By kath cantarella, June 27 at 11:52 pm

“CY, doesn’t it bother you that your Commander-in-Chief has never been female, although 51% of your population is?”

No it doesn’t bother me. By your own numbers, it must not bother some women either.

My State has two very able women representing us in the Senate, by your reasoning, I (as a man)should feel unrepresented. I do not, on the contrary I have voted for both these Republican women every time they have run. I would consider a vote for Kay Baily Hutchenson, Barbara Boxer, Janet Napolitano or Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. I did not vote for Bill Clinton TWICE, and I have no intention now or ever voting for a person based on gender, race, or religious preference alone.

What does bother me (GREATLY) is that we have (in my lifetime) had very little working-class representation anywhere in our government.

CY, doesn’t it bother you that your Commander-in-Chief has never been female, although 51% of your population is? What does that say about how your society views women? Doesn’t that explain something about what is wrong with your society generally?

Women have a right to be represented by women. About half of your public leaders should be female, and yes, some of them will suck at it.

Women have a right to be as flawed as men, without being pilloried for it. Called to account, yes, but not under a filthy double standard.

KC
“Honey, it’s not MY definition of success”
I have been respectful to you, too bad you can’t respond in kind.

“How can they even get real representation in govt if a woman can never be elected president because the standards applied to her are too high for anyone but Christ”

We have two women serving as Senators in Maine, does that mean that as a male I have no representation in the Senate?  P.S, I voted for both of them.

Hillary Clinton is a self-serving PERSON who cares not a whit about any one but herself and her ambition. Her gender has nothing to do with her personality flaws!

This may be off-topic, but because i have slandered him elsewhere on this site more than once, i would like to state for the record that Barack Obama has a very good record on voting for legislation that combats violence against women.

(I read too many blogs.)

I support Barack and Michelle Obama. Hope and change.

Conservative Yankee:

Honey, it’s not MY definition of success, it is the world’s. That is why you are being unfair to women.

How can they even get real representation in govt if a woman can never be elected president because the standards applied to her are too high for anyone but Christ to fulfil?

” HRC is unlike the women in your life because she was enough of a ‘bitch’ (or ‘man’) to succeed in that wider world that makes women work so impossibly hard just to reach the status of second-class citizens”

You are wrong… The women I knew “succeeded also. they just didn’t use yur definition of success!

Conservative Yankee:

HRC is unlike the women in your life because she was enough of a ‘bitch’ (or ‘man’) to succeed in that wider world that makes women work so impossibly hard just to reach the status of second-class citizens. The world isn’t fair for reasons we can change. The laws changed regarding women’s rights, but the general male (and female) attitude to women did not change all that much. Just marginally.

I bristle at the phrases ‘gave women the vote’ or ‘gave women rights’. Rights weren’t ‘given’ to women, they were restored after being stolen for millenia. 

You are wrong about Hillary being over-rated. She is a very competent politician. I sincerely doubt the USA would be at war in Iraq if she was in charge in 2001, regardless of her vote to authorize the president’s independent action. She wanted to be the first female president, and i believe she made that vote because she thought at the time it would be seen as patriotic. This is what all suceesful politicians do. They play the game. Yes, they lie, and cheat. They all do. All the men do. Why judge the women more harshly? That is what burdened your mother and aunt with all the unfairness. The harsh judgements and narrow contraints on their behaviour, the narrow way they were perceived, the fact they didn’t get the little breaks in the way we view them, as men do. Boys will be boys.

Let’s run off a list of failed women in high govt (bear in mind, this is always subjective). there are three i can think of, off the top of my head: Condi Rice (iraq war), Madeleine Albright (foreign policy choices resulting in many deaths), and Margaret Thatcher (falklands war). Then there are women like the two or three excellent presidents of Sri Lanka, the woman in Burma who has been locked up for over a decade because she refuses to cause a war, the woman who was just assassinated in Pakistan because she tried to save her country, etc, etc. 

Yet women in govt are judged exclusively by the failures, and their failures are judged more harshly too. Why don’t we judge men as a gender by their failures in govt? by deaths and wars they have caused or failed to avoid? Wouldn’t that just make a lot of sense? We could talk about male emotions, agression and lack of control. About male PMS which occurs every few hours instead of every 28 days. We could seriously discuss how men as a gender may be ‘unfit to lead’. Perhaps if they proved themselves worthy, they might get elected, you know?

Isn’t that an awful way to talk about men? Isn’t that an awful way to talk about women? And yet that is almost all i have read here at Truthdig since i first discovered it a year or two ago. Either overtly, or in the attitudes beneath insincere or patronising comments and articles. Judging by both left and right political blogs the USA is an incredibly sexist country. And i thought Australia was bad enough. However, you are a little better than Saudi Arabia, or at least your legal system is.

I can see this and yet i don’t really support Hillary politically. I don’t support her but i know she isn’t the monster she has been made out to be. Even Hitler wasn’t that bad. Even Bush isn’t as bad as she’s been painted. Hillary, the mad vicious whore of Babylon.

People are also wrong if they think she had a privileged upbringing. Her father was a misogynist, a military man who showed his young daughter his contempt for her, and for women generally, during her formative years. Then she married a man who, after she gave up her career to support his, repeatedly displayed a different sort of contempt for her.

Let’s look at why the world isn’t fair and work on it.

Btw, isn’t the VP position the perfect place for a woman? She will have no function and no power, all she has to do is appear honourable. (sarcasm)

Reply to Jimbo:

This kind of thing is exactly what will make people like me jump to the man’s defence, as flawed as i suspect he is.

If there is evidence, present it. If not, shut up. If it is pending, then you can’t possibly know anything about it, unless you are one of the investigators.

(And this is one whitey who supports Michelle Obama.)

Cyrena, you can find a taste of the media’s misogyny at the Women’s Media Centre (thankyou Ellen Goodman). It’s a great site. Check out the article on Alice Paul. i’m interested to see the movie ‘Iron-jawed Angels’.

The evidence is mounting that obama seems to have been heavily involved with corruption in Chicago, especially as regards to the house he purchased (ref NoQuarter).  You can take all that’s being said as seriously as you wish, but ultimately it is extremely important that the great American Patrick Fitzgerald, if so indicated in terms of the evidence, indict Obama before he is nominated.  Hillary has not released her delegates, so seems informed as to obama’s status.  My question is, since so many of you are against the supposed corruption of the Clintons, will an indictment against obama put an end to your deep drinking of the koolaid?  Since so many of you are mandating that all us Clinton supporters now back obama, will you in kind back HRC when she ends up being the nominee?  For the good of the party, of course.

His V.P. needs to be someone who can complement his skills and neutralize the racism that exists no matter what the polls say.  (who’se going to admit it?)
However, we have an assassination target in Obama, don’t forget.  So that VEEP must not be someone who is seen as a BETTER president that Barack to the rednecks.  That would just add impetus to the hatred that roils right under the surface of many racists.
I grew up in Birmingham.  Making segregation legal just sent this garbage under-cover.

I aggree with most of what you say… Women are (generally but not in HC’s case) devalued in their work. ) I remember clearly when the Supreme Court had no bathroom for women. Female secretaries and other “help” had to cross the street to find a gendered bathroom.  Margaret Chase Smith used to tell Mainers stories about how she “single-handedly Liberated” a Senate bathroom, then Placed a lock on the door to which she had the only key.

I remember as a boy coming home after school to cookies and milk, and if my mother was not home (she went back to work later in my childhood) I was welcome by any of the mothers in my neighborhood. These women served as cooks, child-care personal, house cleaners, chauffeurs, lifeguards, nurses, security guards, teachers, and an additional list too long to mention. Most were “given an allowance” by their working spouse most of this allowance went for household expenses.

Are women devalued…anyone growing up in the 50’s 60’s or 70’s would have had to be blind, deaf, and brain-damaged to miss it.

BUT Hill-the-business-Shill is NOT one of these women. born into a life of comfort… a young Republican.. she has been over valued. She’s served in several places where she could have made a difference in the lives of woman, but she did not. She did nothing for $4.65-an-hour workers at Walmart when she served on their board. She did nothing for the largely female/African American women who worked at Tyson, even going so far as to help that company break a strike by line workers.

I like to believe that as a man, I’m sensitive to the sexist issues in the work-place. I’ve seen my mother, a very competant teacher paid less than the men who collected the garbage in the town where I was raised. I’ve heard my Aunt (who worked in the almost all male environment at Con-Ed) talk about sniggering anti female humor,  unwanted contact, and even blatant propositions which I won’t print here.

The world is far from a fair place.  I know that, and I like to believe I would change it if given the option, BUT Like my opposition to Clarence Thomas (which lost me some friends) I can’t support a self-serving careless liar….even if she happens to be a woman As I’ve said before she is unlike the women in my life.

Hillary Clinton: her “health care plan”: when in White House as exposed by Unlimited Access by retired FBI agent Allrich was to eliminate almost all long time staff members, replace them with new making far less $ & allowing them only 39 hours per week to DENY them health coverage; her utter contempt shown to FBI etc “you can do NOTHING” I am the First Lady & her demand to have no one look at her or address her (she was so far ABOVE everyone else) & now has told other countries they are “policital elites” (above all others) & exempt from all charges; after all US Supreme Court Judges ARE appointed by Congress no? twisted judges, corrupt Congress: in Iraq; the graft & corruption there which is set up with same Corp’s here & being told HOW to do it; go to yahoo news & type in graft & corruption in Iraq; they advised Bush dictatorship & graft & corruption so bad now that while it was bad under Hussain it is FAR WORSE now: Bush said they prefer to be known as “dysfunctional” not dictatorship, & changed agenda to PEACE not democracy; Clinton’s manager stated no air time would be given to any “shadowy” other parties; only Dems & Reps; Superclass came out & the author on C-Span said “dysfunctional”; you had just better be careful; 1 phone call & they can have a billion people notified (SUPERCLASS) sound familiar? they call themselves “elites” 6600 of them; many sitting on as many as 175 boards of Corp’s; their agenda is same as it was in WW11; man on tv news: from Texas: water is the next oil; you can live without oil; (course you can; multiple green alternatives have been offered & available even for running cars on: DENIED by Pres & Congress cuz THEY want to in Cheney’s words “rule”; but you can only last 3 days without water; I am buying up water rights. They are busy buying up water rights to all the nations; to determine who, when, where, & how much will be given, & how much it will cost; (our leaders are claiming THEY can do it WITHOUT peoples consent;) wonder why Haiti is being flooded with cheaper rice than the folks there can grow & sell? If “supposedly’ it has doubled in cost elsewhere? Know who pulled the same stunt in Mexico & THAT is the land the Mexican folks are currently having civil war over (tho it is “drug war” to citizens of USA & USA pledged $500m to help with? SAME Corp’s went directly after Clinton approached their Pres & low & behold against THEIR constitution & article 25 Corps got water rights & land: snatched up for pennies after flooding them with far cheaper corn than folks could grow & sell; causing them to lose their lands & homes; NOT the “land” supposedly stolen from them from USA or that they are supposedly “claiming” back now: NO NO NO: democracy they name is deception & slavery of the people to whom our nation was NEVER set up for the people to be taxed: but the TAXES to be PAID for by Big Business profits; Other countries see Americans as being slaves folks; eye opener isn’t it? See the “map” of the USA as shown by Absolut? ALL DECEPTION & LIES: I spoke at an NAFTA meeting with multiple groups including Mexican man extremely bitter of NAU & NAFTA & Clinton & Bush: he said there was talk of civil war; I said: go after the folks who CAUSED it: the same ones doing the same things here in the USA: Congress & Corp’s: Gov’s & Pres & VP & Corp’s working together to defraud the Citizens of every country; carrying on this hidden agenda of so called “democracy” which has NOTHING to do with freedom for ANYONE: same corruption found in S. Africa: home office is corrupt (same way it is in USA): same as in Mexico, same as in Canada, same as is being set up in Iraq

Does anyone even have to mention O’s ethnicity? If so, let’s put it in perspective. What percentage of your citizens consider themselves ‘Black Americans’? Would it be ten percent? 20? And you’ve never had a ‘black’ president? That’s not so good. What percentage of your citizens are Hispanic? 30 %? Have you ever had an Hispanic or Italian-American president? I doubt it. How many of your citizens are female? Oh i know that figure, it’s always around 51%. THE MAJORITY. Have you noticed how women are often dismissed as a minority? Doesn’t that tell you something concrete about how much they are intrinsically devalued? THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE. We keep trying to fix the symptoms instead of the disease. Take this for instance: we do not reward women who stay at home to care for others with real respect, just lip service. In effect, we make them feel like rubbish, like burdens. We give them no help to have lives of their own while caring for others. In truth their work has greater economic value than almost anything else. And if some unselfish man chooses to stay home and look after his kids so his wife can pursue a career, we reward him by treating him like an abject failure. A castrato. He’s lowered himself to the level of womanhood. And so, love is devalued. It has no weight, no prestige, no entrepeneur-soldier-footballchampion-prizefighter glory.
Why are we not willing to examine the debacle of bigotry, that great flaccid carnival of woman-hatred that was manifested in the anti-Clinton media, and the role we played in it? And our own attitudes to women? Do we think they have smaller brains? Do we think they have ‘a place’? Or less strength and courage, and other deficiencies that can’t be explained by cruel and relentless conditioning? IT SHOULD NOT MATTER IF WE DON’T LIKE CLINTON POLITICALLY. WE NEED TO BE ASHAMED OF WHAT HAPPENED AND TAKE STOCK. That’s not happening. You are all bleating about good or bad campaigns. Something just happened to demonstrate powerfully what women are facing every day, both in the home and when they step out onto the street (if the porn industry isn’t proof enough for you.) Are there women you care about in your life? Then kick up a stink that won’t go away. What does it mean to say you love someone, and yet you can turn a blind eye to this evil bigotry, again and again, even within yourself? These attitudes to women (and to men, and by both sexes) are at the root of almost everything else that is wrong with our world, and yet we cannot collectively and honestly address this issue. We say ‘she ran a lousy campaign’, or ‘she doesn’t work hard enough’ or ‘she’s not smart enough’ or, the absolute worst: ‘it’s nature at work’. Hurricane Katrina was also nature at work. Does that excuse the poor response to it? I effing hope not.
Overpopulation caused by misogyny is nature at work. Human extinction is nature at work.
Sexism and racial bigotry are attitudes that too many of us are too apathetic and lazy to change at a ‘grass-roots’ level. And so the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
Am i distracting you from the symptoms?
we are like lemmings. and most of us deserve that end. me too, the lemming-basher. i’m not an elitist, i’ll throw my lot in with those around me. But i won’t put on the fatigues before the last possible moment.
That’s the only way war and violence should come into being. Right, John McCain, war-expert? how does destroying societies with bombs and martial law improve anything, wiping out whole generations of largely non-combative people? Rarely do we see a true Warsaw Ghetto situation, where a person must fight or die. And if we bravely examine the attitudes we impart to our peers and our children, and thereafter to our political systems and social apparatus, we should never have to go there.

‘Some say Hillary Clinton’s defeat was the victory of sexism—but Obama faced at least as much racism.’

No, he didn’t. Unless you are referring to the fact that many intelligent people like you kept pointing out the melanin content of his skin.

‘this resounding defeat goes beyond pernicious isms and beyond one candidate—it is a fist-pounding rejection of a corrupt ideology.’

Okay, but what evidence do you have that Obama is any different? He talks Fair Deal? I will believe it when i see it.

As a side issue, this Clintonism refrain and the one about how Obama’s not getting credit for his ‘terrific’ campaign because of all the female losers whining about sexism, is a cowardly deflection. You all seem to be using it to avoid confronting what just happened TO ALL WOMEN because of the misogynistic media campaign that merrily destroyed Clinton. This must be examined. Everyone must look at themselves and see what they are doing that is contributing to the problem. Honestly examine your own attitudes. Clinton’s ineffective (but comparatively naked) campaign has no bearing on the fact of the embarrassment you should all be feeling over her treatment in the media. If you are not embarassed by it, you need to take a good hard look at yourself.

i should add a few things which pertain to my objectivity (yes, i can be ferociously angry and still be objective):

1) I never really liked Clinton politically, i liked Kucinich. Although to me HRC really doesn’t seem any worse than Obama the elitist (sorry, populist) patroniser, especially if he chooses a military general for his VP as he seems to be considering.

2) i am an equal opportunity insulter. Despite the endless incredibly dumb characterizations of him as such in the media, i don’t see Obama as a ‘black man’, i just see him as a bloke like any other bloke. (Perhaps i was badly brought up). He’s smarter than most, but not necessarily less ignorant or arrogant then most. He’s certainly elitist. (As is John ‘everyman’ (cough) McCain) Whenever i listened to Obama’s campaign speeches i felt he was talking to children, in broad happy colourful strokes. What is there to be proud of in his campaign other than it’s effectiveness? It’s expensiveness?

No tears and no sorrow for the outcome of hillary’s Democratic primary.It would have been of great significance though, to have a woman representing the symbol of change, both in gender and in race, had Hillary maintained her true instincts in standing-up for what she realy believes.Capitulating to the Zionist’s pressure to annul her earlier announcement on the Palestinian’s right to have their own state,revealed the fragile nature of a would be President.All of us here in the Middle East followed with sorrow, the tribulation she had to go through to secure the Zionist forgivness, with the promise of never say it again, even when it has become a recognized Bush policy.With such historical background,Obama would be better off without her than having to drag her legacy for the coming presidetial term.Obama too, should learn the lesson and avoid to fall in the same trap.

By Maezeppa, June 13 at 1:39 pm #

“The sexism against Hillary Clinton was astonishing and I think the far left will regret their pile-on.”

How about this:

The reaction against Hill-the business -shill was against a “woman” who did nothing for Woman while she spent 8-years on Walmart’s board of Directors.

The corporate whore did NOTHING positive for the mostly African American woman who worked in Tyson’s sweat-shop environment while she represented the company very well getting them special dispensation from her hubby’s administration which allowed them to dump their waste in Arkansas’ White water river.

Scores of women were negatively affected by the FALN bombings in the late Seventies and early eighties. I never heard Hill ask these women what they thought about her idea to give these criminal murderer’s a pardon ... a tool to advance her political ambition in New York’s Hispanic neighborhoods.

As a man, I am sure I can do a better job of ironing my shirt than she . I have also never broken the “glass ceiling” between my modest and her obscene incomes.

Maine has two women Senators (whom I support) but Obama took the primary here.

Get a clue, it has NOTHING to do with gender, and EVERYTHING to do with trust.  She’s a liar, and a cheat, and Has nothing but her own interest at heart.

To Sleeper….

Maybe the best choice would be a Afro American female who is against the Corporate entities…  For the first time in American history there may be no need for the secret service…. Ya think?

To shyamkumar…..

Shabda nishtum jagat….

Namaste

“but Obama faced at least as much racism”

So naive.  What’s coming isn’t pretty and I don’t think it will be overcome. 

The sexism against Hillary Clinton was astonishing and I think the far left will regret their pile-on.

it would be the same as when billary wuz prez, just another boys club, because you have to know who would be calling the shots for hillary, and attempting to undermine obama’s presidency, there is no change if she is v.p., sorry the truth does hurt some of you.

louie-louie

David,
      Obama secured the nomination by a very small margin.  You can wish all you want that your dishonest appraisal of the Clinton years is accurate, though you know this isn’t true.  Your own thirst for power has got you making the silliest statements.  I bet you make good money, though don’t you?  And that’s what’s most important, now, isn’t it, David?  You are a very important man.