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I don't know how this escaped my notice, unless maybe it's because I never read anything newspaper ombudsmen (or ombudswomen) have to say, and not only because they are so boring. (With the business model failing, the industry in apparent freefall, staffs shrinking so fast the survivors have to scurry just to keep up on government disinformation, and left and right uniting against the lazy, dull-witted, and otherwise very bad people without whom we would know nothing—nothing!—that is going on in the world, aren't in-house scolds superfluous?) Anyway, as the rest of you doubtless saw, the public editor at the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, called out Maureen Dowd for her supposedly sexist Hillary coverage. Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if I hadn't agreed with every last nasty word of it, but since when does the public editor tell columnists what to think? "Dowd's columns about Clinton's campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism,'' he wrote. OK, I never read Clark Hoyt, but he never reads Maureen Dowd? (And since she is a woman, does that make Hoyt's opinion of her opinion sexist, too?)
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The Sunday New York Times chronicled the trials and tribulations of women who run businesses and employ their husbands. The piece profiled women who sell backpacks and run temp-services agencies, women who run companies that deliver meals or set up trade-show displays. But somehow they missed my favorite female CEO, Patty Brisben, who runs a sex-toy company in a suburb of Cincinnati.
Brisben's story is your classic Horatio Alger tale. As this Cincinnati Magazine article explains, she married at 17, and her first husband left her because "he wanted to spend his life with someone who was going to be successful." Some years later, having remarried, she started selling sex toys at in-home parties to make some extra cash. Fast forward to the present: Her company, Pure Romance, did $60 million in sales in 2006. Brisben's son is the president, which frees her up to run her foundation focused on women's health, and to do things like sponsor Sex Week at Yale University. The most delicious part, though, is that Brisben allows her first husband—he who thought she wouldn't be successful enough for his liking—to help the company out as an occasional consultant. (Her other ex-husband works for her, too.)
I've never met Brisben, but—confession time—I have been to a Pure Romance party. The sales reps don't speak in clinical terms, but neither do they act like they've just stepped off the set of a porn shoot. The parties are tasteful and discreet, and sex is treated like a normal, important part of a healthy relationship. When Brisben's son sought to buy radio advertising during drive time over the objection of some stations, he explained: "Look, the moms in the minivans are the ones who need the sex toys. They're looking to spice up their relationships."
I love that Brisben has made sex toys safe for the soccer-mom set and that she is down-to-earth and magnanimous enough to make it a family business. But most of all I love it that she's succeeded in the same town that resisted Larry Flynt and Hustler for so long.
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In his "Human Nature" blog, Slate's Will Saletan rejoices over the recession's toll on the cosmetic surgery business and expresses horror at the idea that some suckers (social parasites?) still refinance their homes to get cosmetic surgery during economic downturns. Then these vain people justify their ill-gotten boobs and rhinoplasties on the grounds that their plastic surgery was "an investment." Saletan cries foul: "When you can't pay the mortgage, we're supposed to bail you out? And your surgeon calls what you did an 'investment'?"
But isn't that a perfectly reasonable perspective? Sad but apparently true: We live in a society that rewards beauty and punishes ugliness, often using the medium of cold, hard cash. A 2005 Federal Reserve study, for instance, found that attractive people—in all occupations—earned 5 percent more per hour than the physically average, while the ugly earn 9 percent less an hour than everyone else. So say you find yourself, through sheer genetic bad luck, stuck in the low-earning "ugly" category—why shouldn't you decide that putting down $5,000 for a nose job or $2,500 for a "chin augmentation" is a smart long-term investment? If you can go from "ugly" to "average," you've potentially got a lifetime 9 percent income boost right there! Even if you're utterly devoid of vanity, some wisely chosen plastic surgery might be a sound economic decision.
I'll go further: Research suggests that the benefits of physical attractiveness start at birth. Nurses in maternity wards spend more time with the cute babies. And even parents, God help us all, apparently take better care of cute kids than of ugly ones—in a 2005 Canadian study, researchers found that parents with unattractive children often didn't even bother to buckle the little tykes' seat belts. Clearly, parents, if you want your ugly kid to get a fair shake in life, you need to get him or her to a cosmetic surgeon, pronto. And this, comrades, should be our new rallying cry: high-quality, government-subsidized day care; universal preschool; and free pediatric cosmetic surgery on demand!
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I'm encouraged by the announcement from the Department of Defense yesterday about the nomination of Army Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody to the position of four-star general. If the Senate confirms her nomination, Dunwoody will be the first woman to attain a status that historically has been achieved through combat jobs, which women are not allowed to hold. What's especially promising about her nomination is the fact that the government lifted its own barrier to recognize her achievements and capabilities by allowing her to circumvent the combat route.
Still, there is plenty of progress left to be made. Only five women have attained the next status beneath Dunwoody's, that of lieutenant general, as CNN reported. Dunwoody's success shows potential, but having one woman at the top does not change the fact that so many others ranking below her have yet to rise up.
I wonder how long it will take for other women in the military to move up the ranks as Dunwoody has over the last 33 years. Her nomination was announced the same day The New York Times reported that women in the military are more likely to suffer under the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, which requires gay members of the military not to reveal their sexual identity. According to the Times article, the percentage of women discharged from the Army last year under that policy increased from 35 percent to 46 percent, although females only make up 14 percent of the Army as a whole. How can women battle gender stereotypes to attain the top positions if many of them are being kicked out due to other types of discrimination?
In an ideal world, Dunwoody's nomination will shatter that glass ceiling for all of her talented female comrades to follow in her wake; in reality, it may take a while for women to be treated equally alongside their male counterparts in the military. Let's hope for the former. And if we reach that goal, perhaps the United States will be ready to reconsider the prospect of a female commander in chief by the 2012 presidential election.
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Kara, go forth and absorb Picasso and Bernini (and then enlighten the rest of us). For my part, I'm sorry I didn't take art history in college. Or music history. In fact I think I'm a cretin. But I also regret, just as much, that I took zero math and as little science as I could get away with. I thought I was following my passions, too, and maybe I was, but now I think of the puzzle-solving part of math, which I like, and wonder if I dropped it for the wrong ie gendered reasons.
Melinda, I should have known that if I wrote about reading a novel in the evening I would offer myself up as How Does She Do It poster-woman. From now on I will write only after watching The View and Flight of the Conchords reruns. I think mother-guilt dates from whenever mothers, whether stay-at-home or working, decided that it was no longer OK to tell their kids to run outside to play and not give them another thought until bedtime (or maybe on a good night, dinner). I would hark back fondly to that time except that it was the 1950s.
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While I can't answer Melinda's question of whether the bar for mothers-who-do-it-all was always set so high, as a young twentysomething just starting out in my career, I can see that bar vaulting upward among the women of my own generation. With few glass ceilings remaining, the limits to our professional ambitions seem next to nonexistent. But along with our heightened career expectations comes the decision to try to balance both work and family life. For all the inspirational value of Hillary Clinton's historic campaign, even she got choked up trying to explain how she did it all.
About a year and a half ago, I heard Linda Hirshman speak about her book, Get to Work ... And Get a Life, Before It's Too Late, at the women's college I attended. I remember vividly her assertion that women in college should not waste their time studying subjects such as art history. Now, I was an art history major at a liberal arts college, and among the audience were a number of art majors who had emerged from the print-making and painting studios down the hall to hear Hirshman speak. Needless to say, none of us were thrilled with her advice. We were all passionate about the subjects and challenged and fulfilled by our work. Why should we have felt guilty for pursuing our interests?
With the opportunity in recent years to disprove the stereotypes about women's aptitude (or lack thereof) in math and the hard sciences, I often felt in college that I was letting down women everywhere by taking art and literature courses instead of math and physics. Studying at a women's college, I didn't have to contend with gendered expectations about the classes I should take; test tubes and equations just didn't excite me. Still, Hirshman and others like her made me feel that there were fields into which I should venture simply because they remained unconquered by women. It's taken me some time to realize that this can't be right. Can it? Just because a woman can be an astrophysicist, doesn't mean she ought to be one, and just because female art historians are not venturing into male-only territory doesn't mean they should feel guilty about studying Picasso's cubist paintings or Bernini's sublime sculptures.
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Dana, I love that you were moved by that picture of Del and Phyllis. They're revered as foremothers of the LGBT movement. In 1955, at a time when people were arrested and lost their jobs (and lives) for being gay, when police would rape women arrested for being lesbian (honest, I'm not making this up), this couple launched the Daughters of Bilitis, the first American lesbian activist organization, and founded The Ladder, a samizdat publication that was passed from hand to hand. They risked their lives back then by using their real names.
That's the reason that Kate Kendall, who runs the National Center for Lesbian Rights, nominated this couple to be the first same-sex spouses in California—and everyone agreed. Phyllis and Del deserve the aliyah, the honor of being called to the Torah in front of the entire congregation. They've helped transform the country during the past 50 years—from what was probably the worst period in American history for lesbians and gay men, to what may now be the best.
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I think I like weddings only when they’re an act of civil disobedience. When my straight friends announce their engagements, there’s always a faint sense of dread at the impending rites of veil-lifting and glass-stomping and Pablo-Neruda-poem-reciting (coupled, of course, with a sincere wish for their lifelong happiness—but I’d wish them that whether they got married or not). But those images of the San Francisco lesbian couple, 84 and 87 years old, who were wed Monday at 5:01 p.m. after 50 years together (and after a California Supreme Court decision invalidated their marriage performed in 2004) had me tearing up like a fond aunt at a rehearsal dinner. It doesn’t get any more romantic than that: Overturn our union, will you? Great, we’ll just line up and get married again the first minute—literally—that state law allows. I love imagining the two of them, frail and bent, walking out of City Hall to a mixed crowd of supporters (both women are well-known S.F. gay rights activists) and jeering protesters with placards reading “Homo Sex Is Sin.”
I honestly think that in a matter of years, this kind of image will look to us like the 1963 photographs of George Wallace blocking the schoolhouse door as two black students attempted to enroll at the University of Alabama. Good Lord, we’ll say, can you believe it was just a generation ago that people were debating the pros and cons of institutionalized bigotry and publicly protesting the right of two octogenarian women to love each other? I just hope that shift will take a lot less than 45 years and that, when Obama gets asked about gay marriage in the fall (and you know that wedge is being sharpened by the McCain campaign as we speak), he won’t fall back on that cowardly (and tautological) dodge about how “marriage is between a man and a woman.” No duh—and it’s high time we did something about it.
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So over at Ars Technica there's a link to a really interesting study that came out the other week in Science. It suggests that the much-discussed "math gap" between boys and girls in American may stem more from social factors than from biology. The study looked at more than 275,000 students in 40 countries who took a particular exam. As the Ars Technica summary puts it:
Girls scored about 2 percent lower than boys on math on average, but nearly 7 percent higher on reading, consistent with previous test results.
The researchers, noted, however, that the math gap wasn't consistent between countries. For example, it was nearly twice as large as the average in Turkey, while Icelandic girls outscored males by roughly 2 percent. The general pattern of these differences suggested to the authors that the performance differences correlated with the status of women. The authors of the study built a composite score that reflected the gender equality of the countries based on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, data extracted from the World Values Surveys, measures of female political participation, and measures of the economic significance of females. countries such as Norway and Sweden score very high on gender equality measures; in these nations, the gender gap on math performance is extremely small.
So what do you make of that, Lawrence Summers? Now, to be fair, the study may not have tested for variance—I haven't read through it fully—which would mean that the gap between boys and girls in performance may still be larger at the ends of the bell curve. But the findings still are remarkable.
If you click on the study, too, you'll note an irony: It suggests that while the math gap correlates to gaps in social equality, boys' lagging reading skills don't. Of course, as the summarizer at Ars Technica puts it, that doesn't mean some other social factor isn't at work. I'm sure one is—or even many.
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Emily, if you are still awake and reading novels after tucking in the tender shoots, then you are so far ahead of the game that I see a best-seller along the lines of How To Be an Awesome Mummy and Still Read Great Literature in your future, and I'll pre-order my copy right now. Here's what puzzles me, though, and I'd really love to hear back on this: When did guilt become de rigueur? No kidding, I almost feel guilty that I don't feel guilty; though I definitely make my share of mistakes, I feel pretty good about myself as a mom, and I don't hear a lot of women willing to admit that about themselves. Was the bar always so high?
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I'm sure Marjorie is right that we don't know the half of the Walkers' feud—how can we, since we're only hearing Rebecca's side? And I agree with Marjorie and Maureen that feminism should entail a little effort to think from the perspective of a woman who makes a choice that's not your own.
I also think, as others have pointed out, that Rebecca Walker's critique makes us uncomfortable (or at least makes me uncomfortable) because it entwines being an ardent feminist with being a bad mother, at least in one daughter's eyes. I can't stop myself from rushing to state the obvious: Lots of feminists are great mothers! Devoted! But I also have admitted to myself since I started work after my first son was born that there's a cost as well as a benefit from having a job that takes me away from my kids for a good chunk of the day. Tonight (after they went to bed) I picked up Meg Wolitzer's new novel The Ten-Year Nap, and the passage below jumped out at me. Amy, the 40-ish napper of the title, is talking to her second-wave feminist-novelist mother Antonia, who is forever disappointed that her daughter hasn't worked (as a lawyer) since her 10-year-old son was born.
"Oh come on, you're very smart," said her mother, "and very capable. You've always been that way."
"And I expected things of myself," Amy said. "But not everyone is that driven. And not everyone is really talented. And also," she said, "sometimes it's too difficult to make it happen."
Amy recalled herself and her sisters standing outside their mother's door, banging with their fists, telling themselves they were undermothered, when in fact for so long they had been so well and fully mothered by their intellient and creative and adoring mother that surely her mothering would have a long half-life.
But all they knew, then, was that Antonia had said. "This is my time," and that she'd gently closed her door. The girls played Jane Eyre once in a while over the years: they imagined themselves orphaned by their wonderful mother and even, somehow, by feminism itself.
This, I confess, makes me want to cry. Am I falling down the guilty-mother rabbit hole?
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There I was, all set to jump up in defense of those Pharmacists for Life whom Will and the Washington Post wrote about. Given how poorly they're likely to fare in the marketplace, their position struck me as both principled and doomed; how could I resist? I don't happen to agree with them, because limiting access to birth control seems so likely to lead to more abortions. But they have the right to sell only what they feel OK about selling, don't they? What's more American than that? Then, alas, I glanced at their Web site, which refers to an "abortoholic babe from NARAL'' and calls Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, "the Dictator of the Midwest, Guv 'Slobodan' Blagojevich ... the totalitarian abortoholic Serb reigning in Springfield, but who much rather prefers the shores of Lake Michigan to the boorish 'fundies' downstate as the kook left-wing radicals refer to anyone with Christian beliefs. Now, there's tolerance!'' Where? You guys are on your own. (And really, isn't that how you want it?)
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The Walkers' feud is way too complex and layered for us to assume we really understand what is going on between them. Clearly there's family dysfunction, old resentments, past disappointments—all the stuff that most families deal with on some level or another. I also wonder if Rebecca has some unresolved identity issues that she may also be blaming on her mother and on feminism. After all, as E.J. noted, this is a woman who for many years lived as a lesbian. She is also a biracial woman who grew up being shuttled between the two very different worlds of her divorced parents, an unconventional black mother and a conventional white father. Being raised by, and in the shadow of, a famous parent also can't be easy.
What any of this has to do with the feminist movement, I don't know. Isn't feminism all about women having choices, the freedom to live our lives as we choose without having to stay within some circumscribed set of societal parameters? Can't both of the Walkers' lifestyle choices be considered just that, choices? Rebecca chose to live as a lesbian without a biological child, and now she chooses to be married to a man with whom she has a biological child, fine. I doubt very much that she checked with the Misguided Angry Feminists Council before she made either of these decisions. The feminist movement never made me want to swear off motherhood, burn my bra, hate men, or denounce women who made choices different from mine or choices with which I disagree. The last time I checked the feminist movement has never tried to control my womb, so why is it the feminist movement's fault that Rebecca allowed her mother to solely shape her image of motherhood, and for that matter womanhood and self? I love my mother but I am not my mother, my worldview and life experiences are very different from hers. Did she make some mistakes in how she raised me? You bet. Does she also get credit for the better parts of me? Absolutely. Our mothers may define us as little girls but we define ourselves as women. My mother could never make me want or not want children, and if I were to solely blame her for either of those choices, it would be intellectually dishonest. I would never give one person so much power over me but if I had, I would also give myself some of the blame for allowing it to happen. I'll leave it to others to decide if Alice Walker deserves all of her daughter's criticisms, but I think if Alice had just supported and respected Rebecca's choices they probably wouldn't be where they are now. Women supporting and respecting one another's choices has everything to do with feminism.
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Today at 5:01 p.m. PT, same-sex couples will begin to marry. I send them love and congratulations. And I send my profound hope that every single newlywed couple—the ones who have been together for 30 years ago or for 3 months ago—may be happy together for ever and ever. Mazel tov!! For the rest of us: Did anyone see Pam Belluck's New York Times article on Sunday about lesbian and gay Massachusetts married couples? Except for the fact that it was primarily illustrated with photos of male couples (not her fault), the story was almost embarrassingly on target. She was entirely accurate about the ordinariness of lesbian and gay couples' attitudes toward marriage, now that the initial rush and excitement is over: As she notes, the numbers marrying have fallen off precipitously, the pent-up demand having been spent. Now we're marrying in more ordinary proportions.
But I got a call from a reporter today who was surprised by our ordinariness, asking: Isn't there something unique about how gay and lesbian folks respond to marriage? Well, no. Remember that we were born and raised in every ZIP code in the country, in every possible subculture, from the Bronx to Bellingham, Wash. We tend to relate to marriage the way our social peers or siblings do. The Cambridge politico gals—the ones who wash out and reuse their Ziploc bags—are going to have a different take on marriage than the Dallas debutante couples who get their hair freshly dyed every four weeks, whose take take will be just as different from that of the D.C. black-church-choir male couple. We are no more unified about our attitudes toward marriage than the rest of you.
But what Belluck did nail, embarrassingly so, was the different attitudes that men and women bring to marriage—amplified when both halves of the pair are the same sex. Whether it's nature, nurture, or culture, men and women do have some different predilections. A couple of weeks ago, when y'all were having that monogamy discussion, I bit my tongue about this. But Belluck has now outed us, so I'll chime in.
1. More women date with an eye toward serious partnerships. You know the joke, right? Q: What does a lesbian bring on her second date? A: A U-Haul. Everywhere that same-sex partnerships have been recognized, female couples sign up at twice the rate of male couples. That's two female marriages for every male marriage. That doesn't mean every woman is marriage-minded—generalizations can never fit everyone in a given group—but women do seem to be, quite literally, twice as interested in marriage as men.
2. Men marry without seeing it as necessarily monogamous. Here's the other half of that joke: Q: What does a gay man bring on a second date? A: What second date? Many gay male couples—not all, as my gay male friends have insisted to me!—leave room for the occasional meaningless sexual encounter. God bless 'em. I hope they are all wearing condoms.
3. Women are serially monogamous. If anybody cheats, it's over—but only sexually, not necessarily emotionally. I used to joke that the waiting period for female-female marriage licenses ought to be two years: If they're still together by then, they should be safe until about year seven. Here's the embarrassing part: Belluck finds a few lesbian couples who've broken up and yet who remain each others' families. (She even airs the dirty laundry of women who leave their gals and start dating men instead—many butch women I know have had to return their toasters when their gals went straight!—but she leaves out the problem of the "straight" married lady next door who starts hitting on you.) One such couple in her story is buying a duplex so that they can still raise their son together. Oy, lesbians and their exes! By the time you get to middle age, you are never dating just one woman; you are dating her entire family of exes and exes' exes. Those are going to be your in-laws, so you might as well make a good impression on them early. They have the key to her house. They walk her dog when she's away. If you have kids, they will babysit for you when you need a night alone together. Learn to love them.
5. Same-sex couples are less likely to go nuclear when they argue. OK, this is from a Science Times article earlier in the week, not the Belluck article, but this also rings true to me. If you're not blaming the entire sex for being incomprehensible, you have a little more room to laugh. My ex and I used to take each others' side in the really common arguments. It made us laugh and it helped. Until it didn't. The other point in this article also rings true: We argue just as often, and in many of the same ways. Consider what they call the "demand-withdraw" approach: One side pushes for more intimacy and the other withdraws. Two women or two men have that too. It broke up my own marriage.
Because of all the above, I'm going to guess that lesbians divorce more often—expectations are higher—and that gay male marriages last longer—they are less likely to marry in the first place, more likely to forgive straying. But I haven't seen numbers on that yet.
Once again to the Californians: Good luck, and may you persuade your neighbors that they have nothing to fear from the married women next door!
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I find it a little ironic that we're so ready to tear Rebecca Walker apart in the same forum where some of us sympathized with the plight of Ashley Dupree. No matter how gross the lot of prostitution, Dupree chose that (although we didn't know until later that she didn't need to. Still, there are other ways to pay the bills). No one chooses their parents, nor the messages those parents send about whether they were happy to have you (or, in this case, allegedly weren't. I'd say it takes a rare someone who's the pillar of self-confidence—and how do you get to be that with a mother who supposedly ignores you?—to survive the message from your own mother that you are, essentially, nothing but a burden.)
Yes, there are parts of the younger Walker's essay where she plays enough of a martyr that you want to go get a cross for her. ("A neighbour, not much older than me, was deputised to look after me. I never complained.") And she's a pretty preachy about motherhood. ("I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters-a happy family.") Still, if there really is a tenet of feminism that "all women are sisters and should support one another," as Walker says her mother believes, why are we, if we believe that we indeed are feminist, so eager to rip her apart? I'm not suggesting everyone needs a group hug, but I do think it's hard to label her as completely anti-feminist because she has some critiques of the movement.
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Two things bother me about the Rebecca Walker essay (which last week stirred up a hot intergenerational discussion on a feminist listserv I'm on). First is her conflation of her mother and feminism. I'm sorry, but when did Alice Walker become the spokesperson for and avatar of the second wave? One older (in her 60s, I think) feminist writer on that listserv wrote that her version of feminism didn't posit motherhood as slavery; rather, her feminism meant trying to enlarge the world so that men and women didn't have to divide up the worlds of work and family because each would be involved in both. In that vision of feminism, men and women both would be important in children's lives--as would some social responsibility for children's futures, including early childhood education, flextime, and all the other things necessary to allow families to integrate work and childrearing (and, let me add, being human). That's the feminism that I learned and subscribe to. Walker, instead, personalizes her mother's mistakes (or her perception of those mistakes--hard to know whether memoirists are reliable narrators) as if Alice Walker's bad behavior stood for the mothering failures of the entire second wave. Um ... nope.
Second is the way Walker elides her relationship with Meshell (note: new spelling). Of course her past life is public and all over the Internet; there's no way she can pretend she has only been heterosexual. But in this Daily Mail piece, her lesbian "phase" is elided from her neotraditionalist narrative, in which she is lost until she finds full life satisfaction from mommy + daddy = baby. Oy. (Note for later blog post: Today California begins marrying same-sex couples! Hurray for the Golden State!)
My novice impression is that the younger Walker is melting down and has some institution in her future. But I don't know the woman, and who am I to psychologize without a license? Her mental state is none of my business. Her politics ... well, it isn't even a politics. It's just whining.
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Rebecca Walker may be a narcissist, but this quality alone is not what bothers me. Her mother Alice has been called the same, yet in the older Walker’s groundbreaking 1983 novel The Color Purple, she managed to forge some meaningful social commentary. The younger Rebecca has failed to muster career success beyond being a memoirist. In addition to her book Baby Love, Rebecca published a book in 2002 titled Black, White, & Jewish, in which she detailed how difficult it was to grow up the biracial girl of divorced parents, shuffled between coasts and homes.
As a child of divorce, myself, I get awfully tired of reading this stuff by people who blame a lifetime of issues on divorce. It’s a harrowing experience, sure, but does anyone else think Rebecca Walker probably had some issues outside of mom and dad splitting up?
Rebecca notes in the Daily Mail essay how difficult it was for her in 2004 when she told her mother she was pregnant. “[Alice] went very quiet. All she could say was that she was shocked. Then she asked if I could check on her garden,” Rebecca writes. Elsewhere, she whines that Alice vaguely considered her “a calamity,” just as madness was an obstacle for Virginia Woolf and poor health a problem for Zora Neale Hurston.
Instead of moping over how her mother’s feminism ruined her life, the younger Walker should be most concerned with how wholly anti-feminist she herself is. She is apparently incapable of writing outside of her own personal experiences as a woman, which has the effect of making her scope as a writer unusually narrow (as if she is stunted by her pair of X chromosomes). Best to hold off on crafting autobiographies until one has achieved something worthy of reflection. Catfights with mom and years of uncertain sexual identity do not a worthwhile memoir make.
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In the New York Times on Sunday, Susan Faludi reworks her American gender narrative for Obama-McCain, and argues that Obama is challenging the norm of candidate as avenging rescuer by refusing to go through the gladiator motions. I went back and read Meghan's piece on Faludi's book to remind myself why I find her approach a bit tired. And call me an unimaginative literalist, but the idea she's shopping now that Obama is the first woman president, because he's not out there posing in a flak jacket (note to campaign: plenty of time left), just seems silly.
But Faludi also rightly points that Obama is surrounded by strong women—mother, wife, sister, daughters—and that he seems proud of that, and of them, without indulging in any insecure flapping around. This reminded me of a great e-mail I got from reader Trena Klohe last week:
I'm Gen X feminist with a 4 year-old son and a 2 year-old daughter. I fret fairly often about how to raise them to be strong, confident, egalitarian-minded people.... So here's what gets me. Even if Barack Obama seems too much like the breezy new upstart, to some, isn't he also a shining example of the feminist son both generations hope is possible? Evidence that the revolution at a personal-is-political level is succeeding? A credit to Ann Dunham [Obama's mother] and the entire sisterhood of courageous, trailblazing women on whose shoulders we stand? In this light, isn't Obama's success just as much an affirmation of "second-wave" feminism as Hillary's would have been?
A different sort of role model for our sons, that's for sure. Though probably better not to point it out to them.
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Political consultants are always yammering about what a good idea it is to get the most damaging information out in the open ASAP, and on the candidate's own terms. Which is why I suspect Michelle Obama of cannily revealing that secret terrorist handshake in literally the very first moment it was safe to do so, on the very night her hubby acknowledged that he had closed the deal. The true genius, of course, was in the foresight and field work of spending the last 15 years getting millions of hapless suburban tweens and their hopelessly unhip parents thinking that this menacing shout out to fellow jihadists was harmless as a high-five; is there no end to this woman's perfidy? And that "baby mama" thing? Doubtless a plant, designed to deflect attention from the soon-to-be-released video of Michelle complaining about her husband's general messiness, and shouting, "Why'd he leave out the butter? Why'd he leave out the socks?'' Not to mention—oops, just did!—the shocking follow-up footage in which she asks a neighbor, "D'you see that?'' Let's just say I'll be curious to see what job that Fox "producer'' gets in the Obama administration.
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A few weeks ago, memoirist Rebecca Walker published an essay in the U.K.’s Daily Mail titled “How my mother's fanatical views tore us apart,” which has been making the American Internet rounds in recent days.
The mother in question is Alice Walker, prominent feminist and author of the beloved novel The Color Purple, whom Rebecca paints as a selfish, distant parent more enamored of her radical politics than her own child. Rebecca describes how her mother would leave her behind for days at a time to hole up in her studio, and how she once discovered a cruel poem her mother wrote comparing her to “various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers.” Alice’s actions left young Rebecca yearning for a “traditional mother” like her stepmother, Judy, “a loving, maternal homemaker with five children she doted on.” (Ouch.)
The crux of Rebecca’s beef with her mom, though, is Alice’s conviction that motherhood is a “form of slavery,” a belief that caused a major rift between the two women when Rebecca announced she was having a child in 2004. The two women have not spoken since Rebecca gave birth to her son, Tenzin, and Alice has reportedly cut her daughter out of her will.
Rebecca, full of the kind of new-mommy bliss that makes us childless singletons simultaneously wistful and a bit queasy, is angry that she almost gave up on this transformative experience because she drank her mother’s “rabid feminist” Kool-Aid. “Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness,” she writes. “It is devastating.”
As opinions pour in about this essay—Is feminism really to blame? Is Alice Walker a raging narcissist? Is Rebecca?—it’s interesting to remember another recent Walker family controversy. When her memoir Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence, was published last year, Rebecca lit some crazy fires by confessing that she felt differently about her biological son than she did about the teenage son she raised (and is still parenting) with her ex-lover, Me'shell Ndegéocello:
"It's not the same. I don't care how close you are to your adopted son or beloved stepdaughter, the love you have for your non-biological child isn't the same as the love you have for your own flesh and blood. It's different. ... It isn't something we're proud of, this preferencing of biological children, but if we ever want to close the gap I do think it's something we need to be honest about. ... Yes, I would do anything for my first son, within reason. But I would do anything at all for my second child, without reason, without a doubt."
Note to Rebecca Walker: Easy there—20 years from now, you might be the subject of an aggrieved essay yourself.
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And so begins the bride-off. Blech.
Articles like this one pitting Michelle Obama against Cindy McCain, remind me of how gross the position of first lady can really be. The wives of the candidates are being evaluated for such important qualities as jeans-size, glamour, personal wealth, public speaking abilities, and sense of style. Obama is in trouble for over-sharing (Barack is sock-challenged.) McCain for under-sharing (her financial info). Oh and now Michelle is being called “Obama's baby mama" by the ever-classy Fox News (although for my money that fist-bump pretty much redefined foreplay in America for a generation or two).
Maybe it’s too much to hope for anything less than the relentless meringue of these kinds of pieces, but given that we were but a breath away from a Cindy McCain versus Bill Clinton race, is it possibly time to rethink the way we talk about presidential spouses in a way that bypasses the size of their jeans?
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On Convictions, a thoughtful post from Rich Ford, in response to Kim and Melinda. Rich is the author of The Race Card (much more here). In thinking about whether Clinton supporters who say they'll back McCain are motivated by racism, he writes:
Of course there are a lot of explanations that don’t involve racism. Maybe some Democrats for McCain really buy into the experience line; maybe some voted for Clinton mainly due to gender solidarity and actually prefer many of McCain’s policy positions. Personally, I suspect most Democrats for McCain are driven not by racism but a much more widespread, simpler, and more primal motivation: spite.
I suspect a lot of the reason Obama supporters want to tar every Democrat gone over to McCain as a racist is that they suspect that some unsavory motivation underlies this strange shift in political alliances and jump to the most uncharitable conclusion: racism. Juries are apt to do this in discrimination cases, too: If the employer is acting out of favoritism, vindictiveness, or spite, they figure he’s probably a racist, too. But in fact the likelihood of another unsavory motivation, sufficient in itself to explain the decision, cuts against the inference of racism: If Clintonites could be motivated to support McCain by spite alone, then we have less of a reason to suspect them of racism.
Oh, by the way, before the hate mail from Clinton supporters pours in: I have no doubt that many Obama supporters would have succumbed to a spiteful solidarity with McCain had Obama lost to Clinton. (Oh, oh: Is that just going to get me more hate mail?) Crushing disappointment and a resultant spiteful backlash has been a real risk in this primary of potential 'historic firsts': Someone had to come in second, and some profound symbolic triumph over bigotry and oppression had to be delayed. That’s hard to take, and we can expect the McCain campaign to try to capitalize on the resentment of the losing faction. I think Obama could probably win the election without the racist vote, but he may have a hard time winning without the spiteful vote. Let's hope those liberals for McCain decide they like their faces enough not separate them from their noses.
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Yes, Kim, it is definitely the Age of Entrenchment, and I don't think I'm pretending that schoolyard taunts of any sort are unheard of, or that what happened to my friend's child is any particular reflection on Obama's campaign. But I don't want to be among the entrenched, either; sometimes I am wrong, and if I'm giving my friend the impression that I am suspicious of recovering Hillary supporters in that way, then I'm not averse to looking at that and maybe rethinking both my assumptions and the signals I'm sending. If things had gone the other way in the primary, I'd need a minute, too. And to be perfectly honest, I'd be winking at the old guy myself.
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Melinda, I'm sorry your friend's son got tagged as a racist for supporting Hillary. But please: Let's not get it twisted.
My kids' school is almost a 50-50 split between black students (African-American, Haitians, Jamaicans, etc.) and white, with a smattering of Asians and Latinos, a good cultural diversity program and all the required social studies curriculum about "teaching tolerance" (a phrase I detest, by the way). Yet we've had incidents of name-calling and teasing and grief that involve race, perceived sexual orientation, body size, academic ability, religion (my friend's Muslim daughter was asked quite casually if she was carrying a bomb in her backpack), etc., etc. Is every other school in America such a bastion of maturity and civic-mindedness and tolerance (that word again!) and acceptance and understanding and full-throttle multiculturalism that these things do not occur? Wow! To pretend that this particular incident is a problem by and/or of Obama or his supporters and not instead another symptom of a far larger and far older American (and indeed human) problem is ridiculous on its face.
The problem is not this campaign. The problem is that we, all of us, remain essentially segregated in this society, not only by race but by class and religion and political views. We live in our own little enclaves, all of us, segregated and self-righteous and increasingly entrenched. The Age of Entrenchment, I call it, when for all the millions of people like me blathering on across the Internet, no one ever really changes her or his mind about anything, or indeed even hears any statement or argument or evidence or passionate plea except that which confirms what they already believe. Any surprise our children are picking up on this nastiness?
As for flirting with McCain, I have two things to say. One of them is this essay—and forgive me for always dragging Tim Wise (a man!) into this forum, but the dude speaks with such fearless clarity it makes no sense to try to replicate.
The second is this: Please, please, please, by all means, go ahead and vote for whomever you want, and let the chips fall where they may. Just stop threatening us already. In this heat it's tiresome.
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The problem with being a judge who loves to shock is that you're a flashy barracuda in a school of plain tuna, and you risk careening off into the high seas that are the province of public officials who are just too out there for their own good. Such is my thought after reading that Judge Alex Kozinksi posted porn on a web site he thought was private, but wasn't. The material included "a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal," we learn from the LA Times. We can't judge for ourselves anymore, because the site has been wiped clean, but if Judge Kozinski says that he found the porn funny, I bet he did--and it was probably offensive, too. Herein lies the Kozinski challenge. He is a transgessor, a flouter of boundaries, a man of many appetites. When he wrote a week-long diary for Slate in 1996, he told us all about going to a lingerie and pajama party. ("The Location: Gatsby's Rendezvous by the Sea, 'the house that all of Malibu deems the scandalous haven of sleepless nights.'") When I profiled him in 2004, the art for the piece depicted him as a circus master--and he liked it enough to ask for a copy. Plenty of other examples could be inserted here, and Phil Carter (on Convictions) has plenty of company in appreciating Judge K's quirks. Lots of reporters and court watchers have urged him onward with our appreciation. And now that we know that among the many things he appreciates are women painted to look like cows, how can we go all schoolmarmish? I know, I know, judges are supposed to be beyond reproach, and this is the opposite of that. And yes being outed for semi-public porn-sharing while trying an obscenity case is pretty rich. It's the sort of plot twist Judge Kozinski would write into a screen play. Maybe that's the answer: Toss the bench and move to Hollywood.
(Cross-posted on Convictions.)
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Melinda, George Will has a plan for how to bring Hillary voters back into the Obama fold - scare ‘em! On Hardball Monday night, George Will said he suspects that "three quarters of the country at this point does not know that John McCain is pro-life" and speculated that "once the Democrats make that known, as surely they will, [women] will come scampering back to the Democratic Party in droves."
Setting aside the light condescension of the word "scampering" (it's what furry little animals do) I wonder if Will's right - if the Democrats might actually benefit from a social issues flare-up. If NOW and NARAL start tearing away at McCain over abortion, aggrieved Hillary-supporting feminists will give up their flirtation with the Maverick. On the other hand, ending the abortion détente could galvanize the Evangelical Republicans that have been sitting on the backbench.
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Seconding Noreen's comments: If the Times wanted to be consistent with its gender stereotyping, the love-that-iPhone piece might have explored how surprising it is that MEN are using cellphones. You know, that men would want to acquire a technology that enables them to ... communicate. It has always seemed to me the obvious technology for women, at least according to accepted gender notions.
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But, back to living women who are entertaining the thought of McCain-ing. ...You know how during the primaries, we kept writing that supporting Obama over Hillary didn't make us woman-haters or even bad feminists? Belatedly, with the help of my McCain-flirting friend, it occurs to me that the opposite obvious point also needs to be spelled out: Supporting Hillary, or now McCain, over Obama does not a racist make, either. When I saw what my friend wrote about her son being branded that way just because his family supported Hillary, it kind of broke my heart and made me think about how I might not want to jump into Obamamania, either, if that had happened to my baby. For me, her perspective was a reminder that candidates are to some degree held responsible for the behavior of their supporters, so it isn't only Obama who needs to show those disappointed Hillary voters some respect. (And yes, I am looking in the mirror on this one.)
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Always liked that Ann Richards,
and am not exactly immune to Obama's charms, either. Yet I was
surprised when the governor posthumously endorsed the presumptive
Democratic nominee yesterday: "If she were still around she would suit
up and campaign for Senator Obama in the farthest corner of the
farthest state,'' her daughter Cecile Richards wrote
on the Huffington Post. "Mom would see in him a leader with a long and
consistent record for standing up for women's health care. ... She'd
see in him what we at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund see. ... Mom
would have said that women voting for John McCain would be like
chickens choosing to vote for the Colonel.'' And I would have said Ann
for VP! Unless Eleanor Roosevelt were available. Or my
across-the-street neighbor Clara Barton,
an Obama girl if ever there was one. And definitely not the sort who
might be flirting with McCain, like that recently deceased voter
Hillary kept talking about. But, what would Bella Abzug do?
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Why is the New York Times still flummoxed by the idea that women might embrace technology? The paper's Technology section today ran a "trend" story marveling at how women are expected to buy the new iPhone in record numbers (sample quote: "'Companies need to be careful to not think that to sell smartphones they just need to be pink," she said. ‘There are other things women want.' " Gosh, really?) It's not even been a year since the paper wrote another color-schemed piece on the breaking news that women had really gotten behind improvements in technology, with the headline "To Appeal to Women, Too, Gadgets Go Beyond ‘Cute' and ‘Pink.' " In February, it delved into the world of girls who create Internet content (quoting an expert as saying that to these girls, hotlinking is "the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing the same dress as another girl).
To affect surprise that women are using technology and the Internet in an era when it's nearly impossible to be engaged with the world and ignore either one is a rich bit of condescension for the paper that endorsed Hillary in the Democratic primary. Was the editorial board expecting her to receive those 3 a.m. phone calls on a hot pink Swarovski-studded BlackBerry Pearl? This feels a little like hearing someone express surprise that women might want to play sports or enjoy sex. The notion that using technology would make you a geek is also a straw man argument that's years out of date—can't remember thinking that way since perhaps middle school, which was right around when IMing became cool, not just the late-night pastime of pimpled anime enthusiasts. (And besides, haven't pimpled anime enthusiasts become cool since then?)
Despite the price scale-back and functionality improvements, the iPhone is still at least as much status symbol as useful tool. The Times is clearly no stranger to the commodity fetishization beat, especially when it comes to women, so you'd think they'd be all over the digital desideratum angle. But I guess the paper thinks this recent story sheds some light on how technology is changing the way women live.
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Our lively debates on XX Factor are inspiring our contributors to write some longer pieces, especially at news-filled moments. In response, we've created a new department for these standalone articles, called XX Factor XXtra. Don't worry-you won't miss anything. We'll be sure to highlight these pieces on the blog, and our contributors are sure to respond to them and debate just as they would a blog post.
For starters, read Dahlia Lithwick's piece from the weekend on how to heal the rift between the older and younger feminists created by the campaign, Emily Bazelon's article on why it's important to focus on issues that will improve the lives of women, regardless of who is the Democratic candidate, and Melinda Henneberger's essay on how feminism will survive.
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In editing a piece about the election this morning, for the first time this season, I didn't replace "them" in a sentence referring back to the president with "him or her." We've only got XYs in contention now, and so "him" will do. It's a small thing, but it made me sad. Though not enough to sympathize much with your McCain-flirting friend, Melinda. The idea that Obama is an empty suit makes absolutely no sense to me now that I've finished reading his first book, Dreams From My Father. Anyone else have thoughts about it? Mine, for starters, is whew, lots going on in that man's brain, and the wonder is that after giving voice to all that anger-laced identity-searching he is actually a candidate for president. That book was a feast of complexity, which meant that I ate it up. Of course, that's not a direct response to your friend's concerns, which were about his mastery of policy. But in the context of worrying about Obama's relative lack of experience, it matters to me that this guy is really really smart.
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Just received this e-mail from a friend, a Washington lawyer who is a lifelong Democrat and a generous donor to the party. She supported Hillary in the primary and is undecided about what she'll do in November:
I just read your XX column, and I wanted to share a couple thoughts. Even though Hillary characterized her campaign as a big feminist movement in her exit speech, I'm not sure all her supporters saw it that way. I also think the risk of defection to McCain is very real, and not limited to uneducated, working class types. Just in my office, I know 6-7 women, all lifelong Democrats from VA who are now planning to vote for McCain. They are all highly educated people who follow politics closely, and a couple even worked for Dems on the Hill at one point or another. The decision to defect to McCain has nothing to do with Hillary as a woman or Obama's personality. They like Obama enough as a person, but they think he's an empty suit—rhetoric with little record behind it. Even if they agree more with Obama's positions, it seems risky to put such an inexperienced person in the White House—especially after what happened last time. I think the media misses this. It is not all about feminism.
Having said that, I know there is a bit of truth to the feminist argument. I also know a strong, pro-choice Democrat from Maryland—someone who regularly hosts NARAL dinners—who is defecting to McCain, even though she understands his views on abortion. I doubt if this woman ever even voted for any Republican before in her whole life, and she just contributed to McCain's campaign. Truly amazing! I think Obama will have a real problem in the Electoral College if he does not find a way to reach out to the people who voted against him—for whatever reason. For now, I'm undecided and I'm planning on staying that way for a while. My big issue is the economy and both Obama and McCain are weak in that area, so it probably doesn't matter much.
I answered her that the experience issue doesn't resonate with me, especially as Cheney and Rummy had been around since the last ice age, and where did that get us? Hillary has been in the Senate only four years longer than Obama: big whoop. If you count his time in the Illinois Senate, he's actually had more experience as an elected official. (And while of course her experience as first lady counts for something, would we give Laura Bush full credit for those years—even though, as she belatedly tells us, she, too, had a big policy role all along?) The whole experience question just feels like a stand-in for race, or maybe something else I'm missing. Because when someone says they would slit their wrist before voting for Obama, that is NOT about Clinton having been in the Senate longer.
And here's my friend's response, which shows that hurt feelings cut both ways during the primary season, and opened some wounds that Obama must now work hard to help heal:
I think her years as first lady count for something, but regardless, she has a much better command of the issues. He was a back-bencher in the state senate, not committee chair, etc. ... He improved during the debates, but even at the end he was flubbing basic tax, economic, and foreign policy issues. Maybe I've been dealing with those issues for too long, but honestly, he is constantly struggling for answers and contradicting himself. I think it would help if he gave voters a sense of who he would appoint to his Cabinet. If he is just going to be an inspirational figurehead, I'd like to know who's going to be advising him. ... Bottom line—the divisions here are very, very deep for all sorts of reasons, and Obama has got to find a way to reach out. Many people are hurt by all the name calling in the campaign. [My son] was repeatedly called a racist at school for supporting Hillary, and I know they have had to address similar issues in [a private school in Washington]. I've heard that some African-American women who supported Hillary were subjected to threats and taunting. Of course, it's not Obama making those comments, and people need to realize that there is a downside to all that young voter passion, but it does not make you want to switch to the other team. Five years ago, I would have voted for McCain in a heartbeat because I've always liked him. He's definitely sold out to the right in those five years, though, and that's what gives me pause.'
That she's even thinking McCain should give her party pause, too.
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Anne, maybe you're right that the next female candidate will have to prove she's less divisive, but I'd reject that test as tedious and unfair. Why should Ms. Whoever Comes Next have to answer for Hillary's sins (such as they are)? In the short term, yes, the legacy of Clinton '08 looks like a lot of splintering. But I hold out hope that's not going to last long, and we'll see women voters harness this energy for more substantive gains than the now-touted V.P. nomination. I just don't get why that's a consolation prize worth cherishing. (More on that here.)
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I spent the day of Hillary's concession speech at a college reunion with one of my oldest friends, and we were talking about the ways, negative and positive, in which Hillary's campaign has served as a role model for our (suddenly!) 41-year-old selves. One take-away from watching her over the last 16 months, we decided, was a motto that might have saved her campaign and could serve most women I know in good stead in our professional and personal lives: Don't Be a Victim. She was always at her best as a candidate when she lightly mocked gender conventions (like that moment in the New Hampshire debate when she deflected a moronic question about her popularity ratings with a wry "Well, that hurts my feelings.") When she actually did showcase her own hurt feelings (with the "pile-on" complaint, for example, or with any and all attempts to win the race-vs.-gender sweepstakes of oppression), she came off as the girl trying to get out of gym class because of her period. But to say that HRC should have toned down the whining is not to say she should have campaigned more like a man. I thought the much-derided tears-in-a-diner moment was a legitimate expression of exhaustion-driven vulnerability, and I hope Slate's Tim Noah is right that the diner sob (really, it was more of a sniffle) represents a turning point in the politics of weeping. With the pitiless mill we put them through, I'm impressed all presidential candidates, male and female, don't regularly crumble into sniveling heaps.
But my friend and I also agreed that, for all the delusionality of the late stage of her campaign, there was something perversely admirable about Hillary's refusal to quit, her blithe disregard for the fact that a great demographic swath of our nation hates her guts. Wanting to please, to be seen as personable and reasonable and—in all senses of the word—attractive, remains a constant in female professional and personal life. Ours is a culture that views the openly expressed desires of older women as risible and grotesque (witness the subplot of the new Adam Sandler comedy, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, in which we're encouraged to laugh at the sex-starved grannies who line up to get their hair, and themselves, done by Sandler's randy Israeli stylist/hero.) As I watched the supposedly comic ecstasy of Zohan's clients on the eve of the Montana and South Dakota primaries, I couldn't help thinking, there's Hillary's base. What's so funny about what they want?
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For different reasons, Kim, I, too, have been utterly mystified by the phenomenon of the Angry White Women, the "feminists" who appear to be upset by Hillary's defeat, and who interpret it as some sort of blow against women. Partly this is because, as I think I've said before, I've always thought Hillary an apalling role model for young women ("Lesson No. 1: Marry the right man"). More importantly though, the last few weeks of her campaign have been not so much feminist as pathological. Why did she keep going for so long, even after it was clear to everybody else that she would lose? Because she was fighting for all the young girls who want to grow up to be president? Or because she was trying to prove something about her odd marriage—or, more likely, prove something to her odd husband? It sure seemed to me that her unnecessarily prolonged campaign had a lot more to do with Hillary's psychological issues than the country's political issues.
Besides, as I hardly need to rehearse here, it was hardly the world's most enlightened campaign. The sly, subracist innuendoes; the whiskey-drinking and allusions to a childhood fondness for guns; the attempt to get the Democratic Party to change its rules after the fact. What was all that about? Are Hillary's feminists pleased that their champion stooped that low? I suppose it's nice that she's decided to be generous and magnanimous now, but it's a bit late: She's done a lot of damage to Obama, as well as to her party. And it's not at all clear to me that her campaign did any good for women in politics, let alone women in general. The next female presidential candidate is going to have to struggle pretty hard to prove that she's not as divisive a political figure as Hillary.
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If you are one one of our readers who feels furious, betrayed, slammed by Hillary's bowing out, watch this to get your blood boiling. It's a lot of Chris Matthews, whose particular form of flirting was well documented in the New York Times Magazine profile. But still.
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It is tempting to believe that Hillary seemed so relaxed, and confident, and generous this afternoon because she has finally accepted her place. And that place is, once again, second to a giant of male charisma. But this would be insulting, and also not true. I think she projected such calm certainty in her bowing out speech because she is at her best out of combat. When the white shirt is out, she can put her demons to rest and, for the most part, let go of the enemies-under-every-rock view that seems to always darken her mood.
If this had been her hello instead of her goodbye I might have felt more enthusiasm for her, or at least affection. She opened on a historic note, mentioning the little girls who now understand that "we can be whatever we want to be." She placed her candidacy in a string of civil rights victories. She mentioned the 50—50!—women who have orbited the Earth.* It's not merely that she cheerfully checked the boxes all the sour pundits drew for her—enthusiastic, repeated endorsements of Obama, calls for Democratic unity. It's that she finally accepted her role as a pathbreaker for women, and not the victim of constant attacks.
Yes, there were some uh-oh moments. The digression about "barriers" and "biases" that went on a little too long. The weird metaphor of her supporters as 18 million shards of glass chipping off the glass ceiling. But for the most part, she hit the notes Meghan was complaining had been missing from her candidacy.
Yes, the female Hillary and Obama supporters will be fighting it out for some time. But with this graceful exit, she allowed the larger conversation to move on. After her speech I was listening to conservative talk radio—in this case the talk show hosted by Richard Land, the enlightened Southern Baptist leader. He is obviously no Obama supporter but he could not help but describe his nomination as the symbol of the greatness of America, and how far we have come. This could stem from conservatives' reluctance to hit hard at a black man (as Peggy Noonas argues) Or it could be genuine. Either way, it can't be bad for the Democrats.
Read more XX Factor posts about Hillary's exit.
*Correction, June 9: The post originally said that 50 women had orbited space.
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Way to woman up.
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Dahlia, thank you so much for your piece; finally, the scales are falling from my eyes. I have been, I must admit, a bit bemused by the rise of the Angry White Woman (AWW) this year. That older white women should support Hillary Clinton with passion did not surprise me, of course. That they should decry incidents of sexism made perfect sense. Even that they should turn angry when her frontrunner campaign began to fail was no great mystery. After all, I came of age, and launched my career, in the time of the Angry White Male. Pissed-off white folks are old hat to me.
What confused me was the tone of that anger—the way it was consistently and passionately framed in terms of shock and woundedness. The way the words betrayal and abandonment have been hurled about, with their insulting implications of what was owed and to whom, of what battles were fought and on who's behalf they were so launched.
I also didn't get how so many white women could be so shocked that sexism still exists. Such a level of insulation seems a privilege in itself. When I am stopped by a white cop for driving in a white neighborhood, I am not shocked. When my neighbor tells me confidentially I am the least ethnic black person he has ever met and how happy that makes him, I am not shocked. My mother, a seventysomething woman who grew up in Mississippi being stomped by black men and white folks—male and female—alike, is not shocked. My sister, who rose to become a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and who says quite clearly that sexism is far worse than racism in the military, was not shocked by this discovery. How could she be? Growing up black in Memphis had well prepared her for discrimination of any stripe. (One example: the white female guidance counselor who told her not to bother applying for college because she could not possibly do the work even if she got in. Result: one B.A. plus two masters' degrees, including one from Harvard.)
But now I see why I have been confused: This whole thing has nothing to do with me. This is a family fight between older white women and their daughters, and me and my mother and my sisters are not even in the conversation.
What a relief. Ya'll carry on.
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Emily Bazelon, Melinda Henneberger, Dahlia Lithwick, and Meghan O'Rourke chatted about Hillary on washingtonpost.com this afternoon.
Some excerpts:
Dahlia weighed in on idea that young feminists don't understand how hard it was back in the 70s: "I think the whole ‘second wave versus young feminists' narrative swamped the whole campaign and ultimately obscured a lot more than it illuminated about the race."
Meghan addressed the thorny question of the Clinton marriage: "While I feel I can be kind of doctrinaire about feminism, and the need for women to band together, I feel we should all be libertarians when it comes to eros. That is, who knows what keeps her in the marriage; maybe it's ambition, but maybe it's a complicated form of love.
Melinda answered a reader's question about the all the anti-Hillary sentiment on the XX Factor: "When Hillary Clinton first appeared on the national scene, I was so taken with her, and loved everything from her history to her hairband. ...[In the 1990s] I saw both Clintons as the victims of terrible regional and class bias and her as a target of woman-haters across the land. Her and their behavior over the years has changed my view, and no one is sorrier about that than I am."
And Emily discussed whether we're ever going to stop hearing about the "women's vote": "Even if it's annoying to be treated as a bloc-member automaton, it's not a bad thing to be courted-it should mean, anyway, that things you (we) care about are getting attention and in theory at least that could have a real result. Universal preschool, anyone? Social security parity? Paid family leave?"
Read the whole transcript.
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I was not one of those people who cried when I heard Obama's now-famous speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Nor did I find it so spectacularly brilliant as to be beyond any critical analysis. I thought it was a really good speech, but I also felt it was too laden with buzz words meant to signal that he was indeed a different kind of black candidate. When he said: "There's not a black America and white America ... there's the United States of America," and the crowd went wild, I disagreed. We all know that there are two very distinct Americas separated by class and color. I understood that people embraced the speech because its sense of optimism went right to the heart of American idealism—not American realism.
I also did not get all warm and teary about Obama's Philadelphia speech last March. It was an important and necessary speech, for sure; but again, I found it too calculated and believe it was mostly meant to appease white voter anxiety about the Jeremiah Wright controversy and assuage fears that Obama might be a closet racist and black militant.
As I watched Obama's speech last night, however, I could not stop crying, and I was surprised by my reaction. It, too, was clearly a carefully scripted, political speech. So why did it crack through my cynical and hardened heart? Because it allowed me to take a deep breath of relief.
I've been holding my breath throughout the primary campaign, waiting with dread for his candidacy to implode—for him to be struck down by scandal, dirty political tricks, racism, a media obsessed with his being "the first black man" with a realistic chance at the presidency. And, of course, I thought the Clinton Machine might take him down. Seeing him on that stage yesterday, regal in his bearing, unapologetic for having stuck to his audacity of hope, knowing he had won a battle he fought hard for and won fairly, and with dignity and grace—two words that can no longer be ascribed to the Clinton candidacy—made me deeply hopeful. That's why I cried. I felt happy for him, for us, for this country. Yesterday's speech not only went to the heart of American idealism, it also wrote a new narrative for American realism. Whether Obama wins or loses in the fall, we all won something special yesterday.
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You've been reading their thoughts on Hillary Clinton's campaign for the last six months or so. Here's your chance to ask a question! XXers Emily Bazelon, Melinda Henneberger, Dahlia Lithwick, and Meghan O'Rourke will be chatting online on washingtonpost.com at 2 p.m. ET Thursday.
Last week, Dahlia batted down the canard that we'll never see another woman presidential candidate in our lifetimes if Hillary is denied, and today Meghan has a piece saying that Hillary's problem is that she hasn't been enough of a feminist. Melinda has written recently on Hillary's RFK assassination gaffe and her "hardworking Americans, white Americans" comments. And Emily is ready for the Dems to unify.
Submit your questions now and go to the washingtonpost.com on Thursday to see the XXers in action.
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Amen (so to speak), Dahlia and Melinda. My quick take-away was this: Hillary Clinton is trying to create an equation between her campaign and a kind of religious quest. She told her supporters that every vote of theirs was a "prayer." (So votes for Obama were what? Votes for the devil?) She implied that her supporters were "invisible" to everyone else. She stressed her dedication to public service. Softening her voice, she said she just wants what she had "always wanted," namely, to help fix health care and end the war. (Never mind that she voted for the war.) She animated the cultish, irrational mob impulse in her supporters. (It's no accident that one of the first "invisible" voters she mentioned was a nurse.) Then she said: "I want to hear from you. I hope you'll go to my web site HillaryClinton.com and. share your thoughts with me .... and in the coming days I'll be consulting with advisers and party learders to determine how to move forward."
Now, after that speech, how many supporters are really going to log in to her message boards and urge, "Bow out gracefully, Hill"? No; she's preparing us for the Great Schism. The moment when the Democratic Party, like the Catholic Church once did, breaks into two camps that can't reconcile their values.
Hillary's right, in a sense, that the way we elect our party nominees is a little ... complex. Even flawed. Sure. That's open for debate. But not WHILE the election is taking place. For better or for worse, we don't rewrite the rules midgame in American politics. Or at least we don't do that most of the time. And that's always been what made American democracy robust. The primary system is one the United States has followed for a long time. And Clinton doesn't get to change the rules midelection simply because they don't favor her. So I find it disingenuous—deeply, deeply disingenuous—that she claimed last night she really cares about "the deepest values of our party." Ours is a system of representative democracy. You don't get to throw a temper tantrum just because "your vote" wasn't "heard." After all, every time there is an election, some voters feel remorse that their candidates didn't win. If each of those candidates stirred up their supporters to the point where, as Dahlia put it, they looked ready to set off small brushfires, we'd be living in a much more violent country.
So you know what, Hillary? The deepest values of the party would suggest that you don't emotionally manipulate those who have less power and less authority than you. They would suggest that you don't stir voters into a moblike frenzy.They would place on you the burden of acting like a representativeup someone who can compromise gracefully, negotiate wisely, and be generous even when the world does not bow to your will. Instead, you're creating a schism within the Democratic Party. If you really think there's a problem with the way primaries are run, take it up after you bow out.
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When you call my name, it's like a little prayer/
I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there/
In the midnight hour I can feel your power/
Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there
—Madonna
OK, so now we know what's on Hillary's iPod. But was Hillary's "Like a Prayer'' speech ("I often felt that every vote was a prayer for our nation,'' she said) a threat or a promise? Was it a ham-handed demand for the No. 2 slot? (Pony up, friend o' mine, if you don't want 18 million angry Democrats on your front lawn by daybreak!) Or was it on the contrary her way of making sure he doesn't offer it to her—if he did so now, he'd look like the sort of person who gives in to blackmail—while also guaranteeing that her supporters are good and mad when he does not offer it to her. (And if it's the latter, she may or may not be on to her own sabotage; the proof that not everything she does is on purpose is her strange insistence on using and reusing that completely discredited battle cry about staying the course. "I'm so proud we stayed the course together,'' she said last night.)
There has never been anything wrong with her decision to stay in the race; it's how she waged war that was at issue. There is nothing wrong with the fact that she did not concede last night, either. But her mouth says unity, and her feet say kick him where it hurts.
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It was a joyful moment after all. I ran upstairs and woke my daughter and my son to tell them. Their world will be different than ours, and that's a good thing.
The great James Baldwin said, "I love America more than any other country in the world." There's a very important second part to that quote, but tonight, I'll just leave it at that.
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Just finished watching Hillary Clinton’s unconcession speech. I guess we should give her credit for the fact that her supporters now look sufficiently angry to set small brushfires.
It would have been hard enough to choke down all the quasi-messianic imagery. (Each vote for her was “like a prayer;” supporters hand her rosaries AND bring her back from the dead.) But the real rhetorical gem tonight was the whole new “invisibility” trope: “None of you is invisible to me!” she vowed. So (subtext): “If I concede, America, you’d go right back to being invisible!” You’d be Tinkerbell!
Clinton did answer one burning question: “What does she want?” She just wants to win the war, turn the economy around, and fix health care. Since we all of us want those things, too, her real desire is actually to be the person who does it. Why doesn’t she just say that?
Nor have I any idea what to make of the call to her supporters to weigh in on her Web site with our own votes for whether she indeed goes on to the next round of Dancing With the Stars . . .
Unfortunately, I kept thinking of that Gilligan’s Island episode in which Ginger acts out an excruciatingly long and melodramatic death scene. You keep thinking her every last gasp is really it. But then she keeps rolling around and twitching because she’s been peeking through her fingers all along and knows you’re still watching.
Read more XX Factor posts on Hillary Clinton's speech Tuesday night.
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Hillary was on her game tonight. She looked good. She spoke well. She touched on the groups of voters she feels she owns and the problems of theirs she wants to solve. And, alas, she went from more conciliatory (congratulating Obama) to less (I won the popular vote, the 18 million people who voted for me). Fair enough that she doesn't want to drop out tonight. But couldn't she have done more to start laying the groundwork for unity? Marjorie and Kim have been expressing their doubts lately about how blacks and women can come together after the gibes and elbow-throwing of this campaign. The same question more generally applies to the two halves of the Democratic Party. I'd like to think voters can do some of this on their own, and that the divisions don't run as deep and aren't as full of acrimony as they've seemed lately. But the signals Hillary sends now matter enormously. And tonight, she' s still telling us that who the Democratic nominee is matters more than what he or she does—or, really, whether he or she wins. A friend of my mother's who is a Hillary supporter told an Obama fundraiser recently that she needs time to heal. That will be a lot easier if Hillary starts the clock running. Tenacity is a feminist trait, yes. But a strong woman should also know how to make a gracious exit.
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Congratulations, Barack Obama! And bye-bye, Hillary.
But don't be sad, die-hard Hillary supporters—you've still got a presumptive presidential nominee who values Hillary's experience and her contributions to his campaign, who's willing to take Hillary at her word and rely on her judgment, who's eager to enlist her in his campaign to get to the White House.
That would be John McCain, of course. His campaign is already sending around the video of Hillary helpfully asserting that both she and McCain have "passed the commander in chief test," while Obama brings Americans nothing but "a speech he gave in 2002."
Hillary, demand what's due to you: a slot as McCain's running mate! Hell, you've done so much for McCain already—you deserve it.
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Well, we probably won't be seeing those colorful prairie dresses and perfect tresses on the front page of the newspapers again very soon. I've been fascinated by the Yearning for Zion ranch drama, which I—like Dahlia, in her great piece comparing the seizure of children to the warehousing of Guantanamo prisoners—have been all but sure would end badly: the overintrusive state would sabotage itself, and the insular compound would become more insular and defensive than ever. But to judge by news reports of the deal struck yesterday, I'd say, with somewhat mixed feelings, that the monthslong mess may well rate as a victory for the state, and maybe for teen mothers, too-even if it was a legal travesty.
The real goal all along, or so it seems plausible to me, has been a criminal prosecution of male leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints found to have impregnated, and otherwise mistreated, young adolescent girls bound to them in "spiritual marriages." It was a Herculean challenge, given a community so barricaded against the outside world. But a sweeping raid, however unwarranted it was soon judged to be, forced open the doors long enough to gather DNA and other evidence from the women and children necessary to substantiate any charges. What's more, the judge's order yesterday evidently specifies that the criminal investigation go on, and facilitates it by barring sect members from traveling outside Texas. In addition, it subjects sect members to continued scrutiny by Child Protective Services. Already the prospect of such supervision seems to have elicited an avowal that the sect will cease to condone underage marriage. It's enough to make ignoring legal requirements look like good social policy-fitting in its way, I suppose, when dealing with a community based on polygamy.
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So here we all sit, waiting for the lady in the pantsuit to go ahead and sing. It's going to be hard for anyone who cares about equality and multiculturalism and common ground and all that jazz to feel joy at the end of this slugfest, regardless of where they stand. For a long time, I felt bruised by the Clinton/Obama wars, but now I just feel numb, and that worries me more.
Reading Geraldine Ferraro's irrational screed in the Boston Globe this weekend, which Marjorie so brilliantly deconstructs today on The Root, did not make me bewildered or angry or chagrined. It made me tired. I just shrugged and turned the page. Whatever, Geraldine. Keep on raging against the dying of that light.
For the life of me ,I simply cannot see this rampant, bludgeoning sexism that Ferraro and her ilk keep spewing about. Sexist incidents, yes. Sexist columnists and sexist commentators and some idiot with a shirt - yes. But some kind of wholesale, bloodthirsty sexist take down of Clinton? No. One condoned, snickeringly, by Obama and his crew? No, no, no. (And I won't even address Ferraro's laughable charge that white working-class folks can't relate to Obama and his wife because of their education but somehow can relate to Bill and Hillary, who apparently attended community college on 4-H scholarships. As far as I know.) And so, not seeing it, my inclination is to brush the dirt off my shoulders and say to Ferraro and all those other Angry White Women out there: Get a frickin' grip.
What stops me is only this: Too often I have stood in that painful place where all around you people (white people, mostly, in my case) insist that your interpretation of your own experience is incorrect. You're too sensitive, you're overreacting, yeah, that's what I said, but it's not what I meant, you just don't understand. I know as well as anyone that just because a huge and particular swath of humanity does not "see" something doesn't mean it does not exist. As Tim Wise points out, in this point-by-point essay on white denial, even in the early 1960s—a time at which America still operated under homegrown apartheid—most white Americans insisted racism did not exist or was not a major factor in the lives of black folks. Gallup polls show that nearly two-thirds claimed to believe blacks were treated the same as whites in their communities, while 85 percent said black children had just as good a chance as white children to get a good education.
The power of human beings to block out what they do not wish to see is astonishing.
So I want to be careful here.
Still, I just don't see it.
And, heartbreakingly, I'm so numb I just don't care.