I have said this before and I am going to say it again. I am going to vote for Barack Obama for president, here in the contested state of Virginia. I am going to stand outside metro stations and farmers' markets and hand out literature for him. I am going to donate money to him. Any woman who does anything different is, well, wrong.
That said, this article in Salon goes a long way towards capturing how many women feel. I especially endorse the comments concerning Dr. Dean, whom I am unlikely to ever forgive.
They are mad at Howard Dean.
Not simply for allowing the massive befouling of the Democratic process that was Michigan and Florida but for addressing issues of sexism only once Clinton was out of the race. Seriously, the anger at Dean may be some of the most unexpected and intense. At the recent EMILY's List conference, during a panel on gender and the election, Dean's name was the only one that got booed.
Keep it up, asshole. I have a long memory and a big checkbook. I choose where and when to write checks. Fifty states, my sweet, round ass.
And, um, yeah, including the stereotype of my religion:
They are mad at their party and its leaders because they feel this race has opened up a door, allowing people to rag on white women -- as irrelevant and buffoonish, as ambitious and preening, as old school and boring and nagging and hectoring -- in a way that demonstrates that women have a questionable place in liberalism and progressivism. Since when is the party supposedly interested in social justice not interested in the advancement of women to the highest office?
It was, in fact, remarkable, the success with which hoary stereotypes about second-wave feminism got so enthusiastically embraced 30 years past their sell-by date. Who knew how eager the American public -- and more critically, the American left -- was to wholeheartedly embrace the image of Hillary supporters as sexless, humorless, bitter, hysterical old crones. It was simply acceptable -- in a way that was a brisk eye-opener for a lot of young women, even those who didn't support Clinton -- to talk derisively about Clinton and her supporters as whiny, cackling, emasculating witches.
Of course, the ease with which these kinds of stereotypes were bandied about suggests that it is women -- about to take your jobs and your college acceptance letters and your seat in the Oval Office and probably your penis! -- who are the most threatening to the established white male power structure. But it seems that that was rather cold comfort when Clinton women were being steadily assailed with images of themselves as unappealing, pruney old harpies who did all their political thinking with their ovaries.
Obama and the thirty-something male bloggers can keep on choosing to not "get" this (we know you get it). We realize exactly how eager you are to "move beyond" this issue. You're making that disturbingly obvious. We also realize why you're in such an all-fired hurry to "move on" to the "more important" issues. We get it. It does not reflect well on you.
The ERA would be a good place to start. I am just a 50-something old woman with the checkbook and address book to prove it. Just saying.
Hat tip to my brilliant friend, E.
Art found here.
4 comments:
I was an Obama supporter during the primaries, and let me say that I would probably be rather upset had my preferred candidate lost. It sucks when your candidate loses, and as Democrats, we know this feeling very well after years of losing to some truly disgusting people.
When it comes to Michigan and Florida, though, I don't think that it had much to do with Obama and Clinton, so far as folks like Dean were concerned. It had far more to do with reigning in our terrible primary system. If our system is to be reformed, then there has to be a guarantee that individual states can't just say, "Screw it, I'm doing my own thing."
For example, I want future primaries to have some way of being more fair about who goes first each time. I find it appalling that Iowa and New Hampshire always get to go first. It's unfair and outdated. Were the DNC to create rules setting up something like a regional rotating primary, Iowa's and New Hampshire's legislatures could simply pass acts that let them jump ahead anyway. Then, it's up to the DNC to enforce their own rules and do to them what they had to do to Florida and Michigan.
Obama didn't need the Florida and Michigan results to be nullified in order to win anyway. By the time that committee meeting was held, most Obama supporters didn't much care about that. Those of us who cared about the issue really cared more about enforcing the rules so that primary reforms could come along. (As an aside, prior to the events, the Clinton campaign agreed with the DNC about not seating the FL and MI delegates. It did matter when they had to get every possible delegate that they could to win. I have no problem with that, because I want my Democratic candidates to pull out every possible stop to win; we've had too many candidates that have failed on that account.)
I respect your right to vote for Obama, but I can't. It's not about him. Neither was it that I so desperately wanted Hillary, because my first choice was Edwards. I came to respect and admire Hillary as she slogged through the festering sewer that was the recent primary.
Yeah, McCain will be worse than Obama, (although the recent FISA vote has me waffling on that statement,) but it really comes down to this:
There's always something more important than women's rights. There always will be. They know we'll 'come back' in the end, because they know we 'have nowhere else to go'.
They will always take our vote for granted until we prove to them that they can't.
'Feminism' isn't cutting it. We need Women's Liberation back.
I will vote for Obama. I would have voted for Clinton, had she been the nominee.
I ended up as an Obama supporter earlier, though, not because of gender issues, age issues, race issues, or any such things.
I leaned toward Obama because of some disturbing things I heard coming from the Clinton campaign.
At one point, Hillary Clinton's chief organizer siad "If you're not with us, you're against us."
It occurred to me that I'd heard those words before, and considering where I heard them, I didn't take too kindly to a Democratic candidate bandying them about.
There were other things, too. Her vote for the Iraq war, for instance, or, rather, her explanation of her vote. She went to some lengths to justify her vote. I wish she had simply said what we all know to be true:
Her vote, along with the votes of many other Democrats, was cast for the war because she, like most of the rest of us, was misled by President Bush and his administration.
She seemed to feel that she had to appear to have gone in with her eyes open. Why, why couldn't she just admit that she was fooled along with most of the rest of us?
This lost her a lot of credibility points with me, I'm sorry to say.
I really am sorry to say that, too.
If I had a 30-year old blogger boyfriend, I'd go Lysistrata on his ass.
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