Pappas is unhinged, and the NY chapter of NOW is frightening in its wholehearted embrace of rape crisis feminism. Unfortunately, so are many other chapters of NOW.

When will these bigots have their snouts removed from the government trough and shown up for what NOW truly is - a hate group focused on denigrating men?

I welcome Pappas outburst, along with Steinem's absurd declaration that women are more oppressed than blacks in this country. Recall that when black people in America got the vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in the NY Times:

"The representative women of the nation have done their uttermost for the last thirty years to secure freedom for the negro; and as long as he was lowest in the scale of being, we we willing to press his claims; but now, as the celestial gates to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see ‘Sambo’ walk in the kingdom first."

Sambo. That's right. Sambo.

The sick racism of elite white American feminism rears its ugly head again.

The movement that takes every opportunity to insult black people and men and boys of every race shows what it's about once again.

Just click on just about any site listed on the BS blogroll and see for yourself.

Thanks Gloria, thanks Marcia. We knew you were bigots, but some people still did not. Glad to hear you wear your heart on your sleeve.

Gloria Steinem revealed the depth of her solipsism when she wrote that there is no greater limiting factor than gender (not even race).

This is so easily falsified by sociological data as to be laughable.

Are you kidding me? A few weeks ago we were all badgered by the hen pecked Church Ladies of Salon telling us how the wimmenz were going to get even with Chris Matthews and all of the other media by voting their own butterfly ballot.

As the mother of three boys I am sad that the only way to assert ones feminism is to hate men. I just don't understand it. I am a woman, feminine, educated, very well traveled and well-read. I didn't marry at 18 and have had relationships, rewarding and downright awful with men from all backgrounds. I don't understand the kneejerk reaction by some that everything in life is about the sex you were born as.

against Elizabeth Cady Stanton for her embittered response to the news that African American men would be enfrancised but not women (not even African American women). Elizabeth Cady Stanton and several other early feminists spent years, decades fighting for the freedom of African Americans and when it came to it, their great ally and the man that they supported and fought for, Frederick Douglass, announced that it was more important for African American men to get the vote than any other consideration.

He made a mistake. He abandoned the great coallition between women's sufferage and African American sufferage that had acheived so much and alienated the entire women's sufferage movement and in the end, African Americans were disenfranchised by the Jim Crow laws. And then they had no effective allies to turn to.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton make a mistake in her embittered words, spoken in anger, for they have lasted the decades between and are now used to throw a wedge again between feminists and African Americans.

We cannot now afford to be divided by words spoken and actions taken over 100 years ago. Reasonable feminists will support the democratic candidate who will best represent the interests of us all. And that does not necessarily mean that it will be the woman candidate.

If you cannot think of any other way of asserting feminism than "man hating" you are woefully ignorant. I tell you, that feminists assert and have asserted their feminism in myriad ways. They fight for equal pay for equal work. Over the years they have striven to eliminate laws that descriminae based on gender. (Did you know that in the state of Texas married women couldn't sign contracts in their own names as late as the 1960's?) They set up women's shelters to help other women escape physically abusive relationships.

Most feminists don't have enough energy left to hate men. They spend most of it just trying to educate men and help other women.

When I heard that quote I couldn't believe it, but apparently some people's sense of group tribalism does run that deep. The very idea that you have to vote for somebody in your group is absurd, and it's sad that people still think that way, whether they're white bigots or feminist activists -- it's the same basic thought process.

Re: "The very idea that you have to vote for somebody in your group is absurd..."

The NOW statement never says that. Did you even read it?

Ted Kennedy's endorsement isn't just a "vote for Obama." He is marshalling the power and resources of the Democratic Party and using them to try to crush Hillary Clinton, the first viable female candidate for President in American history.

Why do you think Obama has received so many endorsements and money in the last few days? Because Teddy is calling in his favors.

Hillary has to hide Bill, but Obama can use Ted Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy and Oprah.

And Hillary will still win. :)

And some of them are just MEAN.

a) criticize any woman alive for being an "aging" anything?

b) attribute an assertive woman's controversial opinions to intoxication rather than the woman's own creative mind?

> The very idea that you have to vote for

> somebody in your group is absurd

And yet, when it comes to presidential elections, white men have been voting for white men for as long as I can remember. While blacks and women, through some streak of kindness, voted for white men as well.

I completely disagree with NY NOW's statement, and I don't think any woman is obligated to vote for HRC just because she's a woman.

But I look on in amazement at the wildly ahistorical view that somehow, suddenly, some women are showing a "tribalism" that is some sort of insult to American politics. This is, after all, the very first presidential election in which a sizeable group (we'll see how sizeable soon) of white men are NOT engaging in something that looks exactly like that kind of tribalism.

I don't suggest that women be allowed 250 years of voting just for women before men start pointing fingers at them and calling them sexist, even though men already had their 250 years. But it might be useful for men to stop and think just how privileged their gender has been when it comes to running for president - for many years, privileged not only by culture but as a matter of law - and how that might continue to be affecting politics today.

The first woman president of the U.S. will represent an enormous breakthrough, given our long history of male-only presidents and a system that supported their exclusivity. This demonstration of the true possibility of equality - the American ideal - should lead to dancing in the streets for men and women alike. But in reality, anyone who is pleased to be finally able to show their daughters, with a specific example, that people of their gender can become president too, will probably be called a sexist for "caring what sex the presidnt is."

I'm not even an HRC supporter. But that doesn't mean that I don't recognize an historical moment when I see one.