Sunday, November 6, 2016

The Price We Pay for the First Woman POTUS

Thank you, Jill Filipovic, for bringing up a huge issue:  the price we women are paying as Hillary Rodham Clinton fights to become the first woman president of the USA in 227 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/campaign-stops/the-men-feminists-left-behind.html

She writes:

On Nov. 8, Americans may elect our first female president. While many of us are exhilarated at the idea of this feminist victory, the toll we’ve paid for coming so close to that historic barrier has been the most graphically sexist election in living memory.

Women have been dragged through the mud by the Republican candidate and his hate-mongering forces.

It has been a painful ten months and excruciating last two months.

Yes, it has been a war on women.  Misogyny is real.

Filipovic points out that white males have been used to privilege and power for so long that they are fighting like pigs to hang onto it all.

And we are suffering.  Every woman I know can't stand one more day of this election.

Here I am, obsessively blogging, tweeting, posting on FB, and watching the news media--like many people I know, both male and female.

Could we just have an election without all this hatred toward the female candidate and toward women in general?

Here are some measures of women's progress listed by Filipovic--facts that stir anger and fear in many proud male hearts:

When Hillary Clinton started at Yale Law School in 1969, there was only one woman in the United States Senate. It was legal for a man to rape his wife, but abortion was mostly outlawed. Mrs. Clinton graduated as one of just 27 women in a class of 235, after being explicitly told that if accepted into law school, she would take the rightful place of a man.

The same year Mrs. Clinton graduated from Yale, the Supreme Court held that American women had a legal right to abortion; that, coupled with expanded access to contraception, meant that women flooded into colleges and workplaces.



And then there's the distance still to go:

 [W]e still make up just 19 percent of Congress and 33 percent of speaking roles in the 100 top-grossing films.

Male identity remains tied up in dominance and earning potential, and when those things flag, it seems men either give up or get angry.

This, perhaps more than anything else, explains the rise of Donald J. Trump: He promised struggling white men that they could have their identities back.

Again, thanks, Filipovic, for this analysis.  

As for why some women are supporting dt, they are male-identified.  They instinctively believe that it's in their best interest to support the male who is their breadwinner. (See my post about my high school friend on October 17, 2016: "Remember the little people.")

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