season of the bitch

At the New York Times, the headline reads: “Weekend Opinionator: Is Racist Hate Republican or Democratic?”

Easy Answer to Stupid Question: It’s neither, assholes. There are racists in both parties, and I could readily provide examples from my own personal experience and from your own newspaper in the past year. Or has everyone else forgotten the primary campaign and then the general election?

There are also racist communists, and racist anarchists, and obviously racist fascists and racist Libertarians and racists in the Temperance Party and the Green Party.

As for the partisan blame-fest, I already said this, and unlike this guy who got paid far more than I did, I actually wrote my own thoughts down instead of cutting and pasting other people’s comments.

Greenwald has an excellent piece on Sonia Sotomayor (and as usual, rips Establishment media a new one for using anonymous sources in the process).

I know far, far less than he does about Sonia Sotomayor or about the relative fitness of judicial nominees for the job. I was far more qualified to talk about Sarah Palin and the attacks leveled at her for being an affirmative action hire, a pretty dumb chick whose appeal was solely prurient.

Rebecca Traister pointed out the obvious gender bias to the TNR piece in question, a bias that is only multiplied by her being of Puerto Rican descent, as Adam Serwer notes. She’s bossy! She doesn’t shut up! She’s not that smart–Obama is prioritizing diversity! (The Clarence Thomas arguments, of course, are too obvious.)

When Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Court, we heard similar arguments about her intellectual ability–and we didn’t argue. When Sarah Palin got the Republican VP nomination, we giggled and made our own jokes. Now Obama’s nominees will face the same kind of criticisms, ones that would never be leveled at a white guy up for the same job, and what do we say?

It’s a double bind. We don’t want to be unable to criticize female nominees or people of color (*cough cough* Gonzalez–or closer to home, Roland Burris) but we need to be consistent in noting the difference between substantive attacks and gender or racially motivated ones. It’s entirely possible that Sonia Sotomayor is not the best choice for the Supreme Court, but I very much doubt that she’s any less “smart” than Thomas, Alito, or any number of federal judges that the Right (or the nominal left as represented by TNR) would have no problem with–because they’re white and male.

The fact is, when it comes to the Supreme Court, there are probably many lawyers and judges and law professors who would do as good or better jobs than the people already on there. There’s no one best person for the job, and it’s also fairly difficult to predict how justices will rule once confirmed (note that the retiring Souter was nominated by George H.W. Bush and became one of the reliable liberal members of the Court). So there’s absolutely nothing wrong with picking a qualified justice who comes from a different ethnic and class background than the rest of the Court for the sake of diversity.

So the McCain campaign won’t let go of Joe the Plumber. He’s still being trotted out in speeches by McCain and Palin. They mention again and again how Obama wants to “spread” Joe’s wealth.

Aside from the condescension (yet again) implicit in McCain’s reduction of Joe to a stereotype (and leaving out any of the frenzied investigations into just who Joe really is), I want to look a little closer at what the Joe the Plumber rhetoric really means.

Joe, of course, is white. He’s from Ohio, a state connected with middle-American whiteness, as opposed to the cities that McCain likes to emphasize in reference to Obama (”I don’t need any advice from a…Chicago politician!”).

The city is black; Middle America is white.

Read the rest. Because you love me.

It’s been a bit since I’ve done this, since I’ve been unholy busy, but here it is.

1. La Lubu has a comment on Octo’s Feministe post that says a lot of what I was trying to say below far better than I did. Octo also linked to this post at La Lubu’s blog that, well, yeah. Because without the basics, we can’t do any of it.

2. And Octo yet again has a thought-provoking post, this time on individualism. She’s seriously on a roll over there, and instead of freaking out because she’s violating lefty dogma, take a minute to think about it. Then think about what La Lubu said. Then…synthesize?

3. Hilzoy on why John McCain gets scarier every day.

4. A post at Racialicious about the true purpose of satire.

5. Emily about the latest round of trans wars (do we really still have to have this discussion, people?) but more importantly, again: A woman is dead, and her killer got off.

6. Debi has a round-up of things you can DO. She has lots of other goodness, too, including a big kiss-my-ass to everyone who’s treating her like a wayward child. Rock on, Debi. And thanks for the Arcade Fire.

7. The Jaded Hippy actually went to see Tropic Thunder to tell us all about it. Frankly, no matter how much Robert Downey, Jr.  was involved, I wouldn’t have been interested in that movie before I heard anything about protests about its racism and ableism. And she’s aware that she’s white and able-bodied. Something to think about, especially in terms of the successful-satire post above.

8. Finally, I’m stealing this quote from Pop Feminist.

“We have lost the relative strength and security that the old moral codes guaranteed our loves either by forbidding them or determining their limits. Under the crossfire of gynecological surgery rooms and television screens, we have buried love within shame for the benefit of pleasure, desire, if not revolution, evolution, planning, management–hence for the benefit of Politics. Until we discover under the rubble of those ideological structures — which are nevertheless ambitious, often exorbitant, sometimes altruistic–that they were extravagant or shy attempts intended to quench a thirst for love. To recognize this does not amount to a modest withdrawal, it is perhaps to confess to a grandiose pretension. Love is the time and space in which ‘I’ assumes the right to be extraordinary. Sovereign yet not individual. Divisible, lost, annihilated; but also, and through imaginary fusion with the loved one, equal to the infinite space of superhuman psychism. Paranoid? I am, in love, at the zenith of subjectivity.”

- Julia Kristeva (1987)

So the stuff I was writing about here has mainly been excused by the fans of that vile cartoon by the idea that it wasn’t intentionally racist! Just like that New Yorker cartoon was excused because it was SATIRE, man! Satire!

This is the thing: most of us are not intentionally racist. Most of us are not intentionally sexist. Yet these things still exist. (Yes, some people are gleefully, openly racist and sexist, but we’re not talking about them here. Don’t derail me.)

M. LeBlanc at Bitch, Ph.D. wrote an excellent post about racism and sexism a while back that I think you should read. Really.

Racism isn’t only about burning a cross on your lawn or about saying that you wouldn’t vote for Obama because he wants to enslave white people. It can be as simple as locking your car door when you drive through a black neighborhood, or assuming in your head that the black woman you see walking down the street with her kid must be unmarried. Or saying that the men in that cartoon don’t have the right hair texture to be black.

Sexism isn’t only about telling your wife to quit her job and get back in the kitchen, or jerking off to really offensive porn (whatever your idea of that is). It’s assuming that a woman who looks a certain way is stupid. It’s perpetuating a false dichotomy between “male” and “female” characteristics and according only the male ones value. (Why do you really think you value not wearing makeup and not shaving? Is it because doing those things makes you less a tool of the patriarchy, or because not doing them makes you less feminine?)

We all do a million little racist and sexist things every day. I do. You do. Barack Obama does and Hillary Clinton does and Noam Chomsky does and Beth Ditto does.

I love to harp on the fact that people are not either good or evil. There is not a line between the good guys and the bad guys that we can see. This isn’t a Batman movie (and hell, even that recent Batman movie played with those lines in a way that made me quite happy).

I’m not saying that there aren’t people who cross lines that make me unwilling to forgive them. Dick Cheney? No matter how much he renounced, I don’t think I’d ever be cool with Dick. Jesse Helms? Jerry Falwell? I did not cry or pronounce one word of regret when they died.

But having it pointed out that you unwittingly participated in something racist or sexist should not be a call for a huge defensive freakout designed to point out that you’re one of the good ones and therefore what you did couldn’t possibly be wrong or bad, because you didn’t intend for it to be!

In literary criticism, we don’t worry too much about the intent of the author. We look at the signs and signifiers, and interpret the message based on those.

This is a long-winded way of saying if someone calls you out on racism or sexism, the best thing to do maybe is give it a couple of seconds of thought, at least, and decide if they’re right. Then, the proper response is, if the questioner appears to be even remotely in good faith, “I’m sorry I offended you. I didn’t mean to be racist/sexist/ableist/whatever.”

Then you learn from it and get over it. It doesn’t make you the devil, or discount the good things you’ve done in the past, or even make most people hate you. It makes you human.

(yes, I used the word ‘periodic.’ deal.)

The neverending discussions go on. I had drinks last night with a friend who wondered what feminism was doing for her, a black woman.

As it always upsets me to see people who are otherwise feminist turned away from feminism, I had to think about this yet again.

My feminism was there long before I used the term. I wrote zines, protested at frat parties and refused to give blowjobs to high school boyfriends just because they wanted them.

My feminism was always somewhat caught up with sexual behavior. Up until I was in college I never felt like I was denied anything because I was female. The smartest people in my classes were always girls. I never felt bad speaking up and telling guys they were wrong. But the double standard in sexual relationships pissed me off.

So even now, it may be a somewhat bourgeois thing to fixate on, but I think about feminism and sexuality a lot. It’s a prime interest for me. I’ve never liked the rules of relationships, so I’ve always been trying to renegotiate them for myself.

My feminism wants equal rights, not special protections. I wrote an angry Op-Ed in college in response to a girl who wrote a column about being a “lady.” I ain’t no lady, I said, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve human respect. I believe of course that there are certain things that affect women more strongly than men–the threat of rape, even though men are definitely raped too (and don’t get me started on the normalization of prison rape), is something that women live with, the aforementioned sexual double standards, pregnancy. But I am not your victim and I don’t need to be protected.

Nor do I believe that women are somehow better fundamentally than men, that putting women into the positions of power that are fucked to begin with is going to make them all better because those women are kinder and gentler.

My feminism is critical of power relations based on a linear hierarchy. (This translates into me feeling guilty being ‘the boss’ at work). Some of this comes from a general punk-rock tendency to say fuck authority, but it’s since gotten much more theoretical. This means that while I am a (white) woman and therefore most sensitive to issues that affect me as a woman, I consider it my job to critique all power structures. This is because I am a feminist.

(more below. this is a long one.) » Read the rest of this entry «

Had a lovely night last night with a friend simultaneously old and new. thanks, you.

And now, back to the blog! Because it’s what I do instead of researching the articles I’m supposed to be writing, reading for my thesis, or taking the dog out to play. Linkage below!

1. BFP on R. Kelly and the Baby Mama incident. Short, but important.

2. Sylvia quotes Gloria Anzaldua and we all need to read it.

3. Blackamazon on othering women of color in feminism.

4. Linking to Racialicious’s links. but they’re good. So read ‘em.

5. And also at Racialicious: more on being a feminist of color and how racism hurts us all.

6. Ren on double standards (which should be a feminism 101 post, shouldn’t it? that we have to keep explaining this at all makes my brain hurt.)

7. Prof BW on the letter writing campaign for Democrats for McCain! (It’s funny. I promise.)

..up at Racialicious. Thanks to Latoya for running it. If you aren’t reading that blog regularly, you really should be.

So after getting my first official troll (and I’m assuming that this isn’t another incarnation of that girl from SC who still hates me for reasons I just don’t get), I have to think about my own reaction to this primary process.

All of us Obama people have been accused of being “sheep” and just in love with the way the man speaks. Being a white feminist, I’ve also been told that I’m disloyal to women and that I cannot be a feminist if I don’t vote for Hillary Clinton on top of that.

Even one of my friends was arguing with me last weekend that many people voting for Obama are voting for him for stupid reasons (as if millions of people in every election don’t vote for “stupid” reasons like which candidate they’d rather have a beer with). This of course insulted the hell out of me, since I like to think that I’m smarter than that and that my friends know me better than that.

At the beginning of the primary season, I made this chart for one of my other gigs. Did the research on almost every single candidate from each party running for president, and lined them all up next to each other and looked at it. While doing that research, I read the issue positions on each candidate’s website and looked at their voting records.

I was tempted by Bill Richardson, really, I was. But in the end he was an ineffective campaigner and money-raiser, and I’d like a Democrat to win in November, thanks. So I stuck with Barack, whose Dreams From My Father I read and loved and identified with. Whose policy proposals, particularly on foreign policy, were closest to what I myself felt. I don’t want any more saber-rattling. I want negotiation. I want understanding that other countries are not just “with us or against us.” (I want single-payer health care too, but only Kucinich was talking about that, and again, I’d like to win in November.)

But ANY of those Democratic candidates would get my whole support–which doesn’t mean just blogging, it means putting my money and my free time where my big mouth is and donating and volunteering and harassing those nice people who aren’t nearly as partisan as me–in November, because the shit we’re up against is scary. (See last post for reference.)

Hell, I love the idea of a woman president. But the nastiness of this campaign wore on me like it did everyone, and even though I am a white feminist who recoils at sexism like it’s a personal slap in my face, I just didn’t see the sexism as coming from the Obama campaign. Most of the people on the ground for Obama were women, young women of all ethnic backgrounds (and men, too, but I’d have to say that in my personal experience with several different offices, all but one has had a woman in charge).

By contrast, I did see race-baiting coming from the Clinton campaign, so much so that yes, at several points I joined the crowds of people saying they’d vote third party rather than for Clinton.

I think that by November I’d be over it, though.

I was pissed in 2004 when Howard Dean lost in the primaries. Pissed at John Kerry because of stories of push-polls that implied that Dean beat his wife or reminded people that Dean’s wife was Jewish.

But come November, I was on the ground a 12-hour drive from my home, helping Kerry win Pennsylvania (only for him to lose Ohio, and the race, but whatevs).

Because what we were up against was scary. I don’t like voting against things, really, I don’t. I’d much rather vote FOR someone that I believe in. But when it comes down to it, I’d like to keep my reproductive rights and maybe get some help with health care because as a freelance writer, my ass is screwed as soon as I leave my cushy (ha!) grad school.  I’d like to get out of Iraq and have my friends home. I’d like to not see any more tax cuts for the rich that screw over broke people like me, and I’d like to go to the wedding of my gay friends.

So I know that some of y’all think us Obama people are sexist and sheep and stupid and mean and taking away the election from Hillary Clinton. I admit to some of the same feelings at times myself.

But I’d vote for her if she won. And I’d campaign for her and work my ass off to get her in office. Because it’s much more important now than it seemed back in 2000 when I voted for Nader, when I could barely see a difference between what George Bush was pretending to be and what Al Gore was pretending to be.

I want a woman president. I’m really hoping that Obama chooses a woman as his VP candidate. I think that could be truly revolutionary for this country. I think it’s amazing that the Democratic primary came down to a woman and a black man, and it surpassed all my hopes (frankly, I thought we’d end up with Edwards as soon as Iowa voted, and they proved me wrong and made me happy).

But we need to turn this country back in the right direction, and I hope that if Obama lost, I’d be able to look past my distaste for the race-baiting I saw and realize that we needed a candidate who believed in my reproductive rights, the rights of the GLBT community, who wants to get us out of Iraq and hopefully prevent future wars, who wants to give immigrants more rights (and maybe some fair pay too?) rather than throwing them out and bolstering xenophobia, who knows the difference between Sunni and Shiite, who wants to fix our broken health care system and invest in our schools.  And that I would vote for and work for that candidate. Whomever he or she may be.

How “different” are Latinos and African-Americans?