Playing the Gender Card

This is going to be, if nothing else, a very interesting year. What used to get me out of bed in the morning was either a high level of anxiety or a strong jones for that first cup of coffee, well actually, both. Now what gets me up and running is the desire to read the morning news, and, of course, commentary on the news. The "iron my shirt" assholes, excuse me - "protesters" - who interrupted an HRC campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday, along with the media commenters, and even one of her fellow candidates, have catapulted voices from my formative past into the public eye once again today. Feminism has refound its voice in women of my generation, and I'd like to share some of the commentary I've read this morning. One of my favorite Salon.com writers, Joan Walsh, gave us The Witch Ain't Dead, and Chris Matthews is a Ding-Dong in which she refers us to Gloria Steinem's January 8th NYT OpEd piece Women Are Never Front-Runners.

Erica Jong has a fine post in today's Huffington Post on the issue of sexism (imagine that, an issue long buried from the public forum has now reappeared everywhere, even in the msm), from which I'd like to share this trenchant comment:

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. "Seeing Sexism"

Katha Pollitt, along with a lot of other writers (and voters), was pissed off by John Edwards' comment after HRC's moment of visible emotion in New Hampshire: "I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business." And it's not just the old warhorses of my generation who have been galvanized into action. Read some of the feminist blogs of the day: Feministe, Feministing, the amazing Echidne of the Snakes.
Scroll through their blogrolls for more and even more furious feminist response to this sexist upwelling.

With less than a month until Super Tuesday (and NM holds its primary vote on that day), I remain undecided on a candidate. But the ghost of my feminist activist past, along with my support for Patricia Schroeder and Geraldine Ferrarro, speaks out of Joan Walsh's keyboard:

Sure, I know it's long past time for a female president, but my hubris has been in believing that Clinton is not the one I have to devote myself to -- my careless presumption being that there will be loads more satisfactory models to choose from in the near future.

So no, I have not been a Hillary Clinton supporter. But the torrent of ill-disguised hatred and resentment unleashed toward a briefly weakened Clinton this week shook that breezy naiveté right out of me, and made me feel something that all the hectoring from feminist elders could not: guilt for not having stood up for Hillary. I can't believe I'm saying this, but had I been a New Hampshire voter on Tuesday, I would have pulled a lever for the former first lady with a song in my heart and a bird flipped at MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

Technorati Tags: feminism, feminist writers, gender card, Hillary Clinton, sexism

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