Sexism

Act Like a Lady


I don’t think I could have had a more sexist upbringing. Although my father, a more traditional role man never lived, confused me by raising me and my next youngest sister as he would have done with sons in terms of expectations about education, work ethic, right/wrong moral issues, Dad still expected us to be feminine. I was a complete disappointment to him on this score. I was tomboyish and unattractive well into my late teens. Even when I took a stab at the girly pretty thing – growing my hair long – it met with disapproval.

Given all this – and throw in the tyranny of 12 years of Catholic schooling – it is small wonder I bristle at sexism in all its forms. It just doesn’t wash with me. There isn’t an argument compelling enough to make me put up with it or to keep quiet about it.

And given that the world in general prefers to not see it in daily action, I feel that much more duty-bound to point it out.

The latest double-standard issue in the world of politics is the Arlen Spector/Michelle Bachmann radio debate incident. Spector, as some of you may know, is an ancient Senator for life from Pennsylvania. Bachmann is the Tea-baggers’ darling Republican congressperson from Minnesota who is of the Palin school of thought on issues, which means she can name them, maybe even spell them but couldn’t define one to save her own life.

The two were paired on the Dom Giardono show and Spector challenged Bachmann to  “articulate what she actually stood for”, which is hilarious for two reasons. The first being that Bachmann is a Teabagger and they don’t stand for anything but the quaint notion that government exists only to bail them out when their lives take unexpected spine-chilling twists into disaster (which only happens to the godless anyway). Oh, and when they do exercise their rights to entitlements, other people should be footing the tax bill. But the other reason that this is so funny hinges on the fact that Spector has gone from Democrat to Republican  back to Democrat again. Joe Lieberman has more clearly defined priorities. Spector’s only aim in life seems to be staying in the Senate.

Having a head full of air and soundbites, Bachmann gleefully complied and went on about being a good little party of NO obstructionism with a good measure of tax cutting thrown in – if anyone didn’t already know that Republicans have no clue how budgets are balanced (Hint – you do actually have to take money in. The Fed can’t just print it. It needs a flimsy excuse at least.)

Spector at some point got a word in but in the spirit of what passes for discourse today, Bachmann talked over him.

The result was this exchange*:

“I’m going to treat you like a lady,” Mr. Specter shot back. “Now act like one.”

Ms. Bachmann replied, “I am a lady.”

He sounds like Dad’s uncle, Father John. A disagreeable man with no inner shushing voice. He spouted and if I knew what was good for me, I kept my good little girl mouth shut.

But good for Bachmann to speak up, she went on to counter him several more times as he chastised her for being “unladylike”.

Unladylike is what Sr. Walter Marie used to rag on me about when I was in junior high. She went about it with missionary zeal which is another reason I am such a pain about shining the light on sexism today.

Make no mistake here, I think Bachmann is a loon and her politics are abhorrent, but she is the elected representative of the people of Minnesota (a fact I can barely wrap my mind around) and has every right to speak without being silenced by shame.

Ladylike is code and all women should recognize it for the unsubtle put-down that it is.

* Audio link available

The Senator is The Centerfold


Do you remember that J. Geils song, Angel is the Centerfold? It’s about a guy who discovers his old high school crush has posed nude for a girly magazine. Perhaps the people of Massachusetts had the same kind of double take moment when they discovered that one of their senatorial options, Scott Brown, had posed nude for Cosmo back in his college days. Or perhaps not. It’s not like the questionable decisions of our youth should have any bearing on the middle aged adults we become.

But as I pondered the prospect of a congressional representative for whom full frontal body scanning by the TSA shouldn’t be an issue, I wondered if a woman could have gotten away with it.

When I was in college in the 80’s, Playboy Magazine showed up on campus every year looking for female students willing to “audition” for a spot in their “Girls of the Big Ten” spread. Every year. Without fail.

One year I was sitting in my children’s lit class idly listening to a gaggle of sorority girls giggling about the prospect.

“So’n so is going to do it,” Muffy said. “Do you think I should?”

“Oh, you are way prettier than So’n so,” Buffy assured her.

“But So’n so has bigger tits,” Baby pointed out – rather needlessly.

Our professor had entered the room at the start of their conversation without being noticed, and it was at this point he intervened.

“Just an fyi, ladies, posing nude is a career killer for an elementary teacher.”

Because I can just see Muffy greeting her students and their parents on Meet the Teacher night.

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. AveragePerson. I’m little Joe’s teacher, Miss Muffy.”

Mr. AveragePerson’s eyes do that roll up into his head thing as he tries to place her being locating her on his rolodex of 2D hotties,

“Girls of the Big Ten 1985!”

While he is delightedly hi-five-ing Junior  – because what dad doesn’t want his son’s first teacher to be a Playboy bunny – Mom is mentally rehearsing her rallying speech for the PTA posse she intends to start rounding up the very second she exits the room in a icy huff.

Now picture  Scott Brown as Sandy Brown running for the saintly old Ted Kennedy’s seat. Her nude  Girls of the Big Ten Playboy picture – which is tame by even prime time television standards today  and she only agreed to because she needed the money since she was paying her own way through school – circulating freely in the blogosphere. Probably has it’s own trending topic on Twitter and a Facebook fan page. Would Ms. Brown be a senator today?

No. She wouldn’t. Men can agree – and someone on my Facebook feed latched onto this like a dog on a new chew toy from Santa – that youthful “indiscretions” don’t matter, but that only applies to men. Especially in the world of politics.

Case in point. Mark Sanford, our darling little hiker of the Appalachian trail infamy. During his South Carolina State of the State Address to the state’s legislature, at some point after he recognized those in Iraq and implored his constituents to dig deep and sacrifice in these hard times, he admitted his “failings”, and by failings I mean little things like misusing public funds to tryst with his mistress, lying about it and publicly humiliating his wife. He promised that he would now stop –  apologizing  that is – after this one last public flogging photo-op where he humbly forgave himself for being weak and human – which he contends that we all are. Let’s pause here and consider the ways in which we too are week and human just like Mark.

He droned on to reveal that with God’s help, now knows the true meaning of success. I am going to guess that it is riding out a scandal and keeping one’s job. For that perhaps he – and the Republican party – are secretly thanking former President Clinton for setting the precedent. One that applies to men only because a female politico who cheated on the taxpayer’s dime, lied about it and then expected to keep her job only after being caught forced her to go the humiliation route pioneered by the televangelist of yore, would be out on her butt.

Eliot Spitzer can find new life as a pundit after banging escort girls, but Sarah Palin, whose only sin is preferring milking her fifteen minutes to actually working, has to profess to all manner of homespun Cleaverish nonsense about femininity, home and hearth while projecting warmth and genuine interest in Glenn Beck and making googley eyes at Bill O’Reilly while he pontificates.

My Facebook friend thinks the sexual indiscretion question should be moot (except where Clinton is concerned – that moldering pony should be whipped at every opportunity), and I agree with him. Brown’s nudie shoot is quaint by today’s standards.

“He can’t have much to hide. He’s barely even using one hand,” my husband pointed out, as we looked at the Cosmo spread. “I’d need both of mine.”

But, as other women in the blogosphere and on Twitter noted, a female candidate wouldn’t be greeted with such nonchalance. Women are held to higher standards in the god fearing world of less than god-like politicians.

Mommy Wars: This is Why Women aren’t Equal


Dr.Phil pimped the never-ending, though completely effective tool in the continuing subtle subjugation of women, working mom versus stay at home mom “discussion” on yesterday’s episode.

I didn’t see the episode but for this clip. I didn’t follow the Tweetie skirmish. I did follow a bit of the conversation at Jessica Gottlieb’s blog. Yes, the Jessica in the clip. I didn’t learn anything new. I didn’t hear anything I haven’t heard for a decade or more. The argument is tired and ultimately pointless. Why? Because women are idiots. We let ourselves be diverted and distracted like Homer Simpson and with a sprinkled donut.

Watching this Dr. Phil clip and reading the comments on Jessica’s blog just adds to my conviction that women will never be equal on any playing field with men as long as we willingly divide ourselves. Men don’t have to use sexist practices against us. We do it ourselves.

Stay at Home or Work? Diet/exercise or accept fat? Age gracefully or wage war against every wrinkle, peeling them off with our teeth in our en suite if necessary.

Women don’t have the skill set to be a coherent group working towards a common goal. We are mommies or not. Marrieds or singles. Straight or lesbian. White or Black or Asian or Hispanic or Aboriginal. We simply cannot accept that women come in a variety of flavors and leave it at that.

“This mommy war thing is another example of why men rule and women are forever second class,” I said to Rob. “I mean, would men argue about what makes one man a better father than another?”

“No,” Rob said, “if fact it wouldn’t even occur to a man that this would be a topic needing discussion.”

Because when it gets down to it, mommy wars are really part of the larger debate on what it is to be a woman. What defines womanhood? The natural default – imposed on us by religion and culture – is vagina and uterine based.

Am I not more than an incubator with a cunt? This seems to be all that is truly required from my by society. That I continually service others and forget that God (or whoever) gave me a working brain too.

Men, by and large, accept that being a man takes on many forms and that at the end of the day they are united as one gender fighting for the greater advantage of themselves as a group. Of course, they don’t have to wage too strenuous a battle in the western world because women are obligingly taking each other out one subdivided group at a time.

I have played on both sides of the mommy street. The grass is the same shade of green though how green and lush is more dependent on the luck of the socio-economic draw than anything else.

I think what I object most to in this current debate is the fact that motherhood today is being perverted into a child worshipping thing that it was never intended to be. My mother lacked most of the modern conveniences of her day due to my Dad’s cheap nature and the fact that we were solidly lower-middle class descended from farmers. Mom worked. Hard. And she took care of us kids but she didn’t drool over us or think that she’d fulfilled some Lord of the Rings like quest by becoming a mother. I can only recall one mother on my block who parented from a child-centered view, and no one wanted to play with her daughter because she was entitled and had clearly spent too much time being treated as a mini-adult.

My grandmothers worked too. They were farmers. Kids were tended to until they could be tended by older siblings and elderly relatives, or could fend a bit for themselves, and the days were filled with chores. Work. Really hard work.

The idea that women have to choose between work and motherhood hasn’t really existed until the last few decades. And what a boon that has been for those determined to set the clock back on feminism and equal rights. They’ve barely had to lift a finger – just scream “stay at home or work” in a crowded Target (because here is our only touch point – shopping – and why isn’t that common ground enough for us to all just get along?)

I loved Dr. Phil’s comeback line for the beleaguered working mom,

“Step off.”

Because it gets right back to the heart of the matter. This isn’t an important issue. Health care is an important issue. The rising tide of fascism in America is an important issue. The fact that our daughters are being inoculated for HPV while our sons – the equal carriers of the virus are not – is a real issue. The fact that gays are still not afforded the right to marriage despite the fact that it is a state sanctioned function and clearly a violation of equal rights – that is an important issue. We are ramping up a war in Afghanistan to fight terrorists who aren’t there – big issue.

But women are notoriously shallow and unable to leave our high school musical days behind us, and so we glom onto any trivial issue to perpetuate the heated rivalry of days of yore.

We are idiots.