To start off today’s lesson: the difference between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, as defined by academia:
Sex = the biological signification of femalehood or malehood
Gender = a social construct that exists outside of biology and the body; has more to do with subjective terms like ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ which can be applied to a person regardless of sex
so why is Salon saying that Hillary is the male-gendered candidate while Obama is the female one?
Is Barack Obama’s wife Michelle challenging Hillary?
In a recent Washington Post article, she was quoted as saying:
“I know that experience is important, right? But experience without the sort of moral compass is not enough. And it’s not just enough to check off a bunch of boxes and say, ‘I’ve spent so many years in Washington,’ because Barack has those experiences. He doesn’t have the checked-box experiences, but he has experience that makes a difference.”
Could this possibly become a war of words between the two females?
A classmate of mine recently found this Media Matters article which discusses the sexist nature of MSNBC’s coverage of the first presidential debate.
Click on the link above– the story and transcript of the coverage speak for themselves.
I was listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation today, and one caller asked the question, “If Obama or Hillary Clinton ended up getting the Democratic nomination, would a joint ticket be possible?”
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I was reading an interesting blog today “about the politics of reporting– and the reporting of politics.” On it, Greg Sargent dissects and analyzes the way in which reporters and popular newspapers, such as the New York Times, write about politics and political candidates.
In one article, Sargent points out that, when asked about Hillary, most pundits will say something about the impossibility of her being elected because she is “polarizing” and, although she sticks closely to her pretty centrist agenda, this makes her “unelectable”. Sargent debunks this myth with an ABC/Washington news poll showing that Hillary is in fact far more electable than another presidential hopeful, John McCain.
So why the presumed “unelectability”?
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Is Hillary an insider or an outsider? And does such a status work to her advantage or disadvantage?
As usual, the frustrating answer is: both.
In what CBS news dubs “The Clinton Paradox”, Hillary’s strengths and weaknesses are as changeable as the crowd she is facing on any given day. As the article mentions, “Clinton has to conform to stereotypes and defy them, and she has to run as both the insider and the outsider,” said Marie Wilson, founder of the White House Project, which promotes women running for high office. “She has to show she’s not entrenched in a system that has not been friendly to women, but also that she really knows it and is good at it.”
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This New York Times article from today says that Hillary is having a harder time getting the Democratic monetary support that she was counting on. Many thought that because she is married to Bill Clinton, she would be the candidate to whom his fans would naturally shift their support to. However, it seems that Barack Obama is gaining a lot of these votes instead of Hillary. This is reflected in the fact that Hillary has raised $5.7 million less that Obama during the primary season– many of Bill Clinton’s main fundraisers have drifted into his camp.
Below is the video in which Hillary announces that she will be running for president. She touches upon her political platform, and does emphasize certain issues which she knows are important to woman voters (see blog posting below, “female voters”). Note that she says she “definately” wants to talk about better healthcare, and also mentions her work fighting for women’s rights and children’s education.
