What She Says Does Not Matter

A year or two ago I got fed up with the sexism of The Huffington Post (intentionally not linked). Try this and you’ll see what I mean: On any given day, go to their homepage and just scan your eyes down the page for stories about women. More often than not, they’re not actual news pieces, but gossip or polls dealing with some sensational tidbit meant to increase the website’s click count.

Today (for ‘research’ purposes I went there, though it makes me want to wash my hands) we have stories about Gaddafi aids, Bernie Madoff, and Lawrence O’Donnell, all accompanied by a picture of the man in question in a suit. For stories that feature women, we have ‘Jessica Simpson Tweets Photo of Herself from NYC Bathroom,’ ‘Kelly Clarkson Reveals Why People Think She’s a Lesbian,’ and ‘Jenna Lyons’ New (Female!) Love Interest Revealed.’ You get the idea. Today Name It Change It, a project of the Women’s Media Center that calls out sexism in the media, especially toward women in politics, called out HuffPo’s sexism toward Hillary Clinton.

Yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Peruvian Prime Minister Salomon Lerner. Instead of focusing on diplomatic issues between Peru and the United States, the Huffington Post created a poll to gauge how readers are “feeling (about) the Hillary scrunchie.”

I know I shouldn’t be surprised any more. But this one irked me a little more than usual because just minutes before the scrunchie post caught my eye, I was reading about Clinton’s views on the limits of power and its implications for advancing the U.S.’s interests abroad. That’s some heavy stuff! And hair accessories don’t come into the piece at all. It takes time and brain power to analyze Clinton’s beliefs, especially in the broader historical context of the U.S.’s reliance of military might. It’s much easier to focus on an aspect of her appearance and urge readers to vote on it. But that serves to minimize what comes out of her mouth as secondary to what she looks like. This is a message women and girls receive loud and clear everywhere they turn, but I wouldn’t expect to be sent by a popular ‘news’ outlet founded by a woman (Arianna Huffington – voted 12th Most Influential Woman in the Media by Forbes).

The media, as we all do, make choices about what’s important and who’s worth listening to. Huffington Post’s choice to focus on Hillary Clinton’s scrunchie, or Kelly Clarkson’s sexuality, rather than their newsworthy contributions to society, reinforces the notion that women are not to be taken seriously. That women are there for a good laugh, or a sexy picture, not relevant to the business of ‘real’ news, which is exclusively the realm of men. This carries over into our daily lives. Are we subconsciously giving people permission not to listen to what women say when they open their mouths?

Another choice the media makes involves the photo that accompanies their stories. More often than not, especially during the 2008 campaign, the photo that accompanied articles about Clinton where less than flattering, to put it mildly. The pattern continues through her tenure as Secretary of State, as Melissa McEwan of Shakesville highlights here. Clinton was at a press conference talking about the Somalian famine. She was urging the Shebab militants to stop preventing aid from reaching children during Ramadan. And what Getting Images photo was chosen to accompany her statement? The photo is after the jump with McEwan’s spot-on analysis below.

 

Can’t Argue With That

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responds passionately and eloquently to Rep. Smith’s concern that the Obama administration supports women’s reproductive freedom abroad. Michelle Goldberg calls it thrillingly unequivocal. You can read a transcript of the exchange here, via Shakesville.

On a side note, why is Hillary Clinton referred to as “the gentleman” on several occasions?

 

The Caroline/Woman Comparison

In the past several days I’ve read numerous articles comparing Caroline Kennedy to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. Seriously? For the most part, I understand the concern over the fact that she’s not been elected to anything. But the outrage over the fact that she’s rich or that she comes from a political family baffles me. 

In a carefully controlled strategy reminiscent of the vice
presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, aides to Caroline Kennedy interrupted
her on Wednesday and whisked her away when she was asked what her
qualifications are to be U.S. senator. (seattlepi)

One of Ms. Kennedys qualifications, leading the Fund for Public Schools
in raising $240 million in private donations, is about as impressive as
being Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Ms. Kennedys main
disqualificationsnot having paid her political dues, not having enough
experiencewere also attributed to Mrs. Palin. (examiner)

The curious thing about this story is how closely it resembles Hillary
Clinton in the early months of this year’s presidential campaign, when
the former first lady was running as a quasi-incumbent. (seattlepi)

Though I disagreed with Sarah Palin on nearly every political issue, I flinched when she was asked to defend her qualifications. Yes, she was extremely unqualified. But so have several male politicians been, yet they are much less often asked to defend this weakness. Arnold, the Governator, comes to mind. But as Marie Cocco points out,

There are no female Arnold Schwarzeneggers. That is, no woman will
ever burst into politics, capture the voters’ imagination and be
catapulted into high public office without a lick of experience.

Perhaps one of the reasons that the extremely unimaginative comparisons are being made between Caroline Kennedy and Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton is that the sexism is all too familiar.

 

Where Are the Female Ah-Nolds?

Marie Cocco (Alternet) argues that unlike California’s governator, women “will never burst into high political office without a lick of experience.” She also notes that experienced women don’t do much better.

The glass ceiling remains firmly in place — not cracked, as Hillary Clinton insisted as she tried to claim rhetorical victory after her defeat in the Democratic nominating contest. It wasn’t even scratched with the candidacy of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee — unless you consider becoming an object of national ridicule to be a symbol of advancement. As divergent as these two women are ideologically and temperamentally, as different as are their resumes, they both banged their heads — hard — against the ceiling. Both were bruised. So was the goal of advancing women in political leadership.

Continue reading here.

Women make up seventeen percent of our Congress. 17. That’s not even halfway to half way.

Marie Cocco concludes:

Yet American women are a majority of the population and a majority of the electorate. They earn more than half the bachelor’s and master’s degrees, a level of educational achievement far exceeding that of women in developing countries. There must be some reason we don’t do any better than women in impoverished, rural regions of the world where cultural norms oppress women.

Maybe it is because our culture isn’t so different after all.

 

Fighting Back

Senators Patty Murray and Hillary Clinton are speaking out against Bush’s proposed attack on women’s reproductive rights. They are calling on the secretary of Health and Human Services to block Bush’s plan to put ideology over science.

The text of their letter reads:

Secretary Michael O. Leavitt
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201

Dear Mr. Secretary:

It has come to our attention that the Department of Health and Human Services may be preparing draft regulations that would create new obstacles for women seeking contraceptive services.
One of the most troubling aspects of the proposed rules is the overly-broad definition of “abortion.” This definition would allow health-care corporations or individuals to classify many common forms of contraception – including the birth control pill, emergency contraception and IUDs – “abortions” and therefore to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it.

As a consequence, these draft regulations could disrupt state laws securing women’s access to birth control. They could jeopardize federal programs like Medicaid and Title X that provide family-planning services to millions of women. They could even undermine state laws that ensure survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

We strongly urge you to reconsider these regulations before they are released. We are extremely concerned by this proposal’s potential to affect millions of women’s reproductive health.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely yours,
Senator Patty Murray
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi added her voice to the charge:

If the Administration goes through with this draft proposal, it will launch a dangerous assault on women’s health.

The majority of Americans oppose this out of touch position that redefines contraception as abortion and represents a sustained pattern of the Bush Administration to reject medical and sound science in favor of a misguided ideology that has no place in our government.

I urge the President to reject this policy and join with Democrats to focus on preventing unintended pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion through increasing access to family planning services and access to affordable birth control.

Bush should make up his mind whether or not he thinks individuals are smart enough to make our own decisions or not. Just last week he said that he wasn’t urging Americans to conserve fuel because we’re smart enough to make our own decisions. Right. Unless you’re a woman and your reproductive health is involved. Then he has no problem interfering.

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton has a guest blog piece up at RH Reality Check.

 

Women’s Issues and Violence

I heard Riane Eisler speak in Monterey at a forum about violence against women and she made many of the points she makes in this Alternet article. She discusses how “women’s issues” are too often viewed as special interest items, rather than problems of the majority. She also talks about how traditional gender roles encourage violence as a means of maintaining power, and how this equates to the current political situation in the U.S. and abroad.

Surely we can learn a lesson from this history: that progressives urgently need a political agenda that no longer relegates “women’s issues” to a secondary — indeed, invisible — place. We need a politics of partnership that recognizes that questioning “traditional” gender roles and relations is foundational to the movement to more democratic and egalitarian relations across the board.

The equal valuing of the two halves of humanity — women and men — will obviously vastly improve girls’ and women’s quality of life. But it’s also essential if we are to move to a more democratic, peaceful, and sustainable future for us all.

Read more about her work here.

 

NOW’s Media Hall of Shame

The National Organization for Women has compiled examples of sexist media coverage and invites you to rate the misogyny.

NOW’s Media Hall of Shame is a collection of some of the worst offenders from this season’s election coverage, including TV, radio, print, web and even political cartoons. We want to know what YOU think — rank these “Shamers” on a sexism scale of one thumb down (least offensive) to five thumbs down (most offensive). The top offenders of the Media Hall of Shame will be dis-honored at the National NOW Conference in July.

This is a nice resource in case you run across someone who insists that sexism wasn’t an issue in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Dare that person to watch this collection and then talk to you about media bias.

 

Alarm Bell for Women Considering McCain

The media says there are a number of Clinton supporters considering voting for McCain. That just doesn’t make sense to me. If you supported Clinton, that suggests you are in line with her on important issues. Barack Obama’s stance on all of these issues are much closer to Clinton’s than McCain’s. Key Clinton supporters are starting to speak on exactly this phenomenon.

Now top female Clinton supporters have a message for McCain: not so fast.

“The McCain campaign has been talking about the mythology of trying to pick up HRC supporters,” says Ellen Malcolm, president of EMILY’S List. “This is a pipe dream, because he’s out of touch with their lives and the issues they care about.”

“We are here to sound the alarm bell,” said Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of South Florida on a conference call. “We are going to work hard to make sure that John McCain is not allowed to pull the wool over women’s eyes one more day.” (Ari Berman, Alternet)

Bill Scher discusses “Reaching Out to Clinton Voters.” He links women’s struggles to the economy, and notes that Obama is under pressure to give a speech on sexism the way he did on racism.

The candidate who recognizes that the specific struggles of women impact all of us, and moves us beyond a battle of sexes, will not only earn respect from Clinton voters, but from voters overall.

And it will ensure that the spirit of Clinton’s historic candidacy lives on (full article here).

According to Gallup, women are getting behind Obama in droves since Clinton’s concession.

Want to know why McCain should worry women? His conservative credentials speak for themselves.

 

Race & Gender in the 2008 Campaign

At the National Conference for Media Reform, Laura Flanders contributes her two cents about race and gender and media bias in the 2008 campaign season.

She cites numerous examples of racism and sexism that didn’t become big stories in the campaign season.

…There’s a relationship between someone being able to say “let’s get the bitch,” and violence against women around the world.

And she highlights the importance of focusing not only on race or gender, but on power, as the most restrictive force in the U.S.

…We used to understand there was a relationship between what people say and the way society behaves. But we’ve seen a language disconnected from that discourse about power, and we’ve seen the experience of certain people, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and various of their surrogates, separated from the treatment of groups…we have a media that resolutely says it’s only personal, it’s only about them. And when we talk about race and gender being a problem, there it is in a nutshell.

 

Sexism Sells

The Women’s Media Center says,

“Sexism might sell, but we’re not buying it!”

Check out this video:

Read a statement by WMC President Carol Jenkins, and sign the petition here.