If you vote for Obama, this is what you’re voting for (Reminder #4)
Barack Obama’s pastor, spiritual mentor, and close personal friend of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explains that women have never been discriminated against:
Quote:
“Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had her people defined as non-persons. Hillary ain’t had to work twice as hard just to get accepted by the rich white folk who run everything or to get a passing grade when you know you are smarter than that C-student sitting in the white house.”
Twenty years. Close friend. Mentor.
65 Responses to “If you vote for Obama, this is what you’re voting for (Reminder #4)”
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Mary Tracy9 says:
“Hillary ain’t had to work twice as hard just to get accepted by the rich white folk who run everything”
This man clearly lives under a rock.
Well, he is a pastor after all.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:52 pm EST -
myiq2xu says:
“Hillary has never had her people defined a non-persons.
I guess Rev. Jeremiah never heard of “femme covert”
And while she may never have been called a “n***er, how many times has Obama or his mentor been called a b*tch, c*nt, or wh*re?
Actually, I seem to recall Bill and Hillary being called “white n***ers” back in the nineties.
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Ciccina says:
Ditto, and ditto.
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bluemorning says:
Wright was one of the earliest signs that I would never vote
for BO- he’s just a different flavor of racist.
I said he would render BO unelectable- but I never imagined
the media would ignore him as they have. -
pacific-cali says:
“Hillary has never had her people defined as non-persons” -Rev. Wright
Those “non-persons” got the right to vote DECADES before women ever did. What does that say about how women were/are viewed in our culture?
Wright is a ridiculous POS. -
Violet says:
Women were legal non-persons in the west well into the 20th century. We are still non-persons in many non-western countries.
The utter indifference to that is clear evidence that we are still, to Rev. Wright, “non-persons.”
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Foxx says:
There is also the Wright and the church connection to Farrakhan a raging misogynist,racist and anti-semite. Once I heard that I said, Obama is unelectable.
But no. The fix has been in for a very long time and is very deep. Someone has to research this and figure out what is really going on. The stench of corruption is overwhelming.
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Mary Tracy9 says:
“Women were legal non-persons in the west well into the 20th century. We are still non-persons in many non-western countries.
The utter indifference to that is clear evidence that we are still, to Rev. Wright, “non-persons.”
“Amen. That says it all.
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quixote says:
“ain’t never been called a nigger”
That’s all it takes to be top dog? Wow. Who knew?
/*leans down, picks jaw up off the floor*/
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simply wondered says:
nothing to see… no sexism here folks … home ya go.
i hear a landslide coming.
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Kat says:
Has anyone called Obama a nigger on tv?
Hillary was called a bitch on CNN and Wolf Blitzer didn’t even correct the guy who said it.
Chris Matthews had the founder of Citizens United Not Tasteful (or something like that) — get it, CUNT! — on his show and laughed and giggled with him.
We’ve all seen the “Sarah Palin is a Cunt” tee shirts and heard all the threats of violence, including rape and sodomy, against her and Hillary.
People who are so virulently misogynistic don’t deserve the vote.
Saddest of all is the many black women, and at least one white woman, in the video who are cheering and applauding Wright’s statements, not thinking about how Hillary couldn’t go to an Ivy League college when she finished high school. The Ivy League was men only in those days. If she were a little older, she couldn’t have gone to Yale Law, either. Those woman don’t realize that being women makes them second class citizens.
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Violet says:
Those woman don’t realize that being women makes them second class citizens.
It’s not that they don’t realize it; it’s that they accept it as normal.
Every time women have tried to agitate for their rights, they’ve been told that sexism is normal and their rights aren’t nearly as important as anybody else’s. The Civil Rights struggle is practically sacred, but the feminism of the same era is to many people a joke.
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Lisa says:
I don’t even know what I can add… except. Yeah.. what you guys said.
After the Rev. Wright fiasco I was sure Obama was done too. Then Obama gives his “historic” speech on race where he chastises all of us for being such horrible racists. I couldn’t believe it.I am so so angry all the time anymore. I come here a million times a day to help me feel better.
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Kiuku says:
The thing is we were non-persons way after , and we’ve only legally been persons for a little while and our culture hasn’t even caught up with the law, regarding women’s personhood and human status.
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Kiuku says:
It’s interesting how violent men become, and how violent men will become in any competition not normally violent, when a woman takes the competition seriously.
It is almost as if, it was almost as if there was something so vile, so repugnant at the simple thought of a woman taking the presidential race seriously and not just going “Ok hee hee Obama you win” being the token female candidate, but an actual woman candidate. There was something so vile about Hillary actually saying something or actually debating Obama, and opening her mouth, that almost anything was warranted, including various comments about killing her to save the O-Man’s face.
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Violet says:
Farrakhan a raging misogynist,racist and anti-semite.
And that’s another thing — Farrakhan is always described in the media as an anti-semite (which he is), but never as a misogynist. But this is a man who openly preaches that women need to stay home and obey their men. That women outside the home equals wickedness and an affront to God (Allah).
Misogyny just isn’t important, you see. Just doesn’t matter.
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Violet says:
The Ivy League was men only in those days.
Even in the 70s, when I was in school. When I was in high school Harvard was just starting to go co-ed. I believe it was my sophomore year they admitted the first woman. Columbia remained all-male. I was in high school and I remember very well sorting out which Ivy League schools I could apply to as a girl and which I couldn’t.
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Annie Oakley says:
“Jeremiah Wright ain’t never been raped. Jeremiah has never had his people defined as cunts and whores. Jeremiah ain’t had to work twice as hard just to get accepted by the men who run everything or to get a passing grade when you know you are smarter than the next guy to be sitting in the white house.”
HRC’s minister, whomever that is, never humped the pulpit while screaming “Obama rode us dirty!” either, but I guess that’s just a cultural thing. After the next 8 years, who knows?
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Violet says:
My first job, in 1980, I had to fetch coffee for my boss. No, my job was not “coffee fetcher.” I was working in a museum.
When the movie 9-to-5 came out, it struck a gigantic chord. I remember one woman I knew, the only lawyer at her firm, telling how it wasn’t unusual when she went to a meeting with a client for the guy (the client) to think she was a secretary and immediately ask her for coffee, to hang up his coat, whatever. Her approach was to just silently go along with it, fetching the coffee, etc., until the client said, “so where’s my attorney?” At which point she would introduce herself and mention that the coffee-fetching was costing him $200 an hour.
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Kiuku says:
I’ve seen this myself. One time we were playing soccer with a group of people and for kicks we decided to play men vs. women. Well we started kicking their ass. And then they got violent. This would never happen if it was men vs. men, but there was something so aweful at the prospect of playing women seriously, of taking women seriously, of competing with women where you might lose, that they started saying “Just take the bitches down” “They want to play soccer let’s play soccer” and started shoving themselves around and kicking the balls in our faces. We still won.
But I mean how aweful are men. They think they are not the problem. They are. All of them. Just about everything wrong with humanity is caused by men and they lament it like it is some weird human ailment they can’t fix or really put a finger on.
It’s them.
This pastor reminds me of almost every pastor, that look like him, white or black, that talk down to me like I’m a little girl. I had one just like this talk down to me just the other day while I was in my car. He just insisted on “giving me directions” (You know what I mean) just because I was in his church parking lot and then when I left shouted about how he is going to put up signs saying you can’t turn around in it. The fucking women. Religious men, non religious men, leftists, rightists..they all hate women. And they all hate themselves in order to do it.
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Kiuku says:
Whenever anyone talks about men uniting, people should be very very scared. Because the only thing that men can unite on is their collective hatred of women.
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Kiuku says:
Evolutionary Psychology is fake science created to support cultural misogynist norms and beliefs, but if there was ever an argument for Evolutionary Psychology it would take into the systematic destroying of women with ideas, the systematic desire of men to fuck sick and unhealthy and small in stature women, and men’s systematic desire to make women smaller and less capable. But, as obvious as this is, the killing of women that do not conform, and the taking of women who are manageable, Evolutionary Psychology only talks about how women like to “be protected” and “shop”. That we are complicit in our destruction.
Evolutionary Psychology never takes into consideration the Reverent Wrights and the Obama’s and all the glaring examples of men in the media today.
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Alwaysthinking says:
If Obama wins, whether by hook or by crook, what do women do to enjoy decent lives in this country?
I plan to continue to mute him on the television so I can ignore the daily aggravation, but that’s not always possible when others have the remote control in their hands. I only partially jest because I know that is no solution, but with all of the animosity he has either fostered or liberated, what kind of daily threats will face us? What must we do to stop the misogyny and keep our lives on a reasonably pleasant track? It doesn’t seem like the older women’s organizations are helping the cause.
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CoolAunt says:
I won’t forget white privilege. If I were black, I’d probably be angry, too, and I’d probably believe that all white people, including white women, have it made.
You and I know that HRC had to work twice as hard as any man ever did, and a lot of that work was stupid, superficial, busy-work created by the patriarchy to eat up the average woman’s time and thus keep her too occupied to get involved in men’s arenas such as politics, working to meet the impossible standards placed on women in the areas of appearance and demeanor, for example. Yet, I can still understand and appreciate that most black people wouldn’t consider that extra work and those impossible expectations placed on all women, white women included. In fact, I doubt I’ll see a black woman make it as far as HRC has toward the office of US president during my lifetime, not because no black woman could do the job and do it well, but because black women have to work even harder than white women or black men to prove themselves; the expectations placed upon them to prove themselves capable of such an important and prestigious position are, no doubt, mind-boggingly impossible.
However, when Wright talks about being rich and privileged, he’s talking about Obama, too. I don’t know anyone, white or black, who lives in a home valued at over $1million US even though I know some wealthy people. I don’t know anyone who’s attended Harvard or any of the Ivy League colleges, although I know a lot of well educated people. I’ve never heard or read anything about Obama having to work to put himself through school. Sure, he’s gone on about his mother living on assistance, but that wasn’t his life. He’s every bit as privileged and his life has been every bit as charmed as most rich, white men, and certainly more so than HRC’s.
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Alwaysthinking says:
Sugar, of SugarnSpice, calls Obama a white man with a tan. She is skeptical, to say the least, of his credentials as one who has suffered as other American blacks have suffered.
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Dulcie says:
WOMEN!!! Such posts! Are you cool or what? I see no apologies, no apologias, no “we understand”. Thanks, for all of that.
And almost on the subject, I just sent my MS magazine back with notes that I am absolutely ASHAMED to be associated with them. We’ve had Hillary Clinton, we have Sarah Palin, who has Ms got on the cover? Suze Orman, who else?
The silence of the Women’s Community we thought were with us, even had our backs, has been not only deafening but complicit. I hope we never forget. When they want $$, refer them to Obama. -
Violet says:
In fact, I doubt I’ll see a black woman make it as far as HRC has toward the office of US president during my lifetime, not because no black woman could do the job and do it well, but because black women have to work even harder than white women or black men to prove themselves; the expectations placed upon them to prove themselves capable of such an important and prestigious position are, no doubt, mind-boggingly impossible.
Yep, black women in America have it extra hard, being oppressed by white people and black men. Black men like Jeremiah Wright, who thinks of racism solely in terms of “The Black Man’s Struggle.”
Wherever people of any group are oppressed, it’s the women who are doubly burdened, whether we’re talking African-Americans or European Jews or First Nations folks or Russian serfs or ANYBODY. They’re oppressed by the dominant class on ethnic/class and gender lines, and then oppressed by their own menfolk. Rev. Wright is as much a part of the problem as anybody. Same old patriarchal bullshit.
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anna says:
I think American children are educated much better about civil rights than women’s rights, and don’t know women fought for anything besides the vote and abortion. They also don’t know about the suffering endured by women’s rights advocates; it’s easy to see women’s rights as trivial next to civil rights when you consider the terror of the KKK, the assassinations, etc, but not the terror of domestic violence, rape etc.
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Violet says:
The ignorance is enormous, you’re right. That’s because the history of women’s oppression isn’t considered important. And why isn’t it important? Because we don’t count. We’re not really full human beings.
And as for slavery — who has been the most enslaved group of human beings throughout history? Women. The first slaves were women. Slavery began, most historians believe, with the enslavement of women — and I’m not speaking metaphorically. Even the word “slave” in ancient Sumer meant something like “woman from the mountains.” Slavery began with the kidnapping and enslavement and rape of foreign women. And everywhere slavery has existed, it’s been women who were doubly burdened with forced labor and sexual enslavement. Always, everywhere. Thousands of years, millions of women — enslaved, raped, beaten, forced to work.
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Yanni Znaio says:
Anne Pressly just passed away.
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betsyfromtexas says:
RIP, Anne. I’ll just bet it wasn’t a WOMAN who brutalized her, either.
Well at least I did my part and early voted for the McCain/Palin ticket. I’m hoping we women shock the world. It sickens me to think of Obama as POTUS. Perish the thought…but drop the TU and that’s more like it. -
Foxx says:
Forced pregnancy is slavery.
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Yanni Znaio says:
Foxx says:
Forced pregnancy is slavery.
Concur. ’nuff said.
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slythwolf says:
Misogyny just isn’t important, you see. Just doesn’t matter.
I think it’s that a man who hates women just isn’t news. It’s not shocking in that titillating way the public loves so much. It’s like getting together with your friend for a chat and she says, “Did you hear? Water’s wet.”
Also if they reported on misogyny they might have to admit it’s possible that it’s bad.
And speaking of slavery, I’ll tell you what is for goddamn sure slavery, is women being expected to do unpaid domestic labor seven days a goddamn week. And women who have been taught their whole lives that it’s a wife’s duty to take care of her husband’s sexual needs, that’s rape slavery.
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Briar says:
“Misogyny just isn’t important, you see. Just doesn’t matter.” I don’t think that is quite the mindset (though it amounts to it). Men, and sadly many women, think misogyny just isn’t because women are supposed to be subordinate to men, are supposed to defer and submit to them. The natural order (and the religious see that as a divinely imposed order) is that men are the head of human society and women and children their responsibility to protect, provide for, and *man*age. What we call misogyny therefore doesn’t exist for them at all. They’re blind to it; it’s the spectacles through which they see life in general. So much so that the women who think this way happily pile into any witch hunt organised against an uppity woman who sees things differently. This year’s campaign hasn’t just exposed this constant bias in attitude, it has reinforced it. That’s the tragedy of Obama’s suppposedly “transformative” influence - it’s forestalled any real transformation of our society into one in which 50 per cent of the human race can have an equal say in and chance to shape our direction into the future. Once I hoped a more humane and compassionate future than anything achievable under the patriarchy - but that was before I realised quisling women are the worst enemy of all. Instead it has re-established the oldest and vilest form of slavery and self abuse in humanity’s history - that suffered by women at the hands of other women and men.
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
“Wherever people of any group are oppressed, it’s the women who are doubly burdened, whether we’re talking African-Americans or European Jews or First Nations folks or Russian serfs or ANYBODY. They’re oppressed by the dominant class on ethnic/class and gender lines, and then oppressed by their own menfolk. Rev. Wright is as much a part of the problem as anybody. Same old patriarchal bullshit.”
There is no discrimination in patriarchy - women of all colors and class are welcomed by patriarchs everywhere to their systems of slavery, torture, abuse, neglect, invisibility.
When I read in one of the other threads the phrase “subvert the dominant paradigm” - it’s patriarchy that I think of. How do we subvert it and kick its ass off the planet for good? I remember the words “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s home.” I think The New Agenda is one of the ways - women getting together on issues on which they can agree and staying bonded together until they get what they want. And staying strong together with the onslaught of patriarchal push back - because it’s there, as Kiuku’s soccer incident shows.
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Shane says:
The ignorance is enormous, you’re right. That’s because the history of women’s oppression isn’t considered important. And why isn’t it important? Because we don’t count. We’re not really full human beings.
I think what you said earlier about how the civil rights movement has been canonised and feminism is often treated as a joke has a lot to do with it. Its interesting and sad how two liberation movements get treated so differently by consensus opinion, as if struggling against racial prejudice is noble and profound while struggling against sexual prejudice is just selfish.
To give another example, as part of my work (and general interest) I read a lot of academic feminist/gender history sort of books, and the books of the last decade or two tend to be very apologetic about feminism’s history. Its like they can’t talk about second-wave feminism and what good it did/does without being sure to point out that oh yeah, it helped some women, but it was highly flawed because it was RACIST. They don’t always phrase it like that (its usually some thing about how they were being essentialists and didn’t recognise ‘difference’ enough) but the gist is essentially that. Its almost like a standard disclaimer on why third-wave feminism is better, and the thing is that these books don’t really provide much evidence for this thesis, they just take it as a given and move on. The constant reminders strike me as weird—I admit to reading less about racial history, but I can’t see them being so apologetic about the fact that a lot of important civil rights figures were quite sexist, or so hostile towards their own legacy when they do discuss it…Maybe being a third-wave feminist really means always having to say you’re sorry.
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Kiuku says:
Men owning shit that women can’t is slavery. Men getting paid more, valued more, listened to more, is slavery.
It’s ironic. When women went to work for the first time really, it was because the men were busy in their war/violence dynamic which entitles them to rulership over women. When men got back, women didn’t give up their jobs/their right to ownership and to economy.
People have basic needs: food, water, shelter. When men bogart all of these things, how is that not slavery?
The entitlement, ignorance of men is alarming. I think the biggest thing men fear is being used. Well, men, how about paying women equally, not demanding a wife, and stop bogarting the land, you entitled pieces of shit?
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atheist woman says:
Actually Kiuku, if you are referring to the US, black women, Chinese women, and poor women had all been working before the war.
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CoolAunt says:
Alwaysthinking says:
Sugar, of SugarnSpice, calls Obama a white man with a tan. She is skeptical, to say the least, of his credentials as one who has suffered as other American blacks have suffered.
Well, I know maternity doesn’t matter in a patriarchal society, but his mother is white. So, in a way, SugarnSpice is right about Obama being a white man with a tan. He is white. And he’s black, too.
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CoolAunt says:
Oops! I meant to say that Sugar of SugarnSpice is right.
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Kiuku says:
Yes true, Atheist. All women had been working, in fact, just not paid wages.
Something that got me thinking looking at Jeremiah Wright and the civil rights movement is where are the Jeremiah Wrights of Feminism? Like MacKinnon and Andrea. Why don’t we have pulpits and crowds of screaming chorus? We should. We should have more community. I guess because it is easier for men to get access to community arena’s, but we should have some. We need to start Feminist churches and women’s religion and we need pulpits and arena’s. We need Farrakhans and Wrights.
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Anna Belle says:
For those of you wondering how Civil Rights got to be revered while women still get shat upon, check out this: http://annabellep.wordpress.co.....the-prize/
That’s how it was done–through indoctrination. And Obama is COUNTING on that indoctrination to carry him through. Women should have been insisting on total lesson plan dominance during the moth of March, which is Women’s History Month. It is this 13 years of public school indoctrination on Civil Rights and black history, which has been the norm for over 30 years, (or two full generations) that has created this situation.
For the record, it was this same dynamic–pitting race against gender–that cost us the vote on the 14th Amendment, and left us waiting another 50 years for that basic right. The patriarchy is very clever about pitting its slaves against each other. And those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
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Violet says:
Its like they can’t talk about second-wave feminism and what good it did/does without being sure to point out that oh yeah, it helped some women, but it was highly flawed because it was RACIST.
Second Wave feminism included women of all ethnicities and races. White women in the movement were explicitly and noticeably less racist than white society as a whole. There was a constant effort to respect and understand and unite women across all ethnic groups.
On the other hand, the Civil Rights movement was overwhelmingly sexist. And it looked upon Women’s Liberation as a threat to their narrative of The Black Man’s Struggle, a threat to the racial narrative. If women across races joined together, that undermined their narrative of people of color (both genders) joining together to resist white people (of both genders). Black patriarchs defined women’s liberation as racist because it undermined black “solidarity” (really black patriarchy).
Patriarchy, of course, won the PR game and so the patriarchal Civil Rights movement is enshrined as glorious and Women’s Lib is derided as “racist.”
Third Wave feminism is, in this as in so many respects, the product of the backlash. It’s what feminism would be if patriarchs could design it (which they did).
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Violet says:
Foxx and slythwolf — regarding your comments on certain things amounting to slavery:
I don’t disagree, but the point I was making is that actual slavery — chattel slavery — has been women’s lot for millennia. Not slavery in a metaphorical sense, but actual, drag-away/rape/beat/force-to-work slavery. It’s a commonplace among historically illiterate Americans to say that women’s oppression is small beer since women have never been enslaved. Not only does this ignore the fact that half of the black slaves in America were women (and they were the ones enduring rape along with all the other indignities), but also that women have been the most enslaved group of humans throughout history.
As ever, women’s history is simply erased.
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Violet says:
Anna Belle, that’s a good post! Everybody go read Anna Belle’s post:
http://annabellep.wordpress.co.....the-prize/
One of my obsessions is education about women’s history and about sexism. I’m convinced that if we educated children about it properly, that would solve half our problems.
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Foxx says:
Violet, I meant that forced pregnancy is literal slavery. It gives the fetus legal ownership of the women’s body. I do think we should reserve the term slavery to actual legal ownership.
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Kiuku says:
“Third Wave feminism is, in this as in so many respects, the product of the backlash. It’s what feminism would be if patriarchs could design it (which they did).”
Totally.
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Kiuku says:
Women have been legally owned for centuries before Feminism. If a woman cannot earn a living then, having no autonomy except that which is afforded to her by others, she must be a slave. If a woman must take a man’s name and refer to his permission for things, she is a slave. If a woman still cannot earn a living equal to that of men, then she is a slave still. Men are continually over represented, listened to, cared about more, and paid more for less work, while women are derided, scorned, and pushed out of the sphere. The unreasonable standards placed upon women force women to shell out more of her economy, her pay check, on things and to generally care about more shit then men, freeing men up to pursue the realms of import and then further deride women as vain, whereas if she did not submit, she would be a fool. Women are either vain, foolish, or both, but never powerful, and it is men’s intent to keep women enslaved to them.
The only way women are going to have total autonomy over themselves is to support other women, to get women represented, to get women paid equally or more since women work harder and generally are more productive/inventive than men, to get her paid fairly for her labor, to give her back her name, and to get her total economic freedom from men so that no woman thinks she needs a man to feed, cloth her, house her or her children. When women do not have to buy expensive clothing, care about her hair, or spend 100’s on makeup unless she wants to, then women will be more free.
Without women in representation, without women being paid equally, abortion remains a man’s interest alone. No fetus should have legal right over a woman’s body, when her body produced the fetus. It’s insane, like rape legislation, because men are insane. Patriarchy makes men insane, but abortion rights alone are not going to help women’s rights. I see it in countries where women are most oppressed. I can’t support misogyny because a woman in power, because of her personal faith, does not believe in abortion, especially when she isn’t going to take away abortion rights.
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Anna Belle says:
Thanks, Violet. I was glad to revisit the piece, and though I hate to say I told us so, I told us so. Anyway, I think I’m going to write a follow up piece, without focusing on the dynamic in the campaign, but rather focusing on it in the large cultural context, and try to brainstorm some ideas to advance it as part of the platform. I’ll offer it at The New Agenda when it’s done.
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Cyn says:
Apologies if this has already been covered above, but did anyone else notice that today’s subject was about Wardrobe-Gate on each and every MSM talk channel? Good grief, even Charles Osgood covered Palin’s clothes budget.
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octogalore says:
“Patriarchy, of course, won the PR game and so the patriarchal Civil Rights movement is enshrined as glorious and Women’s Lib is derided as ‘racist.’ Third Wave feminism is, in this as in so many respects, the product of the backlash. It’s what feminism would be if patriarchs could design it (which they did).”
Well said. And the need, in the context of the 08 election, to demonstrate ones deprioritization of feminism is clearly evinced in most third wave “feminist” sites.
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Carmonn says:
One thing that gets on my nerves is the need to make everything into a feminist issue, as if feminism is a catch all for all social justice issues. And especially when it’s done on the grounds that this particular headline involves a man, and has nothing to do with any woman, but it’s a feminists issue because he has a wife (or a daughter, or a mother). Well, all men fall into that catergory, so now every issue is a feminist issue. A social justice issue that feminists care about is not the same thing as a feminist issue. Of course then putting the onus on feminists to take up a whole range of other issues at the expense of their own pressing agenda, which for sure no one else will then take up.
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Violet says:
One thing that gets on my nerves is the need to make everything into a feminist issue, as if feminism is a catch all for all social justice issues.
And of course what’s really going on there is the patriarchal brainwashing that women’s rights don’t deserve to be an issue on their own, and “good” women should instead be concerned about other issues (ones that involve men).
It’s an old gambit. Shit, a century ago the Socialists were lecturing suffragists that what they really ought to be concerned with is “big” issues that involve “all” people (men), and that it was small-minded to be concerned with the liberation of women (half the human race).
So every issue gets its own movement: gay rights, racism, anti-war, poverty, prison reform, environmentalism — except women’s rights. Women can’t have a movement just devoted to women’s rights. No, in order to be intellectually credible to the patriarchy they have to focus on cleaning up all the OTHER messes.
Then, after the men have eaten and left the table, maybe the women will get to sit down. After they’ve done the dishes of course.
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Keri says:
I’ll note, that during Black History Month you’d hardly know from what they teach and show in the media that black women ever did anything beside be married to black men and be mothers of black men. They might give token notice to Rosa Parks, Madame CJ Walker, and Harriet Tubman, but that’s basically a few minutes out of a whole month, the rest of the times it’s all about men.
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Violet says:
Men who were sexists. Reading AnnaBelle’s post, I sure am glad I don’t have kids in school because I would be furious over that shit. I didn’t realize the hagiography had become so extreme, but I’m not surprised.
Let’s see: MLK, for all his heroism, was nonetheless a sexist who explicitly opposed women’s rights. This “saint” believed that one half of the human race was fundamentally inferior to the other half. Malcolm X appears to have outright hated women, and the Nation of Islam is his legacy. Eldridge Cleaver thought rape was an appropriate tool of war against white women.
When that shit is covered up and the Women’s Lib movement, of all things, is slandered as “racist,” you know the propaganda is thick.
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Violet says:
Most of the black women in the women’s movement that I knew in the 70s were actually refugees from the civil rights movement, or rather from the black male patriarchy that ran the civil rights movement. Christ, the stories. It is a goddamn insult to them and to all women to continue the propaganda that the civil rights movement was pure and beautiful and women’s lib — women’s lib! — was racist. In the early 70s, the women’s movement was probably the most enlightened, unracist enclave in all of American society.
The civil rights movement was hugely important and it did what it did; thank god for it. It was utterly and profoundly necessary. But the truth is that it was deeply marred by sexism, and women’s liberation was needed as much in the black community as in the white. Women’s lib was Mark 2, the second phase of human liberation, and the movement I knew drew women from all races and backgrounds. But women united across the usual barriers is a huge threat to patriarchs of every hue. Hence the propaganda.
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Shane says:
Not to mention that this propaganda also warps how current events are seen. One of the underlying features of this year’s ‘coverage’ of Obama is that by denying him anything his opponents are supposedly denying the whole narrative of Civil Rights, and people know this story because of how often it gets told with most of the bad parts left out. In contrast, Women’s Lib getting attacked so much means that any arguments about gender have their historical foundation taken away from them, and rather than being a real story of liberation and the struggles to continue it they’re just seen as petty complaints that aren’t really important because they’re always there, and truly ‘empowered’ people don’t focus on them anyway because to do so is being whiny… Third-wave narratives can be so self-defeating, and I don’t think that’s an accident.
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Alwaysthinking says:
My experience is that men either get mad when a woman raises the issue of sexism, or they laugh, or they call it petty and advise you not to be a victim or to have a sense of humor. (I have persuaded my husband otherwise, however.)
Nevertheless, I think Hillary did not raise the issue of sexism early in her campaign because she knew she would be ridiculed. When some of her supporters begged her to do so, in fact, she was sneered at for trying to play the victim card when she was trying to stand up for her supporters. As we saw throughout the primary, of course, she was amazing in rising above the true victimization barrage she faced every day.
My neighbor of Egyptian background laughed at the idea of my voting for Hillary. I told him she was the only qualified person in the primary and he sobered up a bit. However, when he asked who I was voting for in the general, I responded “Hillary,” and he laughed louder. I then told him I actually was voting McCain-Palin and he advised me authoritatively that “the people” want Obama because they are sick of Bush.(I gathered that I didn’t count as part of “the people,” whoever “they” are.)
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Kiuku says:
Always,
Because women aren’t supposed to be serious, taken serious enough that sexism could actually exist. They are just supposed to be cute, “hawt” and “sexxay” and laugh at all the men’s jokes.
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Kiuku says:
That’s why men tell you to smile. Because if you’re not smiling you might be taking yourself seriously, which is absolutely fatal.
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Kat says:
Shane says:
I think what you said earlier about how the civil rights movement has been canonised and feminism is often treated as a joke has a lot to do with it. Its interesting and sad how two liberation movements get treated so differently by consensus opinion, as if struggling against racial prejudice is noble and profound while struggling against sexual prejudice is just selfish.A good point. I get the sense that the narrative of the women’s movement in general has been relegated to one of selfishness. Not noble, somehow, but “shrill” and frivolous and self-indulgent, as opposed to all those actual important struggles.
Not to mention that this propaganda also warps how current events are seen. One of the underlying features of this year’s ‘coverage’ of Obama is that by denying him anything his opponents are supposedly denying the whole narrative of Civil Rights, and people know this story because of how often it gets told with most of the bad parts left out.
Yes on this, too. This is part of the dynamic where Obama can get away from being a self-professed cipher — he doesn’t need to be about anything substantial because he knows full well, as does his campaign, that to deny him is to deny the narrative of civil rights. He uses it cynically, like trying to tie his very birth to Selma, and in his own words, to lay claim to the place and its legacy.
You get a twofer, actually: to deny him is to deny hope, too, or so I hear.
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julia says:
These are great comments!
My latest adventure has been sexism and ‘the left’.Last week the Nader campaign came to town. Nader missed his flight, so his senior advisor spoke in his place. His Clinton and Palin bashing were disgusting, I stormed out of the theater. The women in his campaign who I talked to did not understand why I was upset. One is a very seasoned activist. I wrote a piece for Portland Indymedia. It got ten comments by the next morning, then they deleted it.
So - Nader thinks it’s OK to bash women, IMC thinks it’s just fine, who do these people want justice for?
They want justice just for themselves. Just for men.
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Yanni Znaio says:
Kiuku:
While all men *have* pricks, not all men *are* pricks.
Best regards,
YZ
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Ken Cutts says:
The truth is such a simple weapon! Thank you for posting this and your other “Reminders!!”
