Hmmm. Well, I don’t have time for this, this blogging business. But I can’t take any more. I’ve been threatening/promising myself for months now to start a blog on this subject and just never quite felt up to making the commitment. And, truth to tell, I may not have the full commitment for this now, either. I need to be doing other things with my time ( like making a living), but like I said I can’t take it any more.
What is it I can’t take any more? The sexism, and the racism, and the homophobia. But mostly the sexism, only because the homophobia stems directly from that, and probably the racism as well. And because I’m female and take it quite personally.
Let’s start with Hillary. For the record, I can’t stand her and in fact have never liked her. Lord knows I’ve tried. I tried since before Bill was in the White House, I tried all through the White House years, through her strength during all those scandals. I tried and tried. I questioned myself: was it jealousy, as some men suggested to me because women are, after all, so catty and so jealous of one another (sexist bastards)? As sexist \and as baseless as I suspected the charge was, I nevertheless went on a thorough round of self-examination and discovered: Nope, not jealousy.
So what WAS it about her that left me so cold? I spent most of the Clinton years observing, analyzing and yes, soul-searching on that subject until I knew with certainty that it was mostly the simple fact that I never felt like I saw the real Hillary Rodham Clinton. Never, not once. (And no, those recent tears on her campaign trail didn’t strike me as particularly authentic either.)
What I have seen of Senator Clinton that I consider most probably as authentic as I’m likely to get is her raw ambition. I find it particularly grating, btw, that the rightwing always considered her overly ambitious, and that they may have had it right. (Cough. Sputter. Shudder.)
Now, since women have been unfairly criticized and demeaned and thoroughly kept in our places by being called overly ambitious, let me hasten to say that what I’m referring to is the kind of ambition first of all that Bill shares in equally and which is characterized as putting everything else, including everything sacred, on the back burner: ethics, fair play, honesty, integrity, unity, the good of the organization involved (the Democratic Party in this case) and even the good of the nation. It does appear to me that none of these important factors trump her own personal ambitions. Well, hers and Bill’s, that is. I believe all those things are at best secondary to Senator Clinton, if not utterly non-existent, and that her behaviors (and Bill’s) the past several months bear that out.
All that said, don’t you DARE criticize Hillary (or any other woman, including every rightwing or otherwise vile woman on the planet) with sexist or misogynist terms or arguments. I’ll stand up and defend each and every one against those insults and arguments in a New York minute. Language like that has no place in 21st Century public dialog. None.
Appallingly, there’s been a tsunami of sexism aimed directly at Hillary — a good deal of it in the MSM — and I know in my heart (as do you) that the Republicons were hysterical to get her as our nominee because misogyny is so easy, so rampant, and still so utterly acceptable that it’s nearly invisible and therefore runs under the radar doing its dirty work.
Hell, misogyny is still so invisible/accepted that all manner of “progressive” men (and sadly, too many women) such as those found on the discussion forum for left-leaners known as Democratic Underground don’t even know what the hell is and isn’t sexist! Why, here’s one poor sot
who thinks himself something of an expert on what is and is not sexism. (Be sure to read his previous post and the response to that for proper context.) What a case he is! I’m sure you’ll see more about Occam’s Bandage as this blog winds on. And many other misogynist “progressive” men from DU as well.
