I know this is about VEEP stakes but I'm going to say it anyway.
To me, the STRONGEST statement from a woman came after Clinton's speech on Tuesday by another Hillary--Hillary Rosen when she said:
"I am NOT a bargaining Chip I am a Democrat"
Now the diarist heard 'ONE PERSON' make an idiot statement about someone who has never, ever even been mentioned just because she was 'younger and prettier'--Kathleen Sibelous is the only one ever mentioned as a possibility.
AND THEN almost in the same breath it is stated that Clinton supporters would be terribly upset IF Obama picked another woman and not Clinton herself--which sounds reasonable, so there right off the bat, a woman's consideration is lessened! NOT because a woman isn't credible, nor capable, nor qualified, nor NOT WANTED BUT because it would upset and remind Clinton supporters that their candidate isn't the woman selected!
There could be a female on the ticket BUT that choice is now limited because it would 'stir up' Clinton supporters.
and also used the diary referred a totally suspect series of studies since 2005 involving merely 'hundreds' of people to make claims that 'women are treated differently'.
We have no clue what organizations these mere 'hundreds' over years were studied to draw such conclusions.
I'm a 60 year old female, I grew up when things were REALLY bad for women, I mean 'women's jobs and men's jobs. I've had many careers over my lifetime. Some places I worked things were really good, other places they weren't so good.
I never got the attitude of 'oh, poor me, I'm a woman and am being treated differently". I just knew I was in the wrong place and it was time to move on.
In the last 10 years I've been a substitute teacher. In that capacity, I work mainly at one school. I've had principals who were very supportive of me, they would leave, the next one that came in ignored me. I knew I was no longer 'in the right place' and time to move on.
We all make choices in life. I made mine over the decades, to work as hard as I could, leave my problems and attitudes at the door when I worked, and most of all, not to take things personally that happened in the work place. It's always full of politics. And I've been happy with my life and not since the late 60's have I felt overtly discriminated against. I am sorry to see all of this mess being stirred up now, it's a campaign distraction.
Yeah, what are those chicks complaining about? What's anyone complaining about?
No one has to wear 50 lbs of underwear anymore, gay people won't get summarily jailed or beaten to death, there are wheelchair ramps everywhere, women can divorce their husbands for sleeping around, Jim Crow's been abolished, everybody gets to vote, it's all perfect. There's no systemic bias, latent prejudice, suspiciously widespread inequality of outcome. Perfect!
Go peddle that somewhere else.
As I mentioned downthread, my point about the mention of Sen. Lincoln wasn't that she was a widely considered pick.
It was that a self-identified liberal feminist made a transparently sexist argument in her favor, of a kind that often gets ignored as though it were no big deal, and that any female candidate who wasn't evaluated on the same sorts of criteria male candidates would be, that it would be insulting. That if a woman who was anti-choice was chosen, it's as bad on policy as choosing an anti-choice man, and would in addition look like a pandering choice made without regard to Obama's principles or the expressed will of the mainstream Democratic electorate.
Obama's going to pick someone he thinks will help him win and that he's comfortable with. In the meantime, we'll all yammer about it. I'd like that conversation to proceed in a progressive direction, I'd like it not to be filled with sexist remarks that dismiss women, I'd like it to have some grounding in the feminist concerns that you seem to think are imaginary, and though I probably won't get this wish most especially, I'd like to engage in it with people who read what I write before sounding off about it.
Natasha, if you're going to invoke our conversation about Blanche Lincoln at Open Left, you should represent it as accurately as possible so as to avoid any appearance that you're taking anecdotes and generating some kind of consensus position.
You claim that "someone was telling you Lincoln... because she was younger and prettier". Perhaps you're referring to some other conversation you had on the blogs, in which someone had the nerve to say this, but seeing as how you just replied to my OL thread in the comments this morning, I think you mean me. This didn't happen - I quoted another poster who gave 10 reasons, some of them terrible, for Lincoln as VP. Repeatedly, you've claimed those were my own words and opinion, even though I was careful to attribute them.
I hope folks can read the full original thread (including my comments, which were I think too defensive right out of the starting gate), and judge for themselves.
For one thing, I didn't want to single you out. For another, I didn't imply that I was talking to more than one person, even though the full, tediously detailed anecdote is that you thought it was fine to repeat that comment, and 16 people at dKos recommended it. That would actually imply much more consensus than 'someone was telling me ...'
And here was my point, expanded: If some comment had been made in that list of attributes that was obviously racist, it would have a) been troll-rated into oblivion and b) been considered unsuitable in its entirety for quoting because racism is viewed as being so toxic that people hesitate to repeat those sorts of comments without careful qualification of the sort that fully distances themselves from the statement they're repeating.
It's appropriate that racism is considered that toxic, and my question is, why isn't sexism considered equally toxic?
Thank you for clarifying, and responding.
Your final question is a good one - and I don't know why, for instance, the media has been able to get away with gender bias more readily than racial bias.
I wonder if perhaps we're going to see an equally toxic spray of racist vitriol in the general, equally neglected by the media.
