Posted on 05/01/2008 8:33:17 PM PDT by rface
What happened to the nicey-nice? Usually when I listen to Rush Limbaugh (for research, people), my heart sings when I hear a candidate like Obama labeled a “tax and spend liberal.” Why did I feel so disappointed by his success?.....when Gloria Steinem wrote a widely read opinion piece in the New York Times, you better believe my heart sang. But many women writers in the blogosphere whom I respect and admire called the essay sexist. And racist. And they said very hateful things about women like me who support Hillary Clinton, including that they are sexist and racist. One blogger on Feministing.com called it “pro-vagina selfishness.”.......
When I first started thinking about a Democratic presidential nominee for 2008 (sometime after the weeping stopped in November 2004), my criterion was simple: not another white guy.
I have nothing against individual white guys, mind you. My charming husband happens to be one, and before long my 8-year-old son will be one too. But white guys are way too entrenched. They’ve been running things since the dawn of humanity, despite a handful of anthropological studies that show matriarchies did exist, before patriarchies squashed them like bugs (lady bugs).
So imagine my thrill when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama looked like my party’s choices for 2008. Joy! Rapture! Why, back in the old days of ought-seven, discussing the candidates was sheer pleasure. No one argued. Everyone gasped, oh my gosh, aren’t we lucky?
Then the calendar flipped to 2008. I wore my Hillary pin at the new Richfield SuperTarget and got looks as dirty as I’ve seen in any campaign season. I attributed this to suburban conservatism. Imagine my surprise when at my precinct caucus, deep in the heart of the People’s Republic of South Minneapolis, I felt the sting of being in the political minority. I haven’t had that experience since I wore my homemade “Dump Reagan” pin to my classes at Edina’s South View Junior High. Suddenly, political discussions were making my stomach ache.
Why? Was it so hard to have people not agree with me? What happened to the nicey-nice? Usually when I listen to Rush Limbaugh (for research, people), my heart sings when I hear a candidate like Obama labeled a “tax and spend liberal.” Why did I feel so disappointed by his success?
I realized that I wanted a woman to be the nominee much more than I thought. I wasn’t satisfied with Obama, who is not white. He’s still a guy, and I am sick of guys.
Yet when I announce this, I am accused of being not only sexist but racist. No, I don’t mean me personally, mostly because I am too mousy to stand up in the public square and talk about how sick I am of men in power (though my supportive husband encourages this). I should defer to the royal “we” here, because when Gloria Steinem wrote about the subject in a widely read opinion piece in the New York Times, you better believe my heart sang.
But many women writers in the blogosphere whom I respect and admire called the essay sexist. And racist. And they said very hateful things about women like me who support Hillary Clinton, including that they are sexist and racist. One blogger on Feministing.com called it “pro-vagina selfishness.”
Oh, dear. No more nicey-nice.
My daughter Miriam will be 3 years old in May. Let’s imagine, shall we? Say Hillary Clinton is elected in 2008 (my best case), proves utterly ineffectual in office (worst case) and is defeated in 2012 by George P. Bush (whose mother is a native of Mexico). My daughter grows until adulthood with a woman president as historical fact, not a figment of her imagination. Any jerk messing with her self-esteem will get a sassy retort about President Hillary from my tough little girl, who is already known in her neighborhood for not playing princess. When my daughter puts on a tiara, she knows to be queen.
By all accounts, Barack Obama is almost as cool a guy as my husband and son. If he’s the Democratic Party nominee, I will happily support him. But these days when I see him on camera, I’m always peeking over his shoulder, thinking: Hmm, that Michelle Obama is one smart and accomplished woman. Why didn’t she run? Damn.
Is wanting a woman to run the show selfish? Yes. I acknowledge that it is. So is wanting 50 percent of the members of Congress and at least three more Supreme Court justices to be women. I also want 50 percent of the parents watching their kids at the park to be men. I want what any parent wants. I want a pro-vagina world for both of my children.
Perhaps the most important lesson of the campaign is that untangling gender, race, class and so many other of the big “-isms” is far more difficult than anyone thought. The shouters on both sides exhort us to vote blind to them all, to cast our ballots on issues alone. OK. I took one of those candidate surveys on the Internet and was given my perfect match: Dennis Kucinich.
Never mind.
Shannon Drury is a self-described radical housewife. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.
My sympathies to her husband and son.
I'm not racist. I have lots of black friends.
This has to be the most boring drivel I have ever attempted to read in my life.
I think I started to fall asleep and snore by the third paragraph.
Does this person get paid to write this crap?
Yah, but HERS should be put in a lock-box. Along with her typewriter.
What happened to the Super-Mega-Colossal-Projectile-from your toe nails-BARF Alert!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, I didn’t even read your post and wrote almost the exact same thing. Great minds think alike.
LOL. I was thinking it, but you said it so very well :)
I feel sorry for her little son, he doesn’t stand a chance between the wuss father and the flaky mother. I hope she doesn’t force the poor kid to play with dolls.
Sharon Drury is best described as a radical idiot who doesn't understand how lucky she is to be living in the greatest country in the world for women. She is a great (or awful) example of what happens when somebody is half-educated. They can recite the words on the page, but they have no idea what they mean.
I didn't want to say that, because there should be laws like that for people like Drury. But then you've have to ban about fifty percent of my male co-workers and friends too.
Again I wish I could establish a country where these people could live away from conservatives, and they'd be free to enact any idiotic leftist law they want. They'd soon be begging to come back to the nasty, terrible, free-market patriarchy. These people are too stupid to be believed.
When I first started thinking about a Democratic presidential nominee for 2008 (sometime after the weeping stopped in November 2004), my criterion was simple: not another white guy.
I have nothing against individual white guys, mind you. My charming husband happens to be one, and before long my 8-year-old son will be one too. But white guys are way too entrenched. They’ve been running things since the dawn of humanity, despite a handful of anthropological studies that show matriarchies did exist, before patriarchies squashed them like bugs (lady bugs).
-- end snip
The Coalition of the Perpetually Upset cannot see, ever, what they are really saying:
"I married an object. My son is an object. And what "handful" of matriarchies did exist were never able to survive very long because they were ill equipped. Those entrenched "white male objects" made things possible for me to be born into a culture where I can safely be at home and not worry about self-protection (guns are so nasty). Vote for the vagina! None of us will survive long, and we'll all be equally dead then! YAY!"
at least you read the responses to the article. They are better than the article anyways
I agree. The world we live in today is very vagina/estrogen driven and many of the social problems are the result of that. I can draw a line straight back to the day women were given the vote and it is clear that the threads of society started coming apart. Men need adventure(s) and damsels to to rescue. Women need security and to “feel goodâ€. Women are dream killers and sap the adventure out of young men which in turn converts them into bitter and frustrated vagina slaves. It all starts with women contaminating young boys with estrogen poisoning and turning them into wimps. Can’t keep score in a soccer game because someone’s feelings might get hurt. Guess what life keeps score and it can hurt. The current crop of teenage mutant punks on skateboards and x-boxes is the scariest yet. Flame on if you want but it is an undeniable truth.
Exactly. The implication of this common phrase is that intellect trumps emotion and rational thought is superior to feelings. Ms. Drury's gynecological premise is just the opposite. The further implication that men have always repressed women is a staple of feminist "thought", so-called, as it allows them the luxury of playing the victim while actually being the aggressor. Pity her husband.
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