I just had a depressing conversation with Stingray, which she began thusly: “Well. It looks like Hillary’s goin’ down.”
She was bummed. Stingray wants a woman president, and she wants her now.
She enlarged on her point. It’s not so much that Hillary’s politics are destroying her, but the fact that, whether she advertises it or not (and she does not), Clinton is, by dint of her aspiration to ultimate personal sovereignty as the king of the world, de facto a feminist. Hillary isn’t electable, Stingray opined, because most people, particularly women, would rather die screaming than associate themselves with feminism.
Don’t I know it. These days even feminists are against feminism. Check out this post from a blog called, unfortunately, “The Pervocracy,” which I chanced upon at the very moment Stingray made her assertion about women’s antipathy toward feminism. The post was authored by someone named Holly whose online identity revolves around sex; it’s a twist on the venerable “I’m not a feminist, but …”, entitled, winsomely, “I love men!”:
I have to stop reading radical feminist writing. I consider myself a feminist, but with two caveats:
1) Some of my best friends are men.
[…]
2) Call me a rich white het cis privilegebunny, but I don’t feel very oppressed.
Young Holly seems to be sort poking fun at herself, but in a disingenuous, “Stuff White People Like” kind of way that really says “Damn, it’s great being me!”
Oh dear.
I don’t have any hard data to back this up, but based on my experiences with this blog I have to agree with Stingray that American women overwhelmingly are invested to an enormous degree in patriarchy, and, like Holly, have no wish to confront the many ways in which this investment dehumanizes them. They would rather shoot the messenger. So they imagine that radical feminists hate them for wearing lipstick, or that we want them to castrate their husbands in their sleep, or that we want to turn them into dykes, or that we aspire to outlaw sex. And that all these things that they imagine we are makes us paternalistic Nazi sex cops who view all women as “brainwashed.” They all seem to be saying,”I don’t know if patriarchy even exists, but if it does, it doesn’t affect me, so fuck you.”
I don’t blame them. You kind of have to be in the mood to go mano a mano with patriarchy; it’s like getting hit with a piss balloon from a frat house window. But Holly’s view* reveals a certain lack of sophistication. Sexy feminists, there’s a lot more at stake with American feminism than exercising your right to bleach your asshole. Consider what Iranian feminist blogger Unitari had to say in a comment the other day at La Chola:
It is so important to understand that the condition of human and women’s rights in the US and Europe and the west indirectly affects what happens to human and women’s rights around the world. So it is important for American feminists to work on improving “their own” society while staying in solidarity with feminists in other countries.
[…]
I agree 100% with the assertion that many americans including feminists are blind to the problems in their own society and have a condescending attitude about the whole thing. In fact, strengthening human rights and women’s rights in this country helps all feminists globally.
In other words, even if you’re a rich white heterosexual American “privilegebunny” who luxuriates in what you imagine is an oppression-free bubble, feminism matters.
***********************
The aforementioned Unitari, incidentally, observes in her own blog that the seemingly endless Hillary vs Barack debate is a non-event from the feminist perspective.
[A]s I was thinking about this whole thing and arguing with my friends about this and that aspect of this and that candidate, I had a revelation. WOMEN ARE INVISIBLE. It looks like the discussion is all about women, but really when you look at it hard, women are the losers of this debate. Why? Because everyone is talking about who women will vote for, but nobody is talking about what is at stake for women. Nobody is talking about CEDAW and how it was never ratified in the US; nor are they talking about the Equal Rights Amendment. I didn’t hear anything about not-so-equal pay. I also care about what happens to my job when and if I get pregnant and whether my husband will be able to share the responsibilities or I am assumed the baby-care-taker of the house in our system? Anyway, I don’t even know exactly what all the issues are…! And I need to know so bad.
Unitari bemoans the lack of a feminist movement in the US. Well, here’s what I think. I think an American feminist movement doesn’t exist because you can’t challenge patriarchy if you haven’t managed to grasp that it exists.
________________________
*Holly goes on to characterize radical feminism as “[T]hrowing up your hands and screaming ‘we’re so oppressed we can’t even make decisions!’”, a perfect example of the spurious fun-feminist argument against radical feminism to which I alluded the other day.
I get Hollies in my undergraduate classes all the time, and I always think I have to be patient, that they just haven’t hit their heads very hard against the sides of the cage they’re in. But of course it also is easier for them and nicer and pleasanter and all that just to stay away from the bars and pretend they’re free. I’d tell them to grow up, if I hadn’t seen grownup women do that very thing.
“I think an American feminist movement doesn’t exist because you can’t challenge patriarchy if you haven’t managed to grasp that it exists.”
Oh yes it does. There is a very vibrant feminist movement here, it just doesn’t get covered by the mainstream media, and all kinds of weird freaking stupidity happens in the blogosphere. As much as I adore your writing, maybe you need to step back away from the computer for a while, if you need re-charging and re-centering, which would be entirely understandable. Right here in South Carolina there is a lot of important feminist work happening. If the same is not true in your neck of the woods, you need to come visit! But I’ll bet there are plenty right in your neighborhood if you look, and are willing to define “movement” somewhat, wait for it, “broadly.”
Ignore the faux feminists, post feminists, Feminist But(t)s and movement derailers. They aren’t worth it and will only trip you up and try to hurt you when possible for the evil pleasure it brings them.
Oof. I made the mistake of reading Holly’s full post and attendant comments while hungover. I just threw up a little in my mouth.
I watched a friend of mine dismiss ten to fifteen years of her own career destruction, about which she whined endlessly to me in e-mail, with the breezy dismissal that she just “didn’t have much in common with” Hillary Clinton.
The woman who has been subject to more career sabotage than any other human woman on the planet. The woman who has been cartoonified as a cunning gorgon because she dares to act as if she knows what the fuck she’s doing. The woman who has committed the unforgiveable sin of actually being qualified for the job she wants, while not being cute and 25 at the same time.
This, after the aforementioned friend banged on and on and fucking ON to me in e-mail for the past decade about how much easier it was for her at her job before she got some grey hair and gained weight and wasn’t “cute” anymore, about how the men at her workplace, including her boss, would sideline her repeatedly because “some people thought” she was intimidating. The friend who literally had her first choice career not just frustrated or sabotaged but ripped to pieces before her eyes and then handed back to her in bloody shreds.
But she “doesn’t have much in common with” Hillary Clinton.
It sickens me to think of all that pointless fucking whining of hers that I was subjected to, caring more about it than evidently she did given how easily and simply she threw the whole thing in the garbage and forgot about it. All that pissing and moaning about I Don’t Know How I’m Going To Go Into Work Tomorrow, and They Promoted The Guy I Hired Over Me, and she just chirped and forgot about the whole thing the minute she got a chance to put some muscle in the moan.
There is a REASON why women have never gotten real power.
They don’t want it.
Oh, some of us do — some of us evolutionary mistakes with miswired heads. We do. But we are not what evolution wants. Women are indeed meant to be the Sidekicks and Helpmeets of life. And every goddamned one of those little sidekicks can pay for their own birth control and abortions from now on.
Raped? Need an abortion? Awwwww, go find some man to help you. I certainly hope you don’t think I’m gonna give a shit about your sad little problems, Just Because You’re A Woman! I, Like, Totally Resent That Assumption! Just get a new hairdo and manicure, and I’m sure you’ll feel all better.
Seriously — shove power into a woman’s hands, and she’ll go looking for someone else with a penis to give it to. Except for Charles Darwin’s little mistakes — you, me, Stingray, and Hillary Clinton.
Ugh…what a moron. I suddenly feel sick. How can women be so damn complacent? “It’s not a problem because it doesn’t affect me”?
Now I need to go off somewhere and quietly have an aneurysm.
–Chai
Huh. I don’t any feminists who are voting for Hillary. Not because of her chromosone structure so much as they find her hawkish and completely enmeshed with corporate lobbyists. They voted, you know, on the issues. Well, I do know a few who voted for her in our caucus but now wouldn’t vote for her if someone was shoving bamboo under their fingernails because of her behavior and campaign tactics. I used to say that while I preferred Obama, I’d happily vote for Clinton. No longer. I have lost all respect for her and will have to be dragged to the polls kicking and screaming if she gets the nomination.
I love you and your unapologetic radical feminism, precisely because the many women who think it wise to say “I’m a feminist, but…” so hate the things we say here. Of course, any woman that feels it necessary to qualify the statement “I’m a feminist” with “but” isn’t a feminist at all. This fact, when expressed, doesn’t go over well in my classes with “enlightened” feminists. I always figured that an important part of feminism was suspicion: suspicion of men’s motives, suspicion of women’s motives, and suspicion of the sex and gender-obsessed world at large. It seems that the suspicion of the feminist movement has died, when so many of us feel it necessary to qualify our beliefs with “but”.
Of course, one of the many reasons I support Hilary Clinton is precisely because I feel that she’d be more open to women’s issues. I do think you’re right to say that the issues are largely absent in this debate. It seems that most are too obsessed with her lack of penis to really articulate what exactly that means on a larger scale.
Perhaps I’m a nut, but I’d rather have a good president, even if he or she doesn’t share my race, gender, religion, or political affiliation.
“Stingray opined, because most people, particularly women, would rather die screaming than associate themselves with feminism.”
Not necessarily. I have no problem associating myself at the top of my lungs as a feminist. And I do. I’m not supporting Hillary for three reasons: (1) her unjustified sense of entitlement to the job; (2) my deeply rooted feeling that we’ve heard-quite-enough-thank-you from the Bush/Clinton dynasty and (3) she’s behaved like a complete assclown in terms of ‘dirtying up” the contest with every bullshit, nasty game she’s decried in everyone else. Frankly, I’m so sick of the Hillary campaign’s crapfest that I could barf. At least with Obama, I get to keep my lunch down.
It’s so true that everyone, men and women alike, hate Hillary so much because she is a feminist. Unfortunately, it is also a depressing truth that in order for a woman to be in a position in which she is able to be a presidential candidate these days, she has to be a very savvy politician, enmeshed in the terribly corrupt boys club of party politics, and just altogether mainstream. Which means that not only is she too feminist for the anti- and but-I’m-not-a-feminists, she’s not feminist enough for many die-hard feminists. I support Hillary in blind faith that all the negativity about her is misogynistic media hype, but it’s getting harder and harder to maintain the solidarity.
After this last Obama speech on race, I tried to imagine Hillary giving a similar speech about gendered tensions, and I just can’t see it. She might be that self-aware, but I doubt that she would ever have the wherewithal to begin that honest a conversation about feminism. And neither are we self-aware enough about it as a voting public to even identify the gender tensions as they are. The nation would watch it blankly and uncomprehending. It is indeed invisible. We need a lot more consciousness and a lot more “movement” before we could have that kind of a speech. Yes, feminism matters in the US - all social movements matter greatly in the US - and maybe because of this fact, Hillary isn’t the right feminist for the job. Is she a step in the right direction? Probably. But meanwhile, my heart has left (this week) to visit Obama.
I don’t hate Hillary because she’s a feminist. I hate her because she’s an asshole. Every bit as much of an asshole as Dick Cheney and for exactly the same reasons. I’m not voting the labia ticket and I won’t have my feminist cred shit on because I don’t and I won’t vote for a candidate whose values stink just because she’s a woman in order to “earn my cred”. Hillary Clinton is part of the established problem every bit as much as every other male-centered jerk out there.
“Sexy feminists, there’s a lot more at stake with American feminism than exercising your right to bleach your asshole.”
People bleach their assholes?
I know it’s exciting to have the possibility of electing a woman as president, but it brings out the cynical in me. Wishing Hillary Clinton to be president because she is a woman would mean being really happy that Condolezza Rice has her job, because she is a woman too. But I think that Hillary voters are not the greatests fans of Rice.
I’m with BadKitty on this one. She doesn’t come across as a torchbearer of the feminist front in any way whatsoever. I simply can’t trust the product of Mark Penn’s neuromarketing whatsit, and neither can many in America, it would seem.
Well said Nia. I’ll add that I will be voting for the candidate who does me the most good as a woman and a feminist. And that ain’t Condi Rice or Hillary Clinton for sure. My obligations as a feminist are clear and they are much greater than voting for someone based on their genitalia.
To Ann Bartow: No no no no no. No telling Twisty to get a life. Twisty just got back to the computer and got her rant on in FINE style a little while ago. I’m all for Our Twisty having a life, but this blog is so much to so many. You could even say it is an important work of feminist awareness raising, equally as important as any feminist work done in ‘real life’. Huh.
To Twisty: Sorry to talk about you in the third person like that. Just wanted to put my hand up and say that I make a point of saying often that I’m a feminist and that many issues people talk about are feminist issues. (It’s a great conversation stopper.) I do agree with Stingray and your depressing conclusion though… a lot of women do not want to taint themselves with the nasty ‘feminist’ tag. God forbid we look for a pattern in the many oppressions against women.
Having just returned from a mostly relaxing margaritafest in Palm Springs, I decide to catch up on Twisty’s mental mastications. Clicking on “I Blame the Patriarchy” in my “Favorites”, I almost have a beer-and-pistacios-through-the-nose moment when I see, “The Evangelical Pro-Life Gazette” across the top of my monitor. Twisty, you keep us on our toes!
“But I think that Hillary voters are not the greatests fans of Rice.”
I only know of one woman who said she was voting for Hillary because she’s a woman–she was 101 years old. I don’t see why she shouldn’t get to see a woman president in her lifetime.
All the HRC voters I know supported her because she’s stunningly smart, she doesn’t back down and her proposed policies are extremely well crafted–and more liberal– than those of her opponents.
I like her because her economic plan is bold enough to actually, maybe, help us crawl out of the pit we’re in. Obama’s economic advisers are Milton Friedman loyalists and his plan is Republican light. I definitely don’t think Hillary is an “asshole.” Observing her throughout this brutal process, I’ve been surprised by how warm and funny she can be. Admittedly, I had bought into the stereotypes about her being cold and calculating. No more.
StingRay’s comment reminds me of a blog post Steve Gillard wrote a couple of years ago. He was listing reasons why HRC could never be President and one of the reasons was that she “looks like a feminist.” Stingray’s onto something.
Oh, and BadKitty, I’m very much a feminist. Now you know one who likes Hillary.
Huh, Dilexi, I’d never thought about what you said but it’s for sure true that if Hillary gave a “gender” speech like the race speech Obama gave we would NOT have the liberal blogosphere falling all over themselves to praise it. They’d go to town on her. I mean, aside from the fact that it would never happen in the first place, as you pointed out.
I really started out an Obama supporter for the same reason I voted for Nader in 2000 — I was so, so, so disappointed in the W.J. Clinton admninistration and don’t want a repeat. Obama doesn’t strike me as a miracle come to earth but I do think he’s decent and competent. But the more I think about why people don’t/won’t vote for H.R. Clinton, the more it feels like a whole lot of sexism going on. As a result, I just care less and less who wins the nomination — I’ll vote for whoever the Democratic nominee turns out to be, but I don’t want to have to choose between them.
I was about to bang out a protest comment defending my right to loathe Hillary Clinton with every fiber of my being, but then I read the others’ comments and now just want to say, “AMEN. What they said.”
I don’t know where to begin. Perhaps there are no words. How ironic that the first time we have a viable female candidate, and during a time of crisis when we so desperately need a president who will bring the troops home, back out of NAFTA, and rescind the unconstitutional Executive Orders that have turned our country into a fascist police state, SHE’S NOT THE ONE WHO IS WILLING TO DO IT. Irony of ironies: The only candidate who will back us out of this MESS is Ron Paul.
Here’s my bottom line: All of my feminist “issues” pale in significance to the million people we’ve killed in Iraq and the trashing of our Constitution. Am I going to vote for 4-8 more years of Police State, WAR and a million more unconscionable murders - GENOCIDE - because of a litmus test or my party affiliation?” F*ck that. That Dr. Paul is supposedly “anti choice” doesn’t even cause me to flinch. “Leave it to the states” sounds HOKIDOKE to ME! They couldn’t even turn South Dakota anti-choice (for long) so I’m no longer worried about the lunatic fundy fringe messing in my business. I’m worried about Blackwater and the NSA messing in my business. I’m worried about the lethal Nazi-Commie lunatic assholes soiling the halls of Congress and the White House, ordering us to bomb Iran on behalf of Israel using another bogus WMD charge. These traitors have bribed and extorted the people who are supposed to represent US. Hillary is ONE OF THEM, a neocon shill, criminally corrupt, compromised and susceptible to blackmail. She belongs in the BIG HOUSE, not the White House!
Obama is only a LITTLE BIT better. He’s Zbigniew Brzezinski’s candidate. Brzezinski, co-founder of the TriLateral Commission, is the dude who “invented” the Afghan Mujahadeen and the radical Islamic political movement. He’s darn proud of it too. Flip on the lights, look under the Barack Obama rug and you’ll see all the roaches, all of them named Mussolini. It’s NOT pretty.
Changing the subject: I saw this post and thought Twisty would get a laugh out of it:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php
deja pseu,
You too? For a second there I thought someone had hijacked Twisty’s blog!
“castrate their husbands in their sleep”
This is obviously spoken by a husband-free spinster aunt. Why would we wait until they are asleep?
Right on Twisty!
Bet you’re not at all surprised that everyone is jumping on the “I’m not a Hillary supporter but…” and the “Hating Hillary is *so* a pro-feminist position” bandwagons. (apologies for the ellipses, but they are truly called for here!) I certainly wasn’t. Although calling Hillary “as big of an asshole as Dick Cheney” did strike me as particularly vitriolic and unhinged from reality.
This bullshit rhetoric around Hillary Clinton and her campaign has been so misogynist, the only way people could possibly pretend otherwise is because the invisible patriarchal waters they are swimming in blind them to it.
Consider this recent exchange on national news that I transcribed:
Jim: Hey, Bob, would you say that Americans rejected Hillary because she is a bitch, or because she is a cunt?
Bob: Well, Jim, that is a very important question. I think it is because she is a bitch.
Jim: That’s where you’re wrong, Bob, I think it is because she is a cunt.
Bob: Bitch!
Jim: Cunt!
Bob: Bitch!
Jim: Cunt!
Bob: Well, Jim, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. Now, let’s check in with Mike, who is here to comment on how “white man can jump” from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, because Hillary is a castrating, manipulative spider woman!
It’s hours and hours of endless fun for everyone! They get to talk shit about the Clintons, their all-time favorite activity, and they get to be sexist pigs, their second all-time favorite activity! YAY!!!
Look everyone, I’m not saying that Clinton is perfect, not by a long shot,and I’ll happily vote for either one of them, but don’t kid yourselves that your vitriolic distaste for her is completely unrelated to her having a vagina. It isn’t.
1. I feel Stingray’s pain, since I want a successful worldwide anti-capitalist revolution which renders our current systems of government irrelevent and I want it now. (We don’t always get what we want.)
2. I’ve been one of the funsexy feminists. I’ve been one of them recently, as in I was one this time two years ago. Writing like Twisty’s helped me see the light. You are making a difference, if slowly.
PS. She’s now claiming you want to make prostitution illegal. I corrected her under a different SN.
Sevanetta, I wasn’t telling Twisty to “get a life.” I wasn’t trying to tell Twisty what to do at all, and I’m sorry if that’s what my comment sounded like. She just sounds depressed to me, and maybe hanging out with real life feminists would help with that. Because there are a lot of us. And we are doing lots of interesting things. I had dinner a couple of nights ago with the woman who drafted the original version of VAWA. And she continues to work to improve it and related laws. Just being around her made me feel happy and optimistic.
HP,
*RON PAUL*?!?!? You plug Ron Paul on a feminist blog??? The dude who’s both anti-abortion AND anti-contraception???? Can you say “Supreme Court Appointments”? At least I can sleep knowing he doesn’t have a worm’s chance in a chicken yard of winning.
Unitari bemoans the lack of a feminist movement in the US. Well, here’s what I think. I think an American feminist movement doesn’t exist because you can’t challenge patriarchy if you haven’t managed to grasp that it exists.
But here’s a problem. What if you ARE a feminist that HAS managed to grasp that it exists? What then? How do we live our lives?
This turning-over-rocks thing is a tad tedious.
…and another thing:
War-mongering, aka love of mammon, is genderless. Haven’t y’all noticed that?
I’m a feminist, I voted for Hillary Clinton, and I hope she wins.
There, BadKitty. That’s two.
I still don’t thinks she’s teh evil — sorry, Obama lovers. He leaves me lukewarm, and his refusal to denounce the misogyny, and his occasional dipping of his toes into the Misogyny Pool Party, make me like him less and less.
I’ve never bleached my asshole. I hear some women actually shave them, too. (When I read that, I could not make myself NOT explore my own anus to see if there actually IS hair there. Who knew.)
Yes, they all really believe that they hate her because “she’s entitled” or “she’s as much of an asshole as Dick Cheney.” Now, find me the data that supports entitlement. Seriously, I want some quotes. Got none? Oh really. And to say that she is a warmonger. Do you know Obama’s position on extricating us from Iraq? It’s very similar to Senator Clinton’s position. But, he doesn’t have that entitlement vagina that makes you all nervous. WEVs.
You can also keep pretending that she won’t make a difference on gender issues, but she worked w/ Senator Patty Murray to get the Food and Drug Administration to accept the overwhelming recommendation of the medical community and make Plan B (the “morning after” pill) available over the counter. Has Obama done anything like that?
Yeah, the data to back those positions of vitriol is not too good. And I will vote for Obama if he gets the nomination. You know, like an adult, not a whiny baby.
Nom Myo Ho Ren Kyo
Phonics.
I’m guessing it means something like “Calm down”.
In a perfect post-feminist world, we could vote for a candidate without caring about their gender. But here’s a newsflash, which apparently is a big shock to an awful lot of the commenters here:
WE AIN’T IN THAT WORLD YET. CHRIST ON A FUCKING CRUTCH.
Maybe YOU want to live in a nation where the larger, more violent half of the population is drunk with joy at having beaten the shit out of the most powerful woman in politics and naively think that that won’t touch you and won’t have any effect at all on you, but how about you engage the rest of your brain cells and face up.
Here’s a little test I propose to you — why don’t you go take one or two of those “ripped from the headlines” posts that shows up on a feminist blog, oh I don’t know like, “WOMAN RAPED TO DEATH BEFORE EYES RIPPED OUT OF HER HEAD” or “TEN YEAR OLD BLAMED FOR OWN GANG RAPE” and post it twice:
Once to the HRC blog and once to the Obama blog — and tell me what the responses are like. Where you get sympathy and outrage and where you get hate.
and then tell me which group of people you want CELEBRATING after the Democratic nominating convention.
And then tell me who’s an asshole and who’s good and bad for women’s rights.
Do it.
Try it on the rest of the pro-Obama blogs online — there’s shitloads of them. And see what sort of response you get. And why not come back here and share your findings with the rest of us pro-Hillary dinosaurs.
First person to bring up the Iraq war vote will be the first person to be gently reminded that BARACK OBAMA VOTED FOR THE IRAQ WAR TWICE AND FAILED TO DO SO FOR THE FIRST TIME ONLY BECAUSE HE DIDN’T YET HAVE A SENATE CAREER TO RISK.
“Sexy feminists, there’s a lot more at stake with American feminism than exercising your right to bleach your asshole.”
Sigh.
Sexy feminism (aka sex-positivism) isn’t about appealing to men and thus perpetuation the patriarchy through internalized sexism. It’s about claiming our own sexual pleasure and our own bodies. It’s about doing what we want despite the patriarchy. It’s about using our bodies for our own pleasure or to express our own thoughts, despite how you or anyone else interprets our bodies. We’re saying, “It’s my body and I get to decide how to use it.”
You are misrepresenting your sisters.
I don’t know about Holly, but the reasons I’m dissatisfied with radical feminism are these:
1. Radical feminism tends to be essentialist. It assumes there is something about women that we all share and it totally ignores the differences and variety. The 1% of humans who are neither fully male or female biologically are considered male by radical feminism. Transwomen are not considered women in radical feminism.
2. Women who aren’t part of the sex class, for whatever reason, are left out. It asserts that women are breeders, or viewed by society as breeders, and totally ignores the other oppressions women may experience, even when those other oppressions are more severe.
3. Radical feminism hates Las Vegas, happy strippers, and lots of other people, like motel maids. Basically, radical feminism tends to ignore the needs and wants of working class women. Really, even Ms. Clinton visited Vegas, (and remarked that it made her truly aware of the subprime mortgage crisis) but radical feminist philosophers wouldn’t. They boycotted Vegas in 2001 when the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy conference was there. They wrote off an entire city and its residents; something they’d never even think of doing if it were another, eastern city (like NYC) with just as much prostitution, stripping, and other sex work.
4. Radical feminism is not accessible. Most theorists write in a way that can only be understood by elite, well educated people, that is, in a way that cannot be easily understood by regular, working class people. Fun feminism is accessible.
I completely agree with many of your ideas, Twisty, but I think your preoccupation with one type of oppression, the one based on women-as-breeder, clouds your thinking on some other issues.
Just my opinion. Take it or leave it :)
I have yet to see or hear anything (substantiated) to hate about Hillary Clinton. She seems terrific.
OK, goblinbee. Here’s something to hate: in December 2005, Hillary Clinton co-sponsored a flag-burning bill. As in, a bill that would criminalize flag-burning. Sure, it’s merely one example of pandering, but it’s the first one that springs to mind. Not so “terrific.” Yeah, Hillary Rodham Clinton is adequate. She’s the DLC machine candidate.
“What about the ME’s” is just as annoying as “What about the menz.”
I am a middle-aged woman and I am very well-educated. I did not notice sexism so much when I was younger. But I notice is very much now. Because sexism - misogyny - in our society, is so pervasive that it is like very small cuts that aren’t noticed when they occur. But they have a devastating cummulative effect. I see it now at my company. I’m sure all of the younger new hires don’t even notice what is happening to them. All of the new hires are probably hired at the same level and the same salary. Why do the females get saddled with more administrative tasks which limits the time they may use to do original research? So the new guys get to spend all of their time doing research and of course, making discoveries and getting patents and having opportunities to be called “brilliant.” They fall behind in the more mundane tasks at work, but they get the pass because “their brilliant!” So OF COURSE they will be promoted faster and get better raises.
Meanwhile, the female new hires take on the boring administrative tasks and they do them well because they have a great work ethic. But because they do these things well, they are given more work of this type with lots of praise for “organizational ability” and all of the other fluffy stuff that gets you nowhere. People don’t seem to get that what sets it all in motion are the small things - the things like making a female new hire also responsible for some dumb administrative chore or giving a male new hire a pass when he doesn’t complete his crappy safety quiz (or whatever).
My take home message here, is that sexism isn’t something that is usually seen in a single act or a single stroke. It has a cumulative impact. This is why younger women don’t identify with Hillary. They haven’t yet experienced the cummulative effects of sexism. Interview them 20 years from now, when we still will be waiting for the first woman president if Hillary doesn’t get the nomination.
The people reading this blog probably already know everything I’ve written. But thank you for reading my message anyway.
I think Hillary is great; she strong, fiesty, knows how the system and mechanics of government works, and has has so much more experience than Obama it’s not even a contest.
I know this is not going to be a popular thing to say on this blog, but I actually think her policies are secondary to that fact that she’s a woman. As long as she’s feminist *enough* (not a surrendered housewife type), just think what a fantastic, resounding message it would send to men everywhere, all around the world, that the most powerful person in the world was a woman. That alone is enough to make me vote for her (if I could).
I think the symbolic victory of Hillary in the whitehouse would give renewed impetus to the feminist movement worldwide, because it would signal that even the top job is available to women, and I think that many people on this blog are underestimating the paradigm shift that would be for most men around the world.
Also, after reading some of the comments, Obamas beginning to sound like a bit of a closet misogynist-supporter (or at the least not anti-misogyny, which is akin to being an ally), and his islamic links are suspect.
Mostly I think Hillary in the top job would be setting an example to young girls everywhere - she’d be a great role model for aspiring politicians, and proof that even the most powerful of boys clubs can’t keep a pwerful woman down.
I’m really surprised more feminists don’t grasp the power of symbolism, and very sorry to hear that many have turned their back on her, as it might be a while before another woman has the guts/opportunity to run for president.
After this last Obama speech on race, I tried to imagine Hillary giving a similar speech about gendered tensions, and I just can’t see it. She might be that self-aware, but I doubt that she would ever have the wherewithal to begin that honest a conversation about feminism.
I would disagree - I think what she has is the wherewithal to not make that speech, for all the reasons you list in the rest of your comment. What would be the point of making such a speech to a ‘blank, uncomprehending’ audience? All it would do is give the Boyz more ammunition to accuse her of playing the gender card, which as near as I can tell means they’ll spin it whichever way makes her look worst.
There isn’t a feminist who’s right for the job, because the country isn’t ready for or interested in a feminist. The argument that Hillary isn’t feminist enough for women to vote for her is, forgive me, pure BS. She’s a frickin’ woman, fer f’s sake, the first woman who has a real shot at the presidency EVER. As Twisty says, the mere fact that she has the ovaries to make it to the top three shows that she’s a feminist, whether she calls herself that or not. Why is that not a big deal to more women? I think an awful lot of folks have their heads buried in the sand on this one.
She has done what she has to to be electable at all as a woman, doing the balancing act that all politicians must do to have a shot at winning in a country that is so horribly divided. The last two elections were ‘won’ by a hair, and this next one will be no different. True radicals don’t stand a chance in this political climate. Obama isn’t a radical or a prophet - he’s a Republican in progressive clothing, with the slickest speech-writers and spin doctors money can buy. And he shows zero interest in women’s issues, in fact I would say his misogynist colors have been showing pretty clearly.
Yeah. Fine. I don’t agree with all the tenets of radical feminism, but Holly’s post is radfem-blaming of the most bush-league variety. She could at least get the basic theory right. God.
And “I’m a feminist with one caveat: I like men”? I’m sorry, has she read any feminist books ever? Some of my best friends are men and I don’t blather about how that makes for a “caveat” because I’m not such a goddamn jerkoff (most days) as to fish for compliments by trash-talking other women. “Other feminists are MEAN! They hate men! Poor misunderstood men! I’m much nicer and more fun than THEY are, doncha think, boys? Teehee!”
And yet, one can identify with radical feminism in a consistent and intellectually honest way while disgreeing completely with every last one of your stated characterisations of it.
I also played the feminist hedge game for a while until I realized that it was all a sham. Women’s rights are in an atrocious state around the world, not just internationally but here in North America. Just look at life for the average Native woman, for example. In Canada, First Nations women are oppressed on a horrifying level, to the point that international organizations such as Amnesty International have called out Canada for allowing it to continue.
In the light of that, I see how my position as a white, educated, ciswoman, het-privileged (bi but partnered with a man) woman should be used, which is to take what power that gives me and use it to be an ally to other women fighting in my own country and around the world. This means speaking out against the feminization of poverty, the abuse of Native women, and the plight of women anywhere and everywhere (and yes, in my books, transwomen are women).
Feminism should matter the most for those of us who are reaping the rewards of earlier feminists who fought so hard for us. I should be taking the gains my mother and grandmother made and honoring them by making gains for my daughters and granddaughters, and anything less is spitting on the contributions they made to my life.
This is why the fun feminists, the “I’m a feminist BUT” crowd, and the “I’m not a feminist because I like men” sorts, who are so often women my age, make me crazy. Feminism isn’t just about your life and your corner of the world. It’s about seeing beyond your little corner and thinking about how you can make greater change.
As for Hillary Clinton and her radical credentials, would she be where she is if she was more radical? To see women in leadership, we will have to accept that they are not likely, at this point, to be radicals, just as we do not tend to elect radical men, either. Obama’s not exactly a figurehead of the revolution either, people. Even he reads centrist at best, and right of centre in general (like most mainstream US politics). Why do we hold her to a standard that is so much more stringent? I think we’re doing the same thing that the anti-feminists do to her and to so many other women: expect her to be twice as good before she gets half the rewards.
Seriously? You’re trying that line?
Re: Elaine Vigneault: *tears hair out in chunks*
Hillary is not a good role model for anyone. She displays no integrity whatsoever. If we want to teach more young women that they should do anything and everything in their power to appease the patriarchy so that they can get the highest nod of white male privileged approval in the land, then sure, Hillary is a perfect fit. However, joining the patriarchy is not an example of feminist success.
When did Hillary sacrifice her integrity? Was defending a rapist by attacking a 12-year-old rape victim the first time? Probably not. Was standing by her husband as he habitually sexually used women over whom he had power - an activity that many radical feminists would characterize as rape - the last time? Probably not. In what world is Hillary Clinton a feminist? Okay, she has a vagina. So does Ann Coulter. Does that make her a feminist icon?
Of course Hillary’s not happy to simply enable the sexual abuse of women - like a true patriarchy-lover she must also help the men to prove their dominance over one another by fighting wars on foreign soil. Where was Hillary when Clinton’s Iraq policy was starving millions of Iraqi women and children by habitually bombing infrastructure for eight years? Right there with him. Where was Hillary when the Senate was approving funding for Bush’s adventures in Iraq? Right there with them.
Maybe Obama won’t do anything for women, and maybe he’ll turn out to be as much of a warmonger as our last n presidents. Who knows? What I know is that unlike Clinton or McCain, Obama hasn’t proven that he lives only to reinforce the oppressive structures in our society by destroying the lives of women and foreigners. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, but at least with him there’s a betting chance.
Re: Elaine Vigneault: joins Mearl in the tearing out of the hair.
Elaine said: 3. Radical feminism hates Las Vegas, happy strippers, and lots of other people, like motel maids. Basically, radical feminism tends to ignore the needs and wants of working class women. Really, even Ms. Clinton visited Vegas… … They wrote off an entire city and its residents; something they’d never even think of doing if it were another, eastern city (like NYC) with just as much prostitution, stripping, and other sex work.
Wow. Someone forgot to send me the memo about hating Las Vegas. But if it makes you feel any better, I feel just as disinterested in any eastern city in the US as I do in Vegas, although truthfully I’d probably have to have some help in remembering which US cities are in the east other than New York. Does that help?
The rest of the things, even in this small snippet quoted above, that Elaine thinks I’m supposed to hate as a radical feminist - motel maids, happy strippers, working class women - just makes me boggle and want to know what she’s been smoking. Seriously.
Elaine Vigneault- Happy strippers? Women who are not members of the sex class? I’ve known plenty of women and plenty of strippers without ever meeting either. Also, NYC does not have as much sex work as Vegas.
Twisty, I’m so so glad you’re back to regularly posting, especially since Feministing has just started a new segment called, “(Un)Feminist Guilty Pleasures,” where they extol the virtues of television shows like “Millionaire Matchmaker,” a development that has nearly led me to abandon the site completely.
At Pervocracy, I’m trying to do my best (which is surely not as good as you do) in trying to convince Holly of how there is so much more to the issue of prostitution than she has taken into consideration, but when she writes, “Also frankly I don’t see what any of this (capitalism and economic exploitation) has to do with the status of women. Seems to me someone could be liberated from coerced labor and still hate women. I don’t see the connection,” I just feel hopeless.
Saying that radical feminists hate motel maids and strippers is as asinine as saying vegans hate slaughter house workers and fast food fry cooks.
Hating the system is different than hating those that are enslaved by it.
Hello, delurking to leave a comment. Love your blog, Twisty.
I have no doubt that a lot of people hate Hillary because she’s a strong, smart, and unapologetically strong-minded woman, and will vote against her because of that. But I can’t help but feel that her campaign strategies over the last couple months have hurt her more than helped her. These strategies, which strike me as a “kitchen sink” approach that involves using whatever tactics she can to appeal to popular sentiments of the moment have give her a flip-flopping image that does not help her, and has eroded my confidence in her ability to handle dissent in congress and get stuff done.
One question I’ll ask, and it sounds flip, but I assure you it isn’t: what legislation has Hillary participated in, and what issues has she championed, that specifically address women’s issues? Would her healthcare plan fall under that category? I’m honestly curious.
Thanks for listening…I learn a lot and get a lot to think about by reading this blog and the comments.
Gayle: All the HRC voters I know supported her because she’s stunningly smart, she doesn’t back down and her proposed policies are extremely well crafted–and more liberal– than those of her opponents.
Debby, quoting an interview: Jim: Hey, Bob, would you say that Americans rejected Hillary because she is a bitch, or because she is a cunt?
I was surprised to find so much woman-hating expressed by women here. As Gayle points out, it feels like they’re doing it because HRC is everything men hate in us — “oh, I hate her too, will you love me now?”
Debby rebuts perfectly the women who said (or rather screamed) here that they won’t vote for someone because of her genitalia. It’s not about her having a cunt, it’s about her being a bitch — a term generally reserved for any woman who stands on men’s toes. Yet again, “I hate her too. Will you love me now?”
How will we ever get out of the hole we’re in while even so many women who think they are feminists (what are they doing here otherwise?) hate women?
Bird, thank you for saying what kept me up all night thinking until I could get to my keyboard to say: we’ve got to stop holding women to a higher standard. Why does that keep happening? Why do we expect one of the most powerful women in the world to try and change the rules of the game before she’s won it? This is a patriarchy, and we can’t just blame it we have to fight it. She’s doing it, with the best tools she has at hand at this time. That’s right, at this time, in the here and now of this patriarchal society. Is she perfect? No. Will she ever be? No. Do I think she has my best interests at stake? Yes. Yes, I think so, and I’m willing to back her. Will there be another woman candidate in the future that could be a better leader? God, I hope so, but that chance will get beat down and a long time coming if we don’t act on this moment now. Right now.
Yup, nuthin’ more fun than being told you aren’t a real feminist unless you vote for Clinton. {eyeroll} That’s another reason I won’t vote for her - because her camp is constantly accusing me of not thinking for myself and/or being misogynistic. With all due respect, screw you.
THIS is why we’re going to get our asses handed to us in November. We’re too busy hating and insulting each other while the Repubs are stealing our country.
If you are looking for reason to dislike Clinton, you can find them. She is not particularly progressive on many issues. But the same is true of Obama. He is even less progressive on health care and reproductive rights. And part of his Southern strategy has been to employ socially conservative, exceedingly sexist and homophobic clerics of black churches in large numbers. Maybe he is no worse than Clinton. But he is no better either.
Elaine Vigneault, it is completely untrue to say that radical feminism does not consider transwomen to be female. It’s true that there is a subset of feminists who only consider ciswomen to count as female, but in my experience their voices do not dominate radical feminist discussions.
In my radically feminist opinion, the class “woman” is defined by the patriarchy, and the only thing we all necessarily have in common being in it is that we are all oppressed by that patriarchy. Like most radical feminists I know, I consider transwomen and intersexuals to be my sisters.
I don’t hate Las Vegas, happy strippers, motel maids or working-class women, either. I consider all of those things to be my sisters, aside from Las Vegas, which I consider to be a large town in Nevada. I’d be interested to know what on this blog has given you the impression that hating those things is part of radical feminism.
Also, could you enlighten me as to which women don’t form part of the sex class?
Yes, BadKitty, respect. Which is why I don’t believe I mentioned anything about anyone hating anybody. But you did.
Also, radical feminists hate puppies and applepies and sex and rainbows.
As I remarked on the blog under discussion, young women of her kind believe that they will not end up like their mothers. Ha ha ha.
She just sounds depressed to me, and maybe hanging out with real life feminists would help with that.
Ha. Have you ever read this blog before?
Also, Hillary Clinton did make “that speech.” At United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Plenary Session in Beijing, China. Thirteen frigging years ago, people. Where did it get her? Where did it get women?
Text here (cut & paste, change “xttp” to “http”)
xttp://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hillaryclintonbeijingspeech.htm
But, she hasn’t done “anything” to advance women’s plight in the world, has she.
Or has she — and it’s just been ignored, like most things women say and do?
Twisty’s right — we are invisible. Unless we’re serving men in some fashion. As long as we’re fuckable, we count.
“Unjustified sense of entitlement’? I can’t get that phrase out of my mind - it makes me think of Obama. Really. Anyone who is vying to be Leader has a sense of entitlement. Justified - well Ms. Clinton is experienced, smart, and has survived the vast right-wing conspiracy. Yes she plays the game. But she is the best still in the race (I was a Gore and then Edwards supporter before now).
Obama is running at least as destructive a race, has little experience, no record of leadership, and while not a DLC member they love him as much as Clinton, maybe more. He’s opportunist, has made horrible choices for mentors, plays the sexist game, and….republicans are largely responsible for his delegate count. He gives great speech but I can’t trust him.
At least I know Hillary has women and children near the top of her list, I know who and what I’m getting.
I’m astounded by the sexism exposed in this race. I loved what Robin Morgan said - I’m not for Hillary because SHE has a vagina but because I have one.
I’m a feminist and I’m have Hillary’s back. All the way. Of the three that might still be choices, she’s the best on almost any meter. And she’s the one I’d most want to have a beer with……
That’s another reason I won’t vote for her - because her camp is constantly accusing me of not thinking for myself and/or being misogynistic. With all due respect, screw you.
So, you won’t vote for her because her camp is questioning your feminist credentials. But you are totally on board with the Obama camp which employs misogyny against Hillary and the women who support her, that calls women bitches and cunts. Too bad you have those priorities.
That’s because she’s a vulgar right-wing libertarian in feminist clothing. You might as well save your effort.
“Twisty’s right — we are invisible.”
It was quoted blogger Unitari who made that point in the post, not me. Although I agree with her completely. None of these candidates can even mention women’s issues or they’ll come off looking like wussies, and it drives me nuts.
It’s amazing how many women will be really angry if Clinton wins the nomination. That definitely smacks of misogyny to me.
She’s no worse than Obama, and to her credit at least she doesn’t do sneaky things like getting all her opponents wiped off the ballot in order that she can get a clear run, the way he did when he ran for the Illinois State Senate:
http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/
“Obama hired fellow Harvard Law alum and election law expert Thomas Johnson to challenge the nominating petitions of four other candidates, including the popular incumbent, Alice Palmer, a liberal activist who had held the seat for several years, according to an April 2007 Chicago Tribune report.
Obama found enough flaws in the petition sheets — to appear on the ballot, candidates needed 757 signatures from registered voters living within the district — to knock off all the other Democratic contenders. He won the seat unopposed.”
If we’re calling people assholes here, a politician who uses the “rules” in order to wipe out all democratic opposition certainly seems to fit in that category.
lucy stone: “OK, goblinbee. Here’s something to hate: in December 2005, Hillary Clinton co-sponsored a flag-burning bill. As in, a bill that would criminalize flag-burning.”
At least she was against a constitutional ban on flag burning, unlike my senator at that time (Orrin Hatch), and others. There was a lot of hysteria at that time.
I do not expect a president to reflect all my views. I would love it, but it’s not going to happen. Myself? I burn U.S. flags every chance I get. Most politicians (and people!) hold views I do not relate to.
How do feminists for Obama feel about the fact that he was prepared to support John G. Roberts the anti-choice, anti women’s rights judge to the Supreme Court, and needed to be reminded by his aides that it would be a mistake to support a conservative anti-choice judge?
“It was the fall of 2005, and the celebrated young senator — still new to Capitol Hill but aware of his prospects for higher office — was thinking about voting to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice. Talking with his aides, the Illinois Democrat expressed admiration for Roberts’s intellect. Besides, Obama said, if he were president he wouldn’t want his judicial nominees opposed simply on ideological grounds.
And then Rouse, his chief of staff, spoke up. This was no Harvard moot-court exercise, he said. If Obama voted for Roberts, Rouse told him, people would remind him of that every time the Supreme Court issued another conservative ruling, something that could cripple a future presidential run. Obama took it in. And when the roll was called, he voted no.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/26/AR2007082601446_pf.html
http://www.now.org/issues/judicial/roberts.html
Do you trust this man with US women’s reproductive rights?
I don’t expect any better from some of the frat boy morons who are supporting Obama. I do expect better from other feminists. Excuse me for holding you to a higher standard. At least the misogynistic crap isn’t coming from Obama’s campaign. Just many lies and racist slurs am I supposed to overlook to vote for a woman whose ethics I seriously questioned in the first place? I’ll support her if she gets the nom, but I’m not going to like it.
I am not 100% up on American politics and the underhanded doings of political candidates, and I don’t watch every debate. But I have to make this observation: I think Hillary Clinton is playing the game as well as she can for someone in politics, and as a major potential for the first woman President. Given the current climate in politics and society, it’s unsurprising that Hillary wouldn’t rage forth with feminism as the main banner of her platform. I simply think she is attempting to be strategic. Does anyone here think that if she put women’s issues first and foremost, that she’d get any attention at all, let alone be in the running? Correct me if I’m wrong in assuming that Obama is well aware that race politics are less inflammatory than gender politics, so he can play that card openly. You can’t flippantly discriminate against black people these days, but everywhere I look, women are getting discriminated against on more levels than we were 20 years ago, hell, even 10 years ago. My final say about being female and voting for Hillary is this: she’s not Faith Popcorn. She’s a Democrat, whatever that means these days, and she’s a liberal woman. She could very well be hiding her full intentions, same as old George W did before election, for the sake of competition. Obama might be many good things, but he’s a man first and foremost. So if you’ve got the choice between electing a woman and a man as ruler of the patriarchy, why the hell would anyone choose the patriarch? Thoughts? Arguments?
I don’t expect any better from some of the frat boy morons who are supporting Obama. I do expect better from other feminists. Excuse me for holding you to a higher standard.
So, you will go with the frat boy camp because you expect less from them? You will go with the guys who hate Hillary because she is a feminist woman, who will rejoice in her defeat because she is a woman? The men who hate women are relying on women like you to defeat a rare feminist female presidential candidate.
At least the misogynistic crap isn’t coming from Obama’s campaign. Just many lies and racist slurs am I supposed to overlook to vote for a woman whose ethics I seriously questioned in the first place?
Obama has himself made sexist comments. Hillary herself has not made racist comments. And what makes you think Obama is more ethical than Hillary when the evidence points in the other direction? Is it because he is a man and she is a woman, so you are holding her to a higher standard?
mearl, I love everything you said.
I have been excited in the past when supposedly progressive people have taken office (Scott Orton in Utah, Vicente Fox in Mexico, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic)). The machinery of politics wears most people’s good intentions clear off; all of these people were able to accomplish very little of what I would consider real change once they got in. Havel was the most disappointing (a writer! a revolutionary! an intellectual!). He had been previously jailed for his political activiities, but that all got watered down once he was The Man.
I like Clinton AND Obama. I love that either would be a first–the first woman or the first black (more accurately, the first bi-racial), but, since I don’t think Obama can deliver any more than Clinton, it is more exciting to me to break the gender barrier than the race barrier. But, I want the Republicans OUT, which means I want whichever Democrat can bring that about.
Sean, I am sort of taking issue with your comment about Feministing. It is my understanding that the point of that series is not to “extol the virtue” of crappy TV shows, but to admit that sometimes we can’t all be perfect feminists all the time, and sometimes we like things even though we KNOW they aren’t feminist. I felt your comment misrepresented that site and series, not to mention entirely missed the point.
If you want to completely write off and entire blog for that then it’s your loss.
If I wrote off entire blogs because I didn’t agree with every single thing on them, then I wouldn’t read Twisty’s blog.
Sorry I just wanted to address that.
On the candidate issue,I really and truly like both candidates, and don’t understand why more people on the left feel the same way. I will be excited if either Obama or Clinton win, but for different reasons. I think either possibility is exciting.
Here’s a reason to hate Hillary:
MONSANTO.
It’s been awhile since I posted a comment here, so it took last night to remember what it was like to have complete strangers inform me of my motivations and/or ulterior motives for doing and feeling things. To those of you who derive pleasure from these pseudo-analyses and pseudo-deconstructions, it’s fecking annoying. Please stop.
I loathe Hillary because she is a loathesome human being. It really is that simple. Her vagina is not a get-out-of-contempt-free card, not at the lair of the Hedonistic Pleasureseeker, no Ma’am, no Sir, no way.
For the record, I’m more than a little wonkish and I’ve been following this developing train wreck for approximately three years.
These days I describe Hillary Clinton as a Lieberman-Rove hybrid. Meaning a narcissistic, Israel-FIRSTer, thieving, amoral dirty-trickster and extortionist. She’d stab each and every one of us in the back if it advanced her agenda. If it’s good for Israel she doesn’t care if it’s bad for the rest of us. If it’s good for globalism and a one-world-government, she’s officially committed to supporting it no matter WHAT she says to the rest of us (let me see if I can find that videotape from that CFR meeting).
Instead of representing what the PEOPLE want, Hillary is a TOP DOWN elitist eager to impose her Bolshevik (Okay, Fabian Socialist) values on our unwitting population. Somtimes the desires of We The People overlap the Communist State apparatchik: Health care, for instance. Just about everything else, unfortunately, you’d probably hate if you knew about it: House-to-house confiscation of legally owned firearms, the pulling of life support from dying patients who never asked to be euthanized (to “save tax money”), NAFTA, telling you where you can and cannot live, limiting the number of pets you may own, etc. Unless you’re a Marxist who thinks The State Knows What’s Best for You, this is crap. Fascistic, invasive, globalist, crap of the worst kind.
So there phhhhhhbbbbbbbbbblt.
Kalli -
No, I’m going with the “frat boy camp” because I vote according to my values and my ethics. If there are moronic frat boys who agree with me, well, so be it. There are moronic frat boys who support Clinton, too. There’s not much either of us can do about that. Just be glad they aren’t voting for McCain.
BTW, attacking me and twisting my words isn’t helping your case. It’s a very Clinton-esque strategy and one of many reasons I didn’t vote for her.
thisisendless wrote: “It is my understanding that the point of that series is not to “extol the virtue” of crappy TV shows, but to admit that sometimes we can’t all be perfect feminists all the time, and sometimes we like things even though we KNOW they aren’t feminist.”
OK, so we admit that we aren’t perfect feminists, why then do we have to spend time praising things that not only have little to do with feminism, but are anti-feminist on a website called “feministing?” Nearly half of the commenters from that post agreed with me that they were sorely disappointed in the uncritical way the new series is being crafted, including a guest poster on the site, Anna. I doubt I even have the power to misrepresent the site, since every one of us here probably frequents feministing. Please tell me how writing a paragraph like this one does not excuse the show’s patriarchal qualities:
“In the end it definitely makes my feminist alarm bells ring at high volume, especially when I found the link to the service’s site. Talk about leggy blonds. But it’s fun to be outraged by Patti and her crazy techniques, to poke fun at the awkward bachelors and at this same time hope that someone might find love.”
It’s not simply that the show has “leggy blonds” on its site that makes it so offensive, but that we care that the super-rich, who can afford everything else in life, now have a right to be in love. Seriously? It’s simply a glorification of the upper-class male, who we, by watching the show, encourage to commodify women and love as something to be bought and sold. People who have every privilege in life, and now we want to give them even more privilege by helping them find a “soulmate.” That does more than “ring my feminist alarm bell”–that makes me upset and ashamed that somehow a feminist website would find such a prospect “fun.” This is the type of acculturation and “fun feminism” that Twisty (I think) keeps talking about–our refusals to even TRY to change ourselves in preparation for the revolution.
In any case, I wrote “nearly,” a modifier that qualified my hyperbole, meaning I still venture the site, but am disappointed in such an editorial choice.
Sascha wrote: “Debby rebuts perfectly the women who said (or rather screamed) here that they won’t vote for someone because of her genitalia. It’s not about her having a cunt, it’s about her being a bitch — a term generally reserved for any woman who stands on men’s toes. Yet again, “I hate her too. Will you love me now?””
“Screamed?” Sascha, I don’t think you’ve been studying hard enough. You should have called us “hysterical” or “shrill” if you really wanted to do justice to the kind of patriarchal dismissiveness your post emulated. A quick review of the posts and the lack of exclamation points makes clear that nobody “screamed” anything. Speaking for myself, I made several direct statements to the effect that I don’t like Hillary Clinton, that I don’t like being told that I’m not a “good” feminist because of it, that I thought she was every bit as arrogant and entitled and full of shit and professionally political and cynical and calculating in her actions as Dick Cheney and that nowhere in her public servie history did I see anything even remotely resembling a passion for the rights of women. I stand by those statements and have no intention of voting for anyone simply because she’s a woman. If you want my feminist creditials because of that, you can have them. Just let me know where to mail back my badge.
Laurel when you talk about entitlement, what do you think of Obama’s belief that he was so entitled to his state senate seat that he got his opposition removed from the ballot, including the female incumbent, Alice Palmer, who had previously supported him? Would you call that cynical and calculating?
Sorry Sean. I wasn’t trying to attack you. I do understand the point. I suppose it just seems like I often leave this site (IBTP) feeling as though there is some standard of feminism that I can never live up to.
What I like about that particular series on Feministing is that I felt relieved, in the sense of “I’m not the only one.” I don’t always have to be a perfect feminist all the time. And then lo and behold I come here and once again something I enjoy (the blog series, not that particular TV show) is criticized for being “not feminist enough.” At least that is how it felt. A feeling I seem to get often when reading this blog. (As much as I respect and enjoy IBTP and Twisty) And I suppose my response to you was a defensive response to my own imperfections, and for that I apologize.
I do understand and respect your feelings on the subject.
“I thought she was every bit as arrogant and entitled and full of shit and professionally political and cynical and calculating in her actions as Dick Cheney and that nowhere in her public servie history did I see anything even remotely resembling a passion for the rights of women.”
Are you voting for Cynthia McKinney? I’m not judging that choice, btw. I like Cynthia. I’m just trying to figure out where you’re coming from with that statement. I haven’t read her position papers so I don’t know if McKinney’s policies are more feminist than Clinton’s; she’ s certainly much more liberal.
Of the three remaining candidates in the Dem and Republican primaries, HRC is the most passionate about women’s rights.
This is from her website so I know it’s going to be regarded as suspect by some; however, the facts listed are consistent with my research on HRC and it consolidates her work on women’s issues in a nice, neat, easy to read fashion.
FWIW, here it is:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/files/pdf/womenfactsheet.pdf
Thanks, goblinbee. I also forgot to comment on this: we all know that Obama, as a male, will be accepted into politics without much question in a way that Hillary will not. So she’s in that situation again where she’s doing twice the job for half the pay. It doesn’t surprise me that women aren’t standing up for our gender and a possible sea change in American politics if Hillary got into the Democratic leadership and ran for prez. I’m simply echoing Gumleaf, Curiouser, Bird, HypeJersey and others, anyways. Who put it best upthread? Oh, yeah, Somebody with problems:
“In a perfect post-feminist world, we could vote for a candidate without caring about their gender. But here’s a newsflash, which apparently is a big shock to an awful lot of the commenters here:
WE AIN’T IN THAT WORLD YET. CHRIST ON A FUCKING CRUTCH.”
Sing it, SWP! I don’t doubt the intelligent feminism of my co-Blamers, but it’s true that we can’t be sitting square in the middle of another massive backlash and not take the big picture into account. What came first, the female politician or her policies? As long as she ain’t Republican, and as long as she ain’t blowing hot air about either fulfilling her christian role as an obedient wife and mother, or shaking her ass in a thong around the Happy Stipper Pole of Freedom, I’m inclined to make “getting a woman into power” my doctrinal priority.
Too bad I can’t vote in the U.S…
To “Somebody with problems” -
Your commentary reminds me so delightfully of a woman who used to post here under the nick of LMYC.
I hope to see more comments from you.
I also posted some of what she has done for women’s issues upthreat, but Badkitty et al do not want to hear the data. They just want to say that she is “an asshole” or isn’t going to attend to women. I weary of arguing the facts and getting something else in return.
No-one is asking you to return your feminist card, but you are not making a good faith effort to argue your position from data.
http://sobsister.com/2008/02/29/what-is-it-about-the-f-word/
thisisendless- I don’t particularly care that this vapid self-centered rich annoying lady feels the need to tell everybody about how she thinks she invented sex. The reason I think she’s anti-feminist is because she tries to label her patriarchy-supporting behaviors as feminist, redefining feminism into something that is, you know, not actually feminist. Oh, and she spends her time trash-talking feminists for shit they didn’t actually do. This behavior is not “not feminist enough.” It’s antifeminist. Period.
That said, why you should feel personally slighted or as if someone is calling you a &