Caltrops - ELECTION WATCH 2008





	[quote name="Zsenitan"]<a href="http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4931894e-0738-467e-bb27-8fc073fdde40">TNR looks at hating Hillary and whether or not it's sexism.</a> This is all standard wank by now and there are no surprises in the interview, except for my own personal nasty shock when I realized that I am EXACTLY the sort of person who polls as supporting Hillary: an office flunky with a chip on my shoulder about sexism. But what got me about this article was the comment from MartyCincinnati at the end, which I reprint in its entirety here and paragraphinate for the reader's ease of perusal: [quote name="Some Inexcusable Sadness"]I'd like to see a more serious effort to uncover how much of Hillary's problem was due to sexism. Isn't it true that some of the sexist tinged language, inexcusable as it was, was really just a cheap and easy way to attack someone that maybe you really don't like for other reasons. Me, for example. I am a 61 year old woman who has never found Hillary to be genuine; she tries on a new personality every other week; much of what she says comes across as vapid; she expends a lot of effort trying to look tough, which scares me (we are just finishing 8 years with a president who tries to look tough). Perhaps one could approach the question this way: I am in the demographic that is supposed to like Hillary, EXCEPT that I am too well educated (grad degree). Do I flatter myself by saying that perhaps a more educated, more enlightened feminism does NOT support someone like Hillary? Ironically, Barack has the characteristics that are more sterotypically female that I have been missing in a president: a desire to conciliate and solve things with diplomacy rather than rattling his sabers. To be honest, I think Hillary is narcissistic and a flawed candidate. Her experience is not really strong; many people who supported her told me that they felt she'd be great because she'd have Bill right there by her side. How feminist is that?? To vote for a woman because her man will know what to do? This is a more complicated picture than you have presented.[/quote] Decent people, both male and female, get in discussions with me about feminism, and they are all "well you are some kind of sexpert, so what do you think the problem is here?" The problem is men, of course, but that's not the part that women can solve right away. The part that women can solve right away is shit like MartyCincinnati, who can't stop scoring points off of her fellow women long enough to get with the program. WOMAN-HATING CHECKLIST: * Is scoring points off women * Accuses a woman of being unladylike, hence unsuited to a <i>job</i> * Attributes the positive aspects of soi-disant femaleness to a non-female * Speaks for feminism * Assumes that the feminism so spoken for is of a superior sort (e.g. she isn't just scoring points off of women, but feminism and other feminists) * Denigrates the job experience of a woman; does not levy same criticism against a man with a resume even less flush * Cannot talk about woman without setting her in the context of her husband[/quote]