Yesterday's New York Times featured an op-ed by novelist Lorrie Moore titled "Last Year's Role Model," the basic thesis of which is: "The political moment for feminine role models, arguably, has passed us by."
Um, yeah...first of all, Lorrie, "feminine" is different than "female," so I'm not really sure what you think you're saying there. From the context it seems you mean "female," in which case...false. Or rather, what the fuck is that supposed to even mean? It would be one thing if Moore were trying to say that political interest in female role models has waned--which anyway would be contradicted by the recent increase in female political role models such as Rice and Polosi, whatever you might think of them. But based on her subsequent argument, she seems to be saying that female political role models are actually unnecessary-- that they are, in fact, totes lame.
The first big piece of evidence for this is that boys of color are suffering more academically. This is clearly true, but...shit, let me just bullet-point all the problems with this argument:
•Um, I think women still maybe have any other problems in society, like, at all. Yknow, one or two.
•Moore argues that the American educational system was "designed by and for white girls." Wanna back that up with any evidence, or maybe explain it in some way? Some sub-points:
•Actually, that merits its own bullet. BLACK GIRLS EXIST.
•It is kind of a leap to assume that having a black President will encourage all boys of color to study harder--and asserting that this is true undermines the notion that it is the design of the educational system that puts boys at a disadvantage. So all they need to do is apply themselves, and then the system's cool?
Then there's a bunch of general "blacks have it worse than chicks" stuff: "The sexes have always lived together, but the races have not." Which is true--so then why have we not had a female President? Why is the Senate still a mere 16% female? (An improvement from my childhood--and Lisa Simpson's--when it was 2%, but come on, we're half the fucking population.) Also, she likens Clinton's failed health plan to Guiliani's moronic placement of the Crisis Command Center in the WTC, against all sane council he received. Which totally makes sense, cuz Hillary's health care plan totally killed a bunch of people.
This piece is a perfect complement to Steinem's, for two reasons. One, it supports her main point that to a lot of people, sexism is sooooo not a big deal. Two, it's the exact same stupid thing Steinem was doing--falsely and detrimentally casting this election in terms of Race vs. Gender, and making up nonsense for the sake of touting the candidate of one's choice. Steinem likes Clinton. Moore likes Obama. All's fair in love and politics!
Oh, and also: black girls exist.
Showing posts with label GLORIA STEINEM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GLORIA STEINEM. Show all posts
Monday, January 14, 2008
New Times Op-Ed Inadvertantly Supports Steinem Op-Ed
Reposting My Comment From Feministing
(For the record.)
"To be honest, I think the race-vs-gender thing is a media fiction. Which is horrifying, but I think real people--actual non-pundit voters--are considering the candidates rather than the candidates' demographics. It's a shame we're being so misrepresented.
As for Steinem...I defended her on my blog, since I believe she had a valid point or two that got buried in the pro-Clintonism and general nonsense, but the more I think about it the more racist and ageist it is."
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
In Defense Of Steinem. (Mostly.)
Yeah, so, many of you have by now read Gloria Steinem's NYTimes Op-Ed piece about sexism and Hillary Clinton. Many people have had problems with it. This was my reaction after the first read: "She's basically right, except for the part where all this means that everyone should vote for Clinton." I would say I "mostly liked it."
Not that we shouldn't vote for Clinton. (More on that to come.) And if we ignore that paragraph, and pay attention to her other points, there's a lot to embrace. I have long held that sexism is the last acceptable "ism"--even among young, liberal, well-educated people like me and my friends*. Steinem seems to agree:
So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race... and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.
The evidence is everywhere--but because we're so bombarded with it, it's easy to shrug off even the most overt examples. And that's what I'm talking about: explicit sexism. Sexism is not necessarily more prevalent than racism, but being overtly sexist is way more acceptable. Sexism is mainstream. Take my Chris Matthews examples below: could you imagine him saying, "Do you find it difficult to debate a black man?" Far more egregious is the instance in Salem, New Hampshire from a few days ago: at a Clinton rally, a young man stood up and started yelling, over and over, "Iron my shirt!" He had a big yellow sign that also bore the slogan. Imagine if someone had stood up at an Obama rally and shouted, "Pick my cotton!" It would've been a huge event. There might have been violence. It certainly would've gotten media attention, whereas this event was ignored in favor of Clinton "crying**."
Perhaps the simplest example--which won me some supporters at a bar last night--is the question "Do you think a woman can be as effective a President as a man?" This question is being debated on Facebook. WTF? Think for a second. Can you actually imagine someone asking, "Do you think a black person can be as effective a President as a white person?" If you can imagine someone asking that, the person you are imagining probably not only has a Confederate flag tattoo, but would also actually say, "I hate black people." To ask a question like that, you have to be an avowed racist.
I'd been planning on talking about this for awhile--in the context of how it's okay for a movie to be sexist--but the issue's really come to a head. And while I DON'T agree with Steinem that it's cool to support Clinton because she's a woman (and this "on-the-job training" argument makes me uncomfortable for various reasons), what she says about the media's treatment of her is almost all undeniably true:
[W]hat worries me is that [Obama] is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex... 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... What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.
Steinem offers a few reasons for all this, which may or may not be valid. I mentioned the ubiquity of sexism, and how it's desensitized us to the problem, and I think ubiquity is also one of the root causes--in short, sexists know more women than racists know black people. There are more opportunities to be blatantly sexist. It's the oldest form of prejudice there is, because gender is the first characteristic available to us. After establishing that a person is, you know, human, gender is the next thing we want to know. Newborns are labeled as such in hospitals.
I'm not saying we should be squeamish about using gender as an identifying feature--I mean to illustrate the significance of gender in our lives from the moment we're born. And if we're basically okay with gross displays of sexism, think about how okay we are with implicit and unconscious sexism. It's scary.
*Perhaps even more so, since among this demographic the other "isms" are SO unacceptable.
**And Edwards being a douche about it, but that didn't get much attention either.
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