![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptOkay, here's the deal. Remember, if you will, the last election cycle. The one where Hillary Clinton was classified as being a frigid bitch, someone with the policy chops to run the show, but who had no warmth, life, or personality to wow the voters with? And that was too ugly for anyone to honestly want to consider for the office, especially when compared to that vibrant and handsome black man over there? The one where Sarah Palin's winking at the audience overshadowed the cold, hard, truth that she hadn't a frakking clue about what policies she had? The "hockey mom", invoking the trope of the sexualized "soccer mom", the older woman fantasy of a normally uptight mother letting go with wild sexual abandon behind closed doors? The MILF comparisons, favorably for Palin, unfavorably for Clinton? The repeated attempts to show Palin's lack of preparation drowned out by the talking heads parroting endlessly that she appealed to female voters because she was female, and those same talking heads saying that Hillary would get the female vote on strength of being female, policy-wonkiness-be-damned?
I want to say, at the end of that, we all looked back on that as if it were a drunken bender and resolved to get sober and start talking policy instead of physicality. Well...this election cycle has and hasn't been that much different. The President of the National Organizaiton for Women defended Christine O'Donnell against a Gawker post about a "one-night stand" someone claimed to have with her. NOW doesn't like Christine O'Donnell's politics, but they also don't want her to be reduced to the size of her boobs. The article itself lists off several of the other sexist attacks being run against female candidates in their political races this year. For her own part, Christine O'Donnell participated in the same kinds of attacks, by making sure to mention the salient points of the whisper campaign against Mike Castle while denying it. She said repeatedly that she didn't think Mike Castle is gay and that she wished the people who said Mike Castle is gay would stop saying Mike Castle is gay, and won't they just shut up about how Mike Castle is gay?
It's a familiar sequence, and you can, in some ways, substitute minority groups in and have the statements and the animosity hold true. You can even change the setting - Nisi Shawl, the Guest of Honor at WisCon this year, points out the work being done to make steampunk less of a white Victorian Britain setting, and to engage head-on with those elements of the world at the time that were less than civilized, like slave trading, for example. Or consider all the reasons why the Elizabeth Moon statements were harmful and demeaning to immigrants. As a populace, we're really, really, good at being offensive, intentionally or not, toward members of a minority group.
All of these specific instances can boil down into a general form to what happens whenever a woman makes substantive comment about issues - aptly illustrated, in this case. The comic is about how women (who have the perspective) get mansplained and told that their physical attractiveness is the sole thing that makes men want to listen to them any time they try to assert that they know something about sexism (being the recipients of it and all), and then when they try for "content of their character" instead of "size of their boobs", they get a circle-jerk of Morons who denigrate her physical attractiveness, claim that women know nothing about sexism, and generally be loud in their ignorance and "win" because they attract all the other Morons who want to rush to the aid of the guy who might have to submit to the logic of a woman, shock and horror.
Now think again about the last election cycle. And this election cycle. The Shirley Sherrod fake video. The ACORN pimp-and-prostitute fake video. The continuing popularity of characters that should have long-since been discredited on their political stands. The deliberate bashing by Ken Buck - "Vote for me because I do not wear high heels". The whisper campaign about Mike Castle's sexual orientation. The fact that Republicans in office have had scandals involving paying off people that they've been having affairs with, that have kept their seat, or a serially-divorced conservative bloviating about the sanctity of marriage and its importance, or the indisputable fact that many conservative and tea party candidates support forced birth to every pregnancy without exception in any case, and none of this seems to make a dent in the talking heads or in the voting populace's minds. (That aren't already disposed to notice it, anyway.) The way the Republican Party treated Meghan McCain when she said something they didn't like (see Sforzando of October 19th - if you've had that feeling like we've done this before, and recently, give yourself a cookie.) All of these things point in a rather huge and honking manner to one unstated, unspoken piece of privilege that may as well be Gojira in the room - the assumption that women don't count, and can be safely ignored in election cycles. It's shuffling the Southern Strategy off to another minority (in those cases where it isn't being run as the nakedly racist thing that it is - looking at you and your evil immigrants ad, Sharron Angle and Jan Brewer, and your "repeal the 14th Amendment bit applying to private business", Rand Paul.) and trusting that if some woman or man should pierce the fog and point out the misogyny, the wave that will rush to the defense of the idea that only men, preferably white and Protestant, have ideas worth listening to will silence anyone from building any sort of momentum to the idea that politics is supposed to be about issues, policies, positions, and plans than about whether or not the person running for office is pretty, charismatic, affects stupidity enough to feel like a normal person, or has a nice rack to look at so they don't have to listen to her. And while I see it flare up on the appropriate partisan network when their candidate is turned into a sex object, I don't see all that many commentators or newspersons devoting time and effort to stopping the underlying privilege when it's not election season, and networks choosing to hold any campaign that reduces themselves to making sexist, racist, or other -ist comments in contempt for denigrating the political process.
Wouldn't it be nice if people got called out on their bigotry every now and then, on the air, and not for partisan ratings, but because what that person said is offensive and deserves no place in the political discourse?
Can dream, can't I...and while I'm asking for miracles, would everyone please elect actual liberal candidates to office, so that the country can understand what actually is liberal, instead of the centrism that gets passed off as socialist liberalism in this country?
Go vote, regardless of whether you like liberals or not. But do so in an informed manner - know what you're voting for by sending that person to represent you.
I want to say, at the end of that, we all looked back on that as if it were a drunken bender and resolved to get sober and start talking policy instead of physicality. Well...this election cycle has and hasn't been that much different. The President of the National Organizaiton for Women defended Christine O'Donnell against a Gawker post about a "one-night stand" someone claimed to have with her. NOW doesn't like Christine O'Donnell's politics, but they also don't want her to be reduced to the size of her boobs. The article itself lists off several of the other sexist attacks being run against female candidates in their political races this year. For her own part, Christine O'Donnell participated in the same kinds of attacks, by making sure to mention the salient points of the whisper campaign against Mike Castle while denying it. She said repeatedly that she didn't think Mike Castle is gay and that she wished the people who said Mike Castle is gay would stop saying Mike Castle is gay, and won't they just shut up about how Mike Castle is gay?
It's a familiar sequence, and you can, in some ways, substitute minority groups in and have the statements and the animosity hold true. You can even change the setting - Nisi Shawl, the Guest of Honor at WisCon this year, points out the work being done to make steampunk less of a white Victorian Britain setting, and to engage head-on with those elements of the world at the time that were less than civilized, like slave trading, for example. Or consider all the reasons why the Elizabeth Moon statements were harmful and demeaning to immigrants. As a populace, we're really, really, good at being offensive, intentionally or not, toward members of a minority group.
All of these specific instances can boil down into a general form to what happens whenever a woman makes substantive comment about issues - aptly illustrated, in this case. The comic is about how women (who have the perspective) get mansplained and told that their physical attractiveness is the sole thing that makes men want to listen to them any time they try to assert that they know something about sexism (being the recipients of it and all), and then when they try for "content of their character" instead of "size of their boobs", they get a circle-jerk of Morons who denigrate her physical attractiveness, claim that women know nothing about sexism, and generally be loud in their ignorance and "win" because they attract all the other Morons who want to rush to the aid of the guy who might have to submit to the logic of a woman, shock and horror.
Now think again about the last election cycle. And this election cycle. The Shirley Sherrod fake video. The ACORN pimp-and-prostitute fake video. The continuing popularity of characters that should have long-since been discredited on their political stands. The deliberate bashing by Ken Buck - "Vote for me because I do not wear high heels". The whisper campaign about Mike Castle's sexual orientation. The fact that Republicans in office have had scandals involving paying off people that they've been having affairs with, that have kept their seat, or a serially-divorced conservative bloviating about the sanctity of marriage and its importance, or the indisputable fact that many conservative and tea party candidates support forced birth to every pregnancy without exception in any case, and none of this seems to make a dent in the talking heads or in the voting populace's minds. (That aren't already disposed to notice it, anyway.) The way the Republican Party treated Meghan McCain when she said something they didn't like (see Sforzando of October 19th - if you've had that feeling like we've done this before, and recently, give yourself a cookie.) All of these things point in a rather huge and honking manner to one unstated, unspoken piece of privilege that may as well be Gojira in the room - the assumption that women don't count, and can be safely ignored in election cycles. It's shuffling the Southern Strategy off to another minority (in those cases where it isn't being run as the nakedly racist thing that it is - looking at you and your evil immigrants ad, Sharron Angle and Jan Brewer, and your "repeal the 14th Amendment bit applying to private business", Rand Paul.) and trusting that if some woman or man should pierce the fog and point out the misogyny, the wave that will rush to the defense of the idea that only men, preferably white and Protestant, have ideas worth listening to will silence anyone from building any sort of momentum to the idea that politics is supposed to be about issues, policies, positions, and plans than about whether or not the person running for office is pretty, charismatic, affects stupidity enough to feel like a normal person, or has a nice rack to look at so they don't have to listen to her. And while I see it flare up on the appropriate partisan network when their candidate is turned into a sex object, I don't see all that many commentators or newspersons devoting time and effort to stopping the underlying privilege when it's not election season, and networks choosing to hold any campaign that reduces themselves to making sexist, racist, or other -ist comments in contempt for denigrating the political process.
Wouldn't it be nice if people got called out on their bigotry every now and then, on the air, and not for partisan ratings, but because what that person said is offensive and deserves no place in the political discourse?
Can dream, can't I...and while I'm asking for miracles, would everyone please elect actual liberal candidates to office, so that the country can understand what actually is liberal, instead of the centrism that gets passed off as socialist liberalism in this country?
Go vote, regardless of whether you like liberals or not. But do so in an informed manner - know what you're voting for by sending that person to represent you.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 07:04 am (UTC)~M~
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 07:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 07:20 am (UTC)~M~
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 03:17 pm (UTC)You'll note that I just reposted Adam Curtis' Century of The Self (http://nebris.livejournal.com/5659569.html). Even if you have already seen it, I find rewatching a few times a year to be quite salutary.
~M~
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 04:54 pm (UTC)