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The Not-So-Subtle Misogyny in Presidential Politics

2/5/2016

 
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Read the comment sections on online blogs. Whenever there’s a discussion of something that Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton said, people come out of the woodwork with the cruelest insults, calling Hillary a ‘fat old cow’ or criticizing Michelle’s butt rather than actually addressing what Hillary or Michelle said. It’s sickening, really. And anyone who dares comes to Hillary’s defense is met with the same cruel insults. What must a young woman considering a career in public service think when she sees stuff like that? I mean, why would anyone willingly want to go into the public arena and try to make a difference in this world if it just means submitting yourself to junk like that? And I swear, as divisive as Trump or Barack Obama might be, I’ve never once seen someone attack them for not being Hollywood handsome.

I've been working on a novel, again, that examines the role of gender politics in the 2008 Presidential election cycle, so these thought have been on my mind a lot lately. It's disheartening to see that, at some level, the problematic sexism that existed in 2008 is still with us in the Hillary v. Bernie campaign. There's a really good Vox article about this that I just came across. 

ERRATA #1: I was thrilled that Entropy chose to publish a piece I wrote about when  Hurricane Isabel plundered through my neighborhood. If you'd like to read "Hurricane Night, 2003," the link is here.

ERRATA #2: So this novel I'm working on (see above). I've been working on it for years upon years. Different drafts have examined the material from a variety of different angles. I've added characters, emphasized different things, but the second half of the novel has remained fairly consistent throughout the many drafts I've churned out.  Someone who's seen two of these different drafts has asked me to pursue the material further. Last night, it finally occurred to me that the entire second half of the novel (i.e., the part of the novel from which the rest of the novel developed) just ought to be jettisoned. I just wished I had come to this realization, say, a few years earlier!



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