Monday, September 22, 2008

I am a woman, hear me roar

Finally, I got the blogging fever back. Once again, so much to write about, so little time! I have topics in various areas: from kids' latest antics to politics (yes, politics) to fat entertainers. What shall it be today? Hmmm....

I guess politics. I know I promised to stay away from the topic, but some things just need to be said.

Call me any name you want, but I was relieved when Hillary left the race. The main reason was not because I very much dislike the woman, but because I finally could get a break from stupid polls and election coverage that were centered around female voters. Again, I am not opposed to women voters getting special coverage. On the contrary, we make up around 50% of voters, so if Hispanic and black voters get special coverage, so should we. What I didn't appreciate was media's assumption that we,women, are so fed up with government predominantly made up of males, that we have been waiting for a fellow female so long to lead us and the rest of the country that we would vote for any woman as long as she is a woman. I was getting so annoyed with the coverage of Southern states during democratic primaries - how will the black women in those states vote? special report from a beauty salon - that I stopped following for a while.

I find this attitude extremely insulting. Look at the Democratic primaries with the whole business of Obama vs. Clinton. The assumptions made by media were very clear: we need not concern ourselves with white males because they are all Republicans any way. White women will vote for Hillary - but of course! She is a woman, and that makes her a worthy enough candidate for anyone missing Y chromosome! Black males and minorities will of course support Obama (for the same reason women would support Hillary). So the only people who will have to make any tough decisions were black women - on the one hand women, on the other hand black. What would they do? Should they consult their hairdresser? How insulting is this? And how dumb?

Then Hillary was out of the race, and for a few months we were not exposed to this stupidity. Then again, McCain had to pick Sarah Palin, and the whole thing started all over again. Over and over I see CNN articles with titles about women of Alaska being divided over Palin's nomination, women this, women that. What about males, after all they make up another 50% of the voters, for goodness sake! And believe it or not, some women actually CAN see past the candidate's gender. I know, un-freaking-believable, women actually have brains, not only vag-----s. Who would've thought?

And honestly, I have seen a lot stronger reactions from men than from women to Palin becoming McCain's running mate. The reactions were different, from intelligent ("I can't believe he picked someone with no real experience") to dumb ("That was such a low blow to Democrats") to completely asinine ("It would be so cool to have a hot VP") . But honestly, in my experience men were a lot more vocal. So why don't they get a special coverage too? Or does having a Y chromosome makes one ineligible for anything special? Because honestly, that would be sexist, right?

2 comments:

  1. I've had men make the "but she's so hot" argument to me. As a straight woman, don't they realize they've just handed me the one argument they'd actually understand for voting Democrat?

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  2. There is so much I could say on this topic. I think the SNL skit put it well, however, with "Hillary" saying, "I wanted to be President, and I just happened to be a woman. But I didn't want to be a woman President."

    Most of the political coverage is insulting to our intelligence.

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