Letters To My Editor: No One Deserves A Trial Edition

So, I'm going to write about a letter to my paper's editor, and you're going to have to take in on faith I'm not making it up because in order to pull it on-line you need a user name and password. And I'm pretty sure you have to subscribe, so... Here's the letter, entitled Terrorists Don't Deserve U.S. Justice:

How does U.S. government figure the Christmas bombing attempt on Northwest Flight 259 was a failure? It accomplished what al-Qaida wanted. Whether it brought down the plane, Americans will spend millions to put the would-be bomber on trial.

He, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and those wackos in Gitmo do not deserve American justice. They should be executed as soon as the plane lands. We could use the money on more important things.

First, some minor grammatical grievances. This sentence:

Whether it brought down the plane, Americans will spend millions to put the would-be bomber on trial

makes very little sense.

It could read:

Although it did not succeed in bringing down the plane, Americans will spend millions to put the would-be bomber on trial.

An added sentence about how one of al-Qaeda's stated goals is to bleed America dry would have really improved the sentiment.

But the real problem, aside from the fact that the letter writer seems to be cribbing off of Bill O'Reilly without giving O'Reilly his proper due, lies in the philosophical assertion of the letter, that being:

He, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and those wackos in Gitmo do not deserve American justice.

I'll let Keith Olbermann - because I am into giving props when props are due - take the reins about one of the real problems with this argument (relevant part transcribed below):

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KEITH OLBERMANN (SPEAKING AS BILL O'REILLY): "Simply put, al-Qaeda thugs have no rights, none. They should be killed on the spot. And they are being killed by the drones. So if they're captured, they should undergo harsh interrogation and be placed in military prisons."

KEITH OLBERMANN (SPEAKING AS HIMSELF): Okay, were you planning to still put them in the military prisons after you kill them on the spot, or do you need to rephrase your plan? Seriously, Bill, we need to walk you through the idea of why we have trials? Ultimately, why we ask questions first and shoot later? It's not about rights, it's not about who's a thug, it's not about how much sadistic joy you and the sickos like you from the thought of "harsh interrogation". It's so we get the right guy. Mankind figured this out thousands of years ago, and we replaced that old method of "kill them then ask them if they're guilty" because the dead men proved to be mediocre at answering questions! And then it also turned out that often we were killing the wrong guys which is inconvenient! Especially for them!

But, aside from the inconvenient aspect of killing the innocent, there is a not so insignificant fact that applying an impartial judicial system is one of those key things that sets us apart from those who wish to terrorize us. Applying our rule of law to those who would indiscriminately kill, allowing for the fact that our values system is strong enough and significant enough and, perhaps most importantly, sacred enough to try and convict those who are guilty, and try and set free those who are found not guilty.

Because even though Olbermann is right that it isn't wholly about rights, it is at least somewhat about rights. Because the judicial system isn't set up for the government to reign supreme. It has been set up in favor of the defendant. Because the guilty aren't the only ones accused; but also because the guilty have the fundamental right of due process as well. Partly, that is to protect the innocent, because if the guilty are not worthy of trial by jury then the whole process by which we decide who is indeed innocent gets a bit truncated. And then we circle back to a lot of the wrong people dying, which - again - is inconvenient.

Perhaps my Letter Writer means only al-Qaeda terrorists don't deserve American justice. Perhaps those others who break the law are still subject to the rule of law, as long as they aren't Islamic extremists. That may be where his line is drawn. But that doesn't mean that's where everyone's line is drawn. Maybe someone else's line for which crimes deserve a fair trial is less broad than "everyone who isn't engaged in terrorism for the benefit of al-Qaeda"; maybe someone else's line encompasses those who drive while texting, or who kill anyone for any reason. And that's really why denying the American system of justice to one group you personally don't like, even if it saves a bundle of cash, is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard - because it rests predominately on the idea that everyone else will agree that this subset of criminal is the subset that does not deserve to go through due process and be subject to Amendments 5 through 8.

Let's take in that number for a sec, shall we? Our Founders felt that the whole criminal and civil trial thing was so important, they chose to utilize four whole amendments out of the original ten to explicitly setting down rules for how trials should be set up. Four. It is inconceivable to me that those who purport to love our country so much they want to kill anyone on our soil immediately who allegedly engaged in an act of terrorism could so willfully ignore the very words of our Constitution. For all the talk about how actually trying these people plays into the terrorists' hands, those same people do little to engage with the notion that ignoring those parts of our society that makes it our society because we're scared or angry or vengeful does more harm than it does good. Because it fundamentally alters our society, and not for the better. Because it ignores that the justice system isn't there to exonerate the innocent. It is there to provide rights to the guilty.

How Pretty Woman Does Not Hate Women

Okay, so Cracked.com did this list of seven chick flicks that actually hate on women. I've seen only four out of the seven movies on the list (I'll let you ponder over what the other three are, as one will soon become readily apparent), and I tell ya - I have to agree with their analysis. Except when it comes to Pretty Woman. Because their reason for it being a woman-hating film is this:

By tying 100 percent of a woman's self-worth to her clothes.

To which I ask, has the author actually ever seen Pretty Woman? Because it seems like that would be a 'no'. Especially when it continues on by saying:

During a 45 minute makeover scene Vivian walks into a Rodeo Drive boutique all pouty-mouthed and gangly--a big-lipped, shamefaced fallen woman who knows she doesn't belong in the same room as regular folk. Give her some expensive clothes, some flattery and overt groveling from the service caste, and she walks out of there like the honest-to-God Queen of Sheba. Her posture is straightened, her gait is elegant...

45 minutes?! The movie is only 119 minutes long! If there were truly a 45 minute make over scene, there would only be 74 more minutes left of the film for Richard Gere and Julia Roberts to fall in love! The whole opera scene would have to be cut! As would the polo scene!

Here's the other thing: yes, Vivian receives a make over. Yes, she walks out of there happy and secure in her new wardrobe. You know what she does with her new wardrobe? Walks right into the shop that had originally turned her into "a big-lipped, shamefaced fallen woman" (which, no), reminds them of who she was and how they refused to wait on her the previous day, and then tells them, "You work on commission, right? Big mistake. Huge." In other words, the clothes do not make the woman, and the woman who's money was not good enough for them one day is going to remember her treatment and act accordingly. The salespeople of that store got pretty well shafted (and shamed) for their treatment of Vivian.

So. We learn Vivian had self-worth before, retains self-worth during, and then employs that self-worth while in her new outfit to defend the person she was in her old outfit. It's just that she's human, and can be hurt by people's callous responses to her based on her outward appearance. Hey! That sounds like a pretty decent message about not judging a book by its character.

Seriously, Cracked. Fail.

Yes, Christmas Observations WILL Survive

I've written about my insane local paper before, and I'll probably do it again before long. This time, it is Lee Garbar's Christmas Observances Will Survive. My favorite part of the opinion piece is:

At one time, television celebrated the Charles Dickens novel "A Christmas Carol" by broadcasting four different versions of the story, the most significant of which was with English actor Alastair Sim playing the part of Scrooge. Last year TV, apparently fearful of overdoing the movie because it deals with Christmas, ran just one of them.

Yes, that must be what is subduing ABC Family in their 25 Days of Christmas programming, the fear of overdoing movies that deal with Christmas. They were going to go with 50 Days of Christmas, but then were fearful going overboard with the festivities and crossing over into an all out extravaganza. Or, it is much more likely that they decided to choose from the wide array of other Christmas films (good and bad) that have been made since.

(Side note: I find it odd that Mr. Garbar is concerned with the lack of diversity in his Christmas Carol tales viewing opportunities, since A Christmas Carol is, by my measure, not exactly brimming with religiosity. Scrooge isn't changed by a visit from saints or angels, but by four ghosts.)

One of most religious of Christmas specials I know of, A Charlie Brown Christmas, generally plays on one of the major television networks during the Christmas season. The only one that is possibly more religious is The Little Drummer Boy, and I seem to remember that horrible bit of stop action animation being on ABC Family as recently as three years ago.

But Garbar goes further:

Mike Johnson, chief attorney for the ADF, remarked, "It's a sad day in America when you have to retain a lawyer to wish someone a merry Christmas."

Lee Garbar, meet Michelle Goldberg, who says:

Despite Johnson's lamentations, one can in fact offer Christmas greetings without legal counsel. Christmas trees are permitted in public schools. (They're considered secular symbols.) Nativity scenes are allowed on public property, although if the government erects one, it has to be part of a larger display that also includes other, secular signs of the holiday season, or displays referring to other religions. (The operative Supreme Court precedent is 1984's Lynch v. Donnelly, where the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a city-sponsored Christmas display including a crèche, reindeer, a Christmas tree, candy-striped poles and a banner that read "Seasons Greetings" was permissible. "The display is sponsored by the city to celebrate the Holiday and to depict the origins of that Holiday," the majority wrote. "These are legitimate secular purposes.") Students are allowed to distribute religious holiday cards and literature in school. If the administration tries to stop them, the ACLU will step in to defend the students' free-speech rights, as they did in 2003 when teenagers in Massachusetts were suspended for passing out candy canes with Christian messages.

Here's the thing: I, personally, love Christmas. I love Christmas music and Christmas television specials. I love Christmas light displays and Christmas plays. I love seeing Santas collecting money for charity on the sidewalk. I love presents, and giving them. I love the feeling of Christmas, of good cheer and good will toward men. But, as an atheist, I can also tell you that there is no war on Christmas. Forget all of the things Goldberg cites. Walk into any mall, any store, from now until December 26th, and you will hear Christmas carols, most of which contain some kind of religious sentiment. "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"; "O! Holy Night"; "Little Town of Bethlehem"; "O Come All Ye Faithful"; "Christ Is Born"; "What Child Is This"; etc, etc, etc. They are beautiful songs. They hold a sometimes beautiful sentiment. They are also vibrant reminders that those of us on the outside of these faithful proclamations are still living in a Christian nation, that the Christian celebrations are still national celebrations, and that we are all inculcated with those messages of Christ the Savior is Born! whenever we step outside our house this time of year. And for those of us who do not believe Christ is, actually, the Savior, it is also a reminder that our own ideas about this time of year are less important.

Grabar also writes:

Still, the campaign against Christmas has resulted in diminished observance of the holiday. For example, schools have all but eliminated various practices of the past in observing Christmas and emphasizing the day as recognition of the Savior's birth.

Sure, because "the Savior" isn't, actually, my Savior. He isn't the Savior of a great swath of my friends, and to be taught in the secular public school system that he is would be a bit of muddling of the separation of Church and State thing. There are other people who exist in this country. They deserve to be able to go to school and not be inundated with Christian references, and to not be taught - even during a certain time of year - that the Christian way is the Right Way, with the implicit implication that all other ways are wrong. Lee Grabar can believe that; the teacher can believe that; but to use the public school system, the system paid for with everyone's money and not just Christian funds, is crossing the line. And more than warring against Christianity, it is warring for the recognition of the rest of us.

Thank Goodness I Was Discerning About My Best Friend Pick In Pre-School

And those friends I made since then, because otherwise I may believe that

BFFs are great when you’re upset about a boy/sick cat/whatnot. But there are limits to friendship...

Luckily, I've got myself a great best friend. One I can go to with more than boys or sick cats or whatnot. One I could call early in the morning hours to come and get me from the streets or who would come to the ER if I found myself there in a bad way. That is, if she had her cell phone near her and the ringer on (there's a reason we're best friends). I had thought that this is typically why people have best friends instead of just regular old friends - so that you could have someone who would be great if your biggest problem was that you have a sick cat or if your biggest problem is a great deal larger than that. Apparently, though, being there for anything above and beyond "sick cat" is too much to ask for from a best friend. Like, say, not abandoning a best friend at a club without knowing whether or not she wants to be abandoned there and begrudgingly picking said friend up from the hospital after she had been "slipped a mickey". At least, that's what Friend or Foe tells me.

The letter is as follows:

A couple of weeks ago, my two closest friends and I went to a small live-music venue to hear a band. While at the concert, someone “slipped me a mickey.” I remember nothing about the rest of the evening, but I was told that the police officer found me lying alone on the sidewalk. I came-to in the hospital E.R.—alone. The entire experience was frightening.

Since then, I’ve tried to piece together what happened. Apparently, at the end of the band's set, I left for the ladies room with my purse—and didn’t come back. My friends figured I had left, so they left, too. Later, when I called them from the street, sobbing in hysterics and asking for help, they told me to go back to the club and that they would have an ambulance pick me up there. When my mother—who lives 2,000 miles away (and hopped on a plane the next day to be with me)—later called these two friends of mine to beg them to join me while I was recovering, they refused. It wasn't until I told them that the hospital wouldn’t release me until I had someone to drive me home that they came to pick me up. They then angrily drove me to my car, and I drove home alone. By then, it was the next morning.

I have known these girls for more than 10 years, and had until now considered them my best friends. But I can't help feeling as though they’d abandoned me. If I found out one of them had been taken to the hospital, I would have dropped everything and gone to be by her side. Am I expecting too much from my best friends, both of whom are mid-twentysomething professional women?

The response? Well, that leaves a lot to be desired. Let's take that from the top, mkay?

Wow, that’s a tough call.

Really? A tough call? Your friend calls you, hysterical in the middle of the night, and it's a touch and go thing whether or not you should book it to the hospital when her mother calls and asks you to sit with her?

A spouse or even a boyfriend? Yes, it would be his or her duty to haul ass to said hospital at 4 a.m.

Well, yes. A spouse or a boyfriend would be driven to haul ass to said hospital, though hopefully out of something more than simply "duty".

But your single female friends who are already, presumably tucked in their beddy-bies?

Should also be hauling ass to said hospital at 4 a.m., not in the least out of concern because the last time they saw their friend, she was heading off to the bathroom. Which means they should be incredibly concerned that her evening ended in the hospital. Because friendish people tend to care when even their liked ones end up in the hospitals after a night spent mostly together. But in this specific case, it seems more likely this woman's friends were not called at 4 in the morning, but instead later along in the day. Which makes their refusal to come to the hospital all the more appalling.

For one thing, it’s not even necessarily safe—depending on where you live and how far you live from the hospital—for a woman to head out alone at that hour.

I'll concede this one, if we're talking about the original sobbing hysterical phone call. And even then, I would expect my best friend to at least feel bad about the not coming out to collect me.

For another, presumably, by the time your mother called you were out of danger.

But not this one. Because, really. One of the reasons to have someone at the hospital with you isn't because you're in danger, but because you've gone through a traumatic experience. And may want some recognizable and sympathetic people hanging around to calm you down.

Yes, overnights at the E.R. are the opposite of fun. So are disastrous drug trips. (I had one in my twenties, which pretty much sealed my fate as an illegal-substance ninny.)

Um... What don't you get about being "slipped a mickey"? That isn't a "disastrous drug trip"; at least, not a voluntary one. That is being drugged without one's knowledge or consent. That is the whole point behind the phrase "being slipped a mickey". A "mickey" isn't something you take for funsies. A mickey is something someone covertly gives you because they want to do all sorts of illicit things to you you may otherwise object to.

But only nuns make it out of youth without a few ambulance rides.

Wait, what?

No, seriously, what?!

And with that, we pick up at the sick cat line:

Here’s a little secret. BFFs are great when you’re upset about a boy/sick cat/whatnot. But there are limits to friendship—limits that don’t apply to our romantic partners or close family members.

Well, yeah. Most people don't share bank accounts with their best friends, or expect their best friends to co-sign loans. But coming to hang with someone when they're in the hospital after a roofie incident? That's not one of the limits I would reasonably expect on my best friendship.
And the piece de resistance:

I also wish they’d been a less critical of what was, by your account, a freak incident. Why were they so unforgiving? I’d wager a guess that they think you’re lying about the mickey, tales of which are sometimes used as a cover for irresponsible behavior. (Only you know the truth.)

There is so much fail contained in those lines, I don't even know what to say. Seriously. Don't even know what to say. Except what kind of dumb ass friends does this Lucinda Rosenfeld think are acceptable?

Let me say this: friendships aren't really that complicated, especially in situations like this. If your friend ends up in the hospital, go there. It really should be just about that level of simple.

(h/t Feministe)

Rape ≠ "Messed Up Romantic Relationship"

This is an FYI for Stephen Goldmeier, who says this:

By far the most dark and twisted relationship on Dollhouse, though, is that between Sierra and her original handler. Her handler, on multiple occasions, took advantage of the preternatural trust programmed into the otherwise blank Sierra to take advantage of her innocence and rape her.

It's one of the most twisted sexual events Whedon has yet crafted, and it further proves his fascination with strange, unconventional, or even downright disturbingly messed up romantic relationships.

Which, no. Just no.

I'm not one who believes there is a total disconnect between sex and rape, forever and always. I am one who believes rape is a form of asserting power, but rapes come in many different forms. There are rapes that do exist within "disturbingly messed up romantic relationships". One of Whedon's own shows even examines that: Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Spike trying to "make [Buffy] feel it" is an excellent example of where power and sex manifest into attempted rape.

Hearn raping Sierra doesn't fit in that pantheon. It is the classic rape-as-power. Hearn says it himself when Adelle asks him, "Did it make it better? That she didn’t struggle?" and Hearn responds, "No. It made it easier."

This was an abuse of the power a caregiver has over his charge, nothing more and nothing less. To describe Hearn's continued abuse of Sierra in romantic terms is to completely misunderstand the presented scenario, and to categorize all rape as somehow romantic in nature, no matter what.

Say, What?

Or, a post where I cowardly voice my confusion here instead of actually at Shakesville, due to the whole "Luddite"/"flight animal" thing. I'm sure both play a large part in this decision. I'm going to err more on the side of the "flight animal" instinct though.

In a post called Rape Reports Hit Two-Decade Low, a regular of Shakesville e-mailed Melissa McEwan a USA Today article detailing, obviously, how rape reporting has hit a two decade low. All's on the up and up, and all past this point is on the up and up, but this one comment by the Shaker who sent in the article? Not so much on the up and up:

Rape prosecutions have improved dramatically over the past two decades because of advances in DNA testing to pinpoint a rapist rather than forcing prosecutors to rely solely on a victim's identification of her attacker, says Kim Gandy, past president of the National Organization for Women and a former prosecutor.

Oh yes, god forbid we have to rely on the testimony of a victim, of a woman. No wonder conviction rates were so low! Thank god we have rational science now instead of hysterical, over-accusing women!

Here's my problem with this. Yes, conviction rates of rapes were (and are) probably low partially because of how we as a society perceive women, and how we think of rape. But, and it is a big "but" indeed, I'm betting that as much as that perception has and will continue to negatively influence rape convictions, there is a bigger issue at play here. And that is the way our justice system is set up.

Our justice system is, at best, imperfect. Jay Smooth outlined one of the ways it is imperfect just as recently as my last post. Yes, the one right below this one! Our justice system has convicted innocent men and women, because of biases. It has also let clearly guilty men and women walk, because of biases. The reason for the White Night riots wasn't because Dan White got the book thrown at him. The reason for the 1992 L.A. riots weren't because the officers who beat Rodney King were sentenced to jail time.

But, the justice system is set up to err on the side of caution. It is set up to protect the liberty of an innocent (wo)man more than it is to punish the guilty (wo)man. I'm of the mindset that this is a pretty nifty system, indeed. A system where the government has to prove the guilt of the accused rather than a system where the accused has to prove his or her own innocence is a place I want to be. Partially because perception is a malleable thing, and walking into a trial with the mindset the accused is guilty until proven innocent will make for a higher conviction rate.

Thus, if the charge placed before the court is to find the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the lack of evidence present to prove the accused guilty of sex at all is going to be a downer in terms of conviction rates. Overall, I'm not doubting that the "hysterical woman" thing plays a part in the trial; but even so, the jury can't convict, shouldn't convict, if the proof is circumstantial or if the proof offered is the testimony of the victim of the rape. In that sense, rape convictions would almost have to go up with the advent of DNA evidence, because now the proof of sexual contact is hard and fast. That is one less thing the prosecutor has to convince the jury of, and one less thing the defense attorney can question.

So, even though I'm in full agreement with the rest of the post, I can't legitimately say, "Right on" to this part of it. Because although it sucks rape victims don't get justice often enough, I can't imagine living under a system of law where the testimony of the victim is enough to convict someone of a crime - any crime. I'm a firm believer in supporting the victims of sex crimes. But I'm also a firm believer in our imperfect system. I'm a believer in the burden of proof being on the government, and not the accused. It doesn't always end with justice being served, but it is a sight less scary than some of the other possible systems of justice.

Bathroom Sign Alternative

A couple of months ago, after writing a post that contained an image of the traditional bathroom sign, my friend (yes, that one) asked,

...how would you revise this picture, using the same silhouetted images?

I didn't have an answer. Truth be told, I'm not that creative when it comes to redesigning images - and, I suspect, few people really and truly are. Ask me to rewrite a sentence, and I'm all there.

During our most recent conversation, my friend (yes, still that one) brought up the bathroom sign thing again, telling me,

Some of the things that you've highlighted in the past -- like the bathroom signs -- are impossible to correct.

I responded, I'll admit, derisively. And tonight, I went on teh Google and did some Googling to see if anyone had been able to come up with a solution to the bathroom sign problem. And I found one. Now, it doesn't use the same silhouetted images. But it gets the point across.

And, I kind of like it. It makes me laugh :

And if we're going with using the same silhouettes, then there's this one, which is a slightly more graphic take on the one above:

That second one is still a bit too gendered for my taste, what with the blue-pink divide, but still is a valid example of something other than the same old, same old.

Given the advent of products like the "Go Girl" (discovered via feministe), the standing up brigade may see a swelling of its numbers with those of the XX chromosome, but I'm pretty happy with my discovery. It lends to the theory that many things - even those seemingly engrained in our collective psyche - can indeed be corrected.

***

I've been pondering the true reason for the male-female bathroom divide anyway. I've been known to pop into the Men's if the line for the Women's is atrociously long - or if it is moderately long and there are extenuating circumstances. I have always been a little suspicious of the Men's-Women's divide when the divided bathrooms in question are truly two separate rooms housing only one toilet. At that point, gender seems like it's pretty moot in terms of bathroom assignments.

But now, I'm starting to think that, perhaps with a few moderate practical changes, all bathrooms could really be unisex. And in event, this sign:

would do quite nicely.

Affirmative Action in America

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. How many people do the first two?

Americans seem to be notoriously bad at follow through. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We can get one of the three major parts of how to green our world down (incidentally, it is the one that affects our routine the least), but the other two? Nah. We're already recycling.

That's kind of how I feel about the Affirmative Action fight, and the Race in 2028 editorial by Ross Douthat in Sunday's New York Times a friend of mine highlighted on his blog.

Affirmative Action is the slightly more arduous version of "recycle" in the whole "making America more equitable racially"...

The other steps, the ones we know about and the ones we haven't quite worked out yet, well, we can ignore those because we're already working on this Affirmative Action thing.

Because we've accepted that Affirmative Action has to happen, at least for a little while, we can ignore the fact that the world, our world, the world we live in and play in and work in and are entertained by, still remains pretty damn white - and male. We can talk about how "the senators are yesterday’s men. The America of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is swiftly giving way to the America of Sonia Maria Sotomayor and Barack Hussein Obama" without truly delving into the fact that there is one African American in the whole of the Senate, that he wasn't elected, and that he isn't going to run for an actual election (admittedly, for reasons not stemming from his race). We can ignore these facts:

Women – Women of voting age represent 51.6 percent of the voting age population yet are 16.3% of the Congress, putting America below the global average of 17% female representation at parliamentary level. As of 2007, the US ranks 68th in terms of women holding office in the legislature — this puts the US just above Turkmenistan, and just below El Salvador and Panama.

Latinos – Hispanics represent over 14% of the U.S. population, while their Congress representation is 3% in the Senate and about 5% in the House.

African-Americans – The Senate is 1% African American and the House is roughly 9.2% African American compared to the 12.3 percent of American population that are of Black or African-American descent

This is the world in which, as Douthat notes, "The nation’s largest states, Texas and California, already have 'minority' majorities. By 2023, if current demographic trends continue, nonwhites — black, Hispanic and Asian — will constitute a majority of Americans under 18. By 2042, they’ll constitute a national majority." And it is a world in which racism, real and actual and deadly and debilitating and degrading, is still present. In this society, "where the quest for diversity is already as likely to benefit the children of high-achieving recent immigrants as the descendants of slaves", and where those children of the high-achieving recent immigrants are still considered less than, and are still likely to be discriminated against.

I'm not against class-based affirmative action, but I also don't think that we - those of us who have been privileged and still remain privileged - should necessarily be the ones to decide if and when Affirmative Action has done enough. I don't think one African-American elected president and one Hispanic on the Supreme Court is the ushering in of a world in which Affirmative Action is ultimately unnecessary. At some point, I hope that it will be. At some point, I hope that we as a nation learn the follow through. I hope that we as a nation learn to suck it up. I hope that when white America is truly a minority, we recognize that we should probably then be a less of a majority in a majority of the institutions we now, as a race, have a hold over.

But I can understand focusing on the selfish crap. I'm a selfish person. I like knowing how something will help ME. And in truth, Affirmative Action does help me - and not just because I'm a girl and girls are helped. It helps me, because it makes my country better. It gets more viewpoints out in the open. It helps tear down the false belief that there is such a thing as an objective viewpoint. It culls from a wider source. It forces new thoughts and new ways of thinking into spaces that would otherwise be bereft of them. It creates opportunities to interact with and learn from people who have had profoundly different life experiences. It creates different ways of thinking about the very people who have, through the history of our country, been oppressed and discriminated against. And, if we go into Affirmative Action mindful that we as white people were very often not the subjects of a meritocracy and instead had a leg up due to that whole being white thing, it helps reinforce different avenues of viewing fellow citizens.

In a world where a preeminent African-American scholar is arrested after breaking in to his own house and providing identification proving who he was and that the house he was found in was indeed the one he lived in, we as a nation haven't learned all the necessary lessons from Affirmative Action, and we certainly haven't done the necessary follow-through. In a world where latently racist assumptions are made about our president's birth place, in a world where Rosario Dawson - who was born in New York City - was disregarded as the main character in But I'm a Cheerleader because she was Puerto Rican, and thus not "All-American" enough, we haven't fully acknowledged that the only Americans worthy of that title are white Americans. We haven't fully accepted that we aren't the center of our nation's universe.

I agree with my friend's quoting of Andrew Sullivan's "The goal of the gay rights movement should be to cease to exist", and his assertion that should also be the goal of Affirmative Action programs. But I'm not the person who gets to tell the gay rights movement when it has done enough, and when it should declare the ultimate victory by ceasing to exist. And I'm not willing to declare that by 2028, Affirmative Action will have done enough and should cease to exist. White America may not get to be the most central voices in that conversation, and we probably shouldn't be.

The Problem with PETA

The thread on the latest PETA post has gotten long. Very, very long. And then I fell off of the grid for about a week, and no longer feel compelled to post my thoughts there. That doesn't mean that I'm not compelled to answer the questions my continually hounded friend asks, though, so I'm going to once again use him as a jumping off point to write a blog post. My friend ponders,

I was wondering if you think it's equally offensive when Peter Singer compares animals to black slaves, or when he compares apes to the mentally handicapped (another traditionally marginalized group).

I haven't read Peter Singer since sophomore year of college; without the text in front of me (or a strong memory of that text), I'm unprepared to make a judgement about whether or not it is equally offensive, or even offensive in its own right without needing a comparison with PETA. I would hazard to guess that Singer's own comparisons would in all probability be at the very least slightly offensive, for the same basic reason as the PETA ads: it takes a group of people, a group traditionally thought of as deficient or less in some shape or another, and turns them into objects in the course of furthering one's own cause. It is at best a "greater good" argument, and I'm not a big believer in the "greater good"; utilizing some populations for the greater good still leaves those populations being treated as simply tools, and that is unacceptable. It is unacceptable because in order for there to be a workable greater good, then the individual must be recognized as being a vital part of that good. It can't just be the individuals liked best by one organization or another, or the individuals fought for by one organization or another. The greater good is simply not a moral 'good' if individuals or groups are left behind in order to facilitate that victory. In the paraphrased words of one of my favorite characters, "Me and mine gotta be objectified so you can live in your better world?" I don't think so.

This is a problem that has been present in political and social organizations probably since the start of political and social organizations. That does not excuse the practice. Again, I have no recollection of Singer's allusions. But the problem with PETA is that while it may be true, as my friend contests, that:

Often, PETA’s goal in producing these ads is to compare the objectification of people to the objectification of animals – trying to link racism or sexism to “species-ism,

PETA is utilizing that objectification to further its own cause. The problem is that PETA is taking advantage of already present social inequities in order to make their point. This is an issue, because although their goal may be to link racism and/or sexism to species-ism, they are still complicit in creating and distributing sexist and racist images. They are still playing upon those social ills with no conscious - or at the very least public - recognition that by doing so, they are perpetuating those same social inequities. Their goal may be to draw more feminists and anti-racists into the fight against 'species-ism' - ignoring, for a moment, that feminists and anti-racists are more likely than not to have at the very least pondered these connections even if they have not accepted those connections' veracity - and their intent may not be to directly contribute to the continued sexist and racist images and lines of thought that are present in society; nevertheless, intention has very little impact on what is actually imparted. They create racist and sexist imagery, and there is no disavowals present in regard to those images. Which leads directly to this question:

Is there something about the nature of advertisements that makes these comparisons more offensive?

Without comparing the images or advertising to anything else, the medium - and how that medium is used - does go a long way to making the advertising offensive.

PETA's ads are like when hipsters (or others) 'ironically' use racist terminology; it is cloaked in the idea that because the person or organization using the terminology is 'progressive' or 'with it' or 'hip' or 'cool', then somehow the meaning behind the original terminology or image simply fades away or becomes unimportant. The opposite is more true. Being 'progressive' or 'with it' or 'hip' or 'cool' means recognizing the power of those images and that terminology, recognizing how intent does not shape the work independent of the societal reading of such a work, and recognizing how utilizing that terminology or image for one's own ends is the very opposite of progressive, or hip, or with it, or cool. And in both the hipsters' case and PETA's case, I suspect that knowledge is very much present - but that they feel they can play both sides of the fence on the issue.

While PETA claims to be drawing a line between racism and sexism (as well as racialized sexism) and their pet project of species-ism, they are also happily trading in on the titillation of those very images. In short, they are trying to pull in the progressive groups they are objectifying, as well as those who will not see the images as sexist or racist in the first place - or who won't care. A good friend of mine (heretofore known as My Good Friend - or MGF for short) put it best when he said, "When I see the ads of the lamb with leprosy, I want to help. When I see the ads of the hot women, I want to help to meet hot women". Like hipster racism (using racist words/imagery ironically disparage others' racism but to also get away with being racist), PETA is involved in activist sexism/racism. And that is the problem.

Part of it is definitely a media problem; it would be hard to both use a naked body to draw parallels to one's own cause and also disparage the use of such a body as well in a 8 1/2" by 11" glossy. That doesn't mitigate the problem, though. PETA chose the format; PETA chose the message; PETA chose, through certain ad campaigns, to further degrade their cover of simply trying to draw that line between oppressions. PETA chose to use the pictures they use, with no evidence of even trying to deconstruct the traditional pin-up model. Instead, they play quite cogently into that image with nary a hint that isn't exactly what we as the audience are supposed to take away from it. PETA designed the campaigns like PETA Striptease Quiz. My friend (not MGF, though I certainly consider him a good one), continues with this:

You have to place the ad in the context of PETA's larger argument, and that argument isn't racist by any means. In fact, it's an argument against marginalizing and dehumanizing certain groups. PETA is holding up the dehumanization of black slaves as an example something that's wrong - and that we should all recognize as wrong. That's the starting point.

Where is that point in the Striptease Quiz? When has PETA ever tried to continue the conversation past its original, sexualized, imagery? Where is the progress of thought? PETA's larger argument is flawed for a myriad of reasons, but none strike quite so quick as the fact that there is no larger argument presented in their images, in their ads, or in their demonstrations. They begin and end with the exploitation of marginalized bodies; without a continuation of that idea - in the places everyone sees - the 'larger argument' isn't one. The 'larger argument' loses its viability. Because the larger argument then becomes just a skirt to hide behind. If PETA's end goal is to broaden the conversation, then it is also partially PETA's responsibility to keep moving that conversation forward. They have continually failed in that duty; they have continued to simply pay lip service to the idea that the argument is "against marginalizing and dehumanizing certain groups" while marginalizing and dehumanizing the same groups that are and traditionally have been among the most vulnerable. That is PETA's problem. I doubt they are going to solve it any time soon.

River Tam: Sad Attempt At Feminism?

Cracked.com had an article about Hollywood's 5 Saddest Attempts at Feminim, and although I agreed with 4 out of the 5 entries (or at least, the ground reasoning for those entries -like Elizabeth Swan), #3 really makes me scratch my head in wonderment. And actually, also #2, because I'm really not sure if Catwoman was supposed to be such an empowering female figure. I mean, sure, Catwoman is cool and all, but I didn't really get a "Hey! We're totally trying to create a character women will see and go 'Hooray for Feminism!'" feeling from her in any of her reincarnations. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I don't really think I am. After all, comic books and comic book films haven't exactly been known as the bastion of feminist thought. Look at the most recent Batman for an example, or even Iron Man. Pepper Potts is cool, but she's still kind of one-note and not much of an entity. Same thing with Rachel Dawes. She was a cooler character in Batman Begins, because she was actually given something to do and had an agency and story separate from Batman himself. She was a crusader in her own right. And though the switch from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhaal made for a more compelling portrayal of the character, Rachel herself was downgraded significantly in The Dark Knight. Hell, she didn't even try to save herself when she was in danger. Harvey Dent did; but Rachel just sat there passively waiting to be rescued. That's not so kick-ass, but it is par for the course. And so Catwoman is just one in a long line of comic book women who is created more on the individual level than as a beacon of empowerment for women. She is created as a notable and interesting and complex adversary for Batman, and really little else. Her story, like Harvey Dent's story and the Joker's story, is meant to mirror Batman's own tale. Which is a cool literary device and allows a deeper introspection about Batman and Bruce Wayne; but does little to create a moral agent of entirely independent thought, because it all comes back to the Batman.

But let's get back to the #3 on that list. The third spot is occupied by one River Tam, Joss Whedon creation and one of the main characters on the prematurely cancelled Firefly and follow-up film Serenity. The problem Cracked highlights?

"Despite River's inherent ass-kicking abilities, she rarely uses them to the benefit of the crew. The character has been driven insane by her experiences, and therefore she spends most of her time saying crazy things and throwing up on her brother's bed. In fact, protecting River forms the backbone of no less than five out of thirteen episodes, plus the theatrical movie. That is a lot of rescuing for a feminist hero."

And as backup for this critique, they pulled out a crazy woman who claims that Joss Whedon is a rapist. Because all men are rapists, didn't you know? Le sigh. Well, let's take a look at this argument from Cracked, because it isn't all its cracked up to be.

First and foremost, River Tam was not driven insane by her experiences. She was made insane because the government stripped her amygdala. This wasn't just some "weak woman overcome" thing. This was purposefully and medically done to her. It removed her agency, and it was part of the government's plan of turning River Tam into an object and not a subject. And although this is a small nitpick, the throwing up on her brother Simon's bed wasn't because of the insanity so much as it was based on her reaction to the drugs Simon gave her to try to conteract her insanity. So it isn't like Whedon created a crazy female character who went throwing up everywhere willy nilly. Secondly, protecting River and Simon from the government is a main theme, not because they are weak and need protecting but because they are fugitives from the law. That is a lot different than a Rachel Dawes situation. Thirdly, I don't know where they get that five episode count. From where I'm standing, protecting River was just one storyline in the pilot episode; Bushwhacked had a different backbone of introducing Reavers and the Alliance stupidity full on, with keeping Simon and River away from the government playing an adjacent role to the primary theme. Ariel is about gathering more information about River's condition and pulling off a daring heist. Objects in Space is about River being smart enough and able enough to take control of a dangerous situation and utilize her talents to protect not only herself but her newfound family and home. Safe is really the only episode that is about protecting River. Fourth, and this may be a bit of a nitpick as well, a lot of River's talents aren't strictly inherent. She had the ability to become an ass-kicker, but she had to be trained by the government. She isn't Buffy. She is a girl who was used.

Fifthly, this criticism put forth by Cracked may be a valid critique if not for two caveats, one being that River Tam is hardly the only kick ass feminist heroine on the ship (Zoe comes immediately to mind as another); and the second caveat being that this is actually kind of a traditional feminist narrative. Think A Doll's House. Think The Awakening. Think The Yellow Wallpaper. Hell, think Wide Sargasso Sea. All, with varying levels of success on the part of the female protagonist, start off as an examination of the female as the object, as something to be controlled and possessed. Nora escapes; Edna swims out to sea; the protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper goes insane and then begins to crawl; Antoinette goes insane and decides to take her own life. River Tam is among these narratives, with Zoe Washburne representing another narrative.

River Tam had something taken from her, she was broken, and through that she became stronger and overcame and fully grew into a self-defined entity. And yet, even when she is broken by a government who wanted her as an object, as a weapon, we are told outright that she is "a person, actual and whole". Her journey is powerful because it doesn't come from a place of film-exploitation. We don't see the horrific things done to River in an attempt to titillate us; we don't see what has been done to River at all. Even her brief nudity in Serenity (the episode) is meant to emphasize her vulnerability and her odd openness to the world. And through it all, though she has been beaten and broken and used like a thing, she is someone who comes into her own; she becomes someone who is able to control her talents -talents that had made her object in a different situation- in order to fully set herself and her companions free. And that is the thing Cracked's list doesn't seem to recognize: River's journey in Firefly and Serenity is the journey toward empowerment. We don't meet her already empowered and powerful. We meet someone who has had horrible things done to her; we meet someone who has been sacrificed for the greater good. And through her journey, she becomes a feminist icon.

"Women" Politicians

So, I watched Sarah Palin's speech, and I read what people wrote about her, and I read why one of my friends is now a fan, and I have to say that I was unimpressed. Part of the reason why I was unimpressed is because of the narrative her speech took. I was insanely bored of her familial story at about the 7 minute mark, just like I was kind of appalled that her first speech after she had been announced John McCain's running mate was also in great part about being a wife and mother. An editorial in my paper said that Palin "showed us a new model of female politician". My friend said, "Like all political women must do in these types of speeches, she brought up her family in detail". That is the prevailing sentiment, and that is a sentiment I hate. Caveats, modifiers, qualifiers, and markers of this nature drive me up the wall. Sarah Palin is a woman, and she is a politician. But the one should not make for a different type of the other. That "women" politicians have a different criteria to meet than "normal" politicians is offensive, ridiculous, and more than a little sexist. 

The same Republicans that are now fighting so hard against sexism have also unanimously declared that there is a "right" way for a woman to be a politician, and that is by focusing a lot of the attention and energy on the fact that she is still a real woman -you know, one who would rather be a hands-on mom and wife and who puts that part of her life first and foremost, or at least first and foremost in her speeches. I think it is great that another woman has been selected to be a vice-presidential candidate. I think it is a little sad that it took 24 years for it to happen again, but I also believe that it is a demonstration of the progress women have made in the public realm. Even the Republican Party, a party that hasn't exactly been known for their progressive policies since about the time of Teddy Roosevelt, has had to deal with the reality of women both making in-roads in traditionally male arenas and with women who want to see more women succeed in traditional male arenas. Which is why I consider Sarah Palin's pick for vice-president is in fact a feminist victory. We did that. Not me personally, but feminists -since before Seneca Falls- have been working for women to have access to and be acknowledged in public spaces. Each generation has gotten a little closer, has fought new battles, and have changed mindsets about the way things are and should be. These in-roads have been, in many cases, slow to build; sometimes they have been minimal. Sometimes, they have been great. 1920 was a banner year. The Women's Lib movement, starting with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, created a radical shift in how women are viewed by society and what women are capable of achieving in that society. Joe Biden's Violence Against Women Act is another monumental step forward. And the party that represents "traditional family values", the party that has often presented the ideal home and family as one that has a wife and mother in the kitchen with the string of pearls and the homemade dinner with a smile, has a woman in the running for executive office. That is real change. That represents a real change in how we see women. But although Palin's nomination is a victory and a continuation of feminist ideals, Palin herself subscribes to the opposite of those ideals.

Sarah Palin still plays the role we have often expected women to play. She is a politician who emphasizes the fact that she is a woman. And it is working quite well for her. It has made her the very model of a modern woman politician. But we shouldn't want something different from a woman politician than a male politician in terms of how she relates her familial life to us. Barack Obama and John McCain and every politician of the male gender who came before talks about their family, but they did not and do not do it like Palin does. They don't have to. The assumption is that they are family men without the onus being on them to prove how involved they are with family life. They do not have to present themselves as a typical husband and father, and that is both a good and a bad. It is a good thing because it theoretically allows them to concentrate on something more important in running for political office, and that is the issues and their own political philosophy and how that philosophy will help America grow stronger. It is a bad thing because it represents the extent to which we minimize fathers' and husbands' importance in being a constant presence in their family's life. I just watched Finding Nemo for the hundred thousandth time, and one thing the movie emphasized is how extraordinary Marlin is for going the extra mile to find Nemo. He was presented as being an exceptional father, the very top of the pack. And Marlin is a very good father, don't get me wrong. But that narrative, that idea of placing children before self and battling the entire ocean to get a child back, is deemed impressive when presented as a father's narrative and typical when presented as a mother's narrative. And that plays to why "women" politicians have to emphasize their familial role and why just regular politicians aren't expected to. Because a woman's primary concern always has to be her family, and a man is considered to be above average (or in some cases, like stay at home fathers, below average) for doing the exact same thing.

We need to change that. We need to make going the extra mile for one's children an acknowledged fact, gender excluded. We should expect fathers to be just as hands-on as mothers. We should demand that fathers and mothers each do the same amount of heavy lifting in terms of child care. We should require our definition of a "good" father to be our definition of a "good" mother. And we should accept that in the political realm, a politician's immediate family and the politician's devotion to them should not make up the better part of a speech. It is appalling that Sarah Palin is winning such praise, is being presented as a good woman politician. She is either a good politician, or she isn't. I think she is a very good politician, who has very bad ideas about what is best for the nation and who has in a short time built up a goodly number of scandals. I don't know if she would be a particularly good vice-president. I doubt very much she would be a good president. 

I don't really want a president in the White House who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and believes that abortion should be illegal in all cases including rape and incest. I don't want a president in the White House who is expected to spend a lot of time telling us about her family before she gets into the nitty gritty of actually telling us about her policies and herself. I don't want a woman politician. I want a politician who is a woman. I want that to be the order in which we examine our politicians. And Sarah Palin doesn't give me that. She is a woman who has, through design or an organic progression, given me a woman politician who conforms to the status quo about how a woman -not a politician, but a woman- should present herself to the public. That is pretty savvy. It allows people to feel good about seeing a woman in the spotlight without making them actually have to think about how women are forced to be presented. It may get Sarah Palin a slice of the pie. But as my girl Gloria Steinem says, 

"Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It is about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie."

Sarah Palin isn't into baking a new pie; she's found a way to fit into the current paradigm. And we don't need that. And I for one don't want that.

My Vagina Is The Key To My Empathy

I love books. I love movies. I watch television shows. And a lot of the books I read and the movies and television shows I watch have a dearth of female characters as the protagonist. Like, Pixar films. Pixar creates films again after again after again that are wondrous in their brilliance; they are well written; they are complex; they are subtle; and they make an emotional connection with the audience through characters like Mr. Incredible and Woody and Buzz and Speed and Alfredo and Flick and Mike and Sully and Remy. Don't get me wrong, Pixar has incredible female characters as well in Dory and Elastigirl and Violet and Jessie and Colette. But those characters are never the protagonists. And Pixar won't have a film with a female protagonist until 2011; and even then, the story will be a more traditional fairy tale instead of empathetic robots or anthropomorphic toys or loving fish or rat chefs. And throughout my life, the movies and books and television shows have generally had a lack of truly wonderful female leads. The books of my childhood were based almost primarily around male characters like Harold with his purple crayon, and Max and his journey to his island where the wild things were. And Lentil with his harmonica, and the Happy Lion and Francios the keeper's son. There were some girls mixed in. I had Frances.

On Sesame Street, I had Maria and Susan and the random kids who would play "One of These Things", even though a majority of the muppets were guys. But Reading Rainbow had LeVar Burton and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood had, well, Mr. Rogers -and Mr. McFeely. And he had King Friday, "lording over the lesser puppets". And later, I would watch M*A*S*H; and although it had Major Margaret Houlihan, nearly every other character was a man -even Klinger, though he pretended to be a woman. Later still, I watched Northern Exposure, which had Dr. Fleischman as the main character. And then Sports Night, which did a good job but still had men outnumbering women. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was really the first show I had ever seen where the amount of girl characters outnumbered the amount of boy characters, and in the first season, they were pretty evenly matched.

Moving out of the realm of fiction, we hit the "real" world. My bosses have been men. My politicians, both on the local and national level, have been made up of a majority of men. What does this mean? It means that this premise of "but you feel that way because you're a female and you can identify with Clinton" is true. I am a female, and I do identify with Senator Clinton. But it is also false. Because I don't identify with Clinton due to the fact that she is a woman and I am a woman. I know this because I identify with: Casey McCall. With Big Bird. With Mr. Rogers. With Barack Obama. With Hawkeye and BJ and Radar. With Huck Finn. With Lentil, and the Happy Lion. With Francios, the keeper's son. With Buffy, but also with Xander. With Frances, but also with Harold. With Woody and Marlin and Mike and Alfredo. With Batman. With Cyclops. With Harvey Dent. With Dana, but also with Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn. And when I don't identify with a man -like, say, John McCain or John Kerry- I can still muster up outrage at the treatment they have received. And I know this because I do not identify with every woman, not even every liberal woman, and not every feminist woman.

And I've come to the realization that maybe that is a special skill; maybe women, by being sidelined for so long in reality and in fiction, have been able to extend beyond their gender in terms of who they can identify with, who they can empathize with, and whose humanity they can recognize. Not all women, certainly. Ann Coulter missed the boat. But women in general versus men in general. It explains things like how girls can read books like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and enjoy them -but boys will scoff at the idea of reading Little Women. Boys scoff at Little Women and other fiction that focuses on females because, studies say, they find it "boring". But why do they find it boring? Why don't boys run the gamut of finding issues interesting like girls do? Why can girls read John Steinbeck and Hemingway and Mark Twain, and also read Louisa May Alcott, and Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen, but boys are only interested in reading "boy" material? I think it comes down to two things.

One, I think girls are forced, often and from a young age, to identify with the default gender in society -and that default gender is not female but male. Because of the fact that boys populate so much of fiction and so much of this real world -even now, 88 years after the 19th Amendment and 30+ years after the Woman's Lib Movement that fought for things like access to the job market and equal pay for equal work- girls have learned to adapt. Girls can find that they can identify with Huck and his raft down the river. We can identify with James Thurber and his crazy family life. I can identify with the men of The Corrections. I can look up to and admire and want to write like Thomas Jefferson. We can look at politicians and identify with them when they are men, because it hasn't been that long since there were legitimate women available to identify with -and even now, there aren't all that many on the national scale. We are 68th in the world for representation of women in our Congress. And yet, "women vote in higher numbers than men, and have done so in every election since 1964". And "women have voted at higher rates than men since 1980", with "56.2% of registered women voters" going to the polls in 2000 "compared to 53.1%" of registered men voters. That means that there are a hell of a lot of women voters who have voted, time and again, and have identified with, time and again, male politicians. Because we have to; because we are socialized to. Women are, to rip blatantly off Simone de Beauvoir, the second sex -the "other" in dichotomy to the default.

Men, however, are the default sex. They are the "norm" to women being the "other". They are the primary sex. "Boys and girls"; "men and women"; "guys". "Guy" is gender neutral, because it refers to what is implicitly thought of as the default sex. Try calling out "Hey, girls (or gals)" to a mixed group of men and women, and see what happens. My guess is, the men will either not react, or react poorly. Because men have so many figures to identify with who are of their gender, they don't have to instinctively gravitate toward members of the opposite sex. Because of that, they are less likely (or able) to find something that connects them to Jo from Little Women or Lizzy from Pride and Prejudice.

And secondly, girls are being, in greater numbers, told and taught that they can be anything. There are definite caveats, like you can do everything but you have to be attractive; and men get to decide what constitutes as being attractive, and that rubric is always changing. But girls are told that they can be astronauts or explorers or housewives, and they are no longer immediately derided as being a lesbian or "butch" or unfeminine. Boys, however, are called "sissy" if they show too much of an interest in anything feminine. They are called "fag" or teased for being "gay" for doing so much as expressing an interest in the color purple or pastels. And so, boys are still overwhelmingly told -by society, by their peers- that there are certain acceptable areas and interests boys can have, but they still cannot deviate from those aligned paths. Because girls and girl interests are still seen as being "less" than boys and boy interests. So it is perfectly understandable why girls would be interested in fire trucks and guns, but the same is not true for boys interested in dance and dolls. And so, boys haven't been conditioned to be interested in fiction that centers around girls, both because they don't have to adopt girl stories in order to satiate their own need for representation and because they are taught not to be.

And those two aspects seem to bleed over into other aspects of the world. Men harass women on the street in far greater numbers than women harass men. Some men have to be told "that is somebody's sister" in order to recognize why they shouldn't treat women like less than human. And so, some men hear "take out the garbage" and see Hillary Clinton as their first wife instead of recognizing her as a fully independent human being. And it allows men of all stripes to not react in as much revulsion when such sexist comments are made. So yes. I identify with Hillary Clinton. Yes, I am a woman. And if "but you can't feel that way because you're a male and you can't identify with Clinton" is true, then I pity those men. If being a man excludes someone from recognizing or being reviled by sexist acts, then I pity them. And if a majority of men cannot be stimulated and excited and moved by fiction involving mainly females or a female story, then I pity them as well. And I also think we have to try our damnedest to make sure they one day can.

I Don't Support Female Leaders (Or, Why You Shouldn't Dismiss My Arguments Based On My Gender)

Well, I do (I should also mention that this is a follow up to yesterday's Bite Me So Hard For That, which in turn stemmed from Boston and Chicago Are Now States). But not all of them, and not all of the time. Which is why this question, "Did [Andrew Sullivan] offend your feminist sensibilities simply because he attacked a female leader?" galls me so. Which is why my friend's further comment, "Clearly identity politics is a big part of the reason why you like Clinton so much" kind of makes me want to tear my hair out. But I'll get to that point later. First up is this: there is a right way and a wrong way to criticize and critique and condemn human beings in general and politicians in particular. Let me get this out in the open right away: comparing a politician to a nagging wife is not the right way. Calling a politician a she-devil is also not the right way. Criticizing and commenting endlessly on a candidate's love of pantsuits, her hair, her make-up, what shirts create cleavage, and her skin all also fall under the "wrong way" of criticizing a political candidate.

You know what else falls under a bad way to criticize a candidate? When you call them out for something that other candidates have done, and do not call out those other candidates as well. Take, for instance, Andrew Sullivan. When he criticized Hillary Clinton for using the Senate as a stepping stone to the White House, he lost credibility with me as a Hillary Clinton critic because he -as far as I know- failed to make the same criticism of Barack Obama. I think in both cases it is a ridiculous criticism, but by making it about one candidate and not about another who has done the exact same thing (and with less time served), the critic shows an obvious bias. Same sort of deal when Sullivan calls Hillary Clinton's feminist credentials into question (and her political integrity) for utilizing her position as the wife of one of the most skilled politicians of our time in her bid for the presidential elections. For capitalizing on the fact that she -through no want of her own, mind you- shares the Clinton name. And a case can be made that political families are bad, especially in this society which is supposedly a meritocracy. But Andrew Sullivan -again, as far as I know- offers up no criticism of those other political families, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, or even the Adamses, who trade on the family name and recognition for political prizes. And for the record, Andrew Sullivan is not the only person who irritates me when he does this; Keith Olbermann also committed a similar bias when he called out Hillary Clinton for going on Fox News and for not calling out Obama even though he had appeared on the channel 3 days before. That is not sound punditry, and in both Olbermann's and Sullivan's cases, it hurts their own credibility in their critique of Hillary Clinton -based not on sexism but just simply on an incredible bias.

And this has nothing to do with identity politics and everything to do with fairly and objectively criticizing a politician and a human being. So let us get to the second part of this, the identity politics. Say, some conservative woman was running for president. Phyllis Schlafly, Condoleeza Rice, Ann Coulter, or Laura Bush. I would not, ever, vote for any of these women for even the school board. They run the gamut from people I respect but disagree profoundly with to women whose very spot in the public eye makes me fume. If analysis of Ann Coulter focused mainly on her hair style or criticisms of her outfits, I would be just as mad as when this happened to Hillary Clinton. If Condoleeza Rice was called a bitch by another candidate's supporter, only to have that candidate laugh it off and say, "Good question", I would be irate. If Laura Bush's economic policy was ignored so joke after joke after joke could be made about how she made men cross their legs and how men didn't like her because she reminded them of their shrill first wife, I would see red. If Phyllis Schlafly was called a she-Devil and had devil graphics pop up every time her name was mentioned, I would react in disbelief and disapproval. Why? Because even though I disagree with these women, even though I would probably feel as though the country would go to hell in a handbasket if they were elected, it is still demeaning, dehumanizing, sexist, and wrong. These comments are reserved for women. These remarks that limit women are meant to make sure women know their place in society, and that place sure as hell isn't the leader of the United States of America. Because that is the sort of treatment no human being should be subject to, let alone a candidate for higher office.

You want to criticize Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Condoleeza Rice, or any other woman in the national spotlight? Go right ahead. Do so with your grown up words, though, and not those crappy adolescent words like "bitch" or "whore". Do so by criticizing her actions, and refrain from criticizing actions she takes when other men have taken them without comment or reproach -or reproach and criticize men who take that path alongside your criticism of the woman. It isn't that difficult. It isn't that hard to treat women as equals, and not fall back into sexist, baseless, and ridiculous arguments. And this goes for all politicians and human beings; if Andrew Sullivan really dislikes Hillary Clinton for Hillary Clinton, it would do him some good to point out where her policies were flawed and by scraping the parts of his article that criticize Hillary Clinton for doing what countless politicians -including one running right now as the presumptive Democratic nominee- did without taking into account the hypocrisy of doing so. If you want to criticize Hillary Clinton's feminism, fine. But do so without pulling out Margaret Thatcher as your counterpoint of what a feminist rise to power looks like, because that does nothing to further the point that Hillary Clinton could have done it better. In fact, if you want to talk about what feminists should acknowledge or shouldn't acknowledge, maybe the first thing the writer should do is take a look at what feminists care about and not presume to know best who is or is not a feminist. If you want to make a case for how it is more feminist to rise to power without help than it is to enact feminist legislation or further a feminist agenda once in office, more power to you. But accept that feminists don't have to think that Clinton is a feminist dream soured, and that they may be just as right based on their own criteria as you feel you are based on your own. And let me make it absolutely clear that I do not -do NOT- think every criticism of Hillary Clinton is based in sexism or stems from sexism or connotes sexism. But some of it was, and some of it continues to be, and some of it will continue to be fostered upon women in the media in the same way with the same level of rebuke -which is to say very little. It affects Michelle Obama to this day, because we did not call it out when it happened to Hillary Clinton forcefully enough and strong enough and with important enough backers. If those people who made sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton -and now Michelle Obama- were given the Don Imus treatment, there would be much less overt and outright sexism in the news media. But that did not happen, and it should have. 

I wanted Hillary Clinton to win, first and foremost, because I think she would have made an excellent president. I wanted Hillary Clinton to win because I think she is one of the best and brightest our country has to offer. I wanted Hillary Clinton to win because I calmly and objectively looked over much of what I cared about in relation to Clinton, Obama, and McCain, and decided that Hillary Clinton was my candidate. That isn't identity politics. It isn't not identity politics, but it isn't that Hillary Clinton has ovaries and so she was the one I chose. And yes, over time, the baseless attacks strengthened my desire to reach the Oval Office. But that also wasn't entirely about identity politics. It was based partially on how she handled the constant attacks based on little more than just her gender. And it was based, once again, on the fact that dealing with that level of criticism day in and day out only made me more aware of how extraordinary she was as a human being -and as a woman. I identified with what was being done to her; I recognized it as abuse on the basest level. But I would have done that if any woman, conservative or liberal, had been placed in that same situation.

At the same time, I fail to see exactly what is wrong with some of identity politics. It makes sense to say, "This is a person who cares about what I care about" as long as that thought has voting records and a history to back it up. I'm not talking about the identity politics that led to George W. Bush getting elected because he was "ordinary folk" and couldn't deliver a speech, but real honest-to-God identity politics where the person in question is able to identify this candidate as being someone with a similar take on the issues and a similar outlook on how best to achieve their goals. That isn't about being a woman and connecting to a woman because year in and year out, women have had to play the identity politics game with no women in the field. Women are constantly being asked to identify with men politicians, with male characters, and with male stories. We constantly have to insert ourselves into the story when there are no females (or very few females) on the horizon . So to suggest that I -or countless other women- were drawn to Hillary Clinton through the identity politics of gender is to ignore how long and how many times women have had no woman on the scene -and we've done just fine countless times identifying with what we were given. And we'll do it again this year, and four years from now, and probably four years after that.

Bite Me So Hard For That

Oftentimes, people will tell me that their dislike of Hillary Clinton does not lay in her gender but the fact that she's Hillary-fucking-Clinton, like she is such a force as to be beyond gender itself. And maybe sometimes they are truthful. Maybe their antipathy stems from the fact that she's still married to a man derisively called "Slick Willy". That she's, according to a friend of mine, "managed to be ALMOST as phony and self-gratifying as her philandering asshole husband". But I think a lot of this animosity is at least partially about gender norms and how Hillary Clinton has subverted them; or at the very least, people's hatred of Hillary Clinton expresses itself in disparaging, misogynistic, and sexist ways and so becomes about gender norms -and how Hillary Clinton's gender is wielded against her, along with those who admire her. There is a reason there are now 109 recorded sexist remarks and products on Shakesville. You can disagree with the site and the commentary found on it (as I often do), but the list and the remarks and the items on it (like the ubiquitous Hillary nutcracker -"the most popular political product in history") speak for themselves.

Hillary Clinton is not what one would term traditionally "feminine". She's tough. She's at times uncompromising. And she has never been exceptionally good at playing the traditional wife and mother. She friggin' kept her name after marrying her husband as a way to symbolically remain an autonomous individual with her own strengths and interests and life. And she had to give that up because she was seen as being too uppity and too independent by Bill Clinton's constituents; he lost in part because his wife had the audacity to keep her fucking name. And that is reason #1 why I admire and love Hillary Clinton, both in the fact that she kept her name after marriage -and the reasons for doing so- and the fact that she was forced to conform for the good of her husband's career. I imagine that it must have killed her to do so; but she gave up a part of what she felt made up her identity because American society insisted upon it. Because her husband and herself could not have succeeded in the political sphere if she insisted upon being seen as an individual and not simply as an appendage. And that is reason #2 as to why I love Hillary Clinton. She has, over the years, refused to be Nancy Reagan. She refused to be defined as simply a wife and mother. She refused to be seen as anything less than she was. She didn't bake cookies and sit at home. She was out fighting for children's rights, and she wasn't going to apologize for it. Until her uppity ways once again hurt her husband's political career, and she had to come back to the pack and downplay her intelligence, her strength, and her individuality.

Truth is, there was a time when I was at most ambivalent-leaning-toward-like about Hillary Clinton. When Barack Obama gave the keynote address at the 2004 DNC, I was blown away. When he chose to run for president, I actually had a bit of a debate about who I would vote for. I chose Hillary Clinton. It wasn't that I didn't believe in Obama. I did and do. It wasn't that I thought he wouldn't make a good president. I did and do. It wasn't that Hillary Clinton was a woman, and that I absolutely had to have a woman president if given the opportunity. I've said it before and I'll say it again, "I didn't want to elect 'a' woman president. I wanted this specific woman to be president". I looked at her plans and Obama's plans and even McCain's plans -because if McCain had won the Republican primary in 2000, I may have voted for him in 2004- and I decided that as close as Obama's and Hillary's platforms were, I liked Hillary's better. And as the attacks on Hillary Clinton grew in fervor and in animosity, as I felt myself as someone who had ovaries as being subject by proxy to those same, baseless, sexist, useless attacks, I grew closer to Hillary Clinton's campaign. I wanted her to succeed in spite of the fact that the phrase "Take out the garbage" was said over and over and over again in response to her voice. I wanted her to succeed because of every frickin' critique of her hair, her clothing, her wrinkles, and every other insult that was hurled at her but was not hurled at a similarly qualified male candidate. I didn't start off liking Hillary Clinton because she was a woman, but after a while her being a woman and being subject to what was basically highly televised and publicized street harassment made me want her to win more. Because what was hurled at Hillary Clinton, the belittling she faced, is the belittlement women in general face. And anyone -man, woman, child- who doesn't accept that fact, who doesn't acknowledge that fact, is not acknowledging the reality of being a woman in America.

Which is why I am so astonished that a good friend of mine -the same one who felt that Hillary was a phony- would ever say, "Did [Andrew Sullivan] offend your feminist sensibilities simply because he attacked a female leader?" So, I still love you but in the words of Sports Night's Dana Whitaker, "You know what, bite me so hard for that". Andrew Sullivan offended my feminist sensibilities for many reasons. Reason #1: he said, "it became clear pretty soon that the Senate was indeed merely a stepping stone back to the White House". I'm not a disciple of Andrew Sullivan the way my friend is -my worship is already taken by Joss Whedon, Aaron Sorkin, and Anna Quindlen- so maybe I'm wrong here but if Andrew Sullivan didn't have the exact same complaint about Barack Obama and his 2004 Senate election, then I cry foul. It may not be sexist, but it is certainly baseless. Reason #2 is that he invoked the specter of the tears of femininity in order to show how Hillary was a bad feminist; actually, the term he used was "anti-feminist". Which, "you know what, bite me so hard for that" Andrew Sullivan. But instead, I'll let Kristen Schaal do the honors of a rebuttal:

Plenty of politicians tear up. Plenty of elected -male- leaders get emotional. But no, when Hillary does it, it must be that she's a calculating, cold-hearted bitch who is setting feminism back a hundred years. I'll listen to Andrew Sullivan's criticism of Hillary Clinton's anti-feminist tendencies when he seriously looks at how he and many other media outlets play to anti-feminist themes. Until then, ciao, Andrew Sullivan; your feminist critiques have no teeth -especially when you seem to imply that Margaret Thatcher makes a better feminist icon than a woman who fights for things like women's rights, children's rights, comprehensive health care, and the environment (heretofore known as Reason #3). Which, last I checked, were all issues the feminist side of the spectrum were pretty down with.

There was an article questioning why women are still not running for office published a while ago; I pretty much think that the treatment Hillary Clinton endured answers that pretty soundly. I don't know of any single person who would voluntarily place himself or herself in a situation where political pundits, newspaper columnists, Maureen Dowd, and anonymous bloggers would do their worst to humiliate, dehumanize, and diminish the candidate. But that is what Hillary Clinton faced. Time and time again, that is what Hillary Clinton faced. And so, reason #? for why I admire and respect Hillary Clinton is that she was able -day after harrowing day- to step back onto the podium and make her historical run for president. That she didn't just crawl under the covers and never come out due to the jeering, the misogyny, and the idea that she should just be nagging her husband to take out the garbage.

You want more reasons? How about a neutral one? I don't hate her for staying with Bill Clinton. I don't even suspect she stayed with him for the political boost. I don't think she's anti-feminist for staying with a man who cheats. Maybe the Elizabeth Edwards situation will better Hillary's decision, but since people actually like Elizabeth Edwards and think of her as human -which I attribute partially to the fact that she is traditionally feminine- maybe not. I am not a part of her marriage to Bill Clinton. Because I'm not, I don't feel comfortable making judgements about it; but I've read about it. I've read their accounts of it, and I've read others' accounts of it, and what comes out time and time again is that these are two people who seem to genuinely care about one another and who enjoy each other's company, talents, and intellect. There is a story about how Bill Clinton's mother asked him why he was marrying Hillary, and he responded it was because he could talk to her. I think their marriage is a little odd; but I also believe that everyone's relationship is a little odd. I like Bill Clinton -I have a love affair with good oratory that knows no bounds, which is partially why I like Ted Kennedy and why I fell for Obama so quickly- and I certainly can understand why Hillary would be attracted to him, and how she is able to like or love him enough to stay with him regardless of his many personal faults.

Need some more? Every article I've ever read where she's been interviewed, she has been intelligent, moderate in emotion, and has addressed real issues stemming from her campaign. I have yet to read an interview where she railed against the press for what they did to her; and it would have been completely understandable if she had, if a little self-serving and naval-gazing. Need more? Read Courtney Martin's "Dear Hillary" letter. Need more? How about we discuss the cult of personality, and how men and women have to fit into their prescribed roles more often than not in order to succeed, and how men and women who go against the current are maligned, demonized, and made into the worst of the worst. And how we have to, as women, as progressives, as human beings, celebrate those few who don't allow the threat of being maligned, demonized, and made into the worst of the worst to affect how they act, how they dress, and what they see as being the most important aspect of their lives.

Hillary Clinton is one hell of a politician. And we can criticize how she got to where she is; we should critique political families and their influence in American culture. But we celebrated RFK and Edward Kennedy, and we wanted JFK Jr. to go into politics, and so criticisms of Hillary Clinton riding on her husband's coattails fall short of being purely altruistic in motive from where I'm standing (reason #? for why I didn't like that Andrew Sullivan piece). I firmly believed that Geraldine Ferraro's assessment of the Obama campaign was right, that Obama's meteoric rise is due in part to his race and his post-1960s racial construct in addition to his obvious intelligence and skill and talent. Just like John McCain's rise is attributed in part to his having been a POW and being seen as a maverick in addition to his 30 years in Washington DC as a successful politician. Just like Hillary Clinton's popularity is in part due to her gender and who she married in addition to her skill, intelligence, and talent. Geraldine Ferraro wasn't wrong; the American public -and I would assert any public- likes a good narrative. These three have good, inspiring narratives. But you can only get away with criticizing one of their narratives and have your job in the morning. Guess who's narrative that is?