Tag Archives: sexism

Steal this Idea

A story in the San Francisco Chronicle quotes “Emily Solomon, 45, a Washington, D.C., playwright and Pennsylvania native”:

[The news media] completely downplayed the first serious female candidacy. When she won New Hampshire, it wasn’t, ‘The first woman to win New Hampshire,’ it was ‘Clinton steals New Hampshire.’ Very subtle sexism, you know. And I’m not even a rabid feminist.

Okay, I am tired of this “very subtle sexism” thing. What Solomon is saying in this remark is that the only way people could have reported Clinton’s win in New Hampshire was by specifically pointing out that she was “the first woman to win New Hampshire.” Anything else, apparently, would be “sexism,” albeit ”very subtle sexism.” If Obama had won New Hampshire and no one reported it as “The first African-American to win New Hampshire,” would that have been racist? I doubt it. (So would that difference be racist, or sexist? Honestly, I don’t care. Nobody should. There are bigger fish to fry.)

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An Apparent Failure of Logic

About Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein says:

“Each one of them represents a different constituency, and the constituencies are knocking heads at the present time. . . . There are women all over the country, and particularly in my state of California, who feel that she hasn’t been treated fairly. . . . They want her to stand tall.”

Um, huh? Maybe I missed something, but how does “[being] treated fairly” have anything at all to do with how good a candidate you are? (And what exactly does “stand tall” mean in this context?”) Leaving aside the allegations implicit in Feinstein’s statement that there has been unfair treatment and that it is because Clinton is a woman—the truth of either is irrelevant on this particular point—being treated unfairly by others, regardless of the reason, says nothing of one’s own qualities and characteristics as they pertain to the job of being President of the United States.

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