Sunday, June 08, 2008

On Respect for Women

Clinton's campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn't realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.


Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke...She will need her sisterhood.


Clinton is very much a product of the generation that accepted a certain amount of humiliation as the price of progress. She wrote in her autobiography that when she ran for president of her high-school class against several boys, one of them told her she was “really stupid” if she thought a girl could be elected president. She lost, and later, the winner asked her to head a committee “which as far as I could tell was expected to do most of the work.” She swallowed hard, accepted and, she admitted, really liked organizing all the school parades and dances and pep rallies.

This is one of the things you have to admire about Hillary Clinton. She still enjoys the work.


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