Seeing Sexism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it's different this time, say the women of my daughter's generation. We've won the battle. We don't need the White House. Say what? We don't need it? We're past it? We have all heard that before, too. It's an old, old story. Hillary is the establishment? Hillary stole the vote in New Hampshire? Hillary is passé. Hillary is too close to Bill. Hillary is not close enough to Bill. Hillary is calculating. Hillary is cold. Hillary cried. (Actually, she didn't cry -- as Jon Stewart and I pointed out). She just looked human. She showed a teeny bit of vulnerability. UNFAIR! They scream. FEMININE WILES! They scream. The heart of being a woman is to be always in the wrong.

Let's be honest here. We don't know how a female President would act. But we could look around. I know America is a provincial country, but we could look at Germany, Ireland, England, Pakistan, India, Argentina, and Finland--to name a few. We could ask why the USA, out of all the so-called "civilized" countries, is so damned afraid of a woman leader.

We could look at the invisible sexism--as Gloria Steinem has been asking us to do for nearly half a century. We could acknowledge that a multiracial male president with a fierce feminist wife would be great for America, but maybe we should break the invisible gender barrier first. Yes, blacks have been hideously oppressed, but so have women--and black women know this better than white women do. We have been tokens for so long that most of us just take it for granted. The flaying of Hillary Clinton shows us we can take nothing for granted. We need to break that tough, annealed, glass ceiling with the barbed wire over it. And we need to break it now.

If this is the politics of gender, so be it. We need a politics of gender in this country. Obama is a good man who will only get better. Youth is on his side. Perhaps Hillary will appoint him to the Supreme Court where he can counter that embarrassing Clarence Thomas. Perhaps he will be President in 2016 or perhaps, even better, Michelle Obama will be. They have nothing but time.

Hillary's time has come.

Comments

[DietrichMoody]

oops - correction, should preview before I post.

Sexism can be defined in many ways and as I've been told one shouldn't "deny" a woman's right to experience it. I'm just repeating what I've been told.

What I find sexist is that Hillary Clinton had to be "Vetted" for 16 years before the Nation deemed her qualified, experienced and ready to lead. That's obscene. The "We found our female Messiah" mentality but lets wait 20 years to get her ready is sexist,

Not to mention the many years Hillary spent the wife of a Gov. Its like, she can't be President of the US, the all important job, until this Woman goes through this major 20 vetting process. This is sexist and women follow it. But the problem is Hillary waited too long.

To use your idea, "A woman's time has come" but Hillary Clinton time has passed. There are women out there can lead, HAVE lead, been executives, made tough decisions and put themselves out there - look at the number of Female senators and Governors we have - they can be Presidential Candidates. I agree let's find a woman President and not give her a 16 year test.

As for Obama. Ms. Jong, you either DONT GET IT but statements like the following don't help. "Perhaps Hillary will appoint him to the Supreme Court where he can counter that embarrassing Clarence Thomas."
why? because of another black on the bench to counter another. I doubt Ginsberg was put on the bench to counter Sandra Day O'conner, and if so that THINKING should change. Beside Thomas and Barack are worlds apart as far as culture, background, and even skin color.
Stay a feminist, but don't get into racial comparisons it is definitely not your forte.

[rationalmadman]

I haven't had that good of a laugh in weeks. That was one of the best parodies of feminist whining I have ever heard. Congrats!

[maidyalook]

Thank you for saying what I could never say as eloquently. I"ve been saying ever since Hillary started campaigning, that a woman is more of a 'Change" for the country than a man. I agree that Obama will someday , with some more experience under his belt, make a great president. But facts are facts. He is still just another man,black yes, but no one is saying a thing about Hillary already making history by being the first woman to win a primary.

[fitCTmom]

Oh please! I am 38 years old, a registered democrat (who voted for Bill 2X) and the mother of 3 boys. I am tired of hearing about "girl power" and how "hard" it is for women. Women are represented in every level of business, government and outnumber male students on college campuses. We live longer, we're healthier and happier. We initiate a majority of the divorces and manage the finances in a majority of households. Yes, we're are also poorer, make out less financially in a divorce and make less money dollar for dollar than a man does. Women in America have it better than women in almost any other country, yet, we should vote for the leader of the free world b/c she is a woman? Isn't that what feminism is against? Don't we want women treated equally? If that's the case, she must be held to the same stanards as a man! Hillary is polarizing, is not forthcoming with her past (Clinton Library, anyone?), and failed to get healthcare passed because the used it as a bargaining chip to pass NAFTA (an enormous FAILURE!). She is a one term senator and a former first lady. If a man was running for president with the same credential as Hillary he would be recieving the same critizisms. Seems to me Hillary is getting the benefit of the doubt BECAUSE she is a woman. So I guess we should all vote for Hillary to support another feminist ideal...af­firmative action?

[DietrichMoody]

Sexist can be defined in many ways and as I've been told one shouldn't "deny" a woman's right to experience it. I'm just repeating what I've been told.

What I find sexist is that Hillary Clinton had to be "Vetted" for 16 years before the Nation deemed her qualified, experienced and ready to lead. That's obscene. The "We found our female Messiah" mentality but lets wait 20 years to get her ready is sexist,

Not to mention the many years Hillary spent the wife of a Gov. Its like, she can't be President of the US, the all important job, until this Woman goes through this major 20 vetting process. This is sexist and women follow it. But the problem is Hillary waited too long.

To use your idea, "A woman's time has come" but Hillary Clinton time has passed. There are women out there can lead, HAVE lead, been executives, made tough decisions and put themselves out there - look at the number of Female senators and Governors we have - they can be Presidential Candidates. I agree let's find a woman President and not give her a 16 year test.

As for Obama. Ms. Jong, you either DONT GET IT but statements like the following don't help.
"Perhaps Hillary will appoint him to the Supreme Court where he can counter that embarrassing Clarence Thomas."

why? because of another black on the bench to counter another. I doubt Ginsberg was put on the bench to counter Sandra Day O'conner, and if so that THINKING should change. Beside Thomas and Barack are worlds apart as far as culture, background, and even skin color.

Stay a feminist, but don't get into racial comparisons it is definitely not your forte.

[cobblepot]

Yes, Erica, almost all of what you say is true. But even long-standing feminists should not vote for a candidate on the basis of gender or race or perhaps, even, "electabil­ity." We should vote for the candidate whose values we believe in, and whose track record we admire most. And for many of us, that IS NOT HILLARY CLINTON.

[waiguoren]

Erica:

A quick and zipless response:

I'm amazed you're not way past that frozen-in-time feminist crap by now.

The two (count 'em )sexs are infinitely more interesting and complex than all that dry decrepit windowdressing.

Like I gotta tell you that!!

It's as irrelevant and dead as Joe Stalin.

[philistine]

"If this is the politics of gender, so be it. We need a politics of gender in this country."

I beg to differ. We need to vote for a candidate whose positions we favor - or in absence of such a candidate, we need to vote for the one we dislike the least. The sex of the candidate should be immaterial. I realize that, for many, this is not the case; and I hope that will change. But "us versus them" is, by definition, divisive. Rovian politics depends on such division to split the Democratic vote and deliver political office to the minority, who REALLY doesn't care about women.

As it stands now, I will vote for a candidate other than HRC in the primary, because her positions on several issues are not to my liking. If she changes her positions on those issues and convinces me that she's sincere about those changes, I will reconsider. If she's the Democratic candidate for the general election, I will support her against any of the Eleven Dwarves the Republicans offer.

I agree that many of the pundits are biased, or are appeal to our own biases to convince us of their position. I realize that many, if not most, have a dog in the fight, so I tend to ignore them. And, yes, Jon Stewart ably illuminated the obvious overreaction by self-important members of the Fourth Estate. The effect of Stewart's satire, in this instance at least, was to calm the waters, rather than employ a wave machine. I believe that we all should try to follow that example.

Best regards,

[rabun666]

Erica, you provide an excellent forum for the gender discrimination being argued now in the Supreme Court. It's the voter ID law which is intended to prohibit mostly Democratic voters from voting as the most affected would be minority and elderly voters. Most elderly voters are female, by a substantial amount, and vote Democratic. This need to be trumpeted. Also, those voter that would be discriminated against would have no recourse to vote against those who want to prohibit them from voting.