Misogyny In Politics
Posted by Michelle Moquin on October 15th, 2016
Good morning!
It isn’t just American that has rampant misogyny in politics.
From DailyKos:
Misogyny in politics
Misogynist “Ditch the Witch” sign attacking former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard
Misogynistic, sexist crap ain’t just hurled at Hillary—ask former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard and other women in politics.
Many voters in the U.S. are watching, reading, and reacting to the train wreck of sexist, misogynistic remarks spewed by Donald Trump, his campaign, and surrogates. But it’s easy to simply attribute this to Trump’s glaring defects, and fail to examine the long history of what women entering into U.S. politics face from a broad spectrum of attackers. Hillary Clinton is, of course, a lightning rod for this type of slime slinging (not only from Trump), and has been throughout her entire career in the public eye.
Too often the discussion of the sexism hurled her way gets twisted into something that is explained away as a deep flaw in Clinton herself. It’s a massive piece of victim blaming participated in by both men and women (the New York Times’Maureen Dowd is an example of the latter).
Last week I got the opportunity to address this issue with a group of approximately 120 young, mostly freshmen, mostly female students in an introduction to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies class I team teach with three other women.
These students have grown up with a very different sense of Hillary Clinton than I have. They are 18 to 20 years old, and will be voting in a presidential election for the first time in their lives. I was born the same year as Hillary, while they were only 10 years old when she ran for president against Barack Obama. All that was said about her in the media during that time period is fixed in their heads—whether or not they are voting for her in this election (and almost all of them are). Many are doing so after switching from being supporters of Bernie Sanders. They consider themselves to be feminists, are familiar with concepts and terms like “intersectionality,” and are pro-choice. Quite a few are LBGTQ and the others are proud allies. My campus has a very high percentage of female undergrads and many of them opt to take women’s studies.
I opened the class with a photo collage—portraits of women (no names attached) who are or have been political leaders. I asked them to name current female elected heads of state. One young woman (incorrectly) volunteered Queen Elizabeth, while another mentioned Angela Merkel. The rest of the class was silent.
I wonder how well a lot of adults would do with the same question.
How many can you name?
(I took the liberty to black out the names just to have a little fun!)
How many did you get?
My past stories here have talked about the absence of teaching much of women’s history in our high schools. Not one of my freshmen students had ever heard of Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, or Ann Richards before taking our course. Last year, only a handful could identify the name of the female senator who represents New York state, Kirsten Gillibrand. None knew the names of any of the women in our state legislature. And though Bernie Sanders was here in town, at a rally campaigning for Zephyr Teachout for Congress just two weeks ago, the students flocked to go see Bernie, not even knowing her name or that he had come to stump for her.
It is within this vacuum of information and historical context that these young women and a few young men have developed opinions about Secretary Clinton. This view, and even the perspective of those who are avidly supporting her candidacy, have been so tainted by our media that it’s amazing anyone has been able to transcend the ugliness.
These young people are angry at Donald Trump, and won’t be voting for him. They rightly see he is a racist, have taken note of his sexism and xenophobia, and they are very well-informed about his homophobic running mate Mike Pence. Some of them have been participating in Periods For Pence on facebook and twitter.
That still doesn’t change what they think they know about Hillary Clinton. Rather than open the class with a discussion of Hillary and the decades-long media narrative that has shaped their views, I instead introduced them to former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the misogyny she faced. I chose Gillard because Australia is English-speaking, majority white, and had been a recent example of extreme misogyny that resembled much of what Clinton has experienced here in the U.S., though for a much shorter period of time.
I played the class this video:
The students’ shock after viewing this was palpable. I followed it with a portion of the viral video speech on misogyny by Gillard from 2012.
(This video is 15 minutes. I watched it years ago when it first aired in 2012. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth your time.)
It’s still spelled m-i-s-o-g-y-n-y. But now it has a new meaning, thanks to a speech that redefined political shaming.
The Associated Press reports that Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary has updated its definition of the word “misogyny” after Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave a take-no-prisoners lecturing of opposition leader Tony Abbott about his anti-female ways. (h/t Newser)
Gillard included several mentions of Abbot’s “misogyny” and “sexism” in the speech. The gone-viral Oct. 9 lambasting prompted word-keepers to take notice.
Macquarie Dictionary added “entrenched prejudice of women” to augment the established “hatred of women,” according to the BBC. The expanded definition will appear in the next edition, the Australian reported.
Macquarie Editor Sue Butler said Gillard’s remarks highlight how the term has evolved from a pathological loathing of the gender. “We decided that we had the basic definition, hatred of women, but that’s not how misogyny has been used for about the last 20, 30 years, particularly in feminist language,” she told ABC Radio. “Sexist does seem to be moving towards this description of surface features and misogynist applies to the underlying attitude.”
Then came the historical parallel: the crap thrown at Hillary.
The response from students was electric, and when we split up the large class into our smaller discussion groups (which is how the class is designed) we continued to talk. Several of the girls said they were “on fire,” with rage. They demanded to see more. So we looked at how interviewers from the media have posed questions to Hillary over decades.
Watching the responses of my students was like seeing light bulbs go off around the room.
We talked about how the decades-long narrative about Hillary has tainted us all. I admitted it has also affected me, though to a lesser degree since I had my mom’s admiration for her as a check against buying the entire package. My mom always thought Hillary was smarter than Bill. Since my mom was a member of Delta Sigma Theta, if alive today she would have been one of many Deltas urging Hillary to run in 2013.
We looked at this contradiction to the Hillary hater cabal’s narrative, titled “Clinton Most Admired Woman for Record 20thTime.”
Clinton has been the most admired woman each of the last 14 years, and 20 times overall, occupying the top spot far longer than any other woman or man in Gallup’s history of asking the most admired question. Since 1993, the year she was first named most admired woman, Clinton has stayed in the news as first lady, U.S. senator, secretary of state and a two-time presidential candidate.
Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt was named most admired woman 13 times during her lifetime, putting her second to Clinton in terms of first-place finishes. Dwight Eisenhower has 12 No. 1 finishes, the most for any man. Obama, the most admired man each of the last eight years, is now tied with Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan for top overall finishes among men.
The students are now reading Media Matters’ “A Comprehensive Guide To Sexist Attacks On Hillary Clinton From The 2008 Campaign.”
When placed into a global context, it’s clear we have a ways to go before women can take their rightful place in global politics. Women have a right to leadership, and they have a right to be good, bad, or indifferent leaders—just like men.
Pew Research provides some key data in “Number of women leaders around the world has grown, but they’re still a small group.”
Most Americans believe a woman will be elected president within their lifetime, a milestone that would add the U.S. to a growing list of countries that have had a female leader. But the overall number of countries that have been led by women still remains relatively small, and in most of these countries, women haven’t held power for long.
There are currently 18 female world leaders, including 12 female heads of government and 11 elected female heads of state (some leaders are both, and figurehead monarchs are not included), according to United Nations data. These women account for about one-in-ten of today’s leaders of United Nations member states. Half of them are the first women to hold their country’s highest office.
Yet, even while the number of female leaders has more than doubled since 2005, a woman in power is hardly the norm around the world. Sixty-three of 142 nations studied by the World Economic Forum have had a female head of government or state at some point in the 50 years up to 2014, but in nearly two-thirds of those nations a woman was in power for less than four of the 50 years – including 11 countries (17%) where a woman led for less than a year.
Political scientists and scholars who study gender in politicshave produced detailed analyses of the obstacles women face around the world in the political realm. Not all agree that misogyny is a major factor. They do mostly concur that watching it happen to women who do run and win (which in some cases ends in violence and death) has a tendency to discourage politics as a career choice. From my perspective, one cannot ignore the violence or the sexism.
I remember reading “Top 10 sexist moments in politics: Julia Gillard, Hillary Clinton and more” in the Guardian a few years ago. Somewhere, sadly, there is an updated list.
Having this kind of discussion is often discouraged and derailed. Those who raise the issue are often accused of “playing the woman card,” the same way that those of us who push back against racism are accused of “playing the race card.” My standard reply to both is: “My life is not a card game.”
I was elated to see the Clinton campaign turn the tables and offer a real “Woman Card” to people who donate five bucks or more.
I have mine.
Have you got yours?
We ended our class on a high after discussing the overwhelming sexism of the critiques of how political women look and dress (queue the attacks on Hillary’s pantsuits!). And we enjoyed the exuberance of a #PantsuitPower flashmob for Hillary that had taken place in New York City that very weekend.
Hillary and the Democratic women (and men) she is supporting who are running for office can use your help with GOTV.
So take some time to make calls for Hillary.
In doing so, you strike a blow against sexism and misogyny, and for democracy and equality.
💪🏽♀💪🏽
Readers: How many women leaders did you guess correctly?
Blog me.
Gordon, et al: Nice to hear it coming from some men who get it. It baffles me how many people tout this false equivalency and more baffling that people fall for it. The logic escapes me.
Happy Saturday!
Peace Out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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