Wednesday, January 09, 2008

How to keep 'em barefoot and pregnant down on the farm (if not in jail)

Amanda at Pandagon (tx to Kim at LP for this link) observes the predictable sexist US media reaction to a bit of a crack in Hillary Clinton's voice during an emotional speech:

It’s bad enough that the media plays the game with Clinton where if she shows any emotion, she’s too feminine or too scary, but if she’s more stoic, she’s a scary ballbuster.

Remind you of anyone?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

& of course having won NH, its now been claimed that her tears won her the women's vote....

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Yes, Bernice, I saw that too and was utterly appalled by it. I've just been writing to a friend about the 'Oh she only got it because the old [ie over 45 ] women voted for her' line already appearing in some quarters -- imagine the hate press along those lines that will dog her for years if she does make it all the way. Especially considering the particularly virulent hatred of women over 45 that a certain kind of man and a certain kind of American seem to go in for.

WhatLadder said...

I was just listening to Rachel Maddow from AirAmerica talking about her frustration over this issue.

Tom Toles had totally the best comment,though. (If you are looking a this after Jan 9, you may need to look at previous cartoons.)

TimT said...

If the footage they keep playing on ABC tellie is anything to go by, she didn't 'break up' at all. She looked tired, but not 'close to tears'. It's a moment of honesty and earnestness, and I'd certainly be inclined to vote for her if I was in the US and was involved in the Democratic primaries.

And apparently it did turn out to be a big winner for her in the New Hampshire primaries. So go Hill.

Anonymous said...

The problem is that any criticism of HC (or of any other woman in politics) can be robbed of any power by the pavlovian response that such criticisms are just sexist. How can any kind of proper discussion occur ?
Max

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

TimT, exactly. I think her eyes may have filled up for a moment, but you can only see it in the extreme close-ups that have been plastered about the place. I am working up to a post called Crying in Public Places about this whole bizarre obsession the media has with weeping celebs of various kinds.

Max, that is nonsense. I (for example) am highly critical of Clinton on several counts: her opportunist political record (not opposing Iraq, for example), for a start. I also thought her autobiography, a tome I dutifully struggled through to in order to review it, was boring, misleading, self-serving and not very well written. I regard both of these judgements as 'proper discussion' and neither of them has much if anything to do with gender.

Also, you are misusing 'pavlovian'. I know it was a joke, but, apart from anything else, the point of Pavlov's Cat is that it is a cat, ie immune to conditioned response and fundamentally contrarian.

If you can't tell the difference between what is and is not gender-based commentary then I suggest any good Feminism 101 course. I have done my time teaching Feminism 101, but these people are excellent. I bet you won't go there, though; you appear to me to be not interested in gender analysis and simply trying to score points.

Anonymous said...

So criticising Hilary Clinton's literary style is an example of how hard you've been on her ?
LOL
Feminism 101 would be a lot more worthy of attention if its moderator did not censor and remove posts she found offensive.
Stalinism 01 ?
Your view of the media coverage of HC is pavlovian, given who you are - a former teacher of Feminism 101. It's also wrong, influenced as it is by your understanding of women as victims. Hilary won.
And gender-based comment ? Give me an example of commentary that is not gender-based.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

'So criticising Hilary Clinton's literary style is an example of how hard you've been on her?'

Oh I don't know, I think 'misleading' and 'self-serving' qualify as criticism.

'... if its moderator did not censor ...'

Oh, crap. Censorship is what the state does. What blog owners do is remove from their blog things they find offensive, as they would from their homes, or as any other reasonable person would dogshit from their shoes.

'Stalinism 01 ?' [sic]

You obviously know nothing about Stalin.

'Your view of the media coverage of HC is pavlovian, given who you are - a former teacher of Feminism 101.'

Or logic. Or Pavlov. This remark makes no sense at all.

'... influenced as it is by your understanding of women as victims ...'

Clearly you have no understanding of my understanding of women, either.

'Give me an example of commentary that is not gender-based.'

Oh I don't know, how about 'misleading' and 'self-serving'?

What did I say about point-scoring? And why ever are you here at all?

WhatLadder said...

What you have here, PC, is your common or garden internet troll.

What I popped by to say was, did you know that little Mitten Romney has cried in public not once but THREE times over the past couple of months?

Well, he has. And yet no one is calling him hysterical, or questioning his ability to hold it together under the pressure of holding the office. Well, not because of the crying, anyway.