The Kitchen not the (White) House

I've said it before and I will say it again: I am no fan of Hillary Clinton's. My feelings about the misogyny shown towards her and her run for the White House are in no way connected to my politics, except sexual politics.

I want to make that very clear because, as soon as I write anything attacking the sexist hordes, I am reminded of how she endorsed the invasion of Iraq and her many other sins.

Yes, I know. I have columnized about that for years.

And another thing: I recognize that Clinton tries to have it both ways, in one breath saying that people shouldn't vote for her because she's a woman and in the next that she's trying to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling there is.

So what today's treeware column is about is all those people who promote or ignore the sexism. Are we straight on that?

Thank you.

Here's an excerpt:

The New York Times, no less, has printed a lengthy analysis of Clinton's "cackle," a word that conjures up witches. Talk show hosts and pundits refer to her "screeching" and "nagging." One radio guy calls her "Her thighness." When the hecklers yelled and held up a banner saying "Iron my shirt!" the media treated it like a joke.

She shows a modest amount of skin at the top of a sensible suit jacket and a horrified Style writer at The Washington Post writes: "It's tempting to say that the cleavage stirs the same kind of discomfort that might be churned up after spotting Rudy Giuliani with his shirt unbuttoned just a smidge too far.

"No one wants to see that. But really, it was more like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!"

Clinton is guilty of being a woman, and faulted for not being feminine enough.

So afraid of making a blunder and coming across too girlie, she even turned down a chance to appear on the cover of Vogue.

"The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying," noted editor Anna Wintour in February.

"This is America, not Saudi Arabia."

Meanwhile, there was Barack Obama looking the cool dude on the cover of Men's Vogue, not a second thought in the world.

The thing about misogyny is, it's so ingrained and we women are so mentally colonized that we often don't recognize it even when it is aimed straight at us.

But, though we may not agree with her politics, or the way she has managed (or rather, mismanaged) her campaign, Hillary Clinton could be us.

You don't have to watch a lot of cable news shows to see it. Just read your daily newspaper where you'll find that most published photos of her make her look older, or angrier, or more hysterical than she is. It's as if she is perpetually caught in a Howard Dean scream.

But who wouldn't scream under the circumstances?

She's too hot, too cold, too hard, too soft, too weak, too strong, too feminine, too masculine ...

Too much like any other ambitious and successful woman who doesn't know her place.

For more, read this or this or this or (sigh) this or this ...

Comments

[Candida Ellis]

I have enjoyed a number of your columns since coming to Canada four years ago. Furthermore, I have been a feminist, no doubt since before you were born. But I was disappointed to see advanced in in your column today a delusion too frequently touted by North American feminists.

The history of the American suffragettes on race is mixed, but at many key points they were inclined to toss the anti-racist and anti-slavery causes to the dogs in an effort to achieve gains for white women. No doubt they were pissed that black men got to vote before they did. Certainly they complained bitterly about it, as if the real outrage was that BLACK men voted while WHITE women were barred from doing so--not that MEN voted and WOMEN couldn't.

From 1870 onward, suffragettes consistently sided with racists in their struggle to achieve the vote for white women. Clinton's backers have dragged this spurious tactic into her no-holds barred fight for the nomination. In short, Clinton and those who support her demonstrate little regard for the United States as a whole, perhaps believing that having a woman--any woman--in the White House trumps human rights, preservation of the Constitution, and rescue of the American reputation (whether deserved or not) for decency and fair play. Clinton has even resorted to Bush's "be afraid, be very very afraid" and "911-911-911-911" mantras. These cowardly chants are, I am convinced, responsible for the current insouciance of the American people toward torture and the loss of Constitutional rights. These are the issues over which her campaign should be condemned.

Don't get me wrong. Obama's campaign strikes me as being nearly as opportunistic as Clinton's. But perhaps his lack of experience translates, for the time being, into somewhat superior manners. I suspect neither of them belongs in the White House--but I don't think a better candidate could rescue our nation from the blows inflicted on it over the last twenty years by the neo-cons--our courts stacked, a pliant Congress in the hands of collaborators such as Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic party hacks (who autocratically trounced the right of the people to charge Bush with his indisputable felonies), the economy and habeas corpus in shreds, and our military committed to wars that have destroyed two ancient civilizations and generated no reasonable exit plan. The next president will have too much to answer for. The wiser move for any politician would probably be to duck out of the race.

Still, McCain can make it worse and has every intention of doing so. (Whether this will be the legacy of either Obama or Clinton, we may yet see.) Ironically, if McCain wins, Hillary Clinton and her supporters can take a great deal of the credit. She has spawned sufficient divisiveness among liberals to make George Bush envy her talent for pitting people against one another.

Because back at the non-ranch in non-Texas, we have Clinton supporters squabbling over the indecency of a black man getting better press. Would they be happier if there were more racism directed at him--is that their goal?

In fact, any student of racial history in the past fifty years knows that the push for Affirmative Action in the US has overwhelmingly benefited white women, not minorities. Furthermore, black young men are the largest group of homicide victims, dying in record numbers to a resounding national indifference. Black unemployment continues to spiral upward. More black men are in prison than in college. Driving While Black can still get you murdered (check NYC court docket). A to Z, the story is grim: disease statistics, infant mortality, life expectancy, annual income figures--all show that black men and women are most assuredly NOT getting a free ride in today's America. But white men and women (such as Geraldine Ferraro, whose racist observation about Obama is a replay of one she made about Jessie Jackson years ago--apparently NO black man is qualified to be a candidate in her mind) continue to whine that if ONLY they were black--life would be so much better for them.

It's not blackness that gives Obama his advantage. He's a better speaker, has better stage presence, and comes across more intelligently than does Clinton on the campaign trail--her campaign's stuffed with cliches and trite photo ops. Moreover, Obama's not saddled with her political history of back room deals and incompetent voting. Check the Patriot Act and her War votes. Ann Coulter, for crying out loud, prefers HILLARY to McCain!

Far from demonstrating that racism is a non-issue in today's USA, what Obama exploits is his lack of overt blackness. As a man of mixed race, something he stresses ad nauseam, he manages to straddle a racial line with the same sort of ambiguity that successful black beauty queens have drawn on. Despicable things have been said about Clinton, things that enrage me even as I find her politically dirty. But that's because I recognize something too many white feminists seem to lose sight of: Racists and misogynists do not occupy opposing camps. They have interests (and attitudes) in common. That's how a fool like Clarence Thomas rode the racism and misogyny of the neo-cons all the way to the Supreme Court.

If we are for equality, we must not demand a bigger share of the racist/misogynist pie.

I hope you will condemn both sexism and racism. They are most assuredly not running against one another in the US election.

[sooey]

I just think the media can get away with sexism easier than it can get away with racism. Racism offends us more, there's no excusing it. Sexism can always be excused with the "but women aren't men" argument - and by people of any race.

But I'd guess Feminists who want Hillary to win want her to win because she's a woman and a Feminist. They'd want a black woman who's a Feminist to win, too.

And many Feminists are supporting Obama because he's closer to what they want in the next President and they think Hillary is too establishment.

It's not Feminists the Democrats need to be worried about in terms of the supporters of the loser switching to the winner, either. They'll switch.