CURRENT MOON

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

We Get A Lot Of Chances.


What Susie Said About What Melissa Said, but you know what? This is a good thing. It's been too easy for too long for those of us crones who've, bloody but unbowed, achieved some measure of success and financial comfort and respect, and for those of us maidens and mothers who've been able to pretend that the guys OUR age didn't really think like that, to dream that we weren't living inside the patriarchy. We always were. We always were. We always were.

And if this race has done nothing else, it's reminded us that we wake up every morning in a sexist society, that the liberal blogs where we hang out are sexist, that our male colleagues are sexist, that even a lot of our female friends are sexist. One of the dearest people in the whole world to me said recently that, at least with Clinton's defeat, the misogyny of liberal males would go away. And I had to say, "No, it will just go back underground." If we let it. And I'd rather fight it above ground, in the open, with room to manoeuvre and space for sunlight to expose it.

None of us are in this for the short haul. We need to undermine the patriarchy every chance we get. And we get a lot of chances.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My husband said he had no idea just how bad sexism was until this election. He's ashamed for his sex.

Anonymous said...

Hecate, I was, as you know, the friend who wanted it all to go away. And you right. It doesn't go away. It just hides.

Is anyone else reminded of how the second wave started, sparked by the overt sexism of the anti-war movement?

Maybe, just maybe, these lemons can be made into the lemonade of a resurgent feminism.

Oh, and Obama? A little open support for the ERA wouldn't hurt in trying to mend some bridges. Plus it would be funny to watch your supporters' heads assplode.