For Feisty Feminists

You get to overhear a lot of conversations on the bus, and learn some pretty personal things about your fellow riders.  While the overwrought tales of interpersonal drama can be irritating, more often they are entertaining.  If only I did not have to overhear crap like a conversation concerning the election between two seemingly educated, seemingly intelligent, liberal young men, wherein I learned the following:

• Rudy Giuliani shouldn’t be president because he is bald.
• John McCain is too old to be president.
• Rudy Giuliani clearly has mob ties, as he is from New York and has an Italian name.
• Although they both agree with Hillary more than Obama, they will vote for Obama because he gives them the warm fuzzies, or something.
• Obama should do something more interesting with his hair, like get dreadlocks.

For the most part, these things are just asinine (although the thing about Obama’s hair is plain offensive); it makes me very sad, however, that these are the kinds of things people are discussing concerning the election.  I am not sure if this is because these two young men were particularly dim-witted, or because the election really does not bring up anything of meaning - just campaign slogans and meaningless mud-slinging.   I am sure that it is fucking depressing to hear shit like this.

So, apparently it’s big news when a woman cries in a presidential race; according to some it’s a calculated political move - she’s trying to cry her way into the White House; some thought it was a deep display of emotion, indicating that she had the sensitive nature necessary to lead the nation; others thought it showed that she was too weak.

Then she won the primary in New Hampshire, after coming in third in Iowa. Was this because her crying showed her maternal side - that she’s not some calculating Ice Queen, but a loving, nurturing caretaker?

You know what I think? I don’t think she won in New Hampshire because suddenly she demonstrated was the caretaker
we all need to run the country and wipe our noses. I think she won because moderate women, and some men, finally realized that the level of vitriolic criticism directed at her is completely unwarranted. The only reason for it is blatant fucking misogyny. She’s criticized for her clothes, her looks, her hair, sounding ’shrill,’ being too ‘mannish’, being too feminine, and now for crying - while men crying on the campaign trial is routinely praised, even required. When, in the same week, she was criticized for ‘crying’, and interrupted in a public event by being told to ‘iron in shirt!’ the real reason for the intense hatred directed at her became clear.

I think that people who are moderately feminist and/or sympathetic to feminism - but unlikely to label themselves in that way - finally got so fed up that they said ‘Fuck this! If you’re going to criticize her just because she’s a woman, I’m voting for her just to piss you off!’ Right now, I’m hoping all the Christ Matthews’ of the world keep up their hateful comments, because I think it does more for her than they know

I do not necessarily support her, but I hate the way she is hated for being a woman who dares to think she would make a good president.