Serving up Gender in the 2012 Republican Primaries

If there were any lingering questions about how Michele Bachmann views women's rights and roles, last night's Thanksgiving Family Leader Forum provided a clear indication of where she stands. As the event began, Bachmann proceeded to woman up and pour water for each of the other male candidates and moderators. As women continue to struggle as candidates and leaders against the stalwart masculinity of the U.S. political system, it is problematic that a presidential candidate felt it appropriate or necessary to pour water for her fellow dude candidates. Why?

1. Let's start with the most obvious - performing acts like this reifies traditional ideas of acceptable and expected femininity in troubling ways. Call me crazy, but I feel that it would kind of suck if this was the image put forth by the first female president (not that I think for a minute there's anything remotely viable about Bachmann).

2. One of the biggest reasons women are noted as having problems getting ahead in their careers is the persistent expectations that they provide extra care to those around them - to their peers and subordinates.

3. Though it's sort of like having an official national mom, I don't think the public at large would be inclined to take any female candidate seriously who self-subordinates in the presence of her male peers. Women in politics have reported many instances of misogyny on the campaign trail and in office that often impede how freely and effectively they can focus on the issues of their constituents.

4. As much as I hate Michele Bachmann, I hate the fact that she felt compelled to do this even more. Put down the water pitcher, Michele. Put it down.

Women Hating Women Loving Babies

I usually, for reasons of personal and psychological health, choose not to participate in broad public forums like Facebook regarding controversial political issues. Give me a closed group or a great blog, I'm your girl. Facebook status threads, notsomuch. However, a friend of mine from college posted something about her concern regarding the troubling implications of the recently passed bill HR 358, or "Let Women Die Act" as it's been termed in the media. I am always so pleased to see old friends post unexpected things regarding women's rights and issues of similar ilks that I couldn't help but get involved. It IS troubling. The implications of a bill that allow doctors to choose willy nilly who they value more, woman or wombdweller, extend way beyond the usual pro-life/ abortion rights debate. This speaks to what Lauren Berlant writes of in her book The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citzenship regarding the American obsession with futurity and the primacy of the fetus in questions of political viability of it v. the woman who carries it. Women's rights as citizens are decreasing on the regs. All around us. Yet it is interesting to me that it seems like no one really cares very much anymore. . . chiefly women. Their arguments for their rights are startlingly absent. Operating in a rather insulated political world where I take for granted the progressivism I'm around, I had forgotten until this morning just how misogynistic women can be. How self-loathing we have become. Couch it in religious ideology, political slants, whatever you want -- when a woman's life is less valuable to most women than the fetus residing within her, we've got us a big problem. And my friend on Facebook asked, "Where's the media coverage?" WHERE IS THE MEDIA COVERAGE? Turn on the TV, log onto Facebook, pull up the CNN homepage. The Occupy Wall Street news is everywhere. People are outraged. People are active. Where is their outrage regarding the state of women's healthcare? Where is the bustle over how disenfranchised women are becoming and how widely accepted this seems to be? In this 21st Century when anyone can do anything anywhere and we are all working so tirelessly for LGBTQ rights and issues of class, where are all the feminists? It really kinda freaks me out.

Just Remembering

The more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are, the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency of our fellow citizens on the other side. . . .

In short, I hope for an America where neither "fundamentalist" nor "humanist" will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of good will look at life and into their own souls.

I hope for an America where no president, no public official, no individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of religious doubt -- or religious belief.

I hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry division.

I hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and diversity.

-- Senator Ted Kennedy, Speech on "Truth and Tolerance in America," Oct. 3, 1983, Lynchburg, Va.

(reposted from LA Times' "Ted Kennedy Quotes" from August 26, 2009)

Middle-Class Mommy Talk

I don't usually concern myself with mommy squabbles. Partially because I'm not a mother and partially because I'm always severely annoyed by the massive amounts of classism and racism I find circulating in the arguments. Today in The Huffington Post, Wendy Sachs declared a temporary ceasefire in "The Mommy Wars." Citing the economic recession as the cause, Sachs asserts:

Maybe there's one piece of good news to come out of the recession - it's killed The Mommy Wars. With the unemployment rate hovering at nine and a half percent, having a job feels like a privilege not a choice. . . Modern mommyhood comes loaded with criticism and judgment. Whether you're a breast feeder or a bottle feeder, grow an organic garden or feed your kid Big Macs, use biodegradable diapers or landfill clogging Pampers, circumcise, vaccinate, nanny or daycare, home school or
private school, wear a sling or push a Bugaboo, the smorgasbord of personal choices and decisions seem to invite contempt. But one thing is off the changing table - at least for now - whether a "good mom" chooses to work.

Though I find myself chuckling at her acknowledgment of the absurd debates that characterize mothering discussions in the U.S., this passage highlights the blind spots that also characterize those discussions. That the relationship of employment to quality of parenting is removed from the foreground is not a bad thing by any means, discourses surrounding it still exhibit a general lack of sensitivity regarding motherhood and child-rearing. The "opting out" argument and the others alluded to by Sachs are not the issues that characterize parenting decisions for many Americans. "The luxury of choosing not to work" that Sachs describes as a casualty of the recession was never on the map for millions of single moms and the working poor. This daunting reality hovers around these discussions yet is rarely acknowledged. It just really seems that it's about time for analyses of mommy-hood to begin more regularly discussing the realities of mommy-hood beyond those applying to the white middle class. Seeeeeriously.

While I Was Out. . .

Lazy Sunday mornings are by far one of my all-time favorite things. I realized on this particular Sunday morning, however, that I too have been a bit lazy. All wrapped up in the health care debate this week, I totally blanked out on the story of Caster Semenya of South Africa, who's thrust the issue of the gender binary smack-dab onto my lazy Sunday morning MSNBC. I skimmed past it in the New York Times and totally missed it in Feministing on Thursday, as my head was firmly planted up Rachel Maddow's behind. And though that is a place I'm quite, quite fond of being, I also like to try and remember that other things are happening all over. This week, I sort of fail.

Semenya's sex-determination testing is problematic on a number of levels. First of all, it presupposes that to demonstrate such athletic talent a woman must not a woman be. That's pretty obvious. Of course Semenya must really be a man. It also, however, has placed the gender and sexual binaries at the forefront of the discussion. The categories of "man" and "woman" simply do not in any way account for the ranges of sexual identities that exist. And though I was pleased to hear a sports writer discussing that the rigidity of the gender binary is reductive and inadequate, a topic I rarely get to geek out to outside of my queer theory and feminist circles, my delight that the subject matter was being mainstreamed in no way canceled out the sheer horror of the implications for Semenya. I most often discuss issues of gender and sex with others for whom its a matter of politics, either out of choice or necessity. But it's easy to forget that for many people it has nothing to do with a choice to politicize the issue. It's easy to abstract sex and gender, to theorize them to fetishistic deaths. And yes, it is validating to hear the words "gender binary" on Sunday morning MSNBC. But this should not eclipse what will inevitably be the long and likely traumatic experience of sex-determination testing for Semenya, casting a pall over what should be her time to just savor kicking major ass at what she does.

And the media has scarcely touched the issue of race as it plays into the story. It only begins to scratch at what is still a very real colonial legacy of racism wherein Western configurations of sex and gender dominate and marginalize on the basis of race and difference. Sandra L. Gilman creates a genealogy of the relationship between race, sex, sexuality, and Western Imperialism to medical science in "Black Bodies, White Bodies" that could prove very helpful to anyone interested in a concise exploration of the subject.

This aside, I wax all hopeful-like that the dialogue surrounding Semenya's story will expand mainstream cultural conceptions of sex and gender. Who knows? Maybe I'll catch Anne Fausto-Sterling chatting it up with ol' David Gregory on Meet the Press next week.

James W. DeMented

Ever since giving up my dearest Upstarts after finishing the ol' undergrad., I have felt the blogging itch. Though blabbing to open-eared Facebook friends and the random passers by was something I was reluctant to start, I now find myself compelled. I've become "that" person. And now, with the health care reform debate raging, I feel that it is time. Enter Senator Jim DeMint. Good ol' boy extraordinaire. Adamantly opposed to the public option that would so greatly help millions of Americans, he spouts his libertarian ethos: health care reform is "a government takeover" and we should stop it in favor of "real reform." What would real reform look like to Senator DeMint?

As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow put it oh-so-well in her "Parable of the Pizza Order" last night, in the game of ordering the pizza (read health care reform), conservatives really don't want pizza (read health care reform) at all. Jim DeMint wants no pizza. He does not want Tito's. He does not want Pizza City. He doesn't even want Papa John's. And this comes as no surprise when you take a close look at DeMint's campaign contributors. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, of his top 20 main contributors, 10 are either directly part of the health care professions or insurance sector, contributing a substantial $429,514 to his campaign. Among those contributors are Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, UnitedHealth Group, and coming in at numero uno: Club for Growth, who has launched a $1.2 million tv ad campaign of misinformation in response to the health care debate.

Regardless of your personal opinions surrounding the public option and the face of this bill, it is all too apparent that the politicians who so vehemently oppose it speak not based on the needs and wants of their constituents, but on those of the people with the moolah. With one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, South Carolinians are in dire need of this legislation. Senator DeMint will be making two appearances in the Upstate Thursday, August 20; he will be at Tommy's Ham House in Greenville at 8 AM and at The Beacon in Spartanburg at noon. So I urge you, whatever your stance, to go and make yourself heard. To have a public discourse on the matter there needs to be an actual discourse. Hope to see you there!