Sexism

Obama will not be the First Woman President


I was reading an article in Newsweek that put forth the idea that Barack Obama will be the first female president of the United States much as Bill Clinton was the first black president. The idea that Clinton was “black” in a spiritual sense of the word was first put forth by the author Toni Morrison. I can’t speak to the “blackness” of anything, including the former president, but I can talk about what it takes to be a woman and Obama can have the “woman’s touch” in his leadership style ‘til the cows come home but at the end of the day he still has a “Y” chromosome and a dick and that makes him a man.

 

I am not sure why I am supposed to be just as thrilled that a black man is going to be our next president instead of a woman. It is as though black and woman were interchangeable on the minority hierarchy. As though the level of discrimination against each group was the same. As though the prejudice against being female that has been built into civilization since time began, and still exists in many forms – covert and overtly, will be wiped out by a black man in The White House. A man is a man. Black, brown or white. Being male is an advantage according to the rules by which the world is governed everywhere on our planet. Always has been. Still is.

 

Perhaps it is merely the blinkered view of Western culture that ignores the fact that while racism is not well-tolerated and called out, even in situations where it doesn’t exist at all; sexism is alive and well and so deeply entrenched that most women don’t even recognize it for what it is.

 

Women are still second-class. Look at nearly any billboard or commercial, and it is the open promotion of the female as sex object that sells the best and the most. Young women and teenage girls have been convinced that dressing scantily and being promiscuous and predatory sexually gives them power when the truth is that it is birth control that gives us power and freedom from male oppression. Without the ability to control when and if we have babies, we are chattel; and the insidious assault on our rightful access to things like the pill and abortion is slowly ensuring that someday we will once again be imprisoned by our offspring. Giving birth is the single most important factor in determining if a woman will end up living in poverty. Women with children, and without mates because the upside of the sexual revolution only benefited our brother who can eat cake without having to throw a wedding reception to get it, are more often than not are unable to “do it all”. It is difficult enough to work full-time, parent and be the domestic goddess with even the part-time assistance of a male. Despite the idea of men being more useful in the home and with the children, the majority of women still do the lion’s share of housework and childcare.

 

Women are half the population of the world, but one would never know it judging from the lack of political representation in governments all over the world. Even in the United States, the birthplace of democracy, women are vastly underrepresented in all levels of government. The world/men would have us believe that it is our own fault. We don’t participate. We don’t stand for elections. But the rules are different for us when we do. We can’t play power games by being as smart and as tough. We must still maintain an acceptable level of femininity or be branded suspect. Obama is said to be able to play the game like a woman. How ironic is that? That a man can be a woman and be praised for it whereas a woman would be deemed too weak.

 

Women are at the mercy of those who run the world. And it is men who run the world. They do not need to cater to their reproductive needs as women do therefore they deem it unnecessary to factor such things as survival of the species into the workplace. It is women who stall out on career ladders because of children. It is women who lose jobs because of pregnancy. It is women who are penalized by the Social Security system when they retire because they didn’t have the time to put in the time necessary to ensure receiving a benefit payment a person could live off of. Childbirth and child rearing are not skills, and therefore are not important because men don’t have to do it.

 

 

What does this have to do with Barack Obama being the next president? He is a man, and it will be another great snow-jobbing of women if the majority of them can be convinced that his smooth oratory and charisma is an equal substitute for finally being represented in the highest office in our land.  He can’t know however what it is like to struggle in a society that deems you less because of your gender anymore than Bill Clinton knew what it was like to sit at the back of the bus because he didn’t have another choice. It is apples and oranges. Another man is likely going to be the next president of the United States of America? What else is new?

 

Jennifer Love-Hewitt is Fat and Clinton won’t be President


The current cover of People features a bikini-clad television actress with the protesting title “I am not Fat!” And she isn’t, not by even the most twisted standards of beauty that have infiltrated our society and handed it new weapons with which to re-enslave women. Ms. Love-Hewitt is a size two, and I mention this only because I know someone will dispute her claim of a healthy weight (and me) and ask. It’s sad really that 40 some odd years into (or after depending on your point of view) the women’s movement, women in the United States are still objects. Which is why Clinton won’t win the Iowa Democratic caucuses or be president. Because she is a woman and women in this country – like most of the rest of the world – are still just the sum of their pretty, or not so parts. Intelligence. Experience. Ability. None of this matters when the easiest way to put a woman back in her place, or at least remind her she is out of it, is to criticize her femininity via her appearance, martial status or commitment to her children.

While it is true that we are allowed to be as naked as we wanna be in the visual self-expression of how far we have come baby, answer me this – how is the fact that we are judged by our appearance and size and “femininity” any different than the Islamic obsession with covering women up? Or the French and Russian governments extolling their female citizens to patriotism via their birth canals? It’s two sides of the same coin, and the coin of the realm is keeping women in their place as second-class and objectified-  with our complicity at times it seems because we don’t help ourselves at all by playing into whatever the status quo may be. In western cultures women parrot the line that we are free because we can be blatantly sexual and can control our bodies, and chose to marry or not, parent or play working girl – all the while starving ourselves and fueling a beauty industry out of control, and reading Cosmo for man-snaring tips. Our pop culture thrives on female parts – in music and films that depict females and their sexuality as dirty and disposable. Beauty magazines that sell self-improvement in the form of diets and exercise programs. Fashion that is designed to accentuate beauty and expose those who are not.

In places like say, Saudi Arabia, women will tell you they don’t mind being seond-tier, covering up and not being able to drive is fine because they appreciate being protected by their males and the society these males have created for them. The China and the India are dangerously unbalancing their gender ratios by scanning their unborn fetuses and aborting girls because sons are better for a family – at least until they are of marriageable age and their are no daughters for them to marry. French women are bearing children in the name of nationalism and unaware of that the racist sentiments that are slowly tearing at the seams of their country is the likely cause their governments are praising them for their efforts. But telling yourself you are in charge of your choices is not the same as being in charge. When there are no options to chose from but the ones carefully pre-selected and laid in front of you by others – how free are you?

So, what does this have to do with Hillary Clinton, you ask most patiently. Just that she represents what women are not supposed to know about or think about becoming. She is educated and articulate and didn’t get where she is by conforming to the rules as they are written for women. She may have chosen the well-beaten path here and there, who doesn’t? For example, remember her changing hairstyles back in the early days of her husband’s presidency when her looks were being constantly criticized in the press – which by the way is one of the ways the media works for the system that wants all women to know that love and respect are reserved for the pretty and the closed-mouthed. Sen. Clinton plays politics the way the boys do and she isn’t supposed to even want to play in the first place. John Irving called this being “sexually suspect” in his novel, The World According to Garp. Women who live their lives against the current. The current fashions. The current standards of beauty as dictated to us. The current standards of womanhood. 
The Register endorsed Sen. Clinton. It’s unlikely to do her any more good than Ms. Love-Hewitt revealing her dress size. A woman is not likely to be the president of this country. Our sexism is embedded in our genes so deep that we don’t even recognize it. We built our country upon the idea that all men, not women too, were created equal and never changed our minds. And don’t think that our founding fathers didn’t know what they were saying. John Adams wife Abigail railed at him for excluding women. Just as they knew they were in the wrong about slavery (Jefferson referred to it as “holding a wolf by the ears”), they knew what they were doing when they wrote “men”.

I am not a Clinton supporter. I haven’t even begun to make up my mind about the presidential field. It’s a little early in the race and future presidents should be put to the test and made to show their stuff and stamina. Nobody has done that yet. But, the Catholic school girl in me can’t abide those who will use the belittling tactics of the old parish priests when confronted with women who won’t sit down, or shut up or just go away. It may be a man’s world, but as someone pointed out to me recently they aren’t the majority. We are. And perhaps it’s time we decide where are places should be.

Egg Shitter


The book is called NO KIDS: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children and was written by a French author named Corrine Maier. In it this psychiatrist, and mother of two, attempts to dissuade young childless French women from succumbing to the baby fever which is currently sweeping their country. Unlike most other countries in the EU where birthrates have fallen well below population replacement levels and young children are swiftly becoming an anomaly, the French are experiencing a renaissance of motherhood thanks in no small part to government sponsored maternity leaves where mothers are paid full wages for up to sixteen weeks, receive “bonus checks” for having more than one child and enjoy a creche, or childcare, system that is unequaled anywhere. Ms. Maier feels that these programs are part of a larger plan to imprison women in the traditional, and largely unfulfilling, role of “mom”. The phrase she coined for women who buy into the myth that motherhood is the ultimate goal for a women is merdeuf which a French speaker would recognize as the contraction of mère de famille, which is the traditional phrase for a full-time mother or a housewife and someone who makes the act of mothering her career. The contraction of this term, however, sounds like a combination of merde, which any first year French student can tell you means “shit” and oeuf, which means “egg”. Combined these two sounds seem to imply that these xeno-phobes disguised as patriots and uber-mommies are in fact little more than “egg-shitters.”

Now, it may seem ironic that someone who has given birth to and is raising children of her own would counsel women who have not yet had children to steer clear of the “profession” of motherhood, but only if you weren’t a mother yourself. Even the most rabidly devoted mother has moments when she wishes she had opted for the power career or the guy with no real potential other than showing her a really great time. Why? Because it would have been easier and finite. There is no end to motherhood. No way to quit or backtrack. Just 15 or 20 years of intensive, sometimes mind-numbing, and certainly unappreciated but for hindsight freakin’ hard work. For nothing. There are no monetary rewards. No company perks. No advancements. If men had been handed this role at the dawn of creation the human race would have began and ended with Adam and Eve. And yes, I know as a mother myself that there are intangible rewards to having and raising children that shouldn’t be compared with the consumer-driven objectified greediness of the material minded, but when you stop to consider that in the vast majority of the world women are little more than breeding cows with nearly identical rights it is hard to argue against Ms. Maier’s attempt to warn off future generations of brood mares.

It could be the poor translation but I think some of Ms. Maier’s reasons are stupid, but a few drive home the point that women are still being forced to choose between having children and having a life, eg. career. Children are limiting for women in a way that they are not for men. You can argue the point as much as you like but the facts are the facts. Mothers, even really crappy ones, are tied to the early development of their off-spring in a much more physical way than fathers are and because of this, they will inevitably lose time. Time for education or building careers or simply to pursue some personally fulfilling dream. We can’t have it all in the same way men can and it’s time this was acknowledged and made generally known to women before they have babies. An uninformed choice is hardly a choice at all.