Well, this time they did, and there is no doubt that women were a decisive factor in the election of Barack Obama.
To listen to the pundits, however, you'd think that only youth (bless them!) and minorities turned out in overwhelming numbers to stand on endless lines to elect the first African American and liberal and brilliant president.
]]> Frank Rich, whom I admire tremendously, even missed the boat. In his Sunday New York Times column in The Week in Review, Rich never mentioned the amazing gender gap that catapulted a young and relatively unknown senator to become our 44th president.Just take a serious look at the numbers. As the data in the Week in Review in the New York Times reveals, women constituted 53% of the electorate, while only 47% of men voted. Among those who voted for Obama, 56% were women and 43% were men. Among unmarried women, a whopping 70% voted for Obama.
There are many variables in this data that need to be explained. The extraordinary female vote almost certainly came largely from minority and young women. But even white, married women, who usually vote more conservatively, went for Obama.
Does this matter? Yes, and here's why. For years, women have been saying that we are invisible in this political culture. The consequence of this invisibility is that our poverty, our economic insecurity, our need for health care, child care, elder care, and equality in wages and training are also ignored.
So, with all due respect to those who are praising the young and minorities, and rightfully blessing their energy and enthusiasm, take a good hard look and notice that it was women who, in the end, sealed the deal.
Obama's stunning victory is the first time in 63 years that Americans once again danced and cheered in the street. Here on the Left Coast, thousands of Berkeley students danced in the city, wildly cheering his victory. In Oakland's Jack London Square and in San Francisco's Castro District, tens of thousands more gathered for joyous street parties, dancing in the street. It was a bittersweet victory because of the success of those who sought to ban same-sex marriage. That day, too, will come. Of this I'm sure.
]]> Elsewhere, people also danced in the streets. In Chicago, a friend describes the thousands of young people who poured out of trains to join the tens of thousands already celebrating in Grant Park. In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the largely African American and Caribbean population celebrated in the streets, dancing and setting off fireworks.All across America, in these blue enclaves, celebration and joy was in the air. The morning after the election, I received emails from friends all over the world who described how the election would transform not just the United States, but the rest of the world. On the Berkeley campus, colleagues, as well as strangers, hugged each other. Smiles sprouted on students' faces. It was as though everyone were awakening from an eight year low-grade depression.
At an election night party with people of my 60s generation, a mixed-race crowd couldn't believe what we saw on television--and on our computers. As we listened to John Lewis, tears poured down our faces. None of us thought we'd lived to see this historic election. All of our adult lives we have protested racial and sexual discrimination, unnecessary wars, and fought for social and economic justice. None of us could remember wanting to dance in the streets. To feel joy, to feel pride in our new leader,and those who elected him, was a new experience.
All my life I've heard the phrase "dancing in the streets" but I've never witnessed it after a political event. May the future give us more historic reasons to rejoice and dance in the streets.
]]>As early as August 14, 2008, The Women's Media Center in New York launched "Show Me the Women," an email petition campaign reminding all three moderators that women are part of the "diversity" of this country. Bob Shieffer even invited the WMC to offer questions. MomsRising.com, which emerged out of MoveOn.com, also launched an email campaign to persuade the moderators to include women's and family's issues in the debates.
Did it work? Not really.
]]> I would argue that any discussion of universal health care is of course a "women's or family issue." As is the collapse of the economy, which according to recent studies, has hurt women workers the worst. Energy independence also falls into this category, as does our national security policies. All of these--and more--affect women and men, children and families.But there are specific issues that affect women's lives differently. And if people ignorantly view half the population as a "special interest group" or as part of "identity politics," they have yet to embrace the gender revolution that has upended our culture and society during the last thirty years.
Some examples. Sen. Joe Biden practically skipped over his historic role in legislation the Violence against Women Act. To his credit, Sen. Barack Obama mentioned the importance of women's earning the same as men, their right to control their own reproductive health, and his support for early education. But he didn't discuss the desperate Care Crisis experienced by working mothers--women who are expected to take care of the young, the elderly and the disabled while they provide for their families. Nor did he discuss policies such as paid family leave or twenty other family friendly policies that women's groups have advocated for decades.
I've worked as a waitress. In fact, that's how I got through my undergraduate education. I met many Josephines and none of them imagined, like Joe the plumber, that they would ever earn $250,000. If they're lucky, they earn just barely enough to provide for their families.
As Obama has insisted, they are the ones who need his proposed tax cuts. So why did he and Sen. McCain continually talk to Joe the Plumber, who was a Republican and had already made up his mind? Why didn't Obama change the subject and talk about Josephine the waitress? Or Jane, the single mom, who has just lost her home? Or Joanna, who has just lost her job and has no health care?
When all the examples are of men's travails, guess who feels excluded, indeed invisible.
And what a politically foolish move on both their parts. Both political parties know that women are the ones who are going to swing this election. Fortunately, from my point of view, Obama is enjoying a rather generous gender gap, with far more women supporting him than McCain.
But don't take women for granted. Court us; don't ignore us. Woo us with things that really matter; don't insult us. We have very, very long memories.
Amazingly, it was Sarah Palin who uttered the words "women's rights" as part of her robotic explanation as to why the world doesn't like the United States. Sen. Joseph Biden, who authored the Violence Against Women Act, hardly took the time to stress the significance of what he had achieved.
]]> And though Biden briefly mentioned the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal in the U.S. in 1973, the moderator, PBS's Gwen Ifill, never asked these two candidates their views on women's rights to make their own reproductive choices.Palin, as everyone knows, is against women's right to make those choices. Yet Ifill spared her public moment of having to tell the American people that she supports anti-abortion policies.
Of course Palin was spared much, much more. But for this very brief piece, I simply want to register my astonishment that no questions were asked about abortion, women's reproductive health care, equal pay for women, child care or family friendly policies.
Yes, there's an economic collapse. Yes, we're mired in two disastrous wars. But not every woman is a hockey mom. Most women, including mothers, however, are genuinely worried about the minimum wage, keeping their jobs, finding child care and many other issues that daily affect their lives.
Both parties know that in the end, it is women who will swing this election. Might be a good moment to start speaking to them.
]]>Well, let me tell you something about Feminists for Life. In 2003, I decided to investigate this group and its energetic leader, Serrin Foster.
What did it mean, I wondered, to be a feminist and actively fight against the right to choose when or whether to have a child?
So I went to a church in sprawling, suburban, wealthy Danville, California to hear Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life, speak on "The Feminist Case Against Abortion"
to a huge crowd of mainly high-school students.
No woman, argues Foster, should ever have to choose between having a child and a career. "Abortion is a reflection that society has failed women," she tells high school and college students as she tours the country.
"Women deserve better choices," she says and points to practical alternatives and resources available to a young woman who has an unwanted pregnancy. She can choose single parenthood and use food stamps or temporary assistance to needy families. She can choose adoption. Or, college-age women can pressure school campuses to offer child care and family housing so that they never, ever, have to choose between a pregnancy and an education.
Feminism is all about having choices, Foster told me, after her talk. I couldn't agree more. Young women, she says, should have the right to bear a child and have access to high-quality, affordable child care. Again, I heartily agreed.
But Foster is cleverly disingenuous. When I asked what she does to promote child care, her answers were vague and evasive. When I read the organization's brochures aimed at campus physicians and psychologists, I found nothing about campaigning for child care. The real goal is to convince professionals to persuade young women to "choose" to bear a baby.
Despite its protestations, Feminists for Life is not really about choice. You can see this on its Web site, where the slogan "refuse to choose" appeared repeatedly. Nor does the organization challenge the real difficulties working mothers face. Instead, it cleverly appropriates the words "feminist" and "choice" to convince young women that abortion is always an unacceptable choice.
Part of the problem is that Foster either does not know her history or purposefully distorts the past. She spoke that night as though she had invented the idea of child care and describes pioneer feminists of the 1960s and 1970s as selfish, diabolical creatures who never wanted women to have the choice to bear a child.
But she's wrong. The three demands made at the first national march in New York City in 1970 included child care, equal pay for equal work and the legal right to "choose" an abortion. Many feminists, moreover, spent years trying to persuade the institutions where they worked that real equality for women required family-friendly policies, including child care.
Foster also accused Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America of supporting abortion in order to stay in business. But I had to wonder about her own financial goals when I saw, in the organization's magazine, that I could buy a "stunning new logo pin" in either sterling silver or 24-carat gold for $75.
In the end, I decided that Feminists for Life is neither about feminism nor about choice. It is a cunning attempt to convince young women that choice means giving up the right to "choose."
Sarah Palin is the inexperienced woman Sen. John McCain has chosen as his running mate, hoping that she will attract the vital female vote.. It's the worst kind of affirmative action, choosing a person he barely knows, who is completely unprepared to assume any national office. It's like nominating Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. It's all about ideology and not about competence.
To put it bluntly, Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton. Nor does she have the vision and brilliance of Barack Obama. This is an incredible insult to most American women. Just how stupid does he think we are?
]]>Now I watch Sen. John McCain and I see the kind of change I witnessed in Ronald Reagan. As he entered his second term as President, I happened to be watching film clips of a younger and sharper Governor Ronald Reagan. The difference was staggering. Earlier, he had been a quick wit, fast on his feet, feisty as well as charming. By 1984, however, he seemed confused and distracted; I watched him with shock and saw an individual clearly slowed by the early signs of a terribly deteriorating disease.
]]> I'm hardly alone in noticing the changes that have occurred in John McCain. People are whispering about his confusion, his slow delivery, his deterioration, but unlike the issue of Obama's race, it is not being openly discussed.It is not a question of age. One eighty-three year-old woman took me aside last week, a woman who's as sharp and quick as she was when I first met her forty years ago, and asked me, "Why is no one talking about the fact McCain appears to be suffering from the early stages of some kind of dementia?"
I had noticed the changes as well. I don't know if he knew the differences between religious groups in Iraq in 2000, but when I look at old clips of Sen. John McCain during his 2000 run for the presidency, he seems like the kind of quick, witty, guy who knew how to finesse anything he didn't knew.
Consider, by contrast, his lame and confused response to the question of how many homes he owns. Clearly, the question is complicated, because this is a couple who owns property separately, jointly, and have several homes on individual plots of land. But a quick-witted John McCain in 2000 would have responded, "Look, we live in Arizona in our home; we vacation in two condos. The rest is investment property, some of which belongs to my wife and some of which we own jointly. Any other questions?"
It goes without saying that Obama's race is a potent factor in the 2008 presidential race. But I wonder if anyone will openly say what people are whispering about every day, namely, that Sen. John McCain genuinely seems confused, slower than eight years ago, and, in the opinion of more than a few senior citizens who recognize the signs, in the early states of some type of early dementia or Alzheimers.
McCain's failure to think and respond quickly should worry every American. We have experienced two terms of the worst presidency in American history. We have lost considerable moral credibility around the world, started two wars that cannot be won through military means, allowed unfettered regulation to undermine our economic strength and widen wealth inequality, and shredded many of our most cherished democratic civil rights and liberties.
I, for one, want a brilliant, progressive, president who is capable of reversing at least some of this damage. So aside from McCain's capitulation to the right-wing constituency of his party, every American should worry about his ability to govern. His various medical conditions, in fact, require so many drugs, it's a wonder he can function at all.
Think about it. To ask Hillary Clinton's infamous question, is he the person you'd like to answer the White House phone at 3am? And will anyone stop the whispering and finally say it loud and clear---that this is a man who is simply too impaired to be president? This is not about his age. This is about the reality of his health.
]]>So what did I experience? An editor and an editorial board who felt that, in the absence of inside sources, we could not counter the administration's lies.
Let me give you some examples. I was raised in a Republican family, but schooled by the great iconoclastic journalist I.F. Stone, who taught me that you can find the truth without inside sources, if only you're willing to see beyond patriotic fervor and examine voices in the public domain that are marginalized, So, I would read national security experts who countered Donald Rumfeld's ridiculous predictions; I would read the British, Canadian, Italian and French press; I would read the writings of experts in resource wars and weapons of mass destruction.
No, I didn't know I was right. But I was sure that the administration was lying. And, I knew that at the very least that our editorials should be asking why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al should be believed when I had found strong evidence that they were cherry picking intelligence, and setting up their own office in the Pentagon, and acting in complete secrecy.
The rush to war drove me crazy. In the days that led up to the war, I went to my editor and told him I needed a few days unpaid leave to accept the fact that we were, in fact, going to war. In my mind's eye, I saw a baby tied to the railroad tracks and saw the train rapidly moving toward the helpless child. I saw years of quagmire, bloodshed, and tens of thousands of deaths. I needed a few days to accept that reality before I could return to writing. He understood and allowed me to regain my professional composure.
To its credit, the editorial board raised some of the toughest questions in the mainstream media. And yet....I was the only one who didn't believe Colin Powell's shameful presentation at the United Nations. Why? Not because I had special insider knowledge, but like I.F. Stone, I had found credible people who could dissect his speech and found it unconvincing and unpersuasive.
When I heard Bush's inaugural address, I heard two major lies embedded within his speech. But somehow that still wasn't enough to accuse him of plagiarism and deception.
The truth is, even a liberal newspaper, blessed with a liberal editorial board, did not engage in truth telling. We raised some good questions, wrote about supporting the troops, but failed to describe the deception that led to the catastrophe that was unfolding right before our eyes.
While I was writing editorials, I was also publishing two weekly political columns on the op-ed page. I also felt constrained as a columnist. If I wanted to discuss this country's desire to gain control and access over oil, I had to bump up against the accusation that I was a vulgar Marxist, rather than conversant with the reality of resource wars.
Finally, I am an historian, and I knew Iraq's history. I also knew that the war would end in a disastrous occupation, not a liberation, and that no country, including our own, will ever tolerate occupation by a foreign nation.
This week, I sat with a former colleague from the editorial board in a café, rather than in the room where we used to make our editorial decisions. He admitted that I had been right, but even more, that even in a liberal paper, the editor and most of the board, had felt restrained, afraid of seeming unpatriotic, afraid of saying the emperor wore no clothes, afraid of not giving the President the benefit of the doubt, afraid of truth telling without access to inside sources.
You may say, "Ho Hum, even the Senate has now, after five years, come out with a report that describes (oh, so tepidly) the years of deception.
But for me, the tears flowed because I remembered all those years when I felt passionate about telling the public the truth, but was unable to do so in a mainstream, liberal, newspaper.
Already, there are those who are preparing for a referendum for the November ballot that would ban same sex marriages in the California Constitution. But before we lose the joyous celebration of an expanded democracy, I'd like to recall what happened four years ago. Here, from 2004, is what I witnessed--one of the most joyous historic events in my life.
]]>Last Friday, I talked with some of the these couples who, in defiance of state law, married in San Francisco. Even though their marriage licenses may be judged invalid by the courts, they came because they wanted to participate in this historic event and to have, even temporarily, the same rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples.
Some of the women, dressed in stunning white gowns, juggled babies and bouquets. Some of the men, dressed in elegant tuxedos, sported a carnation in their lapels and cradled babies, while friends held their paperwork. One man pushed his partner in a wheelchair, a broad smile spreading across his face.
Beaming faces spread an intoxicating sense of joy throughout the building. As couples looked into each other's eyes, arms wrapped around each other, their friends took snapshots and the national media documented the occasion for the evening news. I chatted with one veteran cameraman who was overwhelmed by the scene and, much to his surprise, found himself blinking back tears.
Jennifer Shifflet, 31, and Kati Keyser, 29, both graduate students, live in Berkeley and have been together for eight years. The day before, Jennifer had telephoned Kati at work and said, "Let's do it tomorrow; it's such a historic event." Neither one had a chance to tell their parents of their plan.
But their parents wouldn't be surprised. With pride, they showed me pictures of the family members and friends who gathered around them at their commitment ceremony. During that event, they had expressed their gratitude to all the earlier activists who had struggled for gay rights. Kati said they had come "to support this historic event."
What do they imagine might change, now that they are married? "I won't have to call her my partner or girlfriend at a doctor's office or a hospital," said Jennifer. "She's now my spouse."
"We want to have children,'' said Kati. "Someday I can call a child-care center or a school and say that my spouse will be picking up our child. We'll be viewed as a valid family."
"It's an honor to be part of this. I'm thrilled," said Jennifer. "But the truth is, we had already made this commitment and felt married."
Randa Johnson and Adreanna Riles, both social workers in their late 30s, jointly own a house in Felton. They also felt that they had already married. Still, the day before they traveled to the steps of San Francisco's City Hall, they had asked each other: "Should we wait? No! We've got to be a part of it."
They too, have been together for eight years, but, as Adreanna put it, "I never imagined that we'd be able to marry in my lifetime." Draped in the white dresses they had worn at their commitment ceremony four years ago, they both felt they were "renewing" vows.
Why, then did they want to wed? Aside from the possibility of getting health and retirement benefits reserved for spouses, they said that their religious friends would regard their relationship as more legitimate now that they are married. They also want to have children and feel that they and their children will be viewed as a more legitimate family by teachers and others in their community.
Glowing with happiness, the two women looked like -- and spoke like -- any other married couple who deeply love and respect each other.
There may have been couples who had just met, were swept up in the heady passion of a new romance, and decided to rush down to City Hall to get married.
But that's not what I saw. I met couples who already had made a spiritual commitment to each other and whose love had been tested by time and travail. For them, a marriage license meant greater social legitimacy and fewer logical and legal hassles.
That's how Andy Anderson, 42, and Marcus Wonacott, 49, viewed it. Longtime residents of San Francisco, the men had already shared 16 years of their lives. They, too, already felt they had wed.
As they approached the steps to City Hall, a friend greeted them and pinned roses on their suit jackets. Their faces beamed as they held hands. "We're really very grateful to Mayor Gavin Newsom," said Andy. This really makes a statement. He deserves so much credit for being so bold and daring."
"It a historic milestone," said Marcus. "We're part of history and we know it."
Then, with joyful smiles, they eagerly entered City Hall to renew vows they had made eight years ago, at their commitment ceremony.
]]>To atone for these politically motivated expulsions, which denied activists their college degrees, at least six southern universities have granted former activists honorary degrees. Having denied these young people the opportunity of an education, it was the least they could do.
]]> But "The New South" doesn't include Tennessee State University, which has refused to grant honorary degrees to 13 African-American students who were expelled in 1961 for their participation in the freedom rides. On March 28, the governing board of the university, formerly called Tennessee A&I State University, voted against awarding honorary degrees to them.In the words of the local paper, the Tennessean, the Regents expressed their concern "about denigrating the value of an honorary degree by awarding so many at one time and recognizing a 'one-time act of courage' with what is intended to be a life-achievement award."
"There is something sacred about an honorary degree," Richard Rhoda, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, told the newspaper. "The board, in their judgment, did not feel like this was an instance where you should grant an honorary degree."
U.S. Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia), who as a Freedom Rider suffered serious physical beatings from mobs, was among those who wrote to Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen and the Regents, asking them to award the honorary degrees to the former students. "Unfortunately," he wrote, "more than two people were required to tear down the walls of legalized segregation. It took nothing short of raw courage for the hundreds of participants in the movement to stand up to the governor, mounted police, tear gas, fire hoses, attack dogs, and yes, even their colleges and universities."
Faced with such pressure, a board spokesman, Mary Morgan, told the press that the university would organize and host a special event to honor the Freedom Riders, and would create a new honor, the Regent's Medallion, for the expelled students.
Nashville was a major scene of student-led protests. When black and white Freedom Riders arrived in Nashville, mobs attacked and beat them. In response, Nashville students reorganized the Freedom Rides into Mississippi, where they were arrested and imprisoned. While in jail, the Nashville students received letters notifying them that they would face expulsion, a ruling that had just been created by Governor Buford Ellington, who boasted proudly of his segregationist views. As a result, T.S.U. expelled the students who had participated in the Freedom Rides.
The current president of T.S.U. has voiced very different sentiments from his board. "I think this campus feels as if these students are an inspiration," he observed. "Their place in history is tremendous during a very dark period in this nation's history. This was a good time to rectify those wrongs."
And that is precisely what Vanderbilt University and Fisk University did; they denounced their decision to expel former students for participating in the civil rights movement. At T.S.U., however, no denunciations or apologies have been made to date. There the Freedom Rides are still not over.
Article originally published at dissentmagazine.org
]]>Some have said that the former President is not questioning Obama’s patriotism, but those are the same people whose job is 24/7 damage control. Let’s not kid ourselves. Bill Clinton is playing the McCarthy card, one that has worked wonders in the past as it destroyed people and their political ambitions. He is also playing the race card, now coded as “all this other stuff.”
And what makes Obama so unpatriotic?
]]> He has candidly and honestly told the American people that we are embroiled in a senseless war, that the U.S. economy is in danger of collapsing, and that we live in a society divided by black anger and white resentment.The Clintons, in other words, have decided to portray Obama as “the other,” the dangerous outsider, the dark menace whose loyalty to America must be seriously questioned. The evidence, after all, is overwhelming: Like so many of us, Michelle Obama is relieved at the prospect that America might once again regain its moral credibility around the world. And, lest we forget, Obama has attended a black church where a hot-headed outrageous pastor, whose comments Obama has denounced, has expressed rage at America’s failure to keep its promises equality to citizens of all colors.
Many have wondered how just how nasty the Clintons would get in the face of defeat. When Hillary Clinton told the media that she “thought” Obama was a Christian “as far as she knows,” I thought she had truly hit the low road. Now we know they’d rather destroy Obama’s chances for the November election than lose the nomination.
Playing the patriotism card, especially against a black candidate, is almost certainly a handy way to discredit an opponent. The Clintons take no prisoners. And soon, there may be no prisoner left to take.
]]>No, none of the main characters were heroes. Even the best lied or broke the rules, often in the pursuit of a greater truth.
Unlike The Sopranos, "The Wire" never became a popular program. Yet those of us who became addicted will now have to look elsewhere for such a bold confirmation of what we daily see in our lives and for the semi-heroic individuals who understand that though you'll always lose the war, the meaning of your life lies in each battle you embrace.
No need to say R.I.P. for "The Wire." It will live on as more and more people who never had access to HBO discover that the very best television series ever made will long be available on DVD's. It ended at the right time. And it ended in the right way, with nothing solved, little gained. Life as usual. It was what it was.
The politics of fear worked wonders for Bush and Cheney. I'm genuinely saddened that Hillary Clinton would reach out to tell us, "be afraid, very afraid." Her ads warn us about our children's 'safety at 3 am in the morning and do nothing more than employ the politics of fear. Her relentless assertion that only she will be a strong commander-in-chief makes my blood boil. In response, Barack Obama must rejoin her attacks and convince us that he, too, would be a fine commander who can deal with crises and war.
Excuse me, but is this what we want from Democrats? Fear mongering? Haven't we had enough from the Bush administration?
]]> Of course we need a strong president who can protect the American people. Of course there are terrorists who are planning attacks on the United States. But no president can prevent a surprise attack. All a president can do is to ensure that our intelligence is excellent and that we are cooperating with nations around the world to prevent terrorist attacks.So why do need a strong Command-in-Chief? To make war? Haven't we had enough wars in the last 7 years?
. What so disturbs me is that Hillary Clinton has created a debate that is irrelevant to our true domestic and economic security. Both Democratic candidates will be able to handle a crisis, but who among us, wants them to start and command yet more wars?
Let Senator McCain stress national security for now Let him defend the Bush military debacles. This is not the debate Democratic candidates should be having during the primaries. They should be arguing about how to end the war in Iraq and how to prevent future wars through multilateral diplomacy and negotiation. They should be talking about how the current wars are bankrupting our economy. They should be explaining how 12 billion dollars a month would support universal health care, as well as child care for working parents. They should be promising to remove the Social Security cap that allows a CEO to pay less social security taxes than his secretary. They should be promising to end the Bush tax cuts. They should be pledging to restore all our civil rights and liberties.
Instead, Hillary Clinton has set the terms of debate and is challenging Obama on the ground that she is more capable of making war and addressing national security. Well, our national security is not simply a military matter. Our national security, as any good Democrat should know, depends on the health and welfare of the nation's families and communities.
]]>I have suggested elsewhere that the women's health movement was arguably the greatest accomplishment of the modern women's movement. If I am right, then Barbara Seaman was also one of the most important activists and journalists who challenged the over-medicalization of women's lives.
Fiercely skeptical, Barbara Seaman early warned women about the dangers of the birth control pill in her controversial book "The Doctor's Case Against the Pill" in 1969. As a result of her pioneering work and the hearings that followed in the wake of its publication, strengthened warnings appeared on birth control packages.
She never stopped.
Long before others recognized the danger of huge numbers of middle-aged women taking hormones to ease menopause. Seaman warned women in " Women and The Crisis in Sex Hormones" (2007) and "The Greatest Experiment ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth (2003).
The list goes on. Seaman was a tireless advocate and muckraker who, like all truth tellers before her, relentless pursued the truth behind the spurious claims of those who stood to profit from selling women youth ,beauty, and health.
Perhaps most importantly, Barbara Seaman, like the entire women's health movement, taught each woman women to trust her own intuition, to listen to her own body, and never to trust doctors or commercial companies more than herself.
I am only one person who owes my life to Barbara Seasman's work, because I trusted my own intuition more than the cavalier indifference of physicians. Countless others are alive because this remarkable women worked to make the world safe for women.
]]>McCain's out-of-control sexism is hardly new. In 1998, he made David Shuster seem positively tame. At a Republican fund-raiser, he jokingly asked "Why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly." His answer was that "Janet Reno was the father."
Surely, I need not spell out the implications.
]]> Folks, this election has provided us with an important and much-needed teaching moment." Can American politicians, pundits, journalists and political analysts learn to speak respectfully about female candidates and their daughters or will they end up vilifying women and alienating some huge portion of America's population? Misogyny is out of control in this campaign and perhaps the only silver lining is that many American will see how socially acceptable it still is to speak about women in hateful, contemptuous ways.It's time for John McCain to apologize to Sen. Hillary Clinton--and to all American women--- for promoting and engaging in such insulting and disrespectful behavior toward them.. As the general election looms closer, he might remember that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" and that they will also cast votes next November.
]]>Restraint against making sexist comments, by contrast, is not yet apparent. Fortunately, the outcry from both men and women has been loud enough to force Chris Mathews to apologize for implying that Clinton would never be a candidate if her husband hadn't messed around in the White House. I'm also delighted that MSNBC's David Shuster has both apologized and been suspended for asking a guest if Chelsea Clinton was "being pimped out in some weird sort of way" by the Clinton campaign?
These are only two of a long list of sexist comments noted by Media Matters, feminist scholars and activists across the country. This list would bore you.
But the one moment that sill sticks in my throat happened quite a while ago. On November 12, 2007, a McCain supporter asked, "How do we beat the bitch?" Laughter erupted among the crowd and McCain joined in. After a few moments, he replied, "That is an excellent question." Then, he went on to say that he respected Senator Clinton.
Oh really?
]]> If so, McCain should have been shocked and admonished his supporter by replying, "That's not the way we speak about women, and certainly it's wrong to use such language when discussing a distinguished Senator campaigning for the presidency. " But that wasn't his response.Imagine, for a moment, if he had been asked, "How do we beat the N word?" referring to Senator Obama. Everyone would have gasped, including the Senator himself. He wouldn't have laughed and he would not have said it was an "excellent question."
The point is, McCain gave his supporters permission to view Clinton as a "bitch,"
even though he then went on to say he respected her. Well, Senator, you can't respect any woman and allow her to be vilified in such a sexist manner.
I am among those feminists who supported Obama in the primaries. But I'm also outraged by the way Hillary Clinton has been treated by the media, the pundits, even the candidates. Discussions of her poor taste in clothes, her thick ankles, distorted descriptions of her eyes welling up as "crying," and attacks on her "cackling laughter" have made many women feel they want to support her, if only to get even with everyone who has tried to diminish and sabotage her. I share their anger. Many of us know that we are viewed as a "bitch" when we're strong and as an incompetent when we reveal emotion.
Now that Sen. John McCain appears to be the Republican candidate, it's time for him to apologize to Hillary Clinton--and all America women--for allowing any woman to be called a "bitch." It doesn't matter that a woman was the supporter who yelled out the question. It's up to McCain to prove that history has not passed him by and that he respects half of the population he seeks to govern.
Enough is enough. Men, get a grip. We're here to stay and one of us is actually running for the presidency forty-odd years after the modern women's women began. Get used to it; we're not going away.
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