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Pelosi on Sexism and Clinton’s Loss Sarah Lueck reports on Congress. Sexism may not be to blame for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary defeat, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but it remains a factor in politics. Clinton “got the benefit of being a woman because women are wildly enthusiastic about her candidacy,” Pelosi said at a breakfast Tuesday with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. Being a woman had “a positive upside in the campaign, probably offset by more sexism, I don’t know,” she said. “I am a victim of sexism myself all the time…My impression is, yes there is...

The postmortems are rolling in to explain the long-drawn-out and spectacular failure of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-promising presidential campaign. She and her supporters are sure they know how and why she was rejected: She was the victim of sexism. Feminist ideology teaches that American women are victims of an oppressive patriarchal society. No matter how rich or prominent or smart or advantaged a woman might be, success and happiness are still beyond her grasp because institutional sexism holds her down. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem opined on CNN that it is "clear that there is profound sexism." She whined that...

The attack of the PUMAs, or a dozen reasons why Clinton voters are still too angry to come home. If you're a dedicated Democrat -- or perhaps even one of those fed-up Republicans we've heard about -- there's a good chance you're pretty stoked right about now. After a grueling but thrilling primary contest, we at last have decided on a history-making, barrier-breaking Democratic presidential candidate. You're excited! You're inspired! You're ready to hit rural Ohio with enough campaign literature to choke a wavering independent! But why do you keep hearing all these stories about grumpy old ladies still hung...

Posterity may well remember the Hillary Clinton campaign as the nearest that a member of the female gender had thus far gotten to the nomination of a major political party. But the episode will be recalled for many other salient features as well. The first time that the wife of an ex-president had leveraged her first-lady status into a senatorial seat and then a bid for the presidency. http://www.slate.com/id/2193684/

Q. What's weaker than playing the "taken out of context" card? A. Digging yourself deeper with the supposedly exculpatory explanation. Mike Barnicle managed the Daily Double today with his mishandling of the flap over the way he described Hillary back in January. Barnicle was on Morning Joe, and discussion turned to a New York Times article, Media Charged With Sexism in Clinton Coverage, that mentioned his remarks. View video here.

Sacha Millstone is nobody's sweetie. The Democratic insider will stand up at August's national convention and cast her vote for the candidate who suspended her bid on Saturday. And then Millstone will quit the party with which she is falling bitterly out of line. "This isn't sour grapes. This is about the best candidate losing the nomination because she's a woman. It's the most blatant example of sexism in our society. This is about the party breaking my trust, women's trust. And that can't be fixed," she says. Millstone hails the day in 2007 when Hillary Clinton announced she was...

LONDON, June 4 -- For much of the world, Sen. Barack Obama's victory in the Democratic primaries was a moment to admire the United States, at a time when the nation's image abroad has been seriously damaged. From hundreds of supporters crowded around televisions in rural Kenya, Obama's ancestral homeland, to jubilant Britons writing "WE DID IT!" on the "Brits for Barack" site on Facebook, people celebrated what they called an important racial and generational milestone for the United States. "This is close to a miracle. I was certain that some things will not happen in my lifetime," said Sunila...

"Someone wins, someone doesn't win, that's life," Nancy Kopp, Maryland's Treasurer, told The Washington Post. "But women don't want to be totally dissed." She was talking about her political candidate, Hillary Clinton. Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. "Healing The Wounds Of Democrats' Sexism," as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Sen. Clinton's presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism. How else to explain why...

...If it's any consolation to Senator Clinton, she's not the only female to find that social progress is strangely accommodating of old-time sexism.... There's a lot of that about. Sex-selective abortion is a fact of life in India, where the gender ratio has declined to 1,000 boys to 900 girls nationally, and as low as 1,000 boys to 300 girls in some Punjabi cities. In China, the state-enforced "one child" policy has brought about the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun — "bare branches." If you can only have one kid, parents choose to abort...

"Someone wins, someone doesn't win, that's life," Nancy Kopp, Maryland's treasurer, told The Washington Post. "But women don't want to be totally dissed." She was talking about her political candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. "Healing The Wounds Of Democrats' Sexism," as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Sen. Clinton's presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism. How else to explain...

‘Someone wins, someone doesn’t win, that’s life,” Nancy Kopp, Maryland’s treasurer, told the Washington Post. “But women don’t want to be totally dissed.” She was talking about her political candidate, Hillary Clinton. Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. “Healing The Wounds Of Democrats’ Sexism,” as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Senator Clinton’s presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism. How else to explain why...

Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman to run on a major party presidential ticket and a supporter of Hillary Clinton, has accused Barack Obama of conducting a "terribly sexist" campaign. Miss Ferraro, the losing Democratic candidate for vice-president in 1984, said that she might abandon her lifelong party loyalties and vote for the Republican John McCain if Mr Obama is confirmed as the nominee. "Should I ratify how the Obama campaign has been run by voting for him? I am going to have to think very hard about that," she said. Some other partisan female Clinton supporters have already insisted that...

Hillary Clinton is now complaining that her candidacy has been harmed by sexism. Interviewed earlier this week by the Washington Post, Sen. Clinton said the polls show that "more people would be reluctant to vote for a woman [than] to vote for an African American." This gender bias, she grumbled, "rarely gets reported on." So a woman who holds degrees from Wellesley and Yale – who has earned millions in the private sector, won two terms in the U.S. Senate, and gathered many more votes than John Edwards, Bill Richardson and several other middle-aged white guys in their respective bids...

HEY There, Sweetie by Nancy Morgan Obama called a reporter 'sweetie.' Gasp. The pundits are divided on whether he should attend sensitivity training to correct his thinking or whether his coerced apology will suffice. The debate swirls, the opinions proliferate. The lesser pundits anxiously await the position paper from the National Organization of Women before committing themselves to a firm stance on this vital issue. The rest of the world news takes a back seat. Welcome to another national conversation. Non-stop news coverage of experts, pundits and elites opining on someone else's opining. As in, "What he really meant to...

Do you agree with Sen. Hillary Clinton that the press has ignored sexism in the campaign? Yes No

The long battle between Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) for their party’s presidential nomination has stoked concerns that irreconcilable differences may prevent a unified front in November’s general election. A recent Zogby poll confirmed this fear. When asked what should be most important in choosing the party’s presidential nominee, 51 percent of Democrats polled said “skin color,” while 49 percent said “sex organs.” “It’s frustrating,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. “Each of our two presidential contenders has an irrefutable claim to the office. As a victim of racism, Senator Obama is entitled to the...

As the race for the democratic nomination continues to favor Obama, Camp Hillary and her network affiliates at New York Times continue to make excuses for her campaign. Not surprisingly, the excuse of the day is that she is be denied a seat at the Oval Office, not for an intern in a blue dress, but rather simply because she is a woman (which this writer for RUF would like conclusive genetic evidence of, as I still have my doubts). Doris K. Goodwin, Presidential Historian commented: “strategic, tactical things that have nothing to do with her being a woman…” are...

As the race for the democratic nomination continues to favor Obama, Camp Hillary and her network affiliates at New York Times continue to make excuses for her campaign. Not surprisingly, the excuse of the day is that she is be denied a seat at the Oval Office, not for an intern in a blue dress, but rather simply because she is a woman (which this writer for RUF would like conclusive genetic evidence of, as I still have my doubts). Doris K. Goodwin, Presidential Historian commented: “strategic, tactical things that have nothing to do with her being a woman…” are...

If the media truly are not more gender than race biased, then Barack Obama's remarks on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania this week should get as much coverage as Hillary Clinton's remark about Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson. While flirting with female factory workers in Allentown, he called one "sweetie," a paternalistic way to address a woman if there ever was one. It might have worked had he been trying to do his best imitation of Lily Tomlin's Ernestine, the telephone operator, but this was no spoof. This was Obama trying to relate to working-class women in a way...

As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss. I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and they are widely sold on the Internet. I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty...

"Either relativism is a genuine theory in which a real assertion is made, or else it isn't. But any attempt to assert relativism without relying on just-plain truth [absolute] would inevitably fail, because it would generate an infinite regress. And, of course, any assertion of relativism that does not rely on just-plain truth would be-self defeating. So it looks like any apparent assertion of relativism is either self-defeating or else is not a real assertion, but something more like an empty slogan." (Jubien, Michael. Contemporary Metaphysics. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997) "The only way the relativist can avoid the painful dilemma...

WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) - Barack Obama, struggling to win over white Democratic voters as he seeks to become the first black U.S. president, said in a Sunday television interview that race would not be a factor in November's election. "Is race still a factor in our society? Yes. I don't think anybody would deny that," Obama said on "Fox News Sunday." "Is that going to be the determining factor in a general election? No, because I'm absolutely confident that the American people -- what they're looking for is somebody who can solve their problems," the Illinois senator said in...

Leaders of national and Pennsylvania women's organizations convened at Philadelphia's City Hall Friday to declare their support for Hillary Clinton's agenda for women and families. It's no surprise, I suppose, that she would be endorsed by groups like the National Organization for Women, the National Women's Political Caucus, Women's Campaign Forum and Feminist Majority. But beneath the surface of this formal endorsement lurks something else: anger and frustration at the way they perceive Clinton's treatment by the media.

In broadening the legal definition of rape, Maryland's highest court has rightly expanded women's rights, recognizing the importance of their being able to assert control at times of particular vulnerability. The seven judges may have relied on different legal reasoning, but they were unanimous in concluding that a woman can change her mind and withdraw consent during sexual intercourse - and that a man has to honor her decision. Making that more clear in the law is a welcome advance that should help juries as they weigh the facts in individual cases. Rape generally involves physical or psychological power and...

By Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks CNN says “Report: Men still not pulling weight on chores.” Major newspaper headlines include: “Home equity? Men are doing more chores, but women still do most,” “Men still slack off, but not as much,” and “Men do more housework, but not yet a fair share.” Several hundred newspapers and media outlets are covering a new Council on Contemporary Families report on men and housework. The message is clear--yes, men have improved a little, but they still don’t do enough, and women are still getting a raw deal. This is a terribly unfair distortion...

To my horror, I turn out to be a racist. The University of Chicago offers an on-line psychological test in which you encounter a series of 100 black or white men, holding either guns or cellphones. You’re supposed to shoot the gunmen and holster your gun for the others. I shot armed blacks in an average of 0.679 seconds, while I waited slightly longer — .694 seconds — to shoot armed whites. Conversely, I holstered my gun more quickly when encountering unarmed whites than unarmed blacks. Take the test yourself and you’ll probably find that you show bias as well....

The Civil Rights Act was passed forty-three years ago.  The feminist movement was more or less officially launched about forty years ago.  And yet today in the Democrat Party there are serious voices complaining of racism and sexism among Democrat voters (and, presumably, among the American people.)   How many "civil rights" leaders talk as if racism is an immutable, eternal characteristic of American society?  How many feminist leaders talk as if sexism is an immutable, eternal characteristic of American society?   The mere passage of years, the mere enactment of statutes or adoption of polices, the decades long public relations campaign against...

"'If anything good can come out of this tragedy, it is that it woke people up that extreme violence between women is possible,' said Morgan Lynn, a staff attorney with Women Empowered Against Violence, or WEAVE, a District-based advocacy group. 'There are a lot of myths in the lesbian community that women don't hurt each other.'"Brown's case is proof that they do." The Washington Post does not have a good record on domestic violence reporting, generally propagating the "85% of domestic violence is committed by men" myth. To read one example of their stilted coverage of the issue, see my...

The Los Angeles Times article Next speaker enjoys broad support (3/2/08) details the rise of Karen Bass, the incoming leader of the California assembly and the first African American woman to be elected to lead a legislative house in the U.S. The piece was a nice example of the subtle and not-so-subtle societal bias against fathers and fatherhood. The article begins: "Anyone who knew Wilhelmina Bass might understand why her daughter Karen Bass, the Los Angeles Democrat elected Thursday as the next leader of the California Assembly, has devoted her Capitol career to making the state a better parent to...

Afflicted once again with Multiple Personality Disorder, Hillary has reverted to playing the gender card. We saw the beginnings of this ploy during the debate when she protested that she always seems to get the first questions at the debates (Mind you, she doesn’t object to fielding the first question, but she wanted to point this out to everybody). Feminist Subtext: Why does Hillary always get the first question? Because she is a WOMAN!!!! The debate moderators for the most part have been men who, even though they are unaware, are engaging in a subtle

"Whenever I tried to get my daughter, Family Court wouldn't let me," said Jewell's father, Ricky Ward. "The courts wouldn't hear me out. I blame this on Leatrice Brewer and Family Court.""She wanted to kill them. I let the court know that. But they took only one side...I loved them. I've been fighting for them."--Innocent Demesyeux, father of Michael, 5, and Innocent Jr., 18 monthsBoth fathers warned the family court that their children's mother was violent and dangerous. Both tried to get custody. Both tried to save their kids. The courts, apparently blinded by the family law system's pervasive pro-mother...

February 17, 2008 -- Who knew the Clinton White House was such a sexist place? It had a female secretary of state, a female attorney general and may produce the first woman president - but Dee Dee Myers makes it clear in "Why Women Should Rule the World" that she's still smarting from the chauvinist slights she received in the West Wing.

Are the news media being beastly to Hillary Clinton? Are political reporters and commentators -- as Bill Clinton suggested -- basically in the tank for Barack Obama? "The political press has avowedly played a role in this election. I've never seen this before," President Clinton said. "...That's what's wrong with this election, people trying to take this election away from the people." ...He said Hillary "has been the underdog ever since Iowa," which is not true. To support that unsupportable assertion, he implied that the political establishment is opposed to his wife's candidacy, which is not true. And he claimed...

It would be insane to waste time and energy worrying that somewhere, doubtless in a high-tech subterranean lair, Republican masterminds are cackling over their diabolical plot: The use of reverse psychology to lure unsuspecting Democrats into nominating Barack Obama, an innocent lamb who will be chewed up by the attack machine in the fall. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Or maybe Republicans are using double super secret backward reverse psychology to exploit the Democratic Party's congenital paranoia: Let's say nice things about Obama so Democrats think we really want to run against him, and that will make them play into our hands by nominating...

The anti-men U.S. legal system The story below is taken from a comment that appeared on Immigration Watch International. "VAWA" stands for "Violence Against Women Act" My wife is an immigrant from Guatemala who entered the country on a tourist VISA. Before we married, we had a child together and she received well over $30,000 in free healthcare through the state or county. She overstayed her tourist VISA and returned to Guatemala with our son for 3 months over Christmas and the New Year leaving me in the U.S. to work. She asked for money for liposuction surgery in...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may be competing in the South Carolina Democratic Primary Saturday, but they're also vying for the top prize in another contest: The Oppression Sweepstakes. That's how Michael Jelani Cobb, an African-American historian, describes the surge of venom that recently erupted between the Clinton and Obama camps. The sweepstakes kicks in when two excluded groups find themselves competing for the same prize. He says that took place in the 19th century when the abolitionist, Frederick Douglass and his ally, women's rights' activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, argued over what group should first be...

On “Hardball” Thursday, Chris Matthews responded to critics who claim he recently made sexist comments about Hillary Rodham Clinton, which they say is part of a history of similar conduct. Controversy erupted after Matthews made remarks on Joe Scarborough's "Morning Joe" on MSNBC that "the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit." Matthews first reminded viewers Thursday of his love of politics...

Last week Hillary Clinton overcame a double-digit deficit in the New Hampshire primary to surprise opponent Barack Obama. How did she manage to pull off the near-miraculous upset? Simple. First, in a heart-warming display of female bonding, she indulged in a tearful moment at a Portsmouth, NH café. Then she traveled to Salem where two planted hecklers chanted "Iron My Shirt," proving to the ladies the patriarchy is still plotting a return to the good-ol' days of barefoot women. So how do I know they were plants? We know Hillary's operatives worked this stunt twice before in Iowa. And think...

NEW YORK - Expressions of sexism and racism emerging from the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barak Obama have been blatant, subtle and perhaps sometimes imagined, and they are renewing the national debate over what is and isn't acceptable to say in public. Hillary Rodham Clinton's camp has perceived sexism in comments about her appearance and emotions. Supporters of Barack Obama have complained about racial overtones in remarks about his Muslim-sounding middle name, Hussein, and his acknowledged drug use as a young man. Beyond the back-and-forth between a white woman and a black man seeking the Democratic presidential nominaton,...

Who's Tired of Pink? Posted January 11, 2008 | 11:45 AM (EST) I am so tired of pink men bombing brown children and rationalizing it as fighting terrorism. I am so tired of pink men telling women (of all colors) what to do with their wombs--which connect with their brains--in case you forgot. I am so tired of pink men telling us we should stay in Iraq for generations. I am so tired of pink men buying bombs and cheating schools. I am so tired of pink men having wives who stand behind them and nod sagely on television. I...

LOS ANGELES — I was all set to write a perfectly reasonable and responsible column about how, when it comes to politics, no one knows anything, and how it’s impossible to predict who will win this nomination, when I came upon Chris Matthews’ comment to end this week of weeks about Hillary. In case you were lucky enough to miss it, here is what Mr. Matthews had to say: "I'll be brutal, the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she...

LOS ANGELES — The stories were all written. The rats were jumping ship. The backstabbing and second guessing and told you so’s by the people who weren’t asked and included in the first instance was in full force. On television, everywhere you looked, another pundit was explaining how it was that the Clinton dynasty was over, the candidacy doomed, and the candidate flawed beyond salvation. Who would be fired and when she would exit and just how broke she was were the only questions left to be answered.

Lead Feministing blogger Jessica Valenti, author of Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, criticizes Abstinence Education in her recent blog post Abstinence-only Education: What we're missing. She makes some valid points, but what most interested me was her citing a 2004 Ms. Magazine article called Virgin Territory--Ms. goes to an abstinence conference and learns that it pays to be chaste. According to the article: "Your body is a wrapped lollipop. "When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it. "It may feel great at the time, but, unfortunately, when...

Last week, I visited a Muslim place of worship. A schedule for Islam's five daily prayers was posted at the entrance, near a sign requesting that shoes be removed. Inside, a barrier divided men's and women's prayer space, an arrow informed worshippers of the direction of Mecca, and literature urged women to cover their faces. Sound like a mosque? The place I'm describing is the "meditation room" at Normandale Community College, a 9,200-student public institution in Bloomington. Until recently, the room was the school's only usable racquetball court. College administrators converted the court into a meditation room when construction forced...

My new co-authored column, Biden’s Misguided S1515 Will Exacerbate Domestic Violence System’s Problems (Philadelphia Daily News, 12/7/07), criticizes a new bill which will enlist 100,000 volunteer attorneys to help purportedly abused women win custody of their children from their alleged abusers. Our principle objection to the bill is that there is no mechanism within it to distinguish between false accusations and legitimate ones. The National Organization for Women is currently running a campaign in support of the bill. The bill is also supported by the American Bar Association and the Family Violence Prevention Fund. The bill can be seen here....

I've little sympathy for Debra Lafave (pictured above), who at 23 statutorily raped a 14-year-old boy. She got the female sentencing discount and did not go to jail because she's a woman. A five-year study conducted by a Kansas State University professor found that male teachers are likely to get 15 to 20 years in prison for sexual relations with students, whereas female teachers usually are placed on probation or go to prison for one to three years. Paul Logli, president of the National District Attorneys Association, says: "There is no question it's more likely that as a case winds...

He's the only man on campus. Wellesley College's all-female world is hosting Mohammad Usman, 19, for a semester-long program, making him the only male student among 2,300 females. "I thought it would be really fascinating to be the only male at an all-women's college," Usman, a government and geography student at Dartmouth, told the Boston Globe. [Snip] "A lot of people don't know his name, really," Johanna Peace, a Wellesley junior, told the Boston Globe. "They're aware that there's a boy on campus. And if they see him, they'll say, 'Oh — there's the boy.'" Wellesley College isn't changing it's...

While I was a teenager and still enthralled with my own generation, the Boomers, I truly believed that we were heralding a new and better human nature. We were going to stamp out prejudice, discrimination, and every other foul practice in the hemisphere. No more bashing folks of color. No more negative stereotyping for females. No more blonde jokes, fat jokes, handicap jokes, divorce jokes, gay jokes or Polish jokes. Human nature be damned. We could all be nice to each other if we tried hard enough, if we just had enough determination. Here we are forty years later, and...

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This next election is shaping up to be the most important decision America has made in many decades. In fact, depending on how Americans choose to vote in the democratic primaries, it could be the most important election since the very first, way back in 1789. For the first time in history, the United States has two candidates — one a woman, one a man of color — who have very good chances of becoming the next leader of the free world. That’s not to say that there weren’t others before Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who threw their hat...