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Election 2008

Seeing Sexism

By Erica Jong, Huffington Post. Posted January 14, 2008.


In an election where sexism is seen as passé, we need a politics of gender more than ever.
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It's not easy to see sexism. It's such a part of our lives it seems invisible. It's in us and outside us. We want not to believe in it---until something---like men making fun of Hillary Clinton, like women making fun of Hillary Clinton---stirs it up. And then something inside our heads shouts: "THERE IT IS AGAIN! I thought--I truly hoped we were past this."

The truth is, we want sexism to be passé. We don't want to keep fighting it. It's so uncool to fight it. We sound so shrill, so whining, so strident, so piercing, so shrewish, so female. For these are all coded adjectives for women you hate. We hate them ourselves. We don't want to be shrill, shrewish, strident, whining, piercing. We want to be cool. We want to hold our own, we want not to waver, not to be high-pitched, not to betray our femaleness, our weakness. And yet our voices are higher than men's and we are less listened to in the agora. We are always tokens.

On most charitable boards I sit, on every prize committee I deliberate, on most writers' panels, I am a token. One woman and seven men, two women and fourteen men, three women and twenty-one men. I hate being a token. I wish it were otherwise. Unlike those nasty women of yesteryear--Clare Boothe Luce, Ilka Chase--the women who inspired The Women--I have no stake in being queen bee. I want a 50--50 world. But the world is not that way. So tedious, old-time feminism must rear its shrieking Medusa head again.

The Greeks got it. Medusa's snaky head, the sex-strike in Lysistrata, Medea's fury in Greek myth and tragedy.

The truth is we have been trying to assert women's rights (and wrongs) for a long time. Too, too long, in fact. No wonder everyone is turned off. From Mary Wollstonecraft to Susan B. Anthony to Eleanor Roosevelt to Germaine Greer to Gloria Steinem is at least two and a half centuries. And before that, Mary Magdalene was smeared by the damned disciples, Cleopatra by Shakespeare, Hatshepsut by all those Egyptian dudes and doubtless even the Sumerian earth goddess. Too fat, too shrill, too monomaniacal, say the cool men. And the cool women echo it.

What? Life begins in the womb? Women are the life force? How unfair! Didn't Samuel Johnson--that old bore, say: "Nature has given women so much power that the law wisely gives her little." The Greek tragedians smeared a lot of women too, but they were shrewder observers of life than our present day guy writers. At least they had the myths to set them straight. So they knew women were fierce from being raped so often and they knew the rapists (usually men) deserved everything they got.

So now we have the cool dudes saying Hillary is dead, the fall of the house of Clinton is here, baby-boomers are so over, don't trust those wrinklies (British for your parents' generation), youth is roaring again, hope is the watchword, Obama has a feminist wife and two cute little girls, he'll fight for us. And the cool chicks echo it: Hillary is over, we have our rights, we have the pill, we have the patch, we have the IUD, we have the vote, we have nannies for our kids, so what about the retrenchment on Roe, so what about the Right to Lifers, so what about my mother's battles? Over and done. Passe. Youth has come in the person of Barack. Male? Not really. Think of his wife. Two for the price of one--like Billary in 1992. But will Ms. Obama be the prez? Not really. Power behind the throne. Same old, same old. We seem to have forgotten that we did this all before.


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View:
No way Hillary!
Posted by: FastEddy on Jan 14, 2008 6:16 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Anyone but Hillary. If Democrats hope to get back White house, then they have let go 'feminist, feminism, human, tear, motherly, cuddly' Hillary and nominate someone else. Hillary is a 'sham' republican who cannot win against a 'real' republican. Learn from your mistake in 2004, By nominating 'sham Bush' aka Kerry against real Bush you managed to lost what would have been a cake walk for any other democrat (like Dean)

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» RE: No way Hillary! Posted by: dragonmagic
Christ.
Posted by: pig on Jan 15, 2008 12:27 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is what feminism has come to?

Yeah, the world really needs more tribalism.

What guff.

Oink!

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Shame on you: this is not the sixties
Posted by: saltoafronteira on Jan 15, 2008 9:17 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
In my family there are great women that affirmed themselves by sheer strenght and determination. They never needed nothing like positive discrimination, they simply faced adversity and prevailed.
So, to me, all this pseudo-feminist bla bla doesnt differ much from all the other extremist crap, like right wing christianism or other. The base is very much the same: intolerance and prejudice.
By the way, doesnt Hillary plays dirty against her opponents?
It's not elegant to use dirty weapons and, when being victim of the same dirty process, playing the feminin victim role, abused by all those "macho" rulers, and hyding behind the feminist establishment personified by a 60s brontosaur (the author of this article).
What does she want? Find feminin votes based on the boogey man tale? THAT is sexism !

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Is Jong Still Pertinent?
Posted by: kamcallen on Jan 15, 2008 9:56 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It must be nice to pontificate from the gated community of lower Fairfield County, CT. Erica, you're just not pertinent anymore and no one really cares what you have to say. Go back to wallowing in WASP luxury.

Karon

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» RE: Fallacy of reasoning. Posted by: dragonmagic
» RE: Fallacy of reasoning. Posted by: kamcallen
Hillary Haters
Posted by: arieden on Jan 16, 2008 10:53 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Hillary Clinton is a bright, strong capable woman and a brilliant politician.
She is certainly the best qualified candidate on the democratic side and possibly the entire race and that is what bothers all these Hillary Haters. Is she perfect? Of course not. But she is certainly no worse than any of the other candidates offering themselves up - but where are their legion of haters? The Hillary Haters really need to look inside themselves and see the misogyny for what it is.

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I personally would rather see Kucinich as president
Posted by: jparsons on Jan 17, 2008 12:25 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
And that's even with the heebie-jeebies I have
about Elizabeth - all admiration for what I have
seen but can't quite get the "trophy wife" image
beaten back.

But that doesn't change a couple of facts:

1) Sexism is still alive and well and never more
evident than in a contest like this. US society
just will not treat men and women equally. New
Zealand is another country (not listed in Jong's
article) which has coped/flourished/choose your
own description for some years with a woman as
Prime Minister. Somehow, too much of the US still clings
to the myth that "a woman couldn't handle the
pressure" while electing(?) and suffering under
the tyranny of a man who definitely can't.

2) Fact 1 needs to be shouted about, and
credibility doesn't have a use-by date.
It is worse than counterproductive to dismiss the author based
on her age or living situation. Who benefits
by attacking (not debating) someone who has
genuine past accomplishments during far
more active and risky decades of feminism?

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