So this is a little stale now that Clinton's won the NH primary, but I wanted to talk about Gloria Steinem's
op ed endorsing her.
I alternate between liking it a lot and being incredibly frustrated with it.
First she talked about how women need a lot more experience to be considered qualified than men do. She invented "Achola Obama," someone with Barack Obama's experience who was female, to prove her point. I agree that often women do need more experience to be considered qualified than men do, but I don't think either candidate actually has a ton of experience, so I'm not sure it's a relevant point for this race. The example did imply that being a mother with young children would hurt a candidate (why isn't she at home raising them?) while being a father with young children helps him. (aww, isn't his family adorable?) This is completely true. Still not relevant to this particular race, but interesting to consider.
Next she talked about how this election is following the same old pattern. For a while, blacks and women are allies, but then black people break barriers before women do. In a very qualified, wishy-washy way, I agree with her. It's a lot more complicated than that, but it's unquestionably historically true that, for example, black men and women, and white women all worked for suffrage together, but black men got the vote before any women did. But the reason black people achieved those legislative victories first is because they were demonstrably worse off to begin with. Women were not, for example, getting lynched. Discrimination against black people was violent and overt, whereas discrimination against white women was much more subtle and muted, and therefore easier to ignore.
Next she said "sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was." I agree SO MUCH with this. People in the mainstream LOVE to talk about inherent differences between the sexes. Major American newspapers feature stories claiming that women talk more than men, that they have a worse sense of direction than men, that they're worse at science than men, or any other number of poorly supported worn out cliches. Outside of the James Watsons of the world, you do not find people talking about inherent differences between the races because it's offensive and stupid.
She started to lose me when she essentially talked about the ways that sexism is supposed to be worse than racism, though. She said anything that affects males is seen as more serious than things that affect females. I think there's a grain of truth to this, but she's seriously overstating her case. She went on to say powerful women make men regress to childhood, whereas black men are stereotyped as "masculine" so to other men they are masculinity-affirming. When I was writing down my initial thougts on her piece, next to this I wrote, "omg, shut up with the pop psychology, gloria steinem!" It's such a bullshit thing to say. It's a deeply weird argument. The ways that black men have historically been stereotyped as "masculine" are very dehumanizing. They also don't apply to Barack Obama who's a major intellectual (hello, editor of the Harvard Law review). Intellectuals are pansies. we all know that. It's kind of why George W. Bush got elected.
Next, she started to sound like she worked for the Clinton Campaign.
She talked about how abolition and suffrage worked well togetherm so Clinton and Obama have to keep working together. (how DARE he challenge her. he should wait his turn!)
She said Clinton had more experience: look at all that "on the job" training. This is totally overvalued. no doubt, she's been thinking seriously about political issues for a long time and she has the years in the white house to prove that, but you don't need to live in the east wing to think seriously about the issues. the things she actually *did* in the White House after the republicans steamrolled her health care reform are insubstantial.
She said, "What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations."
Okay, maybe. except obama is *very careful* about how much he brings up civil rights. Clinton's trying to be fairly careful too. The "old boy's club" comment, I think was at Wellesley, which means she carefully chose her audience, but I think she's alluded more to how the patriarchy (to use a Smith Scrabble(tm) word) has hurt her in other contexts too. and it has hurt her. but racism's hurt Obama. he's just been savvier about not mentioning it.
Then we get to the weird, unfortunate conclusion:
"What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system."
What a poorly constructed sentence. I had an email conversation with my mother about this line yesterday and we decided what she meant by "deny[ing] or escap[ing] the sexual caste system", to quote my mother is, "the attitude that “This doesn’t apply to me. I will be able to escape this prejudice because of my education, competence, intelligence, good looks, savvy, whatever.” Most young women have not faced overt sexual discrimination and don’t realize how insidious it can be." I get that. I think there is a tendency to either overlook sexism or think of it as an inherent fact of life, not something that can be fought against. but come on. the whole *point* of feminism
is ultimately to "escape the sexual caste system."
As is obvious, I'm still not really sure what I think. But it did get me thinking. I recommend it as interesting reading.
