in the Senate at the time of the “war” vote he would have voted the same as Clinton. That seems to be the most cited reason to like Obama more.
His vote history doesn’t make him much different from Clinton, other than some “accidental” present votes. I favor Clinton, I just like her more. It makes for a lonely position on a lot of blogs.
And seeing the comments from other posters who insist their is no/little misogyny out there from their fellow progressives/liberals/whatever (and not even restricted to Clinton) is annoying. I’ll second the recommendation to check out shakesville.
I guess this is one more blog where I will just skip the Clinton and Obama posts. You want to say why either is better than Mccain, I’ll gladly check out that post. Anything commenting on Clinton and sexism and Obama and racism brings out the haters. Directing anger towards the real target (the repubs, sexist, & racists (redundant?)) would be a nice change.
hk April 18, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I favor Clinton, I just like her more. It makes for a lonely position on a lot of blogs.
hk April 18, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I favor Clinton, I just like her more. It makes for a lonely position on a lot of blogs.
The fact that Hillary doesn’t care much about internet and stuff might explain your predicament?
Just today…
http://firedoglake.com/
The Huffington Post headline reads “Hillary Slams Democratic Activists.” I’m being told that Hillary Clinton was caught on tape disparaging Barack Obama because he’s being supported by MoveOn, and that they opposed military action in Afghanistan.
I’ve tried to stay out of the pie fights of late, but as a long-term defender of MoveOn and other progressive organizations — this is completely unacceptable.
I defended Hillary Clinton when she refused to bow to right wing pressure and condemn MoveOn over the “General Betrayus” ad (and was sad when she finally capitulated). MoveOn are valuable progressive partners, who have been with us on Donna Edwards, net neutrality, trying to bring an end to the war, FISA and other issues we’ve been fighting for.
—–
right at these moment, most big bloggers are looking for an excuse to extricate from Clinton campaign, her method is increasingly undefendable.
In fact the easiest argument against any Clinton blogger is: “Are you really going to live with that argument?” (most can’t. Hillary is doing everything that most people on the blog is fighting against. One lost all credibility against rightwing blog future argument.)
Squashed, what do you find objectionable about the Hillary quote differentiating pro-choice from pro-abortion? What do you think Pandagon readers will find objectionable about it?
I’m not buying the ‘racism is still worse’ stuff floating around out there. It’s a new flavor of Oppression Olympics intended to shame women OF ALL COLORS into putting themselves last again. Same with the “But the war!” stuff.
The misogyny is so pervasive even some women are blind to it. You don’t have to be a Clinton voter to be disgusted by that.
And, no, being blind to it doesn’t make one *special* or *extra enlightened* or *so post feminist I get to be an honorary person*. It just means that one’s blind.
JoAnne April 18, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Squashed, what do you find objectionable about the Hillary quote differentiating pro-choice from pro-abortion?
first step to define the boundary of “choice”, a discussion of decision making instead of legality of a medical procedure.
(ie. it is a given that now the procedure can be limited . It is a question of which circumstances and situation. Is the woman making a “bad” choice? then no procedure. )
She parses because she need to appease wingnut, religious voters. She can’t do hardcore “abortion is legal” period.
You want to see how tough she is? start asking hard abortion question in rural wingnut section of PA. I dare you.
————————-
see her senatorial campaign debate.
Late term abortion only if life or health are at risk
Q: Are there circumstances when the government should limit choice?
LAZIO: I had a pro-choice record in the House, and I believe in a woman�s right to choose. I support a ban on partial-birth abortions. Senator Moynihan called it �infanticide.� Even former mayor Ed Koch agreed that this was too extreme a procedure. This is an area where I disagree with my opponent. My opponent opposes a ban on partial-birth abortions.
CLINTON: My opponent is wrong. I have said many times that I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected. I�ve met women who faced this heart-wrenching decision toward the end of a pregnancy. Of course it�s a horrible procedure. No one would argue with that. But if your life is at stake, if your health is at stake, if the potential for having any more children is at stake, this must be a woman�s choice.
Well, I’m a Kiwi but am following the election pretty closely, as is my brother. He’s recently moved back to the same city as me, and when I raised the topic of who he was supporting he’d gone from Edwards to Obama. Without prompting from me he said: “It’s not that she’s a woman, I just really think she’s a bitch, and her voice drives me insane.” Colour me stunned. He doesn’t even use the word “bitch” often, and certainly not out of nowhere.
When I said that it actually was sexist that he felt that way and made some good points, he did what he always does when challenged on his straight, white male privilege and got very angry and shut down the conversation. It all left me with a very sick feeling and this post has fleshed that out for me.
Just adding that there are many acceptable reasons to prefer Obama to Clinton. Her voice and perceiving her as a bitch are sexism, pure and simple.
oh, well here is Obama:
“I’m the product of a mixed marriage that would have been illegal in 12 states when I was born. That doesn’t mean that had I been an adviser to Dr. King back then, I would have told him to lead with repealing an antimiscegenation law, because it just might not have been the best strategy in terms of moving broader equality forward.
That’s a decision that the LGBT community has to make. That’s not a decision for me to make.”
or
“Most Americans recognize that what we want to do is avoid, or help people avoid, having to make this difficult choice. That nobody is pro-abortion, abortion is never a good thing.”
He also barely kept from voting to confirm john roberts…luckily he has some good advisors…
Yep, that is right, both candidates have said and done things I don’t’ agree with, I still prefer Clinton.
(this along with a very public speech he gaves. Hilalry? nada. one gaffe and off press apology.)
http://www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=10906
Guest Commentary
A call for full equality
by Sen. Barack Obama
Published Thursday, 08-Nov-2007 in issue 1037
ver the last several weeks, the question of GLBT equality was placed on center stage by the appearance of Donnie McClurkin at one of my campaign events. McClurkin is a talented performer and a beloved figure among many African Americans and Christians around the country. At the same time, he espouses beliefs about homosexuality that I completely reject.
The events of the last several weeks are not the occasion that I would have chosen to discuss America’s divisions on gay rights and my own deep commitment to GLBT equality. Now that the issue is before us, however, I do not intend to run away from it. These events have provided an important opportunity for us to confront a difficult fact: There are good, decent, moral people in this country who do not yet embrace their gay brothers and sisters as full members of our shared community.
We will not secure full equality for all GLBT Americans until we learn how to address that deep disagreement and move beyond it. To achieve that goal, we must state our beliefs boldly, bring the message of equality to audiences that have not yet accepted it, and listen to what those audiences have to say in return.
Look Mnemosyne, you’re arguing with me like I said I wouldn’t vote for Clinton. I said the opposite thing twice–I would vote for Clinton. But I will have to hold my nose when I do it because she has run a campaign that shits on what I think my party should be doing. You are completely avoiding the point I have been making multiple times over which is that Hillary’s politics stink like skunk. You’re making this about my imaginary temper tantrum rather than actually engaging me on whether her campaign is defensible. I think it isn’t defensible and it strikes me as obtuse for you to claim that one must be childish in order to be pissed off at the Clinton campaign. Why on earth must you vote for a candidate that shits on her own party? You know, like she does in that tape released today?
I have made a number of full-out flaming rants against Clinton just as I have made a number of full-out flaming rants against practically every member of the Bush administration and a handful of Democrats.
I make these full-out flaming rants because I am ANGRY about what these politicians have done to our country and our Constitution. I make these rants because these people have betrayed us with their incompetence and their contempt and their double dealing and their willingness to sell out our country to the highest bidder.
How dare you try to dismiss my anger with some ridiculous charge of sexism. How dare you!
My anger is righteous. My anger is not the result of some sexism on my part. My anger is the result of crimes against my Constitution and my country and my world.
Do not belittle my anger by dismissing its motives.
My anger is real, and it is righteous.
Well, I’m a Kiwi but am following the election pretty closely, as is my brother. He’s recently moved back to the same city as me, and when I raised the topic of who he was supporting he’d gone from Edwards to Obama. Without prompting from me he said: “It’s not that she’s a woman, I just really think she’s a bitch, and her voice drives me insane.” Colour me stunned. He doesn’t even use the word “bitch” often, and certainly not out of nowhere.
Oh, for the love of God.
Ask him how he feels about Helen Clark. By any standard, Clark has shown herself to be a “bitch” - by which I mean a hard-driving, committed politician driving an agenda and imposing discipline on a shambolic bunch in the House. Oh, and female. And the country’s done pretty damned well by it - she’s easily one of the top ten PM’s we’ve had, even if we’re stupid enough to throw her out this year.
As far as I can tell from a very far outside perspective, Clinton’s problem is that she’s, well, normal. When the campaign started slipping, she reached for the standard American politician’s tactic, and went negative. If she was a guy, people will still be disappointed in “him”, but that would be because “he” was just more of the same.
But she’s female. And therefore a “bitch” and “shrill”. So what does that make Clark?
Obama probably isn’t as great as his image makes out. But all he has to do is stand back and not play Clinton’s game, and he looks like a saint. Great position to be in.
Phoebe Fay- no one is dismissing anyone’s right to a full out flaming rant. We are saying that misogynistic language and imagery has become the norm around rants about Clinton, sometimes started by “reasonable” arguments against her but usually devolving into personal attacks on her looks, voice and general habit of being a female in a man’s world.
Heck on a thread on another site a commenter actually outright said that “we had to keep a woman out of the White House”* and was met with, not jeers and condemnation, but applause and acceptance. We are not in a world where any woman can safely make a run which may explain why several predicted (and much touted as alternatives to Clinton) female contenders are sitting safe in their home states while Clinton takes the heat. I would not be surprised if they have shelved plans to run in the future based on what is happening right now. The more ‘progressives’ feed the silencing of any female candidate the more they feed the silencing of all. If we want the language of debate to improve then we have to make sure that we are not among those purposely infringing the rights of others through our language and tone.
Rant away but rant about the right things and in language that is clear and precise about what factual and political actions instigated the rant.
I may not like many of Clinton’s strategies but for the political women who will follow her, she needs to stay in at this point to show that women will not be silenced into submission. Obama needs to beat her on her merits and the voters need to chose on the merits and the voters need to decide this at the polls.
*no, I will not link to such crass misogyny but I did use the anger to clear the last of the ice off my deck.
Hawise, Dame of Deep Fried April 19, 2008 at 8:06 am
I may not like many of Clinton’s strategies but for the political women who will follow her, she needs to stay in at this point to show that women will not be silenced into submission. Obama needs to beat her on her merits and the voters need to chose on the merits and the voters need to decide this at the polls.
BIG Cannard, classic Clinton campaign argument. If Hillary can’t get elected now, no other women can.
She flunk the primary test. All she does now is flailing around.
PS. nobody complains about Pelosi. Third highest office in the land. Two of supposedly misogynist blogs candidate (Darcy, Donna) are a women, propelled purely by net money.
What has the Clinton and crew done downticket? NONE, whining about gender when polls is down.
Forget it. Hillary and crew are the biggest drag in the scene. Pure middle class groupie. For that she should not hold office. (remember how her first campaign team operates?)
All this is just rehash of Politically Correct campaign gag from 1996. Manufacturing event and wedge issue.
squashed- get over yourself. Pelosi was ragged about her clothes, her lifestyle, her looks and money. She stuck it out and she made her point and she didn’t and won’t back down and women in the future will thank her for that.
The rules of the Democratic party give Senator Clinton every right to stay in the race until the bitter end. The Constitution gives her the right to be as much of an asshole as she pleases within the laws of the land in order to try and win the nomination. The only people that can stop her legally are the voters and herself. That is what I will defend and if it is ‘Politically Correct’ to insist that the rights of the candidates be respected and that the fight be on the merits then I accept the label as I accept the label of liberal.
I happen to think that you are an asshole too but should you chose to run for office I will defend to the death your right to prove it to the largest constituency possible.
Hawise, Dame of Deep Fried April 19, 2008 at 9:16 am
squashed- get over yourself. Pelosi was ragged about her clothes, her lifestyle, her looks and money. She stuck it out and she made her point and she didn’t and won’t back down and women in the future will thank her for that.
no, YOU GET over yourself.
You got no argument left except “she is a woman”. You can’t say she is competent manager, capable leaders, good orator, inspiring leader, trustworthy player, or party builder. … By now the only way for her to win is insider party coup. She wants to do that, she won’t survive her first term intake. Her base will be so small, she’ll fall on first attack. (nevermind if about what people say about her dress, lifestyle or whatever other inane stuff.)
… and take your argument, so if Pelosi survives ragging… you don’t even have a case. That means all politicians get a ragging one way or another. As far as I am concern no politicians has fallen because he dress badly or too rich. (well, maybe Kucinich.)
Good lord, plenty of politicians can’t even get started because they don’t fit into some inconceivably weak notion of what a politician should be, look like, talk, move or motivate. It really no longer matters to me who wins this contest neither is much of a democrat in my mind and either would be a better President than McCain, assuming that The Congress supports them. It is the political landscape that I am concerned about and the language that is deemed acceptable to use against one group or another, language which attempts to silence them. This is true of all sorts of politicians. This thread happens to be about the misogynistic elements of this campaign season. If it was about religious, social, class or racial suppression, I would argue the same thing- the right of a citizen who is entitled under the rules to participate should not be shut down on specious arguments unrelated to their merits.
You don’t like her, don’t vote for her but do not attempt to deny other voters the right that you feel entitled to wield. The fact that you would rather dismiss sexism than address it is sufficient cause for me to wonder at the motives of your obvious anger.
sexism is pretty low in priority list of things to consider.
- War
- collapsing economy
- gas price
- raising unemployment
- healthcare
People can’t pay bill, no job, losing home and economic prospect is dimming, on top of war gone terribly wrong. A person ability to solve key issues is FAR more important at this moment than anything else. Hillary fails to convince a lot of people on these issues.
and you are talking about dress, lifestyle, how big sexism should be compensated in election? Are you mad?
Try saying that outloud in the middle of townsquare. You’d be laugh off the stage. I DARE Hillary say “I can’t get to be president because you all are sexist” I DARE her saying that.
I also dare you make a big blog post doing that analysis. (as major voting criteria.)
One more news ….
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080419/ts_nm/ief_ramsay_dc_1
Record oil of $117 a barrel calls for a demand response and a supply response, but for now there is little to stop prices heading still higher, the deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Saturday.
Bullshit.
I used to make jokes about this initially, jokes about people thinking I’m a traitor to my ovaries for supporting Obama. I used to shake it off, but it’s gotten worse. I’ve never been an especially active commenter on feminist blogs, but there are now places where I frankly won’t comment anymore because there is no way to make a pro-Obama comment without being attacked from six directions.
And, just look at what you’ve written. Imagine a man saying to a woman “no one is dismissing your right to rant” while he is, in fact, dismissing her experience. If it were a man saying it to a woman, I’m guessing you’d recognize the dismissive, condescending, arrogant air. You’d recognize the game being played.
Obama already has beaten her on her merits. Obama has won more votes, more states and more pledged delegates. He has registered more voters, raised more money and done more to energize the Democratic party’s activist base. Anyone who looks at the delegate counts and does the math knows there is no path to the nomination for Hillary Clinton other than convincing the superdelegates that Obama unelectable, and there is no way for her to do that without dragging the party down.
Let be me very clear. There is absolutely no way for the voters to decide this at the polls. There is no way for Clinton to pull ahead in pledged delegates. Thus, Clinton’s argument is that we have to let the voters finish voting so that the superdelegates can overrule the voters.
Acknowledging that mathematical reality is not silencing her into submission. Was Edwards silenced into submission when he dropped out? Was Biden or Dodd or Richardson? No. They simply acknowledged that they had lost. Lost fair and square. It’s life. It’s politics. Hillary Clinton is not exempt from reality.
“Her voice and perceiving her as a bitch are sexism, pure and simple.”
I rather like HRC’s voice, but does it make it any better if we call her an “asshole”? Because that’s how she’s ALWAYS come across. Is it more palatable?
(Does this also mean we can’t call Cheney a ‘prick’?)
Yes Eric, IMO, it would be different if the first word to people’s minds was “asshole” for Clinton. Because when the first words that come to mind are misogynistic and comment, amongst other sexist tropes, on her voice (there was a post on Pandagon some time back delving into all the troublesome sexist implications of that), then she’s clearly hitting a nerve that has everything to do with the fact that she’s a woman.
Also, PIATOR, Helen Clark clearly brings out the misogyny; I hope you wouldn’t deny that. It’s one thing to have an issue with female politician’s politics but as I said above, when the first complaints out of someone’s mouth are that she’s a bitch (and Clark gets the voice thing, too as well as her sexuality questioned) then there’s definitely something going on there.
It’s obviously hard to convey a situation online, but the reason I reacted so strongly to my brother’s reaction was because it was clearly a gut reaction to her AS A WOMAN. He didn’t go for her policies, or the fact that she’s lied during the campaign or anything. It was just an overwhelming feeling on his part that she’s a bitch and he was using that to spin justifications for himself as to why he was against her. This is all quite aside from the fact that no powerful woman can escape being tarred as an uppity bitch by the media, so even the very image/feeling of Clinton as a bitch has in large part been constructed by the media over the past decade or more. Again, that’s not to say that she hasn’t done things people disagree with, just that the media construct of HRC never stood a chance of reflecting her career and abilities; it also comprises every misogynistic flavour they could possibly throw her way.
Myself, I favoured Clinton at one point in the campaign (as I did Edwards; I think they’re all good candidates) but would now prefer that Obama get the nomination. But there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that this post does indeed reflect the situation with a number of male voters who are anti-Clinton.
Also, PIATOR, Helen Clark clearly brings out the misogyny; I hope you wouldn’t deny that.
In a minority, and they really go for the lesbian angle.
It’s not all over the place like it appears to be for Clinton.
It’s obviously hard to convey a situation online, but the reason I reacted so strongly to my brother’s reaction was because it was clearly a gut reaction to her AS A WOMAN.
Identity politics exists. That’s a reason why Bush die his hair on differently for each different occasion, or why Hillary has different make up on for different event.
Some people react viscerally to some cues. There are certain things that operate at deep level than perfect rational.
Race, gender, skin color, income, education level, clothing all has effect. (otherwise we won’t here pollster talking about this or that group of people has this or that voting pattern. They are measurable!)
for eg. religious symbolism might have zero effect on you, but to wingnut wacko it push some strong button.
or the word “bitch” probably is just another swear word to most people, but can be used to drive you bonker. Even to make you do things that you won’t do normally.
racially coded words are another example.
that’s what appeal to emotion are all about! because the so called “choosing leader” also operate at deeply emotional level.
okay here is one example. And I hope after this, people just friggin snap out of it.
Most people have certain phobia toward spider or snake right? so deep that a convincing image (pictures, TV show, toys, etc) is enough to freak out a person even if it has no rational base whatsoever.
So now just take an image of a candidate and put a picture of spider or snake on it, in such a manner that transfer the phobia from snake or spider to the image of that person.
… see how this work at deep and irrational level? (It’s only image of spider and snake right?) but will flip people out VERY convincingly.
image of spider and snake work in even deeper level than word representing some abstract notion. I bet it can push around huge number of voters too.
Amanda - I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I find it hard to believe you have not heard the sexist comments from so-called progressive men. Or for that matter, the so-called feminist women.
I have read your posts on occasion, and heard you speak in person, and it seems that you are living in a bubble, that has nothing to do with geography.
That may seem harsh, but it’s my observation and I’m sticking to it.
The sexism in this primary season is staggering. And what is even more disturbing to me is the fact that far too many women don’t seem to hear it. Is sexism that ingrained in our society that otherwise intelligent people — men and women — just don’t hear it?
BAC
BAC April 19, 2008 at 11:12 pm
it seems that you are living in a bubble,
… but you post miami sound machine clip… ehrrr…
she is republican and hasn’t been around since two decades ago. That’s seriously thick bubble you live in. heh.
I think BAC is right that sexism is so ingrained that otherwise intelligent people don’t hear it. If you do hear it and point it out, people jump down your throat and accuse you of being humorless, shrill, hysterical, etc.
I’m supporting Obama in this race, but the sexism towards Hillary has been glaringly obvious.
For example, people go on and on about her horrible voice and her “cackle.” I never thought there was anything wrong with her laugh or her voice. I thought it odd when people started talking about them. She just sounds like an ordinary middle-aged woman. Perhaps that’s the problem. In our society, that’s automatically unattractive and unacceptable.
And the pantsuits. WTF? Who cares what she wears? Pants are more comfortable and practical. Why criticize her for choosing them? No one criticizes male politicians’ fashion choices. (Well, o.k. So maybe I occasionally criticize an ugly tie. But then I forget about it. This pantsuits thing goes on and on.)