as a woman, it's really hard for me to believe that all these women feel so victimized. i guess i don't choose to live my life that way. to me, that's not feminism. i guess i don't identify so much with my gender. i'm a person first. do i come across sexism? sure.
one of the best ways to eradicate sexism is to have more women in power and hillary blew it. that's sad.
hillary could have been a role model. but she squandered her opportunity, choosing to draw the sexism card at the end of a long, weary campaign as a last ditch effort. many women chose to turn the other way while her campaign was spreading the gossipy emails about obama. they chose to look away when hillary said she'd be ready and willing to obliterate iran. they have been blinded by the idea of the first woman president.
hillary's own blind ambition and low-road tactics and strategy misteps did her in. i don't think for a second she feels like a victim of sexism. it's just that it's a convenient way, and the final way, for her to manipulate her supporters. she didn't hesitate to roll out bill when she needed the votes of the "hard working white worker" who wouldn't vote for a woman or a black man in pennsylvania but would vote for the woman who's husband was the former president. the clintons are cunning politicians. i think she'd do whatever it took to win. she now seems to be delusional and it's sad and scary at the same time. what i'm wondering is: what will her concession speech look like?
a supporter, hilary rosen, tries to explain:
There are all of the political reasons that keep her campaign going like the popular vote, the polling in swing states, finishing out the primary states before the superdelegates make their judgments, etc. But that doesn't explain the passion.
It endures out of, not just the determination of Hillary Clinton to be heard, but of her supporters desire to send a message to this country. A message that I am still not sure has been heard. For all of its historic firsts, this primary race has surprisingly not, until recently, generated a discussion of gender in the same way that it has triggered an education on race.
I consider myself one of the most race conscious, race sensitive people I know. My own children are bi-racial (like Obama -- white birthmother, black birthfather). And yet I learned something so important about race and black consciousness during this campaign. I learned that it doesn't matter if Bill Clinton (for instance) is a racist or not. The intentions of a person speaking are less relevant in the moment than the impact of the words being spoken. So whatever has been said about African-Americans by white people in this campaign has been heard by many African-Americans as one more layer of seemingly innocent comments built upon a lifetime of insensitivity and slights.
Yet, for the past few weeks, when Hillary's supporters suggest that similar comments made about gender have the same hurtful impact, Obama supporters guffaw and most of the media ridicules the notion and ridicules the Senator herself as though she is suggesting that she is losing because of her gender -- which incidentally I have never heard her say.
I don't really buy into this notion of the campaign is faltering because Hillary is a victim of sexism. I may part company with some of the Hillary sisterhood on this point. There has been lots of sexism in this race, but this campaign is losing because of choices and strategies of it's own making. Articles and books will be written after the fact about the lost opportunities, the mixed messages, the insular in-fighting, the financial recklessness and the lack of focus on delegates. She has never caught up in the delegate hunt from those early mistakes.
There are all of the political reasons that keep her campaign going like the popular vote, the polling in swing states, finishing out the primary states before the superdelegates make their judgments, etc. But that doesn't explain the passion.
It endures out of, not just the determination of Hillary Clinton to be heard, but of her supporters desire to send a message to this country. A message that I am still not sure has been heard. For all of its historic firsts, this primary race has surprisingly not, until recently, generated a discussion of gender in the same way that it has triggered an education on race.
I consider myself one of the most race conscious, race sensitive people I know. My own children are bi-racial (like Obama -- white birthmother, black birthfather). And yet I learned something so important about race and black consciousness during this campaign. I learned that it doesn't matter if Bill Clinton (for instance) is a racist or not. The intentions of a person speaking are less relevant in the moment than the impact of the words being spoken. So whatever has been said about African-Americans by white people in this campaign has been heard by many African-Americans as one more layer of seemingly innocent comments built upon a lifetime of insensitivity and slights.
Yet, for the past few weeks, when Hillary's supporters suggest that similar comments made about gender have the same hurtful impact, Obama supporters guffaw and most of the media ridicules the notion and ridicules the Senator herself as though she is suggesting that she is losing because of her gender -- which incidentally I have never heard her say.
I don't really buy into this notion of the campaign is faltering because Hillary is a victim of sexism. I may part company with some of the Hillary sisterhood on this point. There has been lots of sexism in this race, but this campaign is losing because of choices and strategies of it's own making. Articles and books will be written after the fact about the lost opportunities, the mixed messages, the insular in-fighting, the financial recklessness and the lack of focus on delegates. She has never caught up in the delegate hunt from those early mistakes.
But that does not mean that the zeitgeist of sexism and the numerous comments and visuals that women have seen during the course of this campaign have not had the same impact on the woman who have witnessed or heard it in the exact same way that African Americans have heard comments about race.
