Remembering the massacre

On December 6, 1989, I was on holiday in Arizona, spending a week by myself driving around the Navajo and Hopi reservations. I kept the car radio on a local Navajo station and I didn't understand much of it, but when I started to hear Montreal mentioned in newscasts I flipped to an English channel.

My first thought, given the general ignorance of Canada in the US, was that the news stories were mistaken. Back in 1989 there weren't a lot of these types of shootings, and there were certainly none in Canada. The idea of men being told to leave the room so the women could be lined up and shot, the idea of the shooter resenting educated women so much that he murdered female engineering students en masse, the idea that he could legally obtain the fire arm in Canada... it was all too much to comprehend. I didn't believe the story till I landed back in Toronto and saw the Canadian papers.

Women have come a long way since 1989: you could say that what Marc Lepine feared has come to pass. But let's not kid ourselves that women are equal yet. I don't want to make a long list so I'll mention just one small example of the real state of our world: Women's names don't appear in phone books. In most families, the man's name is listed but not the woman's. For single women, it's too dangerous to print more than an initial. We have a ways to go.

Guns

It's December 6, the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. In 1989 Marc Lepine, holding a legally-obtained rifle, shouted that he was "fighting feminism", sent male students to safety, and then shot 14 female engineering students to death. In the subsequent years, Canadians concerned about the event have worked to decrease violence against women and strengthen gun control.

Given that today is the anniversary, the Globe & Mail published a thoughtful article about the event from the perspective of the survivors and the families of the dead women. One of their victories after 1989 was the long gun registry, and they are naturally upset that parliament has recently voted in favor of scrapping it.

I am in favor of gun control and the gun registry. It doesn't demonize rural Canadians: it simply asserts that guns (like cars) should be licensed. It has been an expensive program largely because of a pro-gun campaign to make it so: first, by scuttling the procedure and later by the Harper government's removal of license fees. Canada's chiefs of police are overwhelmingly behind the registry. The gun registry has been used by Conservatives to make a wedge issue just as Republicans used abortion.

But that's not what interests me today...

What interests me is the comments to the Globe article. There is not just a majority of comments that express negativity towards the victims and their cause, but the agree/disagree rankings are overwhelmingly against women, as well. Here are some excerpts of comments with current rankings from the thumbs up/thumbs down vote next to each comment:

• "Women this and women that grows most nauseating. As a man, i am getting sick and tired of measures designed to protect women. Last time i checked, they were only half of the population." - 27 agree/4 disagree


• "Should we should be more concerned about the murder of one gender above another. That's what this article seems to imply." - 19 agree/3 disagree


• "Maybe feminists (or pseudofeminists) should stop being so inconsistent. Could that be part of what drove Lepine to kill? Trying to communicate with women who have only their needs in mind, regardless of whether what they say is nonsense or not, can be very trying." - 67 agree/19 disagree


• "Saying "if it saved just one life, it was worth it" is one of the most illogical, short-sighted, emotive arguments out there - that money could have saved many more lives elsewhere, or (if it hadn't been taken from Canadian taxpayers in the first place) WOULD have contributed to more jobs, better jobs, less financial stress... a better Canada." - 76 agree/16 disagree


• "The inconsistent, illogical, purely emotion-based approach of too many "feminists" alienates many men (and probably some women) from what should be an inclusive cause." - 58 agree/7 disagree


• "The Montreal Massacre was a tragedy, no one will argue that, but no tragedy is worth sacrificing democratic freedom over. I am sick and tired of hearing about special interest groups trying to infringe on our democratic freedoms forged through a history of tragedy and struggle. I am absolutely disgusted by the exploitation of this massacre by selfish politicians and special interest groups seeking political gain." - 78 agree/10 disagree


• "This is just another example of feminists taking something - anything - and making an issue about it... Marc Lepine had no resources with which to help him deal with the rejection and the unfairnes of it. Feminists had power. they had the journalists on their side, and politicians. No one wanted to tell them they were wrong. They were so angry they would have destroyed that person's career, in fact their entire life, if they could, just as they have mine, for talking out about it." - 24 agree/17 disagree


• "I am sick of seeing the women's movement use the act of one madman to tar all men and/or gun-owners with the same brush. It amazes me they can get away with it." - 19 agree/11 disagree

And there was strong disagreement with the pro-woman side:

• "I look to the people enforcing crime to get facts and evidence on the usefulness of the gun registry and police forces across the country tell us they use the registry and it's useful in their daily work. Unfortunately, the Conservative party held back RCMP's most recent report endorsing the registry until AFTER the House of Commons voted on canceling the registry. The Tories wouldn't want facts and information getting in the way of a purely political manoeuver. If we take the argument against registering our long to it's illogical conclusion then why do we register our vehicles? Cars don't kill people, drivers do. And is it really such a burden to go out and register a gun? The gun registry legislation isn't perfect, no legislation is. But when the police tell me they find it useful to do their daily jobs I'll believe them before a bunch of Tory hacks trying to solidify their rural voting base. " - 15 agree/16 disagree


• "Shame on these flunkies we keep paying our taxes to every year when they won't keep a Gun Registry open to protect women while they spend $20 billion on a War continents away. Rurar votes is the key on this and we should tell our yahoo gun-macho-politicos that they are going to lose thousands of votes from those who agree with our Police Forces throughout the nation! Enough carnage! Register these guntoting morons same way as pedophiles. They're both endangering our society. Enough!" - 12 agree/59 disagree


• "The purpose of the legislation was specifically directed at domestic violence issues and the protection of women. Long guns, not surprisingly because these are far more easy to obtain and far more likely to be around for non-criminal purposes, are a weapon of choice in domestic violence cases. A vocal minority overturned the long gun registry. They saved us a whopping 2 million dollars a year. Of course, that was after costing us that much because the CPC waived the fees. The long gun registry would otherwise have been a modest revenue-generating system." - 4 agree/3 disagree

Update: A more recent comment: "Don't confuse a revulsion of feminism with a dislike of women. They are not the same brand. Feminism is a Marxist based collective ideology..." - 5 agree/6 disagree

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Ten Ways to Avoid Rape

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.


2. When you see a woman walking by herself, leave her alone!


3. If you pull over to help a woman with car problems, remember not to assault her.


4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.


5. If you are in an elevator and a woman gets in, DON’T ASSAULT HER.


6. Remember, people go to laundry rooms to do their laundry: do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.


7. If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.


8. If someone tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.


9. Don’t tell your friend that being raped was in any way her fault.


10. Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons and sons of friends that it’s not okay to rape.

- Expanded from a post by Antonia Zerbesias.

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Tarts and the Law

The ABA Journal reports that some US judges are asking women lawyers to stop wearing short skirts and low-cut blouses to work because the judges find it distracting.

You have to respect the dilemma of the judges, being forced to work with women who want to be treated like professionals but dress like sluts. However, fixing the problem is not trivial.

The ABA Journal provides a fashion web site called Corporette that provides dress code advice for female lawyers. Recent headlines include "Can Oxford Shoes Be Worn to Work?" and "Ponytails at the Office: Yay or Nay?"

But there's still a problem. Even if all female lawyers always wear conservative, unrevealing clothing, what will the judge do if an attractive witness appears? Or a provocativley clad accused? What about tarty looking spectators?

And even if all women in the court room don burkas, what if the judge is the kind of guy who likes to imagine an attractive body beneath clothing? Should we prohibit all fit, young, or big-breasted women from court rooms? What if the judge has a foot fetish? ...Force all women to wear boots?

All females in a court room could be made to sit behind a screen so that the judge isn't apt to get a hard-on looking at them, but then there's still the problem of that tempting female voice... It's just too much for a judge to listen to. We could try a voice-alteration device, or perhaps just prohibit women altogether.

Of course, another solution would be to decide that men who are unable to do their jobs around attractive women are unfit to do their jobs. Maybe only women are fit to be judges. And managers. And teachers. And counsellors. And people with any responsibility or authority.

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Time for Progressives to Reassess

Politics is interesting. While exercising their democratic rights, people enter a spirit of public opinionating. They scrutinize and analyze and criticize. Sometimes, in their sense of entitlement to express every opinion, some pretty sordid prejudices are exposed.

The recent US election made many people feel that they could get away with some very nasty behavior. Most recently it was Sarah Palin who brought out the worst in people. There was plenty to criticize about the governor from Alaska, but the over-the-top elation with which some people piled on her went way beyond criticism. Now that she's lost, the sport of kicking the loser has begun. Not aimed at McCain - oh no, of course not: the theme of this 22-month electionathon was woman-bashing.

From the start many of the attacks on Palin were fictitious. She never tried to ban any books; her record on taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Alaska is actually quite good; her stance on polar bears is well-informed and responsible; her actions as governor to protect gay rights were actually quite good (not because of any conviction about human rights, but because she was determined to follow the constitution). She is not an Alaskan separatist. As governor, she really did reduce waste and corruption. There is no indication that she has tried to force her private religious views on her constituents. She is not as inexperienced as her detractors like to say and was the only one of the four in the race with executive experience (although her knowledge of facts and issues is poor).

Now the gossips are crowing, based on already-discredited third-hand accounts, that Palin doesn't know that the US free trade agreement includes Canada and Mexico and that she doesn't know Africa is a continent. It's not just that they pass on any preposterous bullshit about Palin as truth; it's the glee they take in bashing her.

The last time we encountered this phenomenon was just a few months ago, when the same crew was bashing Hillary Clinton. In fact, the ravenous dogs barely had time to catch their breath before U-turning to their next prey. With Hillary, the form of attack was different. They couldn't call her stupid, so they claimed she was a rich bitch, had a sense of entitlement, was hypocritical, nasty, mannish, a ball-breaker.

Do you see the pattern? In both cases we have a woman who is extremely competent, wildly successful, and powerful: almost at the top of two male-dominated heaps. One was a US senator, the other a governor. The caricatures of them go to the heart of society's dismissal of women as either inferior or evil.

The ferocity of the attacks border on sexual predation. They expose a need in some people to dominate women, belittle them, humiliate them, crush them - and then mock them. They expose a fear of powerful women, as well as a deep-seated belief that leaders must have traditional male, paternalistic, alpha dog characteristics.

I foresee the reactions of some readers. I've written a number of much milder posts about prejudice against female politicians and received comments that ranged from dismissive and condescending to angry. One older man said I was making a fool of myself by writing about feminist issues. Those comments just further expose the misogyny of their writers.

It's wonderful that Obama was able to break the race barrier and become the first black president. It's clear that the gender barrier is going to be a lot more difficult to bust. At this point, fielding a female candidate is an invitation to character assassination.

It's not just an American thing: think also of Sheila Copps and Belinda Stronach. And unfortunately, prejudice against women in politics has manifested itself mostly in the center and left. Canada and Britain have had female prime ministers, both Conservatives. But recently, it's American grassroots Democratics who have exhibited the most shameful behavior towards women in politics, in terms of savaging women who put themselves forward and attacking female politicians on the basis of their gender.

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Campaign to Boycott the Election

I have been sitting here tonight watching the convention on CNN. It is soooo long and soooo boring. CNN isn't even covering the speeches... just endless yuckety-yuck punditry as the speeches drone on in the background. I don't think I'll be able to take another night of this.

But while I've been enduring this protracted nonsense I've been busily googling and reading, finding places to plant my campaign to boycott the election. I have left various versions of my message, but this is the current form:

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention Hillary Clinton challenged her supporters to support Obama by saying, “I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?” As a Hillary Clinton supporter, my answer is “No.” My interest was in finding a qualified person to be president. That is still my major concern.

But along the way, something else happened. The candidate I supported, who happened to be a woman, was ridiculed and demonized for being female. Over the last year I watched major media personalities say that Hillary is like a nagging ex-wife or that they were afraid that she would castrate them. Her biggest failing, we were told, was that she had a sense of entitlement – and people accepted that as fair criticism. The media was more interested in the husband than the candidate. She was criticized for her laugh, ankles, age, clothing. She was called shrill, a hypocrite, too mannish, too womanish. The final kick in the teeth was that the winner, his party and most of the media deny that there was even a problem and seem completely unwilling to address the issue.

I was profoundly disappointed that Obama did not choose a woman to be his VP, or even seriously consider the woman who got nearly half the vote. I continue to be appalled at the unequal treatment of Hillary as the losing candidate: no man has ever been expected to grovel to the winner so thoroughly. I don't understand why Obama has not made efforts to reach out to Hillary supporters and unify the party.

I don’t dislike Obama or Biden; I just refuse to sit by and accept that the first serious female candidate could be demonized and ridiculed for being female. There were multiple factors in her defeat, but the biggest and ugliest was pervasive, blatant sexism. We got the message loud and clear that a woman would not be taken seriously for president.

Consequently, if Obama and the party continue to ignore my concerns, then as a Democrat and a Hillary supporter I am planning to boycott this election. My goal is to send a message to the Democratic party that I will not stand for the treatment of women that occurred in the Democratic primaries; and that my future support depends on equal representation for women.

Under-representation and sexism have been around forever, and all we get is empty promises without sufficient progress. They'll remember us if we throw the election. It's short term pain for long term gain.

Women represent 51% of the population and yet have minuscule representation in the power elite. I want the backroom boys to get very worried about running a campaign without a woman on the ticket. I want them to start to get serious about moving to equal representation in congress, the cabinet, the judiciary, senior government posts, corporate directorships and senior management. I want them to see women as a demographic they have to take seriously.

My boycott is not in support of Hillary. If Hillary’s supporters turn their backs on Obama it could rebound very negatively on her: no matter what she does, she will be blamed for it. But this is not about her. This is about drawing a line in the sand and saying I will not take this anymore.

This text was updated on August 28.

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The Disenfranchisement of Democratic Women

We live in a world where women are vastly under-represented in the top ranks. We have only token representation in congress and the cabinet; in the ranks of CEOs, directors and senior management; in the most influential media posts; in every influential area of government and business. This is equally true in Canada.

It can no longer be argued that women are under-represented because we are unready to lead. More women graduate university than men. Changes in childcare practices, such as widespread availability of day care and better sharing of the workload between spouses, mean that women don’t have to drop out of the workforce for a decade.

We could write volumes on why women are still excluded from the top ranks. Many people (both men and women) are locked into a paternalistic framework where women aren't acceptable as leaders. Our vision of a leader is a man in business suit. A woman seems wrong. Lots of things reinforce this. There aren’t enough female university professors so people don’t see women as authority figures and women lack role models. Our society increasingly presents women as sex objects for men. The “old boy’s network”, still going strong, excludes women.

But this year we had a glaring, monstrous, public demonstration of how women are shut out. A woman – for the first time – was a serious contender for the nominee for president, and she was brought down – for various reasons – but publicly because she was a woman. She was ridiculed and demonized for being female. Some of the most widely watched and influential media personalities said they were afraid she’d castrate them. Her biggest failing, we were told, was that she had a sense of entitlement – and people accepted that as a fair criticism. She was criticized for her laugh, ankles, age. She was called shrill, a hypocrite, too mannish, too womanish. The media was more interested in the husband than the candidate. It was blatantly obvious that no woman would be taken seriously.

And after it was all over, the sexism was almost completely denied by the media, her party, and the man who won.

What people don’t seem to get about Hillary supporters who don’t support Obama is that our problem is not that Hillary lost; it’s how she lost. I fully understand that there were numerous factors in that defeat - that her campaign staff made mistakes, that she made mistakes - but the key issue is that the sexism was so egregious and blatant that the campaign represents an attack on all women.

I couldn’t bear to watch Michelle Obama’s speech at the convention last night because it was good. She is intelligent, poised, a good speaker with a great heart, and yet she cannot speak at the Democratic convention except as a spouse supporting her husband. As a woman, it is heartbreaking and maddening to see such ongoing blatant dismissal of our sex. It would almost be easier if women were dismissed as inferior, but we’re not. We have made huge strides in attaining equity in education and pay, but we’re still not equal citizens. We’re allowed into every segment of society except - other than a few tokens - the ruling class.

It is widely reported that over 30% of Hillary supporters have not yet decided to support Obama, and yet nobody, it seems, is taking our concerns seriously. The Democratic party seems to believe that it's up to Hillary to heal the rift. As I've said before, she is not the person to do that. It is the responsibility of the candidate and the party to address this issue. And as they seem to have absolutely no inclination to do that, or even to admit there's a problem, well... the only leverage we have is our numbers and our vote.

This is the time for women to take a stand. We have been promised better female representation for decades and virtually nothing has been done. We have been slapped down too publicly to just be able to say OK, fair enough, we’ll try again in four years. I can barely stand to watch the parade of men at the convention podium. I’m sick of it.

We have watched in horror as a high profile woman has been felled, and it resonates too painfully with all the little ways that each of us has been felled. Equality now.

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Girl Athletes

At the Beijing Olympics' diving venue there are cameras aimed at the pool-side showers. Divers shower in their bathing suits every time they get out of the pool, presumably to wash off the chlorine. I'm in Bulgaria this month and my hotel TV only gets the Olympics on the German EuroSport channel, so I don't know if this applies elsewhere, but EuroSport shows the female divers showering after every dive. In terms of time, we see more of these teenagers in the shower than anywhere else. (And lest you think that this is time-filler in a live broadcast, EuroSport is showing clips on a time delay.)

I know - big deal - it's pretty mild stuff. But think of it this way: There is no justification for showing anyone in the shower. The Olympic committee makes its money from TV ratings, and it appears to be using the bodies of female athletes, mostly underage teenagers, to boost ratings. (It will be interesting to see whether male divers get the same treatment - we may reach "equality" by exploiting teens of both sexes.)

The central Olympic committee is not the only group to blame. The national organizations that choose the outfits their athletes have to wear are also pretty crass. The French female gymnasts are wearing outfits that are cut so high in the leg that they're bare almost up to their belly buttons. The male beach volley ball teams were given nice, comfortable outfits: baggy tank tops and baggy shorts, while the female teams were given little two-piece bathing suits.

The commercialization of young women in sport is not the exclusive domain of the Olympics committees, of course. Young women sometimes sell themselves, which is why the top earners in women's tennis are frequently not the top seeds. One of the gymnasts I saw today was wearing light blue glitter eyeshadow that was about as tacky as anything I've seen. But it's fair game for a woman to want to capitalize on her looks, get herself noticed, vie for endorsements. It's a whole nother thing when women who just want to compete are forced to become sex objects. It's quite possible that most of them want to look sexy, but what of the female athletes who don't?

Update August 11: Yup, the boys are also being filmed in the shower. I guess I'm starting to change my mind about the shower thing. In the town where I grew up, women taking showers was a strip club favorite that was regularly advertised on the front page of the KW Record's entertainment section (with tag lines like "Our girls get wet for you"). (Kitchener-Waterloo has since got rid of most of the strip clubs, and the Record has instituted some standards in advertising.) So to me, filming women showering is pretty gross. Now that I see the boys, even though they're also wearing itty-bitty bathing suits, it takes on a different tone. The Olympics are a celebration of the body, after all, and the triumph of the mind over it; the celebration is about the body at its finest, which in most sports means the teenage body. Our society has got so creepy with the commoditization of people that I think I misinterpreted this.

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Reflections

My initial urge to start a blog, some years ago, had to do with some things I wanted to say about Al Gore. That was back before Gore's image was rehabilitated by his Nobel prize, Academy award and great work on the environment. Back then I was fascinated/horrified by the mind-bogglingly unfair character assassination that Al Gore was subjected to in the 2000 presidential campaign. I supported him, and then the world came to believe - unbelievably - something that was completely untrue: that he was a delusional liar and an incompetent boob.

One of my early posts went,

My fascination with Al may have been rooted in his potential to create a vastly different, vastly better world than the one we live in now, and it may have been driven by the shocking events that split our history off into this world of torture, death and government surveillance, but it took the form of a frustrated need to understand how he was defeated and how he has coped.

...how did the Republicans convince Americans that Al Gore, who had a sterling reputation as a conscientious, hard-working, all-around straight arrow, was in fact a self-aggrandizing delusional liar?

...Then there's his coping. This guy was so buttoned up that there were jokes that he made FBI agents look like hippies. After his defeat he went through a brief phase in which he gained weight, always seemed to appear with a drink in his hand, and affected a devil-may-care attitude. My collection of Al photos from 2001 includes one of him shirtless and barefoot, sitting in a back yard in what appears to be a trailer park, leaning way back in a lawn chair and brandishing a bottle of beer.

What went on? What lessons does this teach us about how to overcome being crushed, humiliated, and cheated? Did his transformation help him get past it, or is he a broken man?

Later I wrote,

I don’t usually get too worked up about politicians losing elections, even when I’ve busted my butt helping their campaign. As good as they are, as unfortunate as it is that they didn’t make public office, they always have pretty good fallback positions.

Al Gore, as of this writing, is the president of a television station, the chair of an investment company and a board member of Apple Inc. Some call him the “conscience of the Democratic Party” and he makes a lot of high profile speeches.

Al’s no Gregg Allman, coming home from tours where thousands scream his name to a rented house and long dusty walks down country roads lugging beer and wonder bread because money he could have spent on a car has gone to drugs and alimony.

So then... Why did Al act like that for six months?

So now I find myself in an eerie period of deja vu, feeling that the candidate I supported, Hillary Clinton, was demonized in a way that was breathtakingly unfair: that "coventional wisdom" is perpetuating complete lies and misinterpretations of things she, her husband and her campaign did and said; that the attacks on her were rooted in a prejudice against powerful women that is so entrenched that there is widespread denial (despite overwhelming evidence such as that provided on this site) that it occurred; and that all this was done not by Karl Rove but by her own party - by my party!

Commenters on this site have accused me of being overly partisan to Clinton. I support her, for sure, but my passionate reaction to this campaign is due to the blatant, ghastly displays of sexism and to my living through, for a second time, the fictionalization of a great person. I have been transfixed by this horror story ever since it really started rolling, sometime late last year. The crazy demonization seemed to peak around February 5, just long enough for Obama to sweep Super Tuesday. Then there was a backlash as Clinton supporters started to rally, but even millions of passionate Clinton supporters couldn't make a dent in the "conventional wisdom" that she is a nasty, hypocritical, power-mad bitch.

Now that she's lost it's easy to pick out all the mistakes she and her campaign made, but I think Hillary Clinton's failure really comes down to one main factor: people are uncomfortable with the idea of a female president. A president is a paternalistic figure: he wears a suit and tie, he rolls up his shirt sleeves, he projects a certain authority that we simply don't connect with women. As the pundit famously put it, "When Hillary Clinton speaks men hear, Take out the garbage!" But this isn't a problem of men versus women. Many men have acted admirably, and many women have been sexist. This is a matter of a systemic problem in our society.

As with Al, I have no fears about Hillary Clinton's future. She may end up as VP, a member of the supreme court, governor of New York, a powerful senator or, really, whatever she wants. There's no reason to feel sorry for her.

But I feel great remorse at the idiocy and malice of the mainstream media, the so-called new media like the Huffington Post, and mostly the moronic US (and Canadian) public who bought and perpetuated the lies.

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Kicking Us When We're Down

The second most disturbing thing about this video, to me, is not the mentally deranged Roman Catholic priest who seems to be hyperventilating as he spews his venom, but the gleeful reaction of the parishioners in Barack Obama's church, Chicago's Holy Trinity. And there's nothing new about their reaction. These vile lies have been repeated with glee all over MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, the New York Times Op-Ed page, the Huffington Post and a host of other news/opinion outlets. It has, in fact, become "conventional wisdom" that Hillary Clinton is a hypocritical white bitch whose political aspirations are rooted in a sense of entitlement. (And how DARE a bitch feel entitled to run for president.)

The most disturbing thing about this video is the lackluster response from Obama.

John McCain responded promptly and unequivocally, saying, "I think that kind of language and that kind of treatment of Senator Clinton is unwarranted, uncalled for and disgraceful."

Obama waited four days to respond, and then issued a statement saying he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."

On the same day as Obama, Plefger issued a sort of backhanded non-apology: "I regret the words I chose on Sunday. These words are inconsistent with Senator Obama's life and message, and I am deeply sorry if they offended Senator Clinton or anyone else who saw them." (That phrasing, "I apologise IF you were offended" is a classic non-apology, implying that perhaps there's something wrong with you for taking offence; and "I regret the words" implies that he doesn't regret the message, just the way he conveyed it.)

The next day, Friday, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said, "We remain disappointed that Sen. Obama didn't specifically reject Father Pfleger's despicable comments about Sen. Clinton. We assume that he will... We think that he should because when Sen. Clinton's supporters see those comments, they are understandably angered by them. And it's important, I think, for the spirit of unity that we are all trying to create for Sen. Obama and his campaign to condemn them specifically."

We're still waiting.

This ongoing Hillary hating is all the more personal and nasty because she's lost. Obama supporters are just kicking us when we're down. I understand why a lot of women are starting to feel that they can't support Obama in the general election. I'm starting to wonder if I can.

And to those who say that Obama is not responsible for any old thing that gets said in his church, remember this: Pfleger was a member of the Obama campaign, actively stumping for him in Iowa; he was a member of an advisory committee to the Obama campaign called the Catholics for Obama Committee; he is a donor to the campaign; and he is a long-time friend and political supporter.

Obama's wishywashy half-hearted response, that he was "disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric", doesn't mention any of the hurtful issues: the sexism, racism or personal demonization of Hillary Clinton that was Plefger's main message and has been persistent throughout this campaign.

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You Don't Have to Support Hillary to Deplore the Sexism That Brought Her Down

Commenters on this blog have frequently made the claim that there was no anti-woman bias in the Democratic primary. I have provided plenty of evidence of it in the past, but here's some more material I happened upon today.

This video was put out by the Women's Media Center:



In addressing the issue of misogyny in the campaign, WMC President Carol Jenkins wrote this, in part: "Networks - in the year 2008 - still cannot seem to find women to anchor serious political programs. That every lead anchor for every network’s campaign coverage is a white male, suggests the work of inclusion is not being done. That every Sunday morning talk show—where what is news is decided—is hosted by men; that every late night show that gives us clever interpretation of the news is hosted by men; and where women behind the scenes still seldom hold veto power over blatant sexist behavior— it means that we have a media that is dysfunctional."

Here's a really good summary of one woman's reaction to the campaign: Misogyny I Won't Miss by Marie Cocco. It concludes, "There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture."

And a perspective from Andrew Stephens in the New Statesman: Hating Hillary: "History, I suspect, will look back on the past six months as an example of America going through one of its collectively deranged episodes - rather like Prohibition from 1920-33, or McCarthyism some 30 years later. This time it is gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind. It has been shamelessly peddled by the US media. ...The danger is that, in their headlong rush to stop the first major female candidate (aka "Hildebeast" and "Hitlery") from becoming president, the punditocracy may have landed the Democrats with perhaps the least qualified presidential nominee ever. But that creeping realisation has probably come too late, and many of the Democratic super-delegates now fear there would be widespread outrage and increased racial tension if they thwart the first biracial presidential hopeful in US history."

Obama supporters like to make the argument that misogyny doesn't matter because Obama has faced racism. To this I say:

(1) Obama has faced nothing like the overt female hatred that Hillary has faced. Find me one example of racism to rival the many examples of misogyny in the video above. And that video is really just the tip of the iceberg. Try reading the comments in any Huffington Post (or Washington Post) article about the campaign.
(2) It is illogical to dismiss a problem by citing the existence of another problem.

Want more proof? Try this video or this video or this one.

So when Paul Krugman says, as I quoted yesterday, that "many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment. And the lingering bitterness from the primary campaign could cost Mr. Obama the White House," Krugman is saying something serious. The campaign is over. Obama won. But we're left with a fractured and unhappy party heading into the general election. It isn't helping Obama's chances for his supporters to continue with the hate.

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The Marathon

Every four years there's a marathon and I follow the race very closely. Usually by about Mile 13 it's pretty obvious who's going to win, but everyone cheers on all the others anyway. There's a chance, after all, that the lead runner will trip on a rock.

One thing about these marathons: women never win. They never even come close to winning. Then one year a woman enters the race. And she takes an early lead! But at around Mile 13 a guy passes her, and after that it's pretty clear that she doesn't have a chance.

This time, though, something is different. All the commentators and spectators start screaming at the woman to drop out of the race. Why are they doing this? It sounds like they never thought a woman should have been in the race in the first place, so they're taking their first opportunity to hound her out of it.

I'm just sayin.

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Has Hillary's Defeat Set Back Feminism?

Feminism has been dead in the water - or at least flopping feebly - for quite a few years now. But I notice an even more disturbing trend in blog comments recently: when someone raises an issue about disrimination towards women (for example), commenters poo-poo the problems of women and say that racism is more of a problem.

I'm not saying that racism isn't a problem, but it isn't the only problem. It's as if Hillary's presence in the presidential primaries has made feminism into a partisan issue: you support feminism if you support Hillary, and you deny its importance if you support Obama.

This may be a transitory phenomenon that will pass when Hillary drops out. Or will it? As Maureen Dowd famously said, "feminism lasted a nanosecond while the backlash lasted 40 years." Feminism has proved to be so threatening to the status quo that it is under constant attack. A step backward will not easily be made up.

Many, many people in the world think that feminism is either irrelevant or evil. I have argued otherwise so many times that I won't do it again here (click the feminism label at the bottom of this post to see my other takes on the subject). I made my most direct attempt at explaining it in this post: Why We Still Need Feminism.

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Do I Detect an Obsession with the B word?

I'm in New Orleans as I write this. While New Orleans still has some wonderful food, architecture, and music, it also has some of the most godawful tack in the world. Here are a selection of slogans I saw on t-shirts in tourist shops this morning:

I want to be Barbie / The BITCH has everything!

If you can read this the bitch fell off

I may be a cruel heartless bitch but I'm good at it

Kitchen bitch

Kitchen bitch / Don't make me poison you

I'm the bitch that fell off

I'm not a bitch / I'm THE bitch / and Miss Bitch to you

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Equality Roundup

The home page of the New York Times online edition today has three articles about the equality of women.

At top center, with a picture, is the teaser, "At endowments and foundations, the glass ceiling is edging lower. Susan E. Manske oversees a $6.5 billion endowment for the MacArthur Foundation." In the article we learn that women are in charge of 20% of the 50 largest endowments and foundations, compared to 8% ten years ago. It's an increase, for sure. Whether it's a blip or a trend is not clear, and in any case it's not very impressive to have women doing slightly better in one such narrow sector.

Lower down is the headline in Europe, women are finding more seats at the table. This claim is based on a law in Norway that forces companies to appoint women as 40% of their boards of directors. In 1993, women held 3 percent of Norwegian corporate board seats; in 2002, it was 6 percent. Elin Hurvenes, founder of the Norwegian Professional Board Forum, said, "If organic growth is 3 percent every 10 years, it would have taken 100 years to get to 40 percent." Compliance has been achieved through tough penalties. Krister Svensson, who runs a mentoring program in Brussels for prospective directors and chief executives, said, "If you have 12 gray-haired men average age 65 on a board, they tend to think about business prospects and strategy from the same perspective. But if you put a 45-year-old from a hot company and a woman and an international representative on the board, the quality of the debate will deepen." But the shutting out of women from the top spots has nothing to do with their contribution to the company, and everything to do with the old boy system and ingrained sexism.

Finally, there's a link to a strangely noncommittal article (Post-Feminism and other fairy tales) about the character assassination of Hillary Clinton, the New York governor's penchant for prostitutes, and the divide between younger women and older women on feminist issues. I have always found the latter issue disturbing. In recent decades many women seem to be anti-feminist until their 30s. (I have a male friend who uses the perspective of younger non-feminist women to discredit all feminist issues.) But when I was 15, in the early 70s, I was a feminist; I understood the importance of issues such as equality of opportunity in work and school; violence against women; the objectification of women; exploitation through prostitution and pornography; and the need for women to be able to control their personal reproduction. We have made big inroads on the first of those issues, but many of the rest are still appallingly bad - in many cases getting worse. Why are younger women turning feminism into a preoccupation of the old?

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The War Against Women

This was a sad week for women.

Not only were we treated to an increasing barrage against women in the campaign of hate against Hillary Clinton, but singer k.d. lang also revealed ongoing McCarthy-style blackballing of gay women.

k.d. said in an interview this week that after her song Constant Cravings became a commercial hit a few years ago, she came out as a lesbian and that was the end of her commercial success. She said advertisers instructed radio stations that they didn't want the song played. She never had another hit. k.d. was easy-going about the issue, saying that it was a blessing in disguise because her music never ended up in a car or toothpaste ad. But that's not the point: this is another high profile case of women being put down when they don't follow mainstream images of what women should be - sex objects for men. Had she been better looking or more feminine, she might have gotten away with coming out (gay women being a male fantasy). But mannish, chunky and gay: no way.

On the Hillary front, a tiny wee bit of backlash is starting against misogyny in the Democratic presidential race. Unfortunately, some of it is pretend criticism. Jake Tapper wrote Is Obama using sexist language?, but he doesn't try to make any serious case for his question. He references one rather inoffensive Obama quote ("the claws come out") and then reports on how "female TV reporters" are pushing the issue. The end result of his article is, I think, to dismiss the issue. The hate-filled comments (559 at time of writing) are more revealing than the article.

In Hillary sexism watch, Melissa McEwan documented 62 events from September 2007 to February 12, 2008 that raise questions about the misogyny of the US media. They aren't all examples that I would use, but it's an interesting recap of this troubling campaign.

Erica Jong, who has been plugging away trying to get people to see the war on women that this race has become, this week published Patriarchy:1000, Hillary:0, a summary of some of the misogyny she has witnessed in this campaign.

Jong ends, "I give up." Sometimes I feel that way too. But can we use our frustration? Can women and men who are sickened by what has happened to Hillary (and Geraldine Ferraro and Sheila Copps and others) channel our energy into making our political arena and our society a fairer place for women?

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Analysing Anti-Woman Media Bias

This article is so thorough and well-thought out that I reproduce it completely, including links. It's from Media Matters by Jamison Foser. The issue goes far beyond Chris Matthews, of course.


MSNBC's Chris Matthews problem

I do not care which person is your candidate. I don't care what you think of Hillary Clinton as a potential president. What is being done in the press is akin to a pack of rabid 7th graders trying to haze the nerdy girl in school simply because they can. It has nothing to do with her qualifications -- it has to do with gender, and these lemming pundits think that it's perfectly acceptable because everyone is doing it, including women like Andrea Mitchell and Anne Kornblut.
-- Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake

"OK, let's put the gender thing in here. I love gender politics, guys."
-- Chris Matthews

The behavior Christy Hardin Smith describes has its epicenter on MSNBC's Hardball, where rarely a day goes by without host Chris Matthews sputtering and shouting about Hillary Clinton, often in terms that would give Bobby Riggs pause.

Put simply, Matthews behaves as though he is obsessed with Hillary Clinton. And not "obsessed" in a charming, mostly harmless, Lloyd-Dobler-with-a-boom-box kind of way. "Obsessed" in a this-person-needs-help kind of way.

More than six years ago, long before Hillary Clinton began running for president, the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine reported that, according to an MSNBC colleague, Matthews had said of Clinton: "I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for."

Even before that, Matthews told the January 20, 2000, Hardball audience, "Hillary Clinton bugs a lot of guys, I mean, really bugs people like maybe me on occasion. I'm not going to take a firm position here, because the election is not coming up yet. But let me just say this, she drives some of us absolutely nuts."

Not that there was much chance his feelings would go unnoticed by even the most casual Hardball viewer.

Matthews has referred to Clinton as "She devil." He has repeatedly likened Clinton to "Nurse Ratched," referring to the "scheming, manipulative" character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest who "asserts arbitrary control simply because she can." He has called her "Madame Defarge." And he has described male politicians who have endorsed Clinton as "castratos in the eunuch chorus."

Matthews has compared Clinton to a "strip-teaser" and questioned whether she is "a convincing mom." He refers to Clinton's "cold eyes" and the "cold look" she supposedly gives people; he says she speaks in a "scolding manner" and is "going to tell us what to do."

Matthews frequently obsesses over Clinton's "clapping" -- which he describes as "Chinese." He describes Clinton's laugh as a "cackle" -- which led to the Politico's Mike Allen telling him, "Chris, first of all, 'cackle' is a very sexist term." (Worth remembering: When John McCain was asked by a GOP voter referring to Clinton, "How do we beat the bitch?" Allen reacted by wondering, "What voter in general hasn't thought that?" So Allen isn't exactly hypersensitive to people describing Clinton in sexist terms.)

Matthews repeatedly suggests Clinton is a "fraud" for claiming to be a Yankees fan, despite the fact that all available evidence indicates that Clinton has been a Yankees fan since childhood. In April of 2007, former Washington Post reporter John Harris, who has written a book about Bill Clinton, told Matthews to his face that the attacks on Clinton over her history of being a Yankees fan were false. Harris said: "Hillary Clinton got hazed over saying she was a New York Yankees fan. It turned out, actually, that was right. She had been a lifelong Yankees fan. But people were all over [her] for supposedly embroidering her past." But Matthews doesn't let a little thing like the truth get in the way of his efforts to take cheap shots at Clinton: At least twice since Harris set him straight, Matthews has attacked Clinton over the Yankees fan nonsense, once calling her a "fraud."

Matthews has described Clinton as "witchy" and -- in what appears to be a classic case of projection -- claimed that "some men" say Clinton's voice sounds like "fingernails on a blackboard." In what appears to be an even more classic case of projection, Matthews has speculated that there is "out there in the country ... some gigantic monster -- big, green, horny-headed, all kinds of horns coming out, big, aggressive monster of anti-Hillaryism that hasn't shown itself: it's based upon gender."

Matthews has suggested that Hillary Clinton "being surrounded by women" might "make a case against" her being "commander in chief." He once asked a guest if "the troops out there" would "take the orders" from "Hillary Clinton, commander in chief." When his guest responded, "Why wouldn't they listen to a [female] commander in chief? Sure," Matthews responded: "You're chuckling a little bit, aren't you?" When his guest responded "No," Matthews couldn't quite believe it, sputtering: "No problem? No problem? No problem?"

Matthews has wondered if she is unable "to admit a mistake" because doing so would lead people to call her a "fickle woman." He has said that Clinton is on a "short ... leash" as a presidential candidate, lacking "latitude in her husband's absence" to answer a question. He has, at least twice, called Hillary Clinton an "uppity" woman -- both times, pretending to attribute the phrase to Bill Clinton. But, as Bob Somerby has explained, there is no evidence Clinton has ever used the term.

One of Matthews' favorite topics is Clinton's marriage. After The New York Times ran an article purporting to count the number of nights the Clintons spend together, Matthews' imagination ran wild, and the MSNBC host couldn't get the Clintons' marital life out of his mind. At one point, Media Matters counted 90 separate questions Matthews asked guests about the topic during seven separate programs; the number undoubtedly grew after we stopped counting. In the middle of one of Matthews' bouts of obsessive speculation about how often the Clintons are "together in the same roof overnight, if you will," Washington Post reporter Lois Romano asked him, "[W]hat is your obsession with logistics here?" In response, Matthews snapped at her: "Because I'm talking to three reporters, and I'm trying to get three straight answers, so I don't want attitude about this. It's a point of view -- I want facts. Tell me what the facts are, Lois, if you know them. If you don't, I don't know what you're arguing about."

Matthews has claimed: "[T]he reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." John McCain's political career got started after he left his first wife for a wealthy and politically connected heiress, married her, and ran for Congress. But Chris Matthews doesn't suggest that the reason McCain is a "U.S. senator ... a candidate for president ... a front-runner" is that he "messed around." Even Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said Matthews' comments about Clinton went too far: "I mean, it's rough business what these people over there [at MSNBC] are doing. We don't do that here. We would never say that Senator Clinton got her job because her husband messed around. I mean, that is -- that is a personal attack. And it is questionable whether a network should allow that or not."

Matthews periodically gets it into his head that the most important question in the world is whether Bill Clinton will be a "distraction" or whether he will "behave himself." He badgers Clinton aides about the question and warns that Bill Clinton "better watch it." He asks if Clinton will be a "good boy" or be guilty of "misbehavior." Matthews is not so subtly referring to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. But curiously, he doesn't have the same concerns about McCain or about Rudy Giuliani, as I wrote nearly a year ago.

Think about this for a second: Chris Matthews is holding it against Hillary Clinton that her husband cheated on her. But he doesn't hold it against John McCain and Rudy Giuliani that they cheated on their spouses. Matthews seems to think women are to blame when their husbands have affairs -- and men who cheat on their spouses are blameless.

And then there's Matthews' fixation on Hillary Clinton's "ambition." In December 1999, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson appeared on Hardball to discuss Clinton's Senate campaign. Matthews asked Wolfson eight consecutive questions about whether Clinton was "ambitious." Finally, Matthews said, "People who seek political power are ambitious by definition," leading Wolfson to tell him: "if you say so. If it will make you happy, I'll agree." If Matthews has ever displayed as much interest in the "ambition" of male candidates like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, or Mike Huckabee, he has done so in private.

And, in the midst of his years-long assault on Hillary Clinton, much of it either directly based on her gender or on a sexist double standard, Matthews has the audacity to accuse Clinton of being "anti-male" and to insist that "she should just lighten up on this gender -- 'the boys are coming to get me' routine."

None of this should surprise us. Chris Matthews acknowledged his feelings about Hillary Clinton long ago: "I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for." And "she drives some of us [guys] absolutely nuts."

But Matthews' questionable treatment of women extends beyond Hillary Clinton.

Matthews has described House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as "scary" and
suggested she would "castrate" House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. And he has wondered how she could disagree with President Bush "without screaming? How does she do it without becoming grating?"

Just this week, Matthews claimed there isn't a plausible female presidential candidate "on the horizon" because there aren't any "big-state women governors" -- but Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell, and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius all run states with populations comparable to male governors who have recently run for president, including Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Bill Richardson. How large a state does a woman have to run before she qualifies as a plausible presidential candidate to Chris Matthews? One that is twice as large as Mitt Romney's Massachusetts? Three times as large?

Last October, Matthews mused aloud about a hypothetical couple trying to decide who to support for president. In Matthews' mind, the wife just wants to see "the first woman president." According to Matthews, the husband has to explain the math to his wife: "[T]he husband says, 'You know, dear, you know, this is going to kill our tax bracket. You know that tuition thing we pay every couple of years for the kids, every year, we can't do that if we get a higher tax bracket. We have to pay more money.' "

After the Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Matthews suggested that the paper's "female editors and publisher" succumbed to "lobbying" by Bill Clinton.

Matthews has repeatedly focused on the physical characteristics of his female guests. He recently began an interview with conservative radio host and author Laura Ingraham by telling her, "I'm not allowed to say this, but I'll say it -- you're beautiful and you're smart." He ended the interview by saying: "I get in trouble for this, but you're great looking, obviously. You're one of the gods' gifts to men in this country. But also, you are a hell of a writer." Note that Matthews said Ingraham is also a good writer -- apparently, to Chris Matthews, there is no reason for men to care about whether a woman can write, only about how she looks.

Matthews' comments about Ingraham came only a month after he told CNBC anchor Erin Burnett, "You're a knockout," adding: "It's all right getting bad news from you." Matthews also told Burnett: "Come on in closer. No, come in -- come in further -- come in closer. Really close." Matthews made such a spectacle of himself during the exchange that The New York Post said "it sure looked" like Matthews had been "perving on CNBC hottie Erin Burnett on live TV the other night." Matthews explained that he had merely been "kidding around."

During MSNBC's April 26, 2007, coverage of the first Democratic presidential debate, Matthews discussed the "cosmetics" of the evening. In doing so, he complimented Michelle Obama's pearl necklace and declared that she "looked perfect," "well-turned out ... attractive -- classy, as we used to say. Like Frank Sinatra, 'classy.' "

Matthews also appeared to argue that many viewers would be basing their decisions about the candidates on how, in Clinton's case, the candidate was dressed, or, in the case of the male candidates, how their spouses were dressed: "Some people are, by the way, just watching tonight. They stopped listening a half-hour in, and they noticed how pretty she is -- Michelle -- and they said, 'I like the fact he's [Barack Obama] got this pretty wife. He's happily married. I like that.' They like the fact that Hillary was demure, lady-like in her appearance." When NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell interjected, noting "You're talking about two ... lawyers," who went to "Harvard and Yale," Matthews defended himself, saying, "Cosmetics are a part of this game."

Nor is any of this new: In August 1999, Matthews hosted notorious liar Gennifer Flowers, during which he told her: "I gotta pay a little tribute here. You're a very beautiful woman, and I -- and I have to tell you, he knows that, you know that, and everybody watching knows that; Hillary Clinton knows that. How can a woman put up with a relationship between her husband and somebody, anybody, but especially somebody like you that's a knockout?" After Flowers told him "Gosh, you make me blush here," Matthews replied, "[I]t's an objective statement, Gennifer. I'm not flirting."

In 2000, Matthews responded to linguist Deborah Tannen's explanation of then-presidential candidate George W. Bush's efforts to appeal to women voters by saying, "So is this like the political equivalent of Spanish fly? That these seductive number of words you just drop out there and women just swoon." That led another Hardball guest, Lynn Martin -- a Republican -- to point out, "You wouldn't suggest he's seducing men."

Chris Matthews has been treating female guests as sexual objects for years. He has been judging women -- senators, presidential candidates, the speaker of the House -- on their clothes and their voices and their appearance for years. He has been referring to women as "castrating" for years. He has been applying double standards to male and female candidates for years.

This is who Chris Matthews is. He is a man who thinks that men who support women politicians are "eunuchs."

He isn't going to stop unless you make him stop. Chris Matthews uses his voice to marginalize women. Use yours to tell MSNBC you've had enough.

It's time to play a little "hardball." Please contact MSNBC and Chris Matthews today and let them know what you think.

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Attitudes Towards Women Aren't Getting Better, Apparently

When New Democrat MP Irene Mathyssen saw that Conservative MP James Moore was looking at a photo of a bikini-clad woman while sitting in the House of Commons and noticed that the image was visible not just to members of the House but also to visitors in the gallery, she rose and made a brief, composed complaint about it. Liberal MP Karen Redman rose and supported Mathyssen.

James Moore was outraged. Oh, not outraged that he had been caught displaying an inappropriate photo in the House of Commons. Outraged that some stupid prude of a woman would complain about it. The lowest of the low. Tarnishing the reputation of a red-blooded Canadian man. And besides, it was my girl friend. And (in perhaps the most irrelevant argument ever), my dog is in the photo too!

The men of the country crashed into the debate like the kettle drums in Beethoven's Ninth. This was the worst form of dirty politics. A smear. Don't old, ugly women know that young, pretty women like to appear semi-naked in photos? Doesn't that prove that all feminism is mean-spirited, humorless prudery that must be stamped out like brush fires in August?

In one of the more muted criticisms, Liberal MP Garth Turner wrote, "When a female MP stood one day last week and accused another member, a man, of viewing a babe on his laptop, it was a national story. The guy was ripped as a soft-porn pervert, before being revealed hours later as a blameless victim of a political smear."

I didn't see anything in Irene Mathyssen's statement to the House that constituted a political smear. She was respectful and she described the problem perfectly: the image could be seen by other people in the workplace and by the public. Nobody has disputed that fact. The only new information we got is that the woman in the photo is Moore's girlfriend.

Caving to pressure, Irene Mathyssen apologised. That didn't stop the criticism; if anything, it spurred men to even more nasty-minded attacks on women and their perceived political correctness.

A disturbing theme that ran throughout the men's attacks was that Irene Mathyssen and Karen Redman should be humiliated. Like this one: "They should both have to give lap dances to Peter Milliken." Yet another outraged male wrote, "She should be forced to stand in the House and issue an apology" (italics mine).

Another theme was that all rules against sexual harassment in the workplace should be abolished. For example: "The sensible response in the House, or any other workplace, would have been for her to avert her gaze, ignore the offending image and shut up."

Where are Jack Layton and Stephane Dion on this issue? Neither the Liberal nor NDP party web sites mention the event, much less stand up for Matthysen or Redman. (So much for "male feminists".)

How did Moore and Mathyssen sum up the experience? Moore, in Peter MacKay-style fake sorrow, lamented, "I hope nobody goes through what I did in the last 24 hours." Mathyssen, who truly had been raked over the coals, was more pragmatic, saying that her first step should have been to approach Moore privately and to ask him to stop displaying the photo in the House. But Mathyssen is not correct in that: When a woman perceives sexual harassment in the workplace, she should not feel that she has to approach the man privately.

The tragic thing about all this is that it happened in parliament, where Canada's laws and policies are formulated, and so it affects women and sexual harassment policies in workplaces across the country. We can't leave matters as they stand now. Someone needs to stand up and propose guidelines for laptop viewing in the House that are similar to current rules against displaying photographs. True, images of half-naked women are ubiquitous on the web, but that doesn't mean that it's appropriate to share photos of your girlfriend's buttocks with your workmates... especially not in full view of your colleagues and the public.

See also: Why we still need feminism

Note: James Moore is the same guy who boasted about his dirty tricks aimed to manipulate the Liberal leadership convention in 2006. See link.

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Why the Cleavage Issue Matters

The really interesting thing about the Hillary Cleavage Debate is the comments on the Washington Post Campaign Trail Blog's web page about it. (The page was originally called "Clinton cashing in on cleavage" but was later changed to "Let the cleavage conversation begin".)

The history is: The Washington Post published an article about an outfit Hillary wore on the Senate floor that had a slightly low-cut blouse. The article claimed that Hillary was showing cleavage and then analysed all the times she has worn sexy clothing. (I couldn't detect any cleavage in the accompanying photo.) The Clinton campaign sent out a fund-raising letter that started, "Would you believe that the Washington Post wrote a 746-word article on Hillary's cleavage? ...focusing on women's bodies instead of their ideas is insulting."

Comments on the blog about the issue include:

* The Clinton campaign is over-reacting and is being stupid and petty.
* The Clinton campaign is manipulating people by raising this issue.
* The article was flattering, so why complain?
* Hillary is a hypocrite because she has started to wear more feminine clothes.
* Since Hillary is old and has small breasts, it is gross to think about her body (the term "shrivelled tits" was used, along with several other epithets). This may be the most common theme of all the comments.

I can answer all those who profess not to understand why Hillary made an issue of the article. For the 8 years she was First Lady, Hillary's appearance was scrutinized until it nearly paralysed her. I recall feature articles in top news magazines that showed all of her hairstyles over the years, implying that there was something wrong with her moral fiber because she was inconsistent in her use of a hairband. (I believe she talks about it in her memoir Living History but I wasn't able to find the reference in my copy.)

In the west at least, most women change their clothing and hair styles on a regular basis, but in Hillary's case any change is raised as an indication that she (a) has to fake it to appear feminine; and (b) is a hypocrite and a liar.

Hillary has to take control of this issue or it could ruin her attempt to become president. It shouldn't be such a damaging issue for her, but it is because of a combination of sexism, smear tactics, and our fixation on titillation. She controls the issue by getting people to talk about it and to realize just how sexist and inappropriate it is, and how hurtful it is - not just to her, but to all of us.

Update May 2008: Since I wrote this, the Washington Post has removed the offensive comments from the page I reference.

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Why I Endorse Hillary as Democratic Candidate for President

The thing that really strikes me about Hillary Clinton is that she understands context. When asked (during the CNN/YouTube debate) whether she would call herself a Liberal, she gave a brief non-preachy precis of the changing definition of Liberal over the last 100 years, as well as the original US meaning of the word "progressive". When asked whether she would negotiate with dictators in her first year in office she gave a brief description of an appropriate diplomatic approach, starting with envoys and being careful of how things are interpreted or spun in different places.

She has a lightness to her approach that the other Democratic candidates don't have. She seems to be bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, smiling - she's confident and she's ready for any question. She's ready to win.

That she will win is very much in doubt. While she's still ahead by some measures (and second to Obama by others), the chance of a woman beoming US president is still low. Women may be better educated than men these days, but we do not by any stretch of the imagination have equality. Hillary faces huge prejudices aimed at powerful women and she faces an anti-Clinton Republican machine.

I like the other candidates. I really like Barack Obama and John Edwards. I endorse Hillary because she is by far the most qualified, and I think she will do the best job. In fact, I think she will be a far better president than her husband (and he was pretty damn good). History will change if Hillary is president, and the world will become a better place.

Down the road, with more experience (and perhaps a stint as VP), either Obama or Edwards would make a great president, but in 2008 Hillary's The Man.

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