WTF is going on in the "Feminist" community?

Seriously - we're going to have to come up with a word other than feminism if they keep associating it with Hillary Clinton, Emily's List, and the irrational women who think staying home or voting for John McCain is a sane thing for an adult American woman to do. I can't believe so many women are supporting Hillary in spite of her race-baiting, threats to obliterate Iran, her attempt to manipulate tensions between the Jewish and African American communities, her ridiculous attempt to ride her husband's coat tails, her bold faced lies, her whining about sexism and finally, her unbelievable failure to bow out gracefully and let the Dems bask in the glory of making history by nominating Barack Obama. Clinton has been a complete embarrassment to women and I can't understand why so many don't see that.

First, I want to acknowledge that there was blatant sexism in the media coverage of Clinton's campaign, and some of it really was beyond the pale. It is also not lost on me that Chris Matthews only backed off a bit once Media Matters for America called him on it, taking a formal complaint from an organization run by men after ignoring years of complaints lodged by women. It got to the point, however, where any criticism of Clinton was labled sexism and the critic labeled a sexist. I found plenty to criticize, and I don't think that label applies to me. I think we need to get back in touch with what feminism means.

Emily's List is currently supporting a female candidate in Memphis that is using racism, homophobia and anti-semitism against an incumbent male who is pro-choice and pro-LGBT. What the hell are they doing? I thought the idea was to elect pro=choice candidates. Do they now support any woman for any office, no matter what her positions are? That is absurd!

Feminism has many definitions and a lot of women make a lot of money parsing, defining, theorizing and creating them so they can publish books and theses and dissertations about it. The bottom line, though, is that feminism has to be inclusive and address issues of social justice- things like racism, colonialism, violence, war, hunger, poverty, civil rights for everyone and defending a woman's right to choose- or it's meaningless. Electing more women to office is great, but they have to be the right women. There are feminist men who would be much better choices than some ultra-conservative women. We can't just play a girls-only game while we live in a society with both men and women. (I do think that it might be a good idea to develop women-centric communities or neighborhoods, but that's not the state we currently live in.)

If John McCain wins the presidency, kiss Roe v. Wade goodbye. He has made it clear that he'll nominate conservative judges like Samuel Alito, and he'll make sure abortions are banned. The Global Gag Rule will keep killing women all over the planet. We'll continue to endanger our kids by offering "abstinence-only" education that leaves them unprepared to deal with a world of AIDS and STDs. Poor children will still have no health insurance, just like their parents, and single mothers will be without resources if they are abandoned by partners or isolated from family or friends. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue. Lives, especially the lives of women and children, are at stake here.

Obama is the nominee and we have to make sure he wins.

Hillary and Misogyny

Americablog has a post called "HIllary's Girl Power" where they post a comment by Jacki Schechner, a feminist writer, in which she concludes that a woman would make a great Commander-in-Chief, but not necessarily THIS woman, Hillary Clinton. I heartily agree.

There is no doubt that the MSM has been horribly misogynistic in general, but particularly so in covering Senator Clinton's campaign. She has certainly used underhanded tactics that deserve derision, but the anti-female rhetoric was flowing from the very beginning of her run when she was just one of a field of candidates. Media Matters has covered this in detail, but I'll hit the high points. I don't remember anyone criticizing John Edwards' pantsuits, or debating whether any other candidates' show of emotion were real or practiced. John McCain has never been criticized for the unpleasant tenor of his voice. The word "bitch" flows from the lips of men who should know better far too easily - when was the last time anyone on TV called one of the candidates a "bastard" or some equivalent slur?

It took me months to resolve myself to rejecting the position taken by many feminists, as well as the majority of the Goddess community, that we should support Clinton because she was female. I've heard all the arguments - that it's a question of solidarity, that if she doesn't get the nomination, no woman in our lifetime will ever get it, that she "thinks like a woman" and is therefore a better choice, that she's the best qualified - and I don't buy any of them.

Solidarity, to have any meaning at all, means that we have to rally around a woman with equal or better qualifications for a particular position. I have grave concerns about the choices Sen. Clinton has made in her career. She opposed the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Her ties to Walmart and to overseas sweat shops are questionable. Her participation in The Family - a little known, DC based religious group focused on attaining and holding power for its powerful and often dangerous members - is completely unacceptable in a supposedly Liberal contender. The idea that she's the only woman in a generation to have a shot at the White House is insulting. We have many women in positions of leadership that would make better presidents, any one of whom might have a shot as Barack's VP, which would almost certainly guarantee a woman taking the office in 8 years.

I don't like her using gender as an excuse for losing. She's losing because she ran a poor campaign in which she, her husband and surrogates, have repeatedly behaved in racist and unethical ways, up to and including invoking images of violence against candidates in the past. These improper statements and tactics have convinced me that she lacks the judgement and ethics needed for the office of President. One need only remember her promise to "obliterate" Iran to know that she shouldn't hold sway in our public discourse, let alone control our nuclear arms.

I don't count her activism in her career of any greater value than Barack Obama's credentials as a community organizer and elected official in his home state. More importantly, she doesn't inspire the kind of hope and excitement that Obama does. America has, in my opinion, been on a gradual slide toward a form of fascism, or at least a greedy and inhumane form of Conservative extremism, since the tragic death of President Kennedy. The Bush administration is the direct result of the coup that began with that event - none of the Constitutional nightmare would be possible if President Kennedy had finished his term in office.

The Kennedy funeral is one of my earliest memories. I've waited my entire life to see another JFK, or Bobby, or MLK, who could invoke the "better angels of our nature." When a I see pictures of tens of thousands turning out to see Barack at his appearances, in numbers never seen before in presidential politics, It makes me believe that it's possible for America to be America again. Barack can begin to heal some serious national wounds - the enduring sickness of racism, our shame in the response to hurricane Katrina, our ill-advised and unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, the specter of incompetence that was born of the failure to heed the signs that the 9/11 attack was immanent, and the suspicion of complicity by members of the Bush administration in allowing it to happen, the restoration of our Constitutional rights, the end of torture by our soldiers, and a possible restoration of our standing in the world and the end of our xenophobic and entitled stance toward the rest of the planet- none of which could be expected or even dreamt of in an administration built around the Clinton machine.

This is not about girls vs. boys. This is about hope versus cynicism, the past versus the future, whom we are and whom we can be as a nation. I am not prepared to concede my idealism for a new gender selling the same old shit. A token torturer is still a torturer. I want massive change, more, I'm sure, than Obama could ever provide, but I'm going with the candidate who promises more change than any other. For Sen. Clinton to say that my choice has anything to do with misogyny demeans the entire Women's Movement. Equality is about more than having a vagina. It's about a true shift in consciousness that Hillary cannot catalyze for our nation. The feminist candidate in this campaign is Barack Obama.

Echidne on Feminism

Go to Echidne. Read posts marked Part I: Inhale and Part II Exhale. My comments on part II:

Because of time constraints and laptop problems, I couldn't read all of the preceding comments, but i do want to comment on this issue. I'm not really old enough to be a second wave feminist, and I'm definitely too old to be third wave. I guess I'm a two and a half. Anyway, I haven't really written about the presidential campaign since Edwards and Kucinich gave up because I've been struggling with just this question - who is the remaining feminist candidate? Before, I was quite certain it was Kucinich, though there are some feminists that give me crap about that. Now, I'm torn as to what to do.

I usually call myself a matriarchist, which is a "feminist plus" - in my mind. There are a few issues, like pornography, typically lumped in with the tag "feminist" that I'm not in sync with the Sisterhood about. I am most definitely a Sister, though, I'm quite sure.

My perception of second wave feminism is that it was always about social justice, and that the broader purpose was lost when people had to whittle down their mission statements to apply for funding. Funding is bad - it obligates us to and limits us by the patriarchy we're supposed to be trying to destroy. Yes, I said and mean that we should aim to destroy it, not get along with it and not try to make it more woman friendly.

The human race is 54% female, and the other 46% includes a wide array of variations on the original theme. The first step to making progress is to get out of the artificial patriarchal binary. There is one original gender and a variety of adaptations, the most common of which we call "male" but it's certainly not the only one. One and many. E pluribus unum, as it were.

Anything that affects 54% of a population, and that 54%'s children, is a human rights issue as well as a feminist issue. These terms are synonymous, and it's time we really drive that point home to the boys on the Left who aren't really feminists at all - they just play at it to keep their incoming links count up. A pox on the ones who claim to share our goals then quickly sell out our reproductive autonomy when it gets in the way of their insider status. There is a very real enemy in this world and it's old, white, wealthy and male, though not all of the enemy meets all those criteria. Not all rich white men are bad, of course, but they have to try harder to make me take them seriously, as should any person of privilege who claims to empathize with an oppressed minority - even if said "minority" is 54% of the population. There are people of all races and genders, of all social classes who are with us and against us. The trick is to find those who are really with us and stick together.

Comparing "isms" plays into the hand of the patriarchy. It divides poor whites from poor blacks, lower class women from upper class women with means and access, lesbians from hetero women, and on and on. Divide and conquer. We fight over Obama and Clinton, McCain wins. It's that simple. The only way to defeat the old rich white male system is to approach it differently.

When the Constitution was originally written, the person with the most votes was president, the one with the second amount of votes was vice president, no matter what their party affiliation. If we look at the original intent of the Constitution, there's a clear solution - let the party decide whom to name president and whom to name vice president, and let's get on with it. Or we could just say that Hillary is older and has more experience, so make her P and Barack VP and let's focus on the real issues here. Barack could run for President in 8 years and be a shoe-in. What is clear is that we need to settle on a Clinton/Obama ticket NOW and waste no more money sniping at each other. That's what THEY want us to do. The media moguls and the power brokers are laughing their asses off at that "bitch" and that "uppity u-know what" doing their jobs for them. The key to feminism has always been inclusivity. Social justice for everyone IS feminism. Why waste obscene amounts of money, that could be put to better use, perpetuating a fight that gets us nowhere?

McCain is a nutcase and he has virtually sold his soul to get that nomination. He would be a disaster for America, and that is where our focus should be. Hillary and Barack need to make nice and focus their efforts outward. That's the only way we move forward. United. Anything else, and we lose. We can't afford to carve up the injustices - there's plenty to go around.

You won't believe this...

You know that $200 I was worried about? We won $200 dollars on the lottery tonight. Trust the Goddess and she will provide!

I was going to talk about some random stuff the other night but I got off on a Nazi tangent, so let me do that now.

1) Obento- I'm completely obsessed with Bento boxes and accessories. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a sort of art involving packing the perfect lunch. Since it's mostly for kids, there are special cutters for vegetables that make heart, star and flower shapes, there are little bits of plastic grass for decoration, special divider cups of paper, foil or silicone, and little containers that look like bottles or strawberries that hold soy sauce. I'm completely enchanted by the attention to detail that Japanese moms are putting into their children's lunches.

I never did the PB&J-every day thing as a kid. My lunches were cool - tacos, shrimp cocktail, left-over fried chicken, a thermos full of ravioli. Aside from the fact that I HATE the idea of jelly on peanut butter, I always thought the PB&J thing was kind of déclassé, and yes, I would have known that word in the second grade. I was precoscious in most ways, but particularly so in language. I love how the Japanese can take something most people never think about and turn it into an art form.

2) Hikikomori - Japanese language is so fluid and versatile that they seem to have a word for everything. "Hikikomori" means "one who withdraws" and refers to a trend observed in Japanese boys, but that I believe to be far more widespread, where they go in their room and don't come out. Some start as young as 11, and they don't go to school, then they don't go out, and finally don't leave their rooms except for occasional nocturnal foray that often includes a trip to a convenience store to buy a take-out bento. The availability of boxed, ready-to-go dinners has actually increased to accomodate the hikikomori lifestyle.

Anyone who knows me is seeing a striking resemblance to me in that description. Despite the tendency of most articles on the subject to emphasize the Japanese victims of this syndrome, there are people in most industrialized countries who live the same solitary and nocturnal existence. In Japan it is attributed to an inability to cope with the high expectations and extreme competition focused on males in that culture. The numbers show only 20% of hikikomori are girls, though they also believe that the problem is under-reported in females because of different cultural demands placed on them.

I've only found one article so far that acknowledges this problem in Britain and the US, as well as other parts of Europe and Scandanavia, but I expect to see more. I've encountered too many people like me - agoraphobic, dysfunctional, nocturnal because we can't deal with the activity levels of the day. It's not that uncommon - we just aren't talking about it yet. Anything that affects 1-2% of young males is going to affect the economy in Japan. There is apparently no safety net for hikikomori beyond family. They are trying to develop treatment now that will draw them back out into society, but it's too soon to tell if the assisted living-type programs will have a lasting effect or not. What if it's more than a trend? What if it's an adaptation?

What if a certain percent of the population just can't deal with aspects of the 21st century? Maybe some of us are too affected by noise, chemicals in our environments and foods, electromagnetic fields and a thinning atmosphere. There's a tendency for hikikomori to be very bright, extremely sensitive, and creative, though unmotivated and depressed. What if we have to redefine our concept of "work" to allow for people who can't leave the house or keep a "normal" schedule? If society fails to address the problem, we'll see the potential of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people go to waste. What if becoming nocturnal is an adaptation that will be necessary if the ozone layer continues to degrade? More later...

3) Flickr - I'm indulging these obsessions on Flickr and learning about art at the same time. Just from looking at pictures of other people's art work, I've learned new techniques and found new ideas. It's fun to see what other people are doing, and it gives a kind of permission to try new things that I don't often feel. I've been really blocked for a while, and it's got me painting again, which is a joy. I need more joy in my life. It has also brought up questions about ...

4) Misogyny - there are a lot of fine arts being produced by women right now. There's also a lot of crafts and the distinction between the two is blurring. I hope eventually they are considered the same thing. I notice that the women who are into collage and ATC trades refer to their work as "art" rather than "crafts" and I think that's a positive thing. Women have always done the majority of creative work, but it was dismissed for being, of necessity, utilitarian and seen as "less" than art produced by a man with the wherewithall to be a professional artist. If anything, I'd think the art with purpose should have greater value than something that is merely decorative.

Now I'm going to ramble a bit. As with most feminist issues, I think the answer comes from within us. A word like "poetess" or "actress" is often seen as denigrating because it indicates gender, and the assumption is that a feminine gender is "less" - that "suffragette" is somehow a put down and "suffragist" is not because it could apply to either gender. We don't have to buy into patriarchal definitions. Saying "girls" instead of "women" in social circumstances could be taken as a compliment in a youth-obsessed culture, rather than a put-down in an androcentric context. How I hear it depends on my belief about myself. Being called a girl by a man doesn't diminish me because I don't feel diminished. I was never raised to think of myself as less because I'm female, so I don't hear the word that way. A feminist recently railed at me because I wrote about the primacy of the feminine gender in humans. In her mind, she heard a Greek philosopher saying that woman is an incomplete man. In my mind, I hear it meaning that maleness is a later adaptation at best, a birth defect at worst. Same data, different receiver.

Words are certainly important, but I think it's important not to avoid our gender in favor of neutered nouns or pronouns. Virginia Woolf was a damned good writer whether you call her poet or poetess. To bristle at the latter label is to bristle at being female. I like my gender. It's the reaction of the alternate gender that angers me, and that's not so much about genitalia as it is about bigotry.

5) Bigotry - The line between sophistication and cynicism is unclear. On one hand, you can't expect people to know anything other than what they've been taught, and most times it's better to let them go than to challenge their world view if they're old or poorly educated. There's a conflict brewing in my clan about nudity in art. It hasn't come to a head yet, but I've no doubt it will in the next 6 months or so. When dealing with someone of limited education and limiting religious values, it is easy just to let them be who they are and expect no more of them. If it begins to affect the way a teen is introduced to art, do you ignore the uneasiness of the brood, censor the materials you give to the kid, or point out that educated people are not shocked by nudity in art, knowing that the last option will have them calling you an uppity liberal?

To use a political example from the not too distant past, do you tell John Ashcroft that he needs to grow the fuck up, or do you let him hang draperies over the bare breasts of a classical Greek statue. If the statue was in his home, I'd say let it go. When the statue is in the halls of a government building, it embarasses everyone except the simple folk who think the way he does. Personally, I'd like members of my government to have at least the level of sophistication one would find in an 18 year old art student. The fact is that the vast majority of them don't. Our congress, for the most part, can't handle the dialog in an R-rated movie, would be offended by the sexual content of a movie like, say, "Tin Cup," knows nothing about the internet except that it has a lot of porn on it and Liberals make more money with it than Conservatives. I know they all have family money, but it really amazes me that these people get elected.

The real problem for me is when I'm dealing with people who ought to know better. The bigotry among the Progressive community is infuriating. For all their posturing and pontificating, they still only pay attention to white males and a few token females. They don't respect women's writing, they don't care about women's issues, and if they profess any kind of feminism at all, it's an ivory tower sort of "white chick feminism" that you find in Universities and the media. Mommy's problem is not whether to work or stay home. Mommy's problem is how to keep the rats away from baby, and keep a roof over their heads after daddy split. It's not about what to wear in the boardroom, but can she work in a mine without getting raped, and will the boss pay her as much as the men. There's nothing dainty or chic about real feminism - it's down and dirty populism that has to reach out to and deal with the poorest and most neglected members of society.

That's a sensibility I don't see anywhere in the Pop Politics of the Lefty blogosphere. The big boys kowtow to the DLC establishment to the detriment of the masses for whom they are supposed to advocate. The women acknowledged by the clique are pretty much all politics. Mix in anything personal, religious or non-news oriented and you're ignored. There's a strong anti-religion bias on the Left, even on blogs that profess to practice some - usually mainstream - religion. It's the Left's Achilles heel, and so far they've been completely inept at mitigating the damage it does at the polls. You shouldn't have to live in D.C. or on a Coast to be taken seriously. You shouldn't have to ignore spirituality altogether. You shouldn't be expected to sneer at viable candidates like Dennis Kucinich and automatically love Hillary because she has a vagina.

I knew when I started this blog that I would be marginalized. My opinions are extreme and I don't mince words. I'm not a politician and I don't have a boss that censors what I write. And, as I said, you can't really expect people to be something more than what they've been taught to be. At some point, though, you really want to tell people to grow the fuck up, and realize that there are voices not being heard and they are the ones ignoring them. You really want them to open their eyes and see that there are people in colors, genders, faiths, shapes and sizes that aren't up to Hollywood standards who still have something valid to say. You want them to live up to that Progressive label they wear so proudly. The Left would be unstoppable if it embraced its inherent diversity of cultures, religions, ethnicities, genders, and opinions.

We made the sandwiches and we've been patient. It's time to walk the talk.