Will the sexism aimed at Hillary Clinton in the media and in political discourse create a new interest in feminism?
There are increasing reports that women who never experienced the snickering and mockery that greeted the feminist movement of the '70s are awakening to the fact that we may not be living in a more enlightened, post-feminist period after all.
The Wall Street Journal found that women across the U.S. are worrying that sexist attitudes that their co- workers suddenly seem willing to voice will hurt their chances of moving ahead at work. New York Magazine writer Amanda Fortin interviewed women in their 30s, 40s and 50s and found they described
"a kind of conversion experience brought about by Clinton's candidacy. In some cases, the campaign had politicized them: Women who had never thought much about sexual politics were forwarding Gloria Steinem's now-infamous op-ed around, reiterating her claim that "gender is probably the most restricting force in American life."
Women were stunned to discover that slurs and jokes once restricted to locker rooms or to right-wing talk show hosts were showing up in the mainstream media. The Women's Media Center produced a video for the Internet entitled "Sexism Sells, But We Aren't Buying It," that takes your breath away if you thought sexism was a dinosaur. Male TV reporters and commentators say that Hillary reminds every man of his first wife, that her shrill voice is what every guy hears when his wife asks him to take out the garbage, she's accused of "pimping out" her daughter by taking her on the campaign trail, accused of castrating her opponents, and when a McCain supporter asks, "How can we beat the bitch" everybody around chuckles. Including the candidate.
Hillary was compared to Glenn Close as the murderess in Fatal Attraction by an NPR editor -- one the "good guys," not some right-wing troglodyte. And in byplay between MSNBC's David Shuster and Tucker Carlson, the guys displayed an ugly Hillary pen that uttered a horrible laugh when you pressed a button. Both men agreed that they would miss Hillary's cackle.
Women were also appalled to see the misogyny that appeared on the Internet, not on the expected right-wing sites but on progressive blogs and even on Facebook. It seemed like a stupid juvenile joke when a few guys held up a sign saying "Hillary Clinton, stop running for president and make me a sandwich," but some 23,000 young men belong to a Facebook group with that name, which also has 2,200 "wall posts." Facebook, popular with high-school and college students, has dozens of anti-Hillary groups, many of which, according to women bloggers who track the posts, take great delight in heaping abuse on Clinton as a woman, imagining her reduced to a subservient role, and visiting violence upon her. That's a lot different than critiquing her vote on the war or her tactics on the race issue.
Sociologist C.J. Pascoe, a researcher with the Digital Youth Project at Berkeley's Institute for the Study of Social Change, says that Hillary Clinton offers young men on social-networking sites a ripe target for their aggression and worries about the political impact of such sites. She warns that the broader society ignores the implications of such conversations on these sites at its peril. "This is the new world that's coming," she told the Seattle Times.
A new world in which young men find it cool to be hostile to women and have an equally cool outlet for such ideas is worrisome. Female political bloggers say that are frightened of the hate e-mail they get, threatening violence and telling them to just shut up.
What's disturbing to women is the new acceptance of attitudes that many believed were discarded after the women's movement went mainstream. While the media would have been outraged by a sign that said, "Barack Obama, quit running for president and shine my shoes," the sign aimed at Clinton got lots of airplay and lots of chuckles. Could anyone imagine a pen that pictured Obama eating a watermelon being jokingly passed back and forth between TV anchors?
The deeper point behind the jokes and slurs about women has long roots in history and in our cultural subconscious -- that female power is unnatural, dangerous, perilous to public order and frightening to men. It was stunning to me the degree to which words connoting dread were used so often in the mainstream media -- ones that connoted castration, witchcraft, murderesses, nagging wives, controlling mothers, oedipal complexes, prostitution, etc.
Historically, these ideas have all been used to silence women -- to keep them put of the public sphere and away from power. What's the message when the first woman to have a real shot at the presidency is consistently called shrill and cackling? It signals that women should have no voice in the public arena and will be humiliated if they try to enter it. Many pundits are saying that Hillary broke the glass ceiling by her gallant run--but I wonder if the message many women got was that they could not imagine taking the ridicule heaped upon her.
The upside of all this -- if there is one -- is that feminism may become more appealing to women who thought the word was old-hat. Just as women who saw Anita Hill shamed and mocked when she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment created a new awareness of the issue, it may be that the jokes and the sneers and the name-calling may have an unintended effect.
They may provide a shot in the arm to the movement that some people once mockingly called "women's lib." That movement changed much in the nation, and has the power to do so again.
Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers is the author of Selling Anxiety,: How the News Media Scare Women (University Press of New England.)
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