Letters to the Editor
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Obviously, she sought the "compliment"
I am surprised that anyone would think that Hillary didn't know this was going to be said. Just about everything she does or says is planned and vetted. I'm sure her people thought it would be a way to make her sound more tough and manly.
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Good post, Catherine
Thank you for this:
For me, at least, feminism isn't about trying to put men down, or to assert that women are superior creatures. It's about equality. I've always thought that a better term would be "humanism" -- the fight to establish a society in which both genders had equal rights and opportunities.
I couldn't agree more.
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So let me get this straight...
She's not a pansy, has titanium testicles, and has a right hook like Rocky.
If there wer any brains to match those..I dunno..assets..then I guess she'd just be a great candidate.
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I think you're being too kind
No good comes from the sexualization of politics, no matter what direction is involved. Equating moral fortitude or personal strength with the presence of testicles is a Neanderthal way of viewing the world. It's the kind of nonsense that gets reporters drooling over a President in a flight suit while in pursuit of a foreign policy that is utterly detached from reality.
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"Junk"?
"Junk"? Really? That isn't nice. You take issue with someone suggesting that Hillary has man-parts, and then you go and call her woman-parts "junk". What's in a name, anyhow?
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In defense of genital metaphor
But I think that feminism will become irrelevant only when we reach a stage where we drop the genitalia from our conception of leadership ...
Catherine Price has a great take on the vapidity of the masculinizing commentary about Hillary Clinton, but this passage reflects a poor understanding of leadership.
Leadership is, in essence, about a visceral relationship between the leader and the led. There are very few people who are led only by their brains — though a great many people, some of them otherwise quite thoughtful, may believe that they are when in actuality they are not.
(The present Democratic campaign is a great example. Two candidates who are virtually, though not entirely, identical in their policies and politics nevertheless engender in certain quarters tremendous angst and argument between people who think they see a vast gulf between them — but whose arguments ultimately boil down to visceral identity reflexes.)
So long as we are recognizably human, our leaders will be the ones who have, or appear to have, the gut power to inspire us and keep us on track toward the realization of a shared vision. Referring to that inner essential puissance by analogy to reproductive capability is entirely appropriate.
That said, of course, there's no reason it has to be testicles in particular. Hillary Clinton has her very own perfectly serviceable pair of 'nads.
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Amity
But that's precisely the point-- the reference was to masculine reproductive organs, not female ones. I don't believe that you're naive enough to suggest that a praise of "ovarian fortitude" would be received with the same sort of enthusiasm.
The bottom line is that the debate about assertiveness and leadership qualities is still being framed in terms of masculine and feminine, suggesting that these "Presidential" characteristics are somehow inherently masculine. A woman cannot be said to be strong, aggressive, and decisive without simultaneously being characterized as "having balls" or not being a "pansy."
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Let Me Tell Ya Something About Hillary
She's my little rock and roll
My tits and ass with soul baby
She's my little rock and roll.
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huh?
"Two candidates who are virtually, though not entirely, identical in their policies..."
Uh, right. If you cannot tell the difference between Obama and Clinton you really are not trying very hard. Perhaps you might, say, consider their positions regarding the Iraq war, the biggest foreign policy debacle in decades?
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Feminism is like your own personal Jesus
It is something different to everyone and fulfills every child's wishes too.
Waiting for Brightstar's head to explode in 5, 4. 3,...
"For me, at least, feminism isn't about trying to put men down, or to assert that women are superior creatures. It's about equality."
And it waters your lawn too.
Every person's individual idea of what feminism is is not really relevant when you are discussing the practical results of that philosophy that has that label attached to it-- in this case it becomes what the RECEIVER or VICTIM of that philosophy thinks it represents.
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Sexuality aside, it's a metaphor about fear
"Be afraid! Be afraid! I'll save you!"
I'm sick of it.
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This
is off the subject, but I have to get this off my lovely chest:
Just read today that Barbara Walters has revealed that for several years in the 1970s she had an affair with the then-married Edward Brooke, the Republican black US Senator (now 88 years old.)
I recently watched a clip on YouTube of Walters tearing into Kim Kardashian and her step father Bruce Jenner. It was supposed to be an interview, but quickly turned into a public humiliation. She asked Kardashian "what have YOU done?" (meaning: other than being a rich celeb with a sex tape) and implied with a question to Jenner that he had gone from being Olympic medalist to simply being Kardashian's stepfather. Kardashian and Jenner somehow kept their cool - they should have walked off stage.
You can think of Kardashian and Jenner whatever you like, but Walters had no right to be so utterly patronizing, vicious and - we now know - hypocritical. She clearly relished the opportunity to humiliate them.
Now we learn that Walterns had an affair with a married man for several years and that he is black and a Republican.
It is often the worst "sinners" who become the most condemning of others and this is a perfect example. There is also the hard-to-ignore fact that Kardashian is known to have a preference for black men - perhaps Walters is jealous?
In a Hell of Dante's creation, Walters would be in the Hypocrite Section.
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Gender flipping
In her youth Hillary looked out and learned the wrong lesson - that it is a man's world, and to succeed in it you have to be as a man, and so now she acts like a man. In his youth, Barack looked in and learned the right lesson - that it is a multifaceted world and to engage it you have to move out from a solid center, and so he became a man who seems to have integrated his many sides. This is why he comes across as grounded and comfortable with himself (even when he is aloof, er cerebral), and she always seems trying to impress, a changeling.
I think the difference is generational, with the old guard (Hillary and the Rev. Wright) who spent their youth in a society that assigned them a subservient role, but then as they came of age they had to fight, and fight hard, for equal respect, and they bear the scars like armor. Whereas, say, Chelsea's generation, has always taken equality for granted and so is more comfortable, less combative, and is more likely to generate a female candidate as comfortable with herself as Barack is with himself.