In the past 48 hours, the US Primaries have changed dramatically.
Hillary Clinton choked up
Bill Clinton spoke out
Gloria Steinem wrote a thoughtful piece on whether women can ever be front-runners1:
Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.
:
So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only†the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine†for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right†way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.
And Hillary and McCain both performed come-from-behind Houdini acts.
I am sure the front-runner in both the Republican and Democratic races is going to change often. I just hope we get candidates that, at a minimum, offer us hope of getting out of the complete and utter mess we are in right now.
If you think sexism isn’t alive and well, you should read about the guys who stood up at a Hillary campaign event and kept yelling at her to “Iron my shirt!” ↩