NEWS: Why Gender Matters

CULTURE: Why Gender Matters

Why isn't it as discriminatory to vote for a woman "just because she's a woman" as it is to vote for a man "just because he's a man"? What difference does sex make? Who cares if the government is run mostly by white men or mostly by black women or mostly by purple dogs--it's the *ideas* that matter!

Bull. Shit.

Reading this piece in the WaPo brought to mind all of these annoying arguments that keep cropping up. And since if Clinton gets the Democratic nod (and believe me, folks, she will--you can say you heard it here first, 'kay?), we're going to hear EVEN MORE of this stuff, I'ma post a li'l explanation right now and you all can bookmark it and refer back to it as needed, 'kay?

1. Seeing gender/racial/gay/etc. representation as important /= voting for (or hiring, or admitting to college) someone "just because they're" a woman/a person of color. The argument itself is sexist/racist/homophobic, if you think about it for just a second: it implies that the *only* reason one would vote for a woman is because of her gender, and that being "a woman" makes one devoid of ideas--as if Candidate Girl is a cardboard cutout with boobs.

Folks who are happy to see a woman/a black man running for office, and want to vote for Clinton/Obama on those grounds, wouldn't vote for, oh, say, Phyllis Schlafly or Ward Churchill. Women and ethnic minorities are not all the same. They have ideas, just like the white guys.

2. Gender/racial/gay/etc. representation *does matter.* It would be lovely if it didn't, but we just happen to live in a world where, all other things being equal, a given woman's experience of America is going to be different than a given man's. Just as an Indian's, or a black person's, or a Filipino's experience of America--all other things being equal--is going to be different than a white person's. I know *that* black people are much more likely to be tailed by security guards while shopping in fancy stores, but I don't actually know what it *feels like* to be in that position. In theory, I think it sucks. In practice, it's probably a less urgent issue for me than a lot of other things. I'm all for gay rights, and I know that there are states that have laws making it illegal for employers to offer domestic partner benefits. I also know that some employers (universities, for instance) offer individual insurance packages to people as a way of trying to make sure they can make job offers to smart gay scholars. What I *didn't* know until an Actual Lesbian pointed it out to me--because it simply never occured to straight li'l gay-friendly me to think about, since it *never came up in my life*--is that these packages mean that gay academics earn less than their straight counterparts--because they end up spending a big chunk of their paychecks on "private" insurance, not to mention lawyers, in order to make sure their partners and kids have health coverage and legal protections in case something happens to them.

Hence, for instance, in the linked article, it's a woman representative with a young child who *just happens* to be introducing federal legislation to protect women's rights to breastfeed in public. Back when Plan B was getting blocked by the FDA, it *just happened* to be a woman who quit the FDA in disgust, and it *just happened* to be two more women, Senators Clinton and Murray, who stepped up and put a hold on the nomination process for a new FDA chair until the FDA stopped stalling. It *just happens* that the people who pushed hardest for women's right to vote were women. Yes, there were male suffragists, and god bless them. And there were women who thought that women's suffrage was unnecessary, and that the suffragettes were man-hating hysterics. But women--*all* women--didn't get the right to vote because men who had the "right ideas" gave it to them. They got it because enough of them stood up and demanded it.

3. We are not, contrary to what a lot of people would like to believe, brains on sticks. The idea that bodies don't matter, because ideas are somehow pure and universal and perfectly communicable, is itself, if you think about it, a sexist (and racist and homophobic, etc.) idea. Or at least, believing it perpetuates sexism, even if the person convinced of its truth thinks him- or herself perfectly convinced that All People Are Equal. Equality /= "the same," and (for instance), it is a simple fact that women are the ones to bear children, and that women bear the lioness's share of caring for children. Yet when we talk about these issues, we talk about them as peripheral to, rather than central to, human experience--if you "choose" to have a child, then the consequences of that for your life are, at best, something society as a whole "accomodates." Because the default, universal, brain-on-a-stick way in which we're all "equal" assumes that we're all autonomous individuals, and that being imperfectly autonomous (pregnant, a parent) is somehow an "aberration." Which is true--if you're a guy. If you're a chick, pregnancy/motherhood are pretty central to your humanity--even if the way that centrality manifests itself is that you remember to take a pill *every single morning* in order to avoid it.

This argument brought to you via a couple centuries of feminist philosophy. If you want to think about this stuff in depth, as opposed to getting the severely condensed web-friendly SG newswire version, go pick up a copy of The Second Sex, which oughta be required reading for everyone.


Bitch_PhD loves the header image, which is a (slightly altered) detail from "Simone de Beauvoir With Bear," by Gordon Lester, a former student and TA.

yep. we got us these thangs called HORmones.

and well, even then if you forget a day or two as it turns out.

AMEN sista/motha!

Where do they stand on the Issues? Contrary to "popular" belief, I would be willing to bet that if women or blacks did not agree on a large number of issues their respective "representation" stood for, gender/race would quickly become a moot point. If I was a Christian, Pro-Life woman, there's a chance I wouldn't be voting for Hilary.

Here we go. Now we're back to the "because women are the ones that get pregnant, men have no right whatsoever to discuss any facet of women's rights, lest they be called 'ignorant' or 'sexist' " argument. The writing's been going downhill since Season 3.

Not every white, Anglo male is looking out only for themselves. Maybe you'll understand that soon enough.

-TM

It's an interesting question. If you accept the premise that gender/racial bias still exists (which is essentially indisputable), I think you have to at least entertain the concession that a consideration for those factors is fair game, and possibly beneficial (though not necessarily so).

The first issue, which you address, is putting to bed the canard that factoring issues of race/gender into your decision equals deciding entirely on that factor alone. An avowed feminist wouldn't vote for Anne Coulter simply to get a woman into the Oval Office, and a racial progressive wouldn't vote for JC Watts for president simply to get an black person into office. But, let's start from here: if all other things were equal - eg, if you had two exactly equally appealing candidates based upon the issues, one a white male and the other an under-represented minority, wouldn't it make sense (knowing and accepting the inital premise that gender/racial bias and under-representation still exist) to pick the minority?

I think it would. And if you're on board with that, it makes some sense to consider what extent we are talking about. Again, if you are a feminist or progressive, if the hypothetical two candidates weren't EXACTLY equal - if the white male were just slightly better or closer to you on the issues, would it still make sense to vote for the minority? It might, if you consider the issue of widening diversity in higher office enough of a counterbalance or more of a priority than candidate A's divergence from you in the issues. It might still make sense if there was more than a slight difference or quite significant difference in the candidates; most of the criteria we are taking into consideration are highly subjective based on what issues one considers most important, how wide one sees the gender/racial gap, and whether/how much one thinks the election of a minority candidate is itself beneficial to solving that.

To those who are against the idea of a candidate's sex or skin color being in any way, shape or form a factor in deciding to vote for them, I might ask: are you also against affirmative action in any form? Many of the issues of minority representation weighed alongside merit as a deciding factor are basically identical. Or maybe the feeling is that affirmative action criteria shouldn't be used for something as important as election to the nation's highest office? But if so, isn't that belittling to the goals of affirmative action as a means? Saying, essentially, that it's well and good to help minorities get ahead in minor positions, but let's not use the same decision-making process when the job really matters?

Wow, you're really all over the place here.

You say that women and minority groups bring with them their own unique world views and experiences. And that we should take race and gender into account when we decide who to vote for. In your words: "it matters." But that at the same time, you admit that people's world views are not specific to their race/gender (The Churchill/Schlafly and Clinton/Obama statement).So if you were to vote for a woman because she was a woman, you could end up with either Liddy Dole or Nancy Pelosi. And/or everything in-between. There is no standard female opinion on an issue. There are as many variations as there are for men.

So basically, what you are saying here is that it matters and it doesn't matter. Correct? If so, what gives with the title?

Geez, while some of what said is somewhat accurate, its also a bigoted viewpoint to assume that just because I'm a lower-middle class white male, I can be grouped into a demographic with other lower-middle class white males, when this matter is considered as strictly as it is here.

Also, no offense, my Critical Thinking and Discourse professor would have a field day with many of the assertions put forth there, not because they are factual or nonfactual, but because the argument is incomplete. It made the whole thing really difficult for me to follow/read.

As I'm about to go to bed I will simply say that I agree with this entire article and Bitch_PhD is my favourite SG news contributor.

Ok, so it doesn't matter except when it does. I can live with that. I guess.

I have never felt intergender discourse happening anywhere else like they do in these newswires. No lie!


It's usually one side or the other.

I like Hillary's moderate democratic position and I hope they will have great economic advisors like the last Clinton admin. Democratic economists are rare.

I like Obama's "Let our generation have a chance to move beyond the simple 'Racism Bad, Diversity Good' paradigm of the Boomers" speech. I can't wait for my generation to be in charge. I am so tired of the self-congratulations of the previous generation.

I was with you till the second paragraph.

/= ?

/= !

For whatever reason, Lester's Umberto Eco with Bear made me laugh and laugh and laugh. As to the subject thread, I got into it in the other other one, so I won't here - I'll just read, and continue to admire the bears.

The thing I find deeply unfortunate about all this is that the first time we might get a chance to vote for a woman as president, it turns out to be Hillary Clinton. Will I hold my nose and vote for her if she's nominated? Probably. Will I be happy if she wins? No. She's just as into executive privilege as Bush is, and just as corrupted by political money as any other leading candidate.

gah, she's saying that it often does matter, but by no means is it (it being race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc) dictating of a candidate's views.

let me break it down for you:

2 candidates may both be women/black/gay, but may have radically divergent views on the issues. 2 candidates of similar description may also be united on some issues.

the point isn't that anyone should vote for a candidate because she's a woman exclusively, or that anyone even does. it's that her gender IS a factor. it does not necessarily mean she will legislate womens' rights the way the voter may want, but clearly it's a factor to be considered. what i think the author is saying here is that when 2 candidates of DIFFERENT backgrounds, where one is say, a straight white male and the other is a nonwhite male or a woman, etc and the voter picks the underrepresented trait, that itself does not mean the voter is excluding other factors.

i was so proud of this article that i bought you a pony

...but it only knows one trick.

So this one isn't so heated.

It's not love if there's no fighting.

Your lack of comprehension does not bias the argument and your lack of appreciation of nuance is not a badge of honor.

-TM

Ok, I guess I'm an alien. I honestly do not seriously consider a person's gender or race when deciding on whether I'll vote for him/her. It's not an issue for me. I lose at life, I guess.