I had a twinge of regret, when I was reading that White House as frat house piece last week. It's not that I think Obama needs to play co-ed basketball, God forbid, or have more people who look like me in his inner circle, as Dee Dee Meyers boringly suggested. Obama seems perfectly familiar and postfeminist just like me and all my friends. It's just that there are laws of nature no amount of bean counting or feminist revival can change. And those include the fact that a pack of boys in the workplace will blithely interrupt their work day to play basketball, or watch soccer, and a pack of girls will routinely watch out for how each one is feeling every day, and that's just how it is. I know that now, because for the first time I work at a women's magazine. It's neither good nor bad, although I like it better, and it would have been surprising and cool to see it play out in the White House.Not a bad impersonation of Uatu.
The "throw more women at the problem" idea struck me as unimaginative, also. There seemed to be something deeper at work. Anyway, that's kind of what I like about this comment. While eschewing, as Hanna says, a kind of "bean-counting" diversity, it points out that putting a women in charge would, almost necessarily, make some things different culturally. I think that's true of Obama--I just don't think you have poetry slams at the White House if Hillary wins.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
It'd be cooler if it was the Watcher on What If....Hillary Clinton were President of the United States!
Ok, I'll bite (largely because Double X generally annoys the crap out of me)
1) If Hillary Clinton were President, I doubt the White House staff would have been jamming to Stevie Wonder, or hosting poetry slams, or would feature such a racially diverse White House staff. So we'd have article asking "What if Obama were President." [And I say this not so much as a race thing but as a cultural-generation thing.] So, frankly, I do not see the point of Hanna Rosin's piece. Other than this:
2)
Really? That's a fact? I work with a bunch of gals and we do not watch out for how we're feeling every day. We gossip, we bitch, we talk about Glee (and how much some of us hate it) and politics and marathon-running. And to go back to a potential Hillary White House, does Rosin honestly think that Hillary and her female staffers would sit around talking about their FEELINGS? WTF?
But this is classic Double X, which consistently panders to neo-feminist Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus idiocy.
I balked at that "feelings" crap, too. Give me a break.
Oh, no, they're not talking about it, they're 'watching out' for one another. Cause us wimmens are so perceptive, you know. Ugh.
Preach it.
Also, where were all of these "feminist" concerns during the Bush years? I did not see Dede Myers trout her ass out to scream sexism and how Bush could not connect with voters.
I am so sick and tired of these faux feminists trying to hate on Obama because Hillary lost. Get over it. Did anyone miss how cold and calculating Hillary was during the campaign? Anyone see her worrying about Patti Solis Doyle her longtime friend and campaign manager when she started losing primaries? Please.
Ooh don't even get me started on so-called white feminists. Hmmf.
Where are all these "faux feminists" and "so-called white feminists" railing against Obama? I haven't seen or heard any negative opinions of Obama expressed by any feminist thinkers (but then I don't spend much time at Double X or similar websites).
largely because Double X generally annoys the crap out of me
This. Lord. I want to like these intellectual by-smart-women-for-smart-women things, but I always wind up at "man this is annoying, and offers nothing not done twice as well in The New Yorker." If we ever become post-feminist I want to see the end of these. (I did like Rosen's take on breastfeeding, though I think it could be more accurately titled anti-pumping.)
By all accounts Hillary Clinton's campaign featured a great deal of acrimony and the method of decision making was to yell it out, then she would decide. And while I've freelanced for more than a decade (the pets and I will interrupt our workday to take more naps and to go online, respectively) I think Rosen is here falling into "my one experience is the world" that we saw off in the black hair threads. I've worked in largely female offices where we did not spend the day taking each other's emotional temperature. And while my brother-in-law's office stopped to play nerf basketball* my husband's lab does not.
*He ran a consulting group and it reminds me of one of Fallows' weight pieces from a big accounting firm guy, that his office expected you to be fit and do some sort of regular sport and be planning your next triathlon. I think this is going to be true of a fair subset of harddriving companies, that you show that competitive drive. But it doesn't really work for the campaign styles of Obama and Clinton at all--neither one was touchy feely within the command center, though both found some benefit in being perceived that way on the trail.
ETA that I'm delighted to find so many interesting women chiming in on the annoyingness of the X factor. The bit last week on Baby Einstein was awful, though at least their commenters took them to task.
Don't forget the advice columnist who told the woman it was her own fault if she 'really' was drugged and raped.
It's been a constant disappointment. I like Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick on judicial matters---when they write for Slate---but DoubleX is just the worst kind of over-educated mommy-career-conflicted navel-gazing.
I was about to go off, but managed to hit the backspace to blot out a rant.
I will say, however, that I no longer read the 'Friend or Foe' column. I thought she was terrible before the 'you-made-it-up' blackout victim, but that column did it. No more page views.
Yeah, it kind of makes me want to have some kind of beer night with all y'all. You know, to talk about our feelings.
Tough crowd. Tough crowd.
Good comment though Maya.
"I just don't think you have poetry slams at the White House if Hillary wins."
The few poetry slams I've been to seem to be infested with borderline hyper dudes whose poems seem filled with the spirit of competition and aggresiveness you usually see among guys talking smack to one another as they play basketball.
What wouldn't have changed the is Right's venom. There's a real sense of entitlement that helps to fuel their rage. The idea of someone repugnant to them because of who - or what - they are holding power, no matter how legitimately gained, violates this on an instinctive level. Glen Beck would still be Glen Beck, etc.
Not only that, it's worth considering that Hillary had some of the highest unfavorables of any major 2 party candidate. As sick as the racism has been, the sexism would have been worse.
This leads me to another topic, which may be for another time, but it ties in here. I decided to support Barack early, mainly because I thought he had the best chance of winning. I think, implicitly, I may have factored in that America might just be more sexist than racist. That's a very difficult thing to measure, and I'd generally recommend against attempts to try. But what I'm getting at is, if I would have thought Hillary were the best candidate (again, I didn't), and I still made my decision on who I thought more likely to win, is that sexist?
I always thought sexism would be easier to overcome than racism on the basis that rich privileged men have daughters. But during the primaries I was surprised to see that the sexism was stronger than the racism. I am not saying that this is why Obama won, but the racism we are seeing today was much more restrained during the primaries, while the sexism was front and center.
In last year's election, most people only seemed to be sexist about the women on the other side. This leads me to think that sexism is a weapon people only pick up when it's useful to them -- which is to say when the woman in question disagrees with them. No need to be sexist about your own team.
I don't mind if people have sharp words to say about women they disagree with on substance. We say mean things about men we disagree with, after all. But it annoys me when they argue that the disagreement makes a female opponent illegitimate as a woman. Women shouldn't have their gender questioned just because they exercise the same freedom to be fools that men have always claimed. Their brain power, perhaps, but not their sex.
Anecdotal, but I noticed that the people who were willing to say outright that they weren't sure about nominating a woman tended to be Democratic women. Hillary's supporters were also Democratic women, of course, but I was surprised that the reasoning no old-white-man dared give to a reporter was happily trotted out by 40ish professional white women in NH.
My view is that sexism is less virulent, but it's also more common. Racism, as I think has been noted before on this blog, is an anathema: "you're racist" equates to "you have no place in decent society."
There isn't a similar attitude about sexism. Heck, I'm female and I don't feel the same about sexism. And it did create trouble for Hillary in the primaries (everyone talking about her "crying" before the NH primary - I watched the clip, there were no tear! She sounded mildly upset, but the media had to play the 'female weakness' card!) and it was even worse when it got to Palin (where people - liberals! - were actually saying "she should be staying home with the kids"). There's this need to shoehorn women in politics into being either bitches (Hillary) or ditzes (Palin). I think if Hillary had won she's probably be taking more crap than Obama is.
Part of it may be that they idea of significant physical/physiological differences between races is known to be false and utterly discredited, while there actually are physiological differences between women and men so associations of womanhood with specific character trait are more accepted. Not that I'm saying women and men aren't different - they are! - but that doesn't mean all women can be stuck into one of two categories anymore than men can.
I don't like doing the comparison, but I think you guys are really underestimating how race, and racism, work. You're forgetting, for instance, the "whitey tape" hoax, the ridiculous flap over Michelle Obama's thesis, the fact that Obama had to do a speech about Rev. Wright, while McCain only needed a statement for Hagee and was never called to task for supporting a flag of treason, and then flip-flopping when he had nothing to lose.
Your forgetting the insinuation the Obama is a "Muslim," which may take into account other prejudices but certainly is race-related. Your forgetting the McCain-Palin rallies where people, on camera, openly said they wouldn't vote for a black man. Lastly, it's very hard for me to imagine any black person, with Hillary's negatives, even winning a Senator's race, much less a presidential election, if only because of the math--the base of women voters is several times larger than the base of black voters.
I'm not interested in whether sexism is worse than racism--this is an unknowable that works in concert with a variety of other factors. But I think you guys should consider how distance works in these equations. Sexism is something that, most likely, one of our loved ones will experience, and hopefully, keep us aware of. Anti-black Racism is not. I know about women being cat-called/harassed on the street because I've had many women who were close to me (friends, sisters, lovers etc.) over the years tell me about it. Most white people won't have that kind of repeated informational experience with black people--there just aren't enough of us to go around.
In short, it's worth considering how equipped you are to make the calculation. Any discussion, by me, about the intensity of sexism in this country begins with the fact that I'm not on the receiving end. Underestimation is very seductive, especially when it's an underestimation of the requisite evil of your own in-group.
Again, I really don't know what's worse at this point. I guess the comparison I'd make is between racism in America and racism in Europe; whereas racism in America is more virulent here, I think it's more prevalent there. That's a tough call to make, and I'm very open to being wrong on that, but at least it's the way I see it.
On you're point about the McCain rallies, people saying they wouldn't vote for a black man, it's valid, but if Hillary had won, and there'd have been no Palin (presumably) I'm pretty sure we'd have heard the same thing.
I think, personally, I tend to constantly examine my views on race. I don't as much with gender issues because it's very innate; the interactions are constant, I was raised by a single mom, I live with my girlfriend, etc. That leads to a lot of acting without thinking.
I should also mention that at the time, I thought the racism was much worse than the sexism--in fact, explicitly it was. I thought a lot of people had to come up with as many excuses for Hillary as possible. However, I think at this point it's worth me questioning, hell, all of us questioning, whether implicitly there was more of a gender bias than we knew.
I don't disagree with this--which is why I say it's an unknowable. How can anyone seriously measure this?
I didn't mean to imply you disagreed, just thought it was a point worth making. Again, it's impossible to measure. Also, again, I'm speaking about my own experience with this mainly.
Also, I'm responding to the idea that I'm somehow "forgetting" that people were caught on camera saying they wouldn't vote for a black man. Come on man, that's unfair. I've even used that specific instance in conversations before. I don't expect you to remember everything I say, that'd be pretty damn egotistical. But I don't like the assumption that I'm not taking that into account here.
Your not the only person in the thread expressing that sentiment--hence the "you guys." Moreover, I didn't mean a literal forgetting, so much as I meant a "not factoring it into your analysis" forgetting.
I think we'd have doubled down on Afghanistan by now. Not sure how health care would've gone. Personally, I care more about that than the poetry slams (even though I think poetry is awesome).
Yeah, it really is a shame we won't be enduring four years of questions about the Clenis. Woo hoo! Teabagging? Yea, buddeeeee ....
Mad props for the Uatu shout-out.
I wonder if Clinton were still a Senator, instead of being Secretary of State, would health care reform be moving more quickly.
Here's my long-term what if: Let's say Obama serves out a successful 8 years as president and then is succeeded by another Democrat. Does Obama pull a William Howard Taft and get tagged for a Supreme Court gig next?
I would rather have him run for mayor of Chicago in 2017. He would still be relatively young (only 56), and the city would benefit immensely from his chief executive experience. .
This gets my vote. The man is a deep thinker, and a certified Constitutional scholar. Who knows... maybe we'd finally end the accursed War On (some) Drugs...
He would then have served in all three branches of government. Remember the talk after the election about Obama giving Hillary a seat on the court? I guess that won't happen. But imagine if Obama did serve on SCOTUS, and Scalia and Thomas were still there...
I could totally see this happening except I dont think Obama is the kind of guy who wants to sit it out on the sidelines.
I'm guessing that Mrs. Obama will have something to say on this matter.
From various articles on Michelle and on the Obama's marriage, it's pretty clear that she's the one who's had to adapt to his ambitions, not the other way around.
Maybe, post-presidency (hopefully, in EIGHT years), he'll be the one to adapt to her ambitions.
Actually, don't like that idea very much. Obama's too much of a consensus-builder, those guys are too implacable, and the Court is too small. We'd never see the kind of smack down those two need.
As editor of an online women's magazine with far lower numbers than Slate, I was at first thrilled to see the emergence of DoubleX — until the launch. Now I'm horrified, and do my best not to fall into similar pink-contrarion traps. Most of my board were the Hillary demo, but that doesn't mean we have to ignore reality.
"Pink-contrarian" is a Coates-esque neologism.
Huh. I was all set to click there, man...
Cos XX is ridiculous.
I'm glad to see a lot of women speaking out against XX; I always thought it was really crappy and played into stereotypes, but I figured it might have been one of those things I just didn't get. It's funny, I think WaPo's decline has extended to it's family of sites, Slate and the Root included. I don't often read FP, but when I do, it seems solid.
FP blogs about how to deal with the hypothetical zombie menace--truly a full spectrum foreign policy site.
Yeah I caught that haha...didn't you say you were reading World War Z? I'm almost done with it. It's interesting. Not the best writing, but the idea there is interesting...
Sorry this is a thread jack, I'll get back to this one later
Some of the writing (e.g. the Israel parts) was rough but it gets a big boost for the ideas behind the zombie theme. I especially liked the part about needing to believe in our ability to find technological fixes--that rang very true. That we needed to tell ourselves that story even if it wasn't really true, and that would help us keep on until we did find the answers, technological and otherwise.
One of the (many) things I can't stand about DoubleX is how pink the site is. For a site that is supposedly for/about the concerns of progressive, modern women it is jarring to see how stereotypically feminine the layout and overall visual presentation is.
I like travel writing, but have given up on the whole A Woman Writing About Being A Woman in a Place Having Woman Experiences genre; it's too painful. Individual accounts by women I often really enjoy, but when the writer's gender becomes a big selling point and the story goes from "what I saw" to "what I as a woman saw, in my woman way," it's bad news.
Yes! For the love of God, will they please stop making all women oriented things pink, purple, or teal?!