As someone who gets called sweetie a lot, I know that in a professional setting, particularly in the wrong tone (which, based on watching the clip, Obama’s definitely was), it can be very offputting. Still, when I logged onto the Huffington Post this morning to see an HRC supporter railing against Obama for this gaffe, I found myself irritated. I found myself irritated because when I am called sweetie and it bothers me, my response is not to automatically think “fucking sexist asshole, clearly this guy will never do anything for women.” Rather, that tends to be my response only if the man saying it has otherwise proven himself to be a sexist asshole. When the term is coming from a man who seems respectful of women and concerned with women’s issues, my response is to think that he, like everyone else, has been raised in a culture where condescending terms are often used to address women. He, like everyone else, is not immune to the patriarchy that surrounds him, and he, like EVERYONE else, has room to be a better feminist.
The reason that I believe feminism is still necessary after most formal barriers to women’s equality have been removed is that sexism, like most forms of oppression, is very deeply rooted in American society. If a person could just shake off sexism as soon as they became aware of it, we probably could have stopped being feminists long ago. But even the strongest believers in women’s equality do things that fail to live up to our own standard every day, whether this means having a harder time voicing one’s opinions around men, making snarky comments about another woman’s appearance, or in my case, sincerely hoping that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders’ reality TV show will come back for a third season. If we start labeling people as anti-feminist because they demonstrate that they are not immune to the culture that has inundated them since birth, we end up with a very small tent, and, in my opinion, end up looking like the worst caricature of ourselves.
Allowing for this influence does not mean that we should ignore things like being called sweetie; I am glad the reporter called Obama out and glad the incident got some media play. But it does mean that our assessment of Obama should go far beyond his use of the word. Had Obama written this woman off as over-sensitive, I would be writing a very different blog right now. But it seems to me like he took her offense seriously, acknowledged that his use of the term was a mistake, and pledged to try to do better. There is nothing about that which indicates to me that Barack Obama does not take women seriously.
The standard for a politician being pro-woman should not be demonstrated immunity from sexist norms; by that standard Hillary would have been counted out long ago along with everyone else in Congress. Instead, it should be a genuine desire to listen to and work with women to end this sexism. To that end, in this feminist’s opinion, this was not a bad week for Barack Obama.
Filed under: Current Events, Politics | Tagged: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Feminism, Sexism
One of the things at the core of this issue is the idea that fundamentally we do not trust our politicians. On different levels I think we all fear that politicians, even the “good ones”, only tell us what we want to hear whether they believe it or not. In that context, it is very tempting, and sometimes not unreasonably so, to view these gaffes and slip-ups not for what they probably are (constant reminders that politicians exist in a broader society and are subject to the imperfections there of), but rather as Freudian gestures that reveal unseemly flaws in the politician. So when Barack Obama calls a woman “sweetie”, many automatically wonder if his progressive persona is just a cover for more deeply-held Howard-Stern-like misogynistic traits. When a desperate Hillary Clinton tells USA Today that she should be the Democratic nominee because white people prefer her, again people wonder if she is really some kind of Archie Bunker in pant suit.
Did any of that make sense? Probably not. I guess my point is just that you are right; people make the mistake of trying to completely separate politicians from the rest of the society and the imperfections that influence us all even as we work to eliminate them, but there is at least some small part of all this that is due to the fact that we do not and cannot completely trust our politicians.
Being the online news/blog junkie that I am (grad school is just not enough to captivate me) I came across this article by way of Slate (another site I read way too much). The article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/138514) speaks about the opinion/role of black women, the conundrum of the identity politics that seem to plague the Democratic race .
While being a black women who supports Obama, I would like to think that I made this important decision not based on the shade of my skin or anatomy of my body, but through careful consideration. But, all this talk of the ‘mindless followers’ of Barack Obama makes me wonder, what’s to say either my sex or gender played a role in my support? I am also a college graduate, originally from the state of Illinois, and quite fond of vanilla lattes, all factors which apparently make me more likely to be a Obama supporter.
I guess my real point is that in a race where the two front-runners have little differences in given policy, we have chosen the most-obvious and, possibly, insignificant to separate them, and the nation is definitely worse off for it.