Kristol smirks and mugs his way through a "conversation" on misogyny

From Echidne:

The guys are smirking all through it. Smirking, note.

What about the meat in that sexism-is-funny sandwich? The bit about the Republicans not being as misogynist as the Democrats:

Summary: On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol, who previously declared that "[w]hite women are a problem ... we all live with that," stated of Sen. Hillary Clinton: "She's put behind her the horrible sexism and misogyny the Democratic primary voters demonstrated, which I'm appalled by, personally. Never would have happened in the Republican Party. You know, we're -- Republicans are much more open to strong women."

Much more open to strong women? Are they indeed? And who is it who has loved to hate Hillary Clinton for the last twenty years or so? It's the wingnut wing of the Republican Party, that's who, and even in the recent primaries the most viciously sexist comments came from right-wing talk show hosts and pundits.*

*Though one would have to add that Chief-Sexist-In-Residence at MSNBC Chris Mathews certainly did his part.
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"I do it sometimes with all kinds of people" (who do not have penises)

"It's not Tootsie or Toots or Sweetie or Honey or Doll."
Yes, Sen. Obama called a female reporter who was just trying to do her job '"sweetie":


Yes, he apologized:

"Second apology is for using the word 'sweetie.' That's a bad habit of mine. I do it sometimes with all kinds of people. I mean no disrespect and so I am duly chastened on that front. Feel free to call me back. I expect that my press team will be happy to try to make it up to you whenever we are in Detroit next."

Yes, he's done this before to another women who was just trying to do her job:

While flirting with female factory workers in Allentown, he called one "sweetie," a paternalistic way to address a woman if there ever was one. It might have worked had he been trying to do his best imitation of Lily Tomlin's Ernestine, the telephone operator, but this was no spoof. This was Obama trying to relate to working-class women in a way that went directly south.

And, yes, it is a problem.

Numbers

In all the articles and opinion pieces rightfully condemning those in West Virginia who said that race was a factor in their decision to not vote for Sen. Obama, I don't recall this exit poll stat making much (any?) news:

About one in five Clinton voters said gender was an important factor in their vote. Nearly as many Obama voters said that.

Perhaps we'll see a skit this weekend on Saturday Night Live where an actor playing Barack Obama says, "My supporters are misogynists."

(No, I'm not holding my breath.)

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"At least I'm not racist" Cartoon

"Misogyny I Won't Miss"

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EQUAL PAY RALLY

From the Women and Girls Foundation:

Did you know that southwestern Pennsylvania has one of the most dramatic wage gaps in the country?

Nationally, women make 80 cents for every dollar that a man earns.

In Pennsylvania, women earn 73 cents per dollar.

In southwestern Pennsylvania, women only earn 69 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

We will work for equality...will you?
Join us for an Equal Pay Rally and make your voice heard!

April 25 - Noon - Market Square

Women and Girls Foundation
http://www.wgfpa.org/

This year's speakers (in order of appearance) are:
Cecile Springer Board Member, Women & Girls Foundation
Ayana Ledford Exec. Dir. of PROGRESS @ CMU Heinz School
Tiona Jones Ellis student, PROGRESS intern, Teen Council leader/Reign of Aquaria game
Monica Shaw High School Student, Teen Council leader/Reign of Aquaria game
Rich Fitzgerald Pres., Allegheny County Council
Vivien Luk Gtr Pgh Non-Profit Partnership
Magdeline E. Jensen Executive Director, YWCA
Susan Nitzberg Incoming Pres., Nat'l. Council of Jewish Women
Esther Bush Exec. Dir., Urban League
Heide Tappe Representative for State Rep. Chelsa Wagner
Sen. Jim Ferlo State Senator
Jeanne Clark Representative of NOW
La'Tasha Mayes Representative, New Voices Pittsburgh
Betsy Magley Chair, PA Commission For Women
Karen Myres Representative, Executive Women's Council
Ed Gainey Representative for Mayor Ravenstahl
Doug Shields President, Pgh. City Council
Bill Peduto Pittsburgh City Council member
Rose Bonesso Working America
Frances M. Wright Pres., SWPA Coalition of Labor Union Women
Kim Ellis Activist
Sara Radelet Executive Director, New Hazlett Theater
Vanessa German Poet, artist, activist
Sala Udin Executive Director CORO
Deborah Lyles Student representative, Chatham University
Liz Rincon Executive Director, PA League of Young Voters
Celeste Taylor Rep. Black Political Empowerment Project
Joanne Quinn Smith President Nat'l Assn. Bus. Women (NAWBO)
Heather Arnet Executive Director, Women & Girls Foundation

ALSO:
The Women and Girls Foundation invites you to join them today through Thursday, (April 24th), in Market Square, from Noon to 1:00 PM. They will be raising awareness about the need to wipe out the wage gap once and for all.

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What She Said

What she said.

Excerpt:

This is and always has been a feminist blog.

[snip]

But it is and always has been a feminist blog. Because it is and always has been a progressive blog, for starters, and because the name "Shakespeare's Sister" has always been there, representing women's historical and ongoing fight to be taken seriously, to be heard.

Apparently, however, this is news to some people. Not the trolls and MRAs--they come here because they do know it's a feminist blog. No, it's news to both new and long-time readers who are just so tired of hearing "misogyny this, misogyny that"; the ones who think a certain amount of feminism is all well and good and necessary, but expecting them to read post after post about it is really just asking too much; the ones who want to talk about the first viable female presidential candidate in, you know, ever, but leave aside her gender to focus on the "real issues"; the ones who just get exhausted trying to see the subtle sexism that feminists keep telling them is there; the ones who think believing that women should be allowed to have careers and control their own bodies 'n' stuff means they've earned their Feminist Card and can therefore say any damn fool thing they want without being called sexist; the ones who can't stand all this bickering and really wish we'd all CALM DOWN and get back to the IMPORTANT things... Those people don't seem to get that this is and always has been a feminist blog.

And you know what happens on feminist blogs? People write about sexism. It stuns me that there are people who would deliberately come to a feminist blog and then ask that people quit talking about sexism so much. I don't fucking get it. But this isn't even the only place where I've seen this happening lately. Zuzu's getting slammed today for "reading too much into" comments by Obama, seeing sexism that isn't there, refusing to talk about the "issues" instead of boring old sexism, etc., on a blog called... hmm, what was it again? Oh, right, Feministe. Yeah, I can't imagine why a contributor over there would think it appropriate to discuss subtle sexism. That's just crazy.

As Spudsy pointed out earlier today, if you want to talk about Clinton any way you like without sexism discussions obscuring the "real issues," you can surely find a comfortable home at any number of fauxgressive blogs these days. But if you want to talk about Clinton around here, you're probably going to end up talking about sexism, because she is doing what no woman has ever done before, which means her gender colors everything, and that's the kind of thing that gets discussed on a feminist blog.

And HERE. (It's Time to Get Obama-Skeptical)
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Speaking of interesting national press on Pittsburgh...

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article on Pittsburgh talking about how Clinton's women supporters fear her bid has unleashed a sexist backlash.

And unlike on this blog, even an Obama supporter in the story sees misogyny in some of the attacks on Hillary:

But even some women who don't support Sen. Clinton express unease about the tone of some attacks on her. "Why is it OK to say such horrible things about a woman?" asks Erika Wirkkala, who runs a Pittsburgh public-relations firm and supports Sen. Obama. "People feel they can be misogynists, and that's OK. No one says those kinds of things about Obama because they don't want to be seen as racist."

The article gives some depressing statistics on women ascending the corporate ladder.

It also quotes Heather Arnet as follows:

Heather Arnet, a Clinton supporter who runs a Pittsburgh organization that lobbies for more women on public commissions and corporate boards, recently surveyed the Internet and found more than 50 anti-Hillary Clinton sites on Facebook. One of them, entitled "Hillary Clinton Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich," had more than 38,000 members.

"What if one of these 38,000 guys is someone you, as a woman, have to go to and negotiate a raise?" she asks.

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Nope, nothing sexist here

Back in February in a New York Times column titled "A Flawed Feminist Test" Maureen Dowd called Hillary's run for the presidency a "flawed science experiment" going on to say:

But Hillary is not the best test case for women. We’ll never know how much of the backlash is because she’s a woman or because she’s this woman or because of the ick factor of returning to the old Clinton dysfunction.

Maybe Dowd should check out this video:


I'd say that the Olbermann stuff quoted is more character assassination than sexism but it comes in the context of a constant barrage of sniggering, little boy sex jokes and references to young Hollywood actresses as "hos" on Countdown. (Not to mention Keith yucking it up with a guest over the "monster" comment implying that it isn't a problem if she really is one.)

(h/t to Shakesville)


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WAPO on Women Are Stupid

I understand that having published Charlotte Allen's expose on how stupid women are (and "weaker," "dumber" and "dim" with a "pre-frontal cortex [turned] into Cream of Wheat"), the Washington Post will next print a column by black white supremacist Clayton Bigsby on how awful black people are.

(Note to WAPO: Comedy Central is a comedy network while you claim to be a source of "news" and we don't believe for a second that Allen was being "tongue in cheek" based on her past verbal diarrhea.)
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Vagina-Americans have their say

So why were the polls so wrong in New Hampshire?

We heard last night that it might have been the Bradley Effect at work ("instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots"), but if you look at the breakdown of the vote by race and gender, you see that black women broke for Hillary and white men for Barack:


Now look at the breakout purely by gender and you see that Hillary was the clear winner among females:


This is not how it went down in Iowa. While the same percentage of the voters were women in both races (57%), in Iowa, Clinton only received 30% of the women vote there ( 35% Obama, 23% Edwards). In NH it was: 47% for Clinton, 34% for Obama, 14% for Edwards.

Now add to this that 39% of Clinton's supporters made up their minds on election day:


and it sure looks like John Edwards fucked up royally when he responded to Hillary's barely welling up for a second by playing the "Women are too emotional to be Commander in Chief card" or as Nation columnist Katha Pollitt put it:

John Edwards just lost my vote. How dare he take cheap shots at Hillary Clinton for letting her eyes mist over (not "crying" as was widely reported) at a meeting with voters in Portsmouth NH earlier today? This is a man who has used his most private tragedies--his wife's cancer, his son's fatal accident -- in his campaign in a way that had a woman done the same she would surely be accused of "oprahfying' the lofty realm of politics. This is also the man who promoted himself early on as the real women's candidate, and who has repeatedly used his likeable wife to humanize his rather slick and one-dimensional persona. Today he deployed against Hillary the oldest, dumbest canard about women: they're too emotional to hold power.

Let's go now to one of the best blog takes on last night. It's from Jeff Fecke (a man!) over at Shakesville:

And that’s why she won tonight; because women recognized that, at least for tonight, their future was inextricably bound up with Hillary’s, and that, at least for tonight, they needed to send a clear message that misogyny and sexism just won’t work anymore. Clinton may yet lose — there are plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose her. But if she loses, it won’t be because she was too emotional, or because she reminds someone of their ex-wife. It will be because she loses on her merits as a candidate. That’s as it should be, and it’s why our country should be grateful to the angry women who rallied to her, angry women who were angry for a righteous reason, angry women who accomplished something grand. [Emphasis Added]

In closing: a little story.

A few years back I worked for what was at the time the Hispanic shop of a top ad agency. I was basically doing three jobs at once: Corporate Communications Director, Co-director of PR and I also wrote all the correspondence for the CEO (who was not a native English speaker). I put in 70 to 100 hours a week.

While I shared a title with my co-director of PR that was really only on paper as he was not allowed to speak to clients without my being present. At some point, I discovered that my male coworker was making ten grand more than I was. I took it up with the CEO and got a raise and the difference in the last year's salary in the form of two bonuses (one paid immediately and one to be paid a couple of months later).

However, before the second bonus was due, I was sitting in a meeting with the CEO, A VP and another department director (all males). We were all gathered at the end of a conference table. The CEO started in on a sneeze. He looked around as to where to direct it. He looked at each of us. The MFer didn't go for the handkerchief in his bespoke suit pocket. No, he finally turned back towards me and let out the sneeze. None of it really hit me, but I went back to my office after the meeting, called one of the partners in a company that I had worked at before and secured a job there. I then gave the CEO my two weeks notice.

In the interest of full disclosure: I just gave the Hillary Clinton campaign a whopping 10 bucks. It was for the sneeze more than the $10,000. (I still don't consider myself a Hillary -- or anybody else -- supporter.)


(Voter breakdown charts courtesy of Rimjob's diary at Daily Kos.)
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