bleh, politics
i hesitate to post this stuff, but i think its important and unfortunate that most people wont bother to read it. also probably a good thing because some of what im going to say would probably get me excoriated by many. i actually wouldnt mind that kind of feedback, as i actively enjoy being challenged and proven wrong, as long as its well-reasoned and sincere. unfortunately, i will probably write this and then crawl back into my hole, while berating myself for having completely wasted the better part of today listening, reading thinking, and writing about this stuff instead of drawing or editing a colouring book that is way overdue. and no one will tell me why i am right or wrong, and ill ignore the elections for another few months.
so, start here and here
watch Obama's speech in its entirety (it gets more interesting as you go, and really starts to dig in around minute 14 or so.)
for fun and a little more context regarding stupid sensationalism and low-blows leading up to that speech, check out this little rant
the possibly incendiary, politically incorrect thoughts of a feminist and anti-rascist white girl:
as ive stated before, i generally avoid following the us election stuff too closely. what is interesting me right now is that the things that were always there underneath are finally getting said. namely, that it is bullshit to pretend like race and sex are not major issues in the democratic nomination. im not saying that they should be in an ideal world, nor that they are issues in the simplistic ways that the media use them, but rather that they are issues precisely because of the fact that we dont want to admit they are, and then proceed to think only of that. kind of like how puritanical approaches to sexuality underlie an incredibly sex-obessessed culture. it is precisely the things we -dont- talk about that underlie everything we do or say.
what is unsaid is far more interesting and disturbing. on the surface, political correctness long ago taught us not to say what we really think. im not saying there is not value in discussing the ways in which vocabulary influences culture, nor am i saying im against ridding ourselves of historically discriminatory language and calling people whatever they wish to be called. im saying that as much as i hate hearing racist and sexist comments, id rather know thats who you are and how you think. yes, its uncomfortable, and hearing it every day wears you down. but when its out there i can address it, or at least know who to avoid, which swine dont deserve my pearls. those ideas dont go away just because people stop voicing them. i want them to disappear not because people are biting their tongues or minding their p's and q's, but rather because they just dont think that way anymore. changing language without changing the ideology it represents is useless.
so now here we are, things are starting to get heated, and a few people are having more and more trouble biting their tongues.
two candidates with basically similar ideas and voting records are running for the dem nomination. their policy recommendations and overall attitudes are different, but on the whole they are both nominally concerned with the same stuff, and propose mediocre solutions to problems to which the current state of american politics will never allow them to propose real or radical solutions. of course there are other differences between the two, but no one actually cares. they only say they do in order to convince you that they are not racist or sexist. because they dont want to believe that about themselves.
the skinny is this: the US has never elected a woman or a person of color as president. the closest they have ever come was Gerraldine Ferraro as vice-presidential candidate. now here is where i say something inflammatory: no matter how much people on the left want desperately to believe that this somehow transcends race and gender, and no matter how much i agree that Ferraro overall has some screwy ideas about race and politics, part of what she said is true. it is stupid to pretend that race is not a factor, that people arent thinking about it, however secretly. just as it would be disingenuous for her to pretend that sex was not a factor in her nomination those many years ago.
of course i disagree that it is the only reason anyone cares about what O says, or the only reason he is serious competition for Clinton. Not only does this discount the very real appeal of his rhetoric and approach, but it also belies, as most discussion does, the issue of sexism in the election. there -is- a nasty odor of competing oppression in her remarks and her approach, and that is why the across the board backlash was so extreme (except from the Clinton camp itself). Of course this is not a simple matter of quotas or affirmative action, but in a way, the issues surrounding it are not so distant.
a few weeks prior to that little scandal an Obama staffer said something nasty about Clinton, and was summarily canned (or forced to resign, or whatever), thus preserving Obama's image as the nice guy and clean fighter, but without ever really raising any discussion of sexism in this race. and then on the heels of ferraro's remarks and subsequent 'resignation', came another concerning remarks by Obama's pastor, to which the speech above is his response. i wonder, are we about to see just how ugly and unresolved these issues truly are? or will we continue to try desperately to convince ourselves that we have 'moved beyond' these things... after all, we are -considering- electing a woman or a black man. isnt that enough? havent we already proven we are enlightened just by considering it? now can we please stop talking about it and confirm that the hideous inequities and poor political and social policies that we adhere to are not really about race or gender, they are just pervasive social problems like um, class and economics. so we can all work together too end them, without anyone having to give up anything. wont that be nice?
part of Obama's appeal, and why his rhetoric is so effective, does stem from his background. A mixed-race man from kansas, he can be seen as child of an immigrant, black, but also the child of down-home white-bread america. This multi-faceted appeal to all sides is quite evident in his race speech (above). the unity and "we can do it if we all stand together and put aside our differences" mentality that he preaches is reflected and exemplified in his background. A white man could not say these things so effectively, and neither could a white woman. Any white candidate saying the same things would be spun as a bleeding-heart liberal to the white voters, and to minority (for the record, i hate that term) voters as affecting white guilt, privileged and (upper)middle-class, not truly knowledgable and concerned.
Im not saying this because i think all people, or even most, really think that way, i am talking about how things play as representations, as media, as politics. Im honestly not sure what the result would be if it were a black woman but overall, she would probably be juggling so many balls of representation it makes my head spin. in our visual and over-simplifying culture, only a man who represents the happy union of black and white, rural values and intellectual acuity can say these things and be heard. that doesnt mean it isnt true. it doesnt mean we dont really really want to believe that everything he says is possible. we do. It does matter. race and ethnicity matter in the united states, but we desperately dont want them to. his words have power because he is percieved to represent the core values of american culture: that we are all created equal, united we stand, individuals and equal opportunity for all, democracy, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
this is what americans look for in a president. someone who represents them and their experience, and therefore will govern in a way that reflects their values and ideology. in the age of visual media, this someone must also be the physical representation of the ideology they stand for. no one was afraid to say that GW Bush appealed to 'the average' american, that his down-home speech and style appealed to good-ol boys like himself, to the many disaffected rural white people who wanted to feel safe. So why are we afraid to say that people are inspired by Obama because of the culture that he also represents? of course both of these stories are equally constructed, but they are how we make these decisions and it is simply disingenuous to argue otherwise. to deny this is, in my mind, equivalent to prefacing an offensive statement with the phrase, "im not a racist, but..."
the second part of my inflammatory remarks is to say that it is sex, and not race that will determine the outcome of this election. if Obama is nominated, i think he stands a decent chance of being elected. but there is no way in hell Hillary Clinton will be elected president of the United States, and that has everything to do with the fact that she is a woman.
Ever since she was first lady, she has been the perfect Bitch. Her foray into health care reform failed not only because americans were convinced that socialised medicine because means the same thing as communism, but also because it was orchestrated by a first lady who should have been busy baking cookies for poor children. then when that fizzled, she tried to play a proper first lady, but no one ever really believed her (everybody knew she wasnt having any fun, nor doing what shes best at). Then she was a bad wife for having a husband who philandered (because she had failed as a woman). as with most roles women play, there is no way to behave correctly in that situation: you cant stand by em, and you cant not. Finally, she got to go have her own career, but sadly kowtowed right and left, trying to be the good woman and the strong woman, the left and the right and everything in between, all at once.
the great thing about this particular sexist stereotype is how effectively it undermines women gaining positions of power. in order to be in a position of power, you must be percieved as strong, decisive, powerful. in other words, masculine. but when a woman displays these, she is unfeminine and a bitch. US politics care a lot about family values and we look to the president to represent (again, the visual image, representations and symbols...) our ideal. despite 30 years of feminism, the american ideal is still the nuclear family, even though we know it is a lie. we still want camelot and all that bullshit. a woman cannot simultaneously be a bitch and a madonna. for ten years Clinton has been trying to walk that line, she has even been outright accused of trying to play to all sides, and unltimately it has eroded her. Trying to please everyone and pleasing no one. I think many ambitious women especially can identify with this, and whether or not i agree with her, or how she has chosen to deal with these pressure, i respect her for continuing to try. i really dont know how to do it better.
i will add that Obama is also walking this line of competing stereotypes, and while part of his success is in negotiating that more successfully than Clinton, i am really interested in how he does that, and how we as a society choose who to see as bridging stereotypes and who we see as representing all of them simultaneously. it seems to me that he somehow manages to distance himself form all of them while Clinton drowns in them. is this just a matter of approach, or are we more ready and willing as a society to be color-blind (another term i hate) than gender-blind? why is that?
we can have a black president. we allowed black men to vote first too. but a president must be strong and woman must be weak. the reason that no one will say this out loud is the same reason why it not okay to say, im a racist, but its cool and practically de rigeur to malign feminists. it is more culturally acceptable to be overtly sexist than it is to be overtly racist. im not trying to set the two up in a competition, on the contrary, that is incredibly counterproductive. both are undeniably important and intertwined, and too often, as now, they are pitted against each other when they should be working together to dismantle all oppressive systems. my final critique of this entire race is the fact that is does embody that dynamic of dueling oppressions. neither one should be okay. neither one being elected will end discrimination in america, nor will it prove that one is more important than the other. it might say something about which faults we are most willing to work on, but im not sure even of that.
i actually do like Obama, and I think he'd make about as decent a president as we are likely to see. I have a soft spot for Clinton, but i simply dont think that she would be elected and i think she is slowly but surely botching this campaign. Offering Obama sloppy seconds? if she was going to do that, it should have been a long time ago, and in private. it would have been really awesome if the two of then had sat down in secret a long time ago and hashed out some kind of deal where whoever gets the nomination takes the other as running mate. i think a lot of people secretly wished for this early on. it would be great if they at least had a personal deal, based in complete mutual respect, to run entirely amicably, remembering that they are, in fact, on the same side. but Clinton has been in the political world for far to long, and both are far to ambitious individuals to ever do that. politicians with agendas are not generally very good at that kind of compromise, so it was never going to happen.
nevertheless, I really wish that they were playing on the same side, and sometimes, I really wish we would talk about sexism too.
so, start here and here
watch Obama's speech in its entirety (it gets more interesting as you go, and really starts to dig in around minute 14 or so.)
for fun and a little more context regarding stupid sensationalism and low-blows leading up to that speech, check out this little rant
the possibly incendiary, politically incorrect thoughts of a feminist and anti-rascist white girl:
as ive stated before, i generally avoid following the us election stuff too closely. what is interesting me right now is that the things that were always there underneath are finally getting said. namely, that it is bullshit to pretend like race and sex are not major issues in the democratic nomination. im not saying that they should be in an ideal world, nor that they are issues in the simplistic ways that the media use them, but rather that they are issues precisely because of the fact that we dont want to admit they are, and then proceed to think only of that. kind of like how puritanical approaches to sexuality underlie an incredibly sex-obessessed culture. it is precisely the things we -dont- talk about that underlie everything we do or say.
what is unsaid is far more interesting and disturbing. on the surface, political correctness long ago taught us not to say what we really think. im not saying there is not value in discussing the ways in which vocabulary influences culture, nor am i saying im against ridding ourselves of historically discriminatory language and calling people whatever they wish to be called. im saying that as much as i hate hearing racist and sexist comments, id rather know thats who you are and how you think. yes, its uncomfortable, and hearing it every day wears you down. but when its out there i can address it, or at least know who to avoid, which swine dont deserve my pearls. those ideas dont go away just because people stop voicing them. i want them to disappear not because people are biting their tongues or minding their p's and q's, but rather because they just dont think that way anymore. changing language without changing the ideology it represents is useless.
so now here we are, things are starting to get heated, and a few people are having more and more trouble biting their tongues.
two candidates with basically similar ideas and voting records are running for the dem nomination. their policy recommendations and overall attitudes are different, but on the whole they are both nominally concerned with the same stuff, and propose mediocre solutions to problems to which the current state of american politics will never allow them to propose real or radical solutions. of course there are other differences between the two, but no one actually cares. they only say they do in order to convince you that they are not racist or sexist. because they dont want to believe that about themselves.
the skinny is this: the US has never elected a woman or a person of color as president. the closest they have ever come was Gerraldine Ferraro as vice-presidential candidate. now here is where i say something inflammatory: no matter how much people on the left want desperately to believe that this somehow transcends race and gender, and no matter how much i agree that Ferraro overall has some screwy ideas about race and politics, part of what she said is true. it is stupid to pretend that race is not a factor, that people arent thinking about it, however secretly. just as it would be disingenuous for her to pretend that sex was not a factor in her nomination those many years ago.
of course i disagree that it is the only reason anyone cares about what O says, or the only reason he is serious competition for Clinton. Not only does this discount the very real appeal of his rhetoric and approach, but it also belies, as most discussion does, the issue of sexism in the election. there -is- a nasty odor of competing oppression in her remarks and her approach, and that is why the across the board backlash was so extreme (except from the Clinton camp itself). Of course this is not a simple matter of quotas or affirmative action, but in a way, the issues surrounding it are not so distant.
a few weeks prior to that little scandal an Obama staffer said something nasty about Clinton, and was summarily canned (or forced to resign, or whatever), thus preserving Obama's image as the nice guy and clean fighter, but without ever really raising any discussion of sexism in this race. and then on the heels of ferraro's remarks and subsequent 'resignation', came another concerning remarks by Obama's pastor, to which the speech above is his response. i wonder, are we about to see just how ugly and unresolved these issues truly are? or will we continue to try desperately to convince ourselves that we have 'moved beyond' these things... after all, we are -considering- electing a woman or a black man. isnt that enough? havent we already proven we are enlightened just by considering it? now can we please stop talking about it and confirm that the hideous inequities and poor political and social policies that we adhere to are not really about race or gender, they are just pervasive social problems like um, class and economics. so we can all work together too end them, without anyone having to give up anything. wont that be nice?
part of Obama's appeal, and why his rhetoric is so effective, does stem from his background. A mixed-race man from kansas, he can be seen as child of an immigrant, black, but also the child of down-home white-bread america. This multi-faceted appeal to all sides is quite evident in his race speech (above). the unity and "we can do it if we all stand together and put aside our differences" mentality that he preaches is reflected and exemplified in his background. A white man could not say these things so effectively, and neither could a white woman. Any white candidate saying the same things would be spun as a bleeding-heart liberal to the white voters, and to minority (for the record, i hate that term) voters as affecting white guilt, privileged and (upper)middle-class, not truly knowledgable and concerned.
Im not saying this because i think all people, or even most, really think that way, i am talking about how things play as representations, as media, as politics. Im honestly not sure what the result would be if it were a black woman but overall, she would probably be juggling so many balls of representation it makes my head spin. in our visual and over-simplifying culture, only a man who represents the happy union of black and white, rural values and intellectual acuity can say these things and be heard. that doesnt mean it isnt true. it doesnt mean we dont really really want to believe that everything he says is possible. we do. It does matter. race and ethnicity matter in the united states, but we desperately dont want them to. his words have power because he is percieved to represent the core values of american culture: that we are all created equal, united we stand, individuals and equal opportunity for all, democracy, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
this is what americans look for in a president. someone who represents them and their experience, and therefore will govern in a way that reflects their values and ideology. in the age of visual media, this someone must also be the physical representation of the ideology they stand for. no one was afraid to say that GW Bush appealed to 'the average' american, that his down-home speech and style appealed to good-ol boys like himself, to the many disaffected rural white people who wanted to feel safe. So why are we afraid to say that people are inspired by Obama because of the culture that he also represents? of course both of these stories are equally constructed, but they are how we make these decisions and it is simply disingenuous to argue otherwise. to deny this is, in my mind, equivalent to prefacing an offensive statement with the phrase, "im not a racist, but..."
the second part of my inflammatory remarks is to say that it is sex, and not race that will determine the outcome of this election. if Obama is nominated, i think he stands a decent chance of being elected. but there is no way in hell Hillary Clinton will be elected president of the United States, and that has everything to do with the fact that she is a woman.
Ever since she was first lady, she has been the perfect Bitch. Her foray into health care reform failed not only because americans were convinced that socialised medicine because means the same thing as communism, but also because it was orchestrated by a first lady who should have been busy baking cookies for poor children. then when that fizzled, she tried to play a proper first lady, but no one ever really believed her (everybody knew she wasnt having any fun, nor doing what shes best at). Then she was a bad wife for having a husband who philandered (because she had failed as a woman). as with most roles women play, there is no way to behave correctly in that situation: you cant stand by em, and you cant not. Finally, she got to go have her own career, but sadly kowtowed right and left, trying to be the good woman and the strong woman, the left and the right and everything in between, all at once.
the great thing about this particular sexist stereotype is how effectively it undermines women gaining positions of power. in order to be in a position of power, you must be percieved as strong, decisive, powerful. in other words, masculine. but when a woman displays these, she is unfeminine and a bitch. US politics care a lot about family values and we look to the president to represent (again, the visual image, representations and symbols...) our ideal. despite 30 years of feminism, the american ideal is still the nuclear family, even though we know it is a lie. we still want camelot and all that bullshit. a woman cannot simultaneously be a bitch and a madonna. for ten years Clinton has been trying to walk that line, she has even been outright accused of trying to play to all sides, and unltimately it has eroded her. Trying to please everyone and pleasing no one. I think many ambitious women especially can identify with this, and whether or not i agree with her, or how she has chosen to deal with these pressure, i respect her for continuing to try. i really dont know how to do it better.
i will add that Obama is also walking this line of competing stereotypes, and while part of his success is in negotiating that more successfully than Clinton, i am really interested in how he does that, and how we as a society choose who to see as bridging stereotypes and who we see as representing all of them simultaneously. it seems to me that he somehow manages to distance himself form all of them while Clinton drowns in them. is this just a matter of approach, or are we more ready and willing as a society to be color-blind (another term i hate) than gender-blind? why is that?
we can have a black president. we allowed black men to vote first too. but a president must be strong and woman must be weak. the reason that no one will say this out loud is the same reason why it not okay to say, im a racist, but its cool and practically de rigeur to malign feminists. it is more culturally acceptable to be overtly sexist than it is to be overtly racist. im not trying to set the two up in a competition, on the contrary, that is incredibly counterproductive. both are undeniably important and intertwined, and too often, as now, they are pitted against each other when they should be working together to dismantle all oppressive systems. my final critique of this entire race is the fact that is does embody that dynamic of dueling oppressions. neither one should be okay. neither one being elected will end discrimination in america, nor will it prove that one is more important than the other. it might say something about which faults we are most willing to work on, but im not sure even of that.
i actually do like Obama, and I think he'd make about as decent a president as we are likely to see. I have a soft spot for Clinton, but i simply dont think that she would be elected and i think she is slowly but surely botching this campaign. Offering Obama sloppy seconds? if she was going to do that, it should have been a long time ago, and in private. it would have been really awesome if the two of then had sat down in secret a long time ago and hashed out some kind of deal where whoever gets the nomination takes the other as running mate. i think a lot of people secretly wished for this early on. it would be great if they at least had a personal deal, based in complete mutual respect, to run entirely amicably, remembering that they are, in fact, on the same side. but Clinton has been in the political world for far to long, and both are far to ambitious individuals to ever do that. politicians with agendas are not generally very good at that kind of compromise, so it was never going to happen.
nevertheless, I really wish that they were playing on the same side, and sometimes, I really wish we would talk about sexism too.