Jezebel: sex(ism) and politics

"I Don't Want To Get Spanked By Mama" And Other Clinton Camp Sexism

Megan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:20:00 EDT

If Gail Sheehy's article Hillaryland at War is to be believed, Hillary Clinton did face a ton of sexism — from inside her own circle of advisers. From her advisers admitting that "nobody knew how to run a woman as a candidate for President" to the title quote to Mark Penn insisting that she couldn't show "weakness," aka, any kind of emotion or female-ness, to Bill Clinton insisting "you can't run as a woman," it seems like Hillary faced as much sexism from within her inner circle as from without. Could she have run a credible campaign as a woman instead of running, as Penn and her husband reportedly insisted, as the "toughest man in the race"? Millions of women would probably say yes, but, then, by Indiana, Penn was courting white men anyway.

"Jokes" About Domestic Violence Are Never Funny

Megan — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:40:00 EDT

For a candidate who's trying to woo women voters, John McCain sure acts like a sexist piece of crap sometimes. In an wide-ranging interview yesterday with the Las Vegas Sun, he was asked why didn't appoint the scandal-plagued piece-of-sexist-crap governor of Nevada, Jim Gibbons, to be his state chair. The reporter asked, "Maybe it's the governor's approval rating and you are running from him like you are from the president?" and McCain responded: (Chuckling) "And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago…" That's the kind of humor that will get the P.U.M.A.'s growling, for sure. [Las Vegas Sun]

We wanted to bring your attention to New...

Megan — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:45:00 EDT

We wanted to bring your attention to New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt's column in which he examined his paper's record on sexism and Hillary Clinton. While mostly an examination of all the sexist things Maureen Dowd has said about Clinton (and way in which she insulted Obama by calling him girly), Hoyt did agree with criticisms of the Times' coverage of Hillary's laugh and its incessant need to specify that she was wearing pants. Jason Zengerle of The New Republic strongly disagrees that calling attention to Clinton's attire is sexist. Um, the whole point of calling it a pantsuit instead of a "suit" is to call attention to the fact that the supposed norm for a woman is a skirt. Because, you know, a woman's place is in a skirt or something. [NY Times, The New Republic]