I'm sick of your insane demands.

Over on Slog, where I cross-posted yesterday's sampling of the misogynistic asshattery that the media and bloggers have hurled at Hillary Clinton over the course of this campaign, some commenters have accused me of posting only links to right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, as well as a few "non-liberal" columnists like Maureen Dowd. Leaving aside that Dowd does in fact claim to have real progressive cred in her role, as Shakesville's Melissa McEwan puts it, as the "World's Most Obnoxious Feminist Concern Troll," I thought I'd dig up a few examples of Supposedly Liberal™ bloggers and columnists who have similarly ill, anti-woman things to say about the first serious female candidate for President.

So, without further ado, a reprise:

Hillary is "petulant, arrogant, whiny... a spoiled brat." She's "childish. A desperate, spurned lover. And, as ever, shrill... shrill... shrill... shrill. And, oh yeah, cold. (Brrrrr!) She doesn't have a heart, and she's jealous and vindictive (over, uh, boys?) Any woman who votes for her is voting with her vagina, not her brain. When she "periodically... is feeling down" she goes on the attack! She's ruthless.She has claws! But dude, there's nothing sexist about saying that! Especially according to the guys. And, you know, she really ought to just be beaten... to death. I mean, c'mon--don't you just want to punch her in the face? After all, she's ambitious, dominant, and controlling. She's carping, and a liar, and frigid, and when she smiles it's fake. She's controlling and humorless. Watch out--she'll bite you! And watch out for her supporters, too--those ladies, when they don't get what they want, they tend to go a little crazy! They may even cut your balls off. Ooh, but she has balls of her own--three of them! Arianna Huffington agrees with Maureen Dowd: Hillary's just a little wittle girl.

There are more--including many I posted in my original post--but I'll stop there. Suffice it to say that plenty of folks, including supposedly liberal (even "feminist") writers, are slinging misogynistic shit at Clinton. I wish I could say it was all coming from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Chris Matthews, but I can't.

Violet Socks at Reclusive Leftist--probably the most ardent Clinton supporter on the Internet after Robin Morgan--has a post up today explaining why she won't vote for Obama even if he's the nominee. And while I don't agree with her conclusions--as I wrote this week, I think it's time for Democrats to unite around a nominee and get to work building the case against McCain--her reasons for sticking it out with Clinton struck a chord.

Imagine this scenario:

The shoe is on the other foot, and Obama, not Hillary, is the punching bag of the media — a media that is blatantly and unapologetically racist. And I do mean blatant. Jokes every night on the cable news shows about Obama’s hair and his fondness for fried chicken. Pundits laughing about what a problem uppity Negroes are.

Across the country, racists openly ridicule Obama and his candidacy. In mainstream stores there are gag gifts playing on racist themes: maybe a (water)Melon Baller with Obama’s head on the handle, maybe a Barack Obama Shoeshine Set — you get the picture. 501c groups invoke the most grotesque racist slurs with their advertising; T-shirts say “Quit Running for President and Shine My Shoes!” Anybody who protests is branded a fool and a spoilsport.

Online, Hillary’s supporters constantly refer to Obama and his supporters as n—–s and c— -s and all the other epithets I refuse to type out. Blogger Boyz blog about those stupid lazy Negroes who are still wallowing in memories of the Civil Rights era, too dumb to get with the program and vote for Hillary.

And the lies: Obama is constantly lied about, belittled, demeaned. His record is distorted, his character impugned. Every day the pundits and the Blogger Boyz urge him to drop out of the race, to remember his place, to give up his seat to the white woman. All in the interest of “party unity.”

And nary a word of reproach from Hillary herself. No denunciation at all of the relentless racism. In fact, she actually cracks a few racist remarks herself, albeit subtle ones. She jokes and nods with the media about “letting” Obama run as long as he wants to. And when she makes speeches about American values, she talks a lot about women’s rights but never mentions civil rights. She’s strikingly silent on the subject. Even when she delivers a major address on the importance of rooting out bigotry, she neglects to mention racism at all.

And the Democratic Party goes along with all this, pushing Hillary as the nominee, ignoring the anger of African-American voters, smugly assuming that they’ll “come back to the fold” by November. After all, say the pundits and the Blogger Boyz, where else are they going to go? The Republicans are even worse.

I've said it before--but because some Slog readers seem to still think I believe any attack on Clinton is a sexist attack, I'll say it again: The misogyny from the media, from supposedly liberal blogger doodz , commenters on this blog, and just about everywhere during this campaign has been despicable. This kind of shit ought to be behind us: Hillary Clinton is a bitch. A big ol' bitchy bitch. And a cunt. A "big fucking whore." Fortunately, you can "call a woman anything." She's "Nurse Ratched." She'll castrate you if she gets a chance. She would like that. She's a "She-Devil." She's a madam, and her daughter's a whore. She's frigid, and she can't give head. She's a "She-Devil." A lesbian. A nag. When things get tough, she cries like a big dumb GIRL. In fact, she's just that -- a "little girl." In FACT, she wants to "cry her way to the White House." To be, ahem, "Crybaby-in-Chief." That proves that she's not tough enough. But she's also not feminine enough. She's "screechy." She's an "aging, resentful female." She's "Sister Frigidaire." She really ought to quit running for President and stick to housework. She basically spent her entire times as First Lady going to tea parties. She's a monster whojust won't die. In fact, she really should just die. You can buy a urinal target with her face on it to express what you really think of her. OMG she's got claws! She's crazy. In fact, she's a lunatic. She's petty and vindictive and entitled. She's a washed-up old hag. She's "everybody's first wifestanding outside probate court." She's a "scolding mother." She's shrill... shrill... shrill. She can't take it when people are mean to her. She's a "hellish housewife." She's Tanya Harding. She CAN'T be President, what with the mood swings and the menses.Any woman who votes for her is voting with her vagina, not her brain. Women only like Hillary because she's a fellow Vagina-American. And because they vote with their feelings. Frankly, anyone who still thinks we need "feminine role models" should get over it and move on, already. Oh, and men who supporters are castratos in the eunuch chorus. You shouldn't make her President because she wants it too much. She's totally just banking on support from ugly old feminists. And she looooves to "play the victim." She cackles! And cackles. And cackles. It's like she's a witch or something! She's definitely"witchy." And now you can buy her cackle as your ring tone. Her voice, too, is "grating"--like "fingernails on a blackboard" to "some men." She's hiding behind her gender. She isn't a "convincing mom" because she's too strident. She never did anything on her own. Her husband keeps her on a leash. She hates men. Her campaign is a "catfight." She makes people want to kill themselves, is like a "domineering mother," and is cold. And OMG she has boobies! All of which are reasons to hate her. (And boy, could I go on.)

Oh, and if you even mention any of this, you're either silly or a bad person.

So yeah, while I'm ready to get on the Obama welcome wagon, I'm also angry. And I'm not ready to "get over" the blatant, ugly misogyny that so many Democrats--Democrats!--have displayed throughout this campaign, thank you very fucking much. (Of course, Republican shitbags did plenty of dishing, too, but the sexist statements by Democrats and otherwise liberal columnists have been the most disappointing). You can't be intellectually honest if you give lip service to "equality" in one breath and guffaw at how "caustic" and "shrill" Clinton is in the next.

I'm fiercely disappointed in many of my fellow Americans. I've long hoped that the daughters of the generation that follows mine would grow up thinking that even they could be President someday. If I ever have a daughter someday, I'll tell her that, just as my parents did. But after seeing what happened to Hillary, I doubt they'll have reason to believe it.

How much do you want to bet that the sitting in at a San Francisco gas station--praying for God to "deliver us from high gas prices"--voted for the administration that adopted the policies that are helping to keep gas prices high in the first place?

P.S. I never thought I'd say this, but: Hillary Clinton, STFU.

WHY, why, why do women join PETA? The group basically EXISTS to promote the idea of women (well, young, sexy, thin white women, anyway) as meat. Pregnant meat. Shaved meat. Fuckable meat. Surgically enhanced meat. Cagedmeat. Fur-shunning meat. Naughty, naughty meat. Beauty-contest-winning meat. Meat meat. And now, sex-ay, lathered-up, girl-on-girl showering meat.

According to a (clothed) female PETA member quoted in the NY Post's video, available at the link (the naked women, as always, were silent spectacles), the point of stunt, in which two women showered together, naked, in Times Square, was to demonstrate how much water it takes to produce meat. Judging from the looks on the faces of the male video crews arrayed, bukkake-style, around the tank that message wasn't exactly front and center.

No woman should ever join PETA until they show women the same respect they show pigs, cows, and minks. Considering that the top image on their web site right now is a crowd of thin, naked white women carrying a sign reading "Bare Skin Not Bear," I'm not holding my breath.

Tell it, Prudie:

Dear Prudence,

My wedding is 59 days away, and I am concerned about my future mother-in-law's dress. She is a wonderful woman who makes me feel accepted as her son's choice for a wife. But with only two months left before the wedding, she had finally begun her search for a dress. Last Sunday, my mother-in-law held my bridal shower at her house. My mother told me that while she was there, she saw a photo of the dress my mother-in-law picked out. She described it as "young, low-cut, and flowing." I wanted to get to the bottom of this, as my mother-in-law had not even informed me that she had purchased anything. So, after the party, I sent her an e-mail, and she sent me a picture of the dress. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My 51-year-old mother-in-law has picked out a dress with a wispy skirt, a V-neck, and spaghetti straps. It's fit and styled for someone my age—25! And it's robin's egg blue—which doesn't even go with my champagne-colored dress, the bridesmaids' sage green, the chocolate brown tuxes, and my mother's pale pink dress. I can't swallow the fact that she would attempt such a daring wardrobe choice on a day so important to me and her son. This dress has been ordered and is not set to arrive until two weeks before our wedding! I really need advice on how to tell her that I do not feel it is appropriate to wear.

—Frustrated Bride

Dear Frustrated,
The nerve of this 51-year-old woman to decide she's just going to march off and buy a dress that she finds flattering without asking permission of a 25-year-old. Sure, she has welcomed you into her family and thrown a shower for you. But now she has really shown her true colors—robin's egg blue, to be exact—by pulling this spaghetti-strap stunt. This V-neck desecration has to be stopped! You simply must tell her the hard truth. Something along the lines of, "Hey, you old hag, no one wants to see your saggy flesh. Your choice of color is an outrage. And, in case you've forgotten, in 59 days it's going to be my day, my day, my day, my day."

—Prudie

The Portland Tribune has a good hit on an Oregon "eco-race" called "Eco-Challenge 2008," which, it turns out, is neither supported by any environmental groups nor donating any of its proceeds to environmental causes. Oh, and all the contestants are models.

The man behind Eco-Challenge 2008, which begins today, is founder and chief executive officer Mo Martinez, 47, who relocated to the Pacific Northwest from Southern California last summer and now rents a place in Troutdale.

Dressed in jeans and a ball cap, the retired photographer has smiling eyes and an unassuming presence that doesn’t seem to match his résumé.

His 25-year career is highlighted by spreads of big-lipped, big-haired, big-breasted young women in skimpy swimsuits and suggestive stances.

“I got caught in the swimsuit industry and was pretty much labeled as that,” he says.

His portfolio includes work at modeling conventions and shoots for publications like Swimsuit Illustrated. Photos on his professional Web site (www.imodel.com/index.cfm?mid=3190) include a casual fashion shot that looks like it belongs in a catalog – and a photo of a curvaceous, come-hither blonde on a bed, falling out of her teddy.

So is this competition just an exercise in green T & A?

“No,” Martinez says with a gentle smirk and a shake of the head. “No.”

He’s just always wanted to do something “eco.”

Martinez says the race is a nonprofit event, and that he’s investing $10,000 to film it for a documentary highlighting the challenges of the Columbia River watershed that he hopes to sell to National Geographic.

“They want it,” he says. “I know they want it.”

Martinez also believes the competition will help teach local students about the ecosystem. “If we do not educate,” reads the event’s Web site, www.eco-challenge2008.com, “it will be our own demise and destruction of our existence.”
Models join the cause

In pursuit of his mission, Martinez recruited eight models he’s worked with before, ranging from professional sports models to working students. Four of the women are from Portland. All have head shots.

“Over the years, they’ve been, you know, they’re genuine. And, you know, they’re athletic.” He goes on: “Models are like the meat and potatoes, part of the ingredients, you know, to finish the stew.”

Because if ladies were smart like men, they'd realize that boobs are totally HOTTT. And, you know, "look after" them instead of ruining them with icky boobie-killing cancer.

Via Hoyden.

It's been a few days since Salon ran this Since You Asked column about a couple whose kids want to go to a fundamentalist Christian Bible camp, but since I'm a lazy blogger, and you get what you pay for, I'm going to address it now. (In fairness, his advice in today's column, to a woman whose alcoholic ex-boyfriend refuses to move out of her apartment--he says, essentially, that she should get a lawyer and start eviction proceedings against him--is right on.)

Anyway: Last week, a reader wrote Cary with the following dilemma. He and his wife are agnostic former born-again Christians, and his wife's parents are right-wing fundamentalist Baptists. Their kids want to go to Baptist Bible camp (taught by the sister of the letter writer's wife), but neither he nor his wife wants to let them. What, he asks, should they do?

Cary's response: Let them go. I mean, they want to, right?

Let's get out of the realm of Christian fundamentalism for a moment, as it's hard to be objective about it. Let's imagine that your kids really, really wanted to go to French language camp, but you were concerned that they might return with deep suspicions about the contaminating effect of American slang words. Could you handle hearing your kids come back speaking French? Would it freak you out? Would it give you traumatic flashbacks of high school French? Could you respect your kids enough to let them do what they really, really want to do, even if it's something you're not into? Or do you feel more strongly an overweening responsibility to protect them from some harm that might come to them, especially since it's a harm that they, being children, are not capable of foreseeing?

I lean toward letting kids do what they really, really want to do. I have a kind of instinctive faith in kids, in their ability to sort through stuff.

[...] Your kids really want to do something that you really are not into. My mother really disapproved of Disneyland. I don't know why. She disapproved of football and people from Maine and the Army Corps of Engineers. As a kid I had no clue why. I don't know what effect her peculiarities had on me. But I would have preferred that she take a more balanced view of the various recreational activities available to a kid.

Wow, so much bullshit here. First of all, being taught fundamentalist Christian doctrine is in no way comparable to learning French, or going to Disneyland, or playing football. Learning French is a skill that could come in handy (even if the learning itself is in some way unpleasant, or it doesn't take, or you'd rather learn, say, art history); going to Disneyland and playing football are recreational activities. Being indoctrinated in fundamentalist Christianity is neither: It's learning a belief system that's in direct conflict with the beliefs of the parents who are theoretically in charge.

And they are in charge, right? I mean, assuming these kids aren't actually emancipated adults, or older teenagers (none of which is suggested by kids really wanting to go to summer camp), it's the parents' call. Fundamentalist Christianity is a dangerous belief system. It says women and gay people are less than fully human; it supports holding back information and tools for STD prevention from people in developing countries; it would rather see women endure forced pregnancy than provide them tools to keep from getting pregnant in the first place. It is as dangerous, in its way, as every other kind of fundamentalism, including the fundamentalism of other religions (would Cary have been quite so blithe if the kids had wanted to go to a fundamentalist mosque?), racial fundamentalism, and gender-based fundamentalism. Kids may have an intuitive ability to "sort through stuff," but adults have a responsibility to help them--not send them packing off to an institution that goes against every belief they hope to instill.

1) Headline in this morning's Seattle Times: "Judge sentences former stripper in murder plot." Actual story in this morning's Seattle Times: Judge sentences a woman who was apparently a stripper at some point in her life--the story leads with the sex-ay stripper angle, then fails to mention it EVER again--in a murder plot against her fiance.

2) The Washington Post reports that a woman whose husband killed their three children "continued to have sex with her husband, including twice on the day he allegedly talked about killing the children ... because she was frightened of him and was worried that if she didn't, he would 'assume something was wrong' and suspect that she was trying to get a restraining order against him." That this "sex" was quite clearly rape didn't just escape the Washington Post reporter's attention--the judge in the case ruled against her request for a restraining order, in part, because she'd continued to let her husband "have sex" with her.

3) Headline for a story about the latest allegedly scientific dude-affirming sex survey: "Good sexual intercourse lasts minutes, not hours, therapists say." And how do they define sexual intercourse? As the period "from penetration of the vagina by the penis until ejaculation." Good news for dudes who want to get their rocks off; bad news for women who think "sex" should encompass more than just "penetration" and "ejaculation" for him.

What better argument to go vegetarian than a series of half-naked photos of starved-looking vegan hotties, right? At least, I'm assuming that's the thinking behind PETA's "Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door" contest, which stars a series of pretty standard-issue white bimbos (there was a black chick, but she was knocked out in the first round) posing in a series of come-hither porntastic shots like this one:

The winner, you probably won't be too surprised to learn, was a skinny blonde with big tits named Shona, whose interests include dancing, modeling, and "working out." Yeah, no way she has any body-image issues that might lead her to choose a vegan diet regimen!

(Incidentally, are boob implants vegan? Just curious.)

Oh, but I'd be remiss if I didn't note that PETA does throw a bone to the ladies. Meet Chris, this year's Sexiest Male Vegetarian Next Door:

Hmmm... There's something about that photo that's ... different from the others. If only I could put my finger on what it was.

Oh, God help us: There's a new online video game aimed at seven-to-16-year-old girls called "Miss Bimbo." The goal: To win "bimbo points" by getting skinny, slutty, and popular, with the ultimate aim of becoming the "hottest, coolest, most famous bimbo ever!" Step one: Get a cool but not-too-taxing job or find a "sugar daddy" to keep you in "bimbo bucks," which you can use to buy sexy clothes, lingerie, breast implants, or diet pills to keep you at your "target weight"--"waif thin." Players are told to "stop at nothing," even "meds or plastic surgery," to win the game. Along the way, they encounter challenges—like level 7 ("After you broke up with your boyfriend you went on an eating binge! Now it’s time to diet"), level 9 ("Have a nip and tuck operation for a brand new face"), and level 11 ("Bigger is better! Have a breast operation.") The game's creator (a dude) told the Times of London that the game is "tongue in cheek" (because nine-year-olds really get that whole irony thing) and that it teaches girls "morally sound" principles about "the real world." And lest you think this is just an obscure, silly lark by a to get feminists all riled up, consider this: As of this post, Miss Bimbo had more than 225,000 registered players.

Meanwhile, in totally unrelated news, the Tacoma News Tribune reports that parents are finding it hard to find non-"sexy" clothing for their little girls. That means velour pants advertising girls' six-year-old asses as "Juicy"; low-rise jeans for girls too young to have hips to hold them up; shirts in little-girl sizes with slogans like "Knockin' Boots"; and platform heels more appropriate for strippers than elementary students. "“The pants rise on little girl pants are too low to be practical,” one mom is quoted as saying. “Kids run, jump and hang on monkey bars. With these fashions, their bottom is hanging out at recess.”

Hey, Mom? If you're reading this, just be grateful that when I was a preteen, the worst thing you had to worry about was me wanting to wear all black all the time.

As someone with a secret (and rarely indulged) love of food television, I've often rolled my eyes at how male chefs get a pass if they look like this:

Or this:

While, almost without exception (here
are two), women who are "really into food" have to look like this:

Or this:

Or, horribly, this:

Which is to say, the more popular you are, the sexier (and skinnier) you have to be.

That's one reason I'm sad, but not surprised, to see that the coverage of this woman, Food Network host and cookbook author Nigella Lawson:

Has devolved into this:

OUR spies at the Food Network say Nigela Lawson - the sexy British chef famous for batting her eyelashes, jiggling seductively while grating parmesan and licking a spoon the way Tina Turner handled a microphone - has waaaay overeaten. "The result is a butt like a Budweiser horse," sniped one detractor. "Her director is now doing back flips to not show her below the waist, and deflects viewer vision by focusing on her cleavage/tongue/eyes more than ever." A Food Network rep denied any changes had been made in the way the show is taped and said no new episodes had been taped since October.

Just as women apparently can't be funny unless they're also hot (and white), it seems you can't talk about food if you look like you've ever actually eaten any.

Over on Oprah's web site, you'll meet Patti Novak, professional matchmaker and uppity-woman-shamer, who shares her tips for "getting past the first date" and on to true love.

Visit Patti on Oprah's web site, where you'll learn not to judge him on his looks (but for God's sake be sure to look your best!); don't correct your date when he says things wrong (that's being "competitive"--a no no!) and, most important, make him feel "like a man." In Patti parlance, that means letting him pick the restaurant and open the pickle jar. Seriously.

Allison's take-charge attitude is what Patti calls the pickle jar effect. "We are so successful today, women. We're fabulous. We work hard. We make good money. We parent. Sometimes what happens when we spend a lot of time alone, we forget to let them open the damn pickle jar," Patti says.

"The one thing I don't think is ever going to change on this planet is men still need to feel like men," she says. "So let them open it."

So how does a woman ask a man to do something without compromising herself? Patti says that if he's not in the room, go ahead and open your own pickle jar. But if he's standing there, Patti says it's just as easy to ask him to open it.

You know what else is "just as easy" as asking him to do things for you? Finding out whether he's the kind of insecure douche who won't go on a second date because you're capable of doing opening a damn pickle jar yourself.

The headline: "Housework Gets You Laid"!

The substance: A new study shows that the typical American dad "has gradually been getting better about picking himself up off the sofa and pitching in, according to a new report in which a psychologist suggests the payoff for doing more chores could be more sex."

Because sex is currency, y'know? I mean, no one's going to argue that having to do all the chores is going to "put her in the mood," as one of the sex experts cited in this story puts it. But neither is a lazy schlub who grudgingly does a little more of the housework so he can get "paid" in sex, because, you know, the ladies don't like to give it up for free.

The report's co-authors, sociologists Scott Coltrane of the University of California, Riverside and Oriel Sullivan of Ben Gurion University, said they were addressing a perception that women's gains in the workplace were not being matched by gains at home.

"The typical punch line of many news stories has been that even though women are working longer hours on the job and cutting back their own housework, men are not picking up the slack," Coltrane and Sullivan wrote.

They said this perception was based on unrealistic expectations and underestimated the degree of change "going on behind the scenes" since the 1960s. The change, they said, "is too great a break from the past to be dismissed as a slow and grudging evolution."

"Unrealistic" by whose standard? Behind what scenes? My feeling is, if you're doing most of the work, you sure as hell know it.

You have to go to the Seattle P-I's version of the story to get the actual statistics, which show, not surprisingly, that a "slow and grudging evolution" is exactly what's going on. The study shows that dads who work outside the home contribute a grand total of 16 hours a week to child care other family work, including housework, compared to ten hours a week in the 1970s. However, women's time doing such work increased, too--from 26 to 30 hours, an increase of 15 percent. While men did triple the amount of time they spend on child care (from two to six hours a week), so did women--from four to 11 hours a week. And women still spend twice as much time as men, total, doing "women's work."

So yes, it's great that we're lurching toward gender parity. But before we go patting guys on the back (or, in the parlance of the AP story, "rewarding" them with sex) for "powerfully and irreversibly changing the rules of the game" we ought to look at who's still doing most of the drudge work in American families.

"Brazen Careerist" Penelope Trunk--last seen advising working gals to learn to live with sexual harassment and advising fatties who want to keep their jobs (including recently pregnant fatties) to lose some weight--got unceremoniously dropped from her job at Yahoo! Finance a few months back; her boss suggested, in her words, that she she put it, "write for Lifestyles. That is more women oriented." But Trunk didn't go gently into that good ladyghetto -- instead, she started a blog, where she dispenses BRAZEN! advice, like: "Get a husband. If you want to make sure you’re making babies with your own healthy eggs, think of your twenties as the time to find a mate." And: Try hard to be funny, even though "most funny women are gay"! And: The true test of power is how confidently you can stand behind a man! ("Sorry, feminists, we're moving on") And, this one courtesy of the Boston Globe: "Take that career drive and direct it toward mating"! (I imagine she'd find a kindred spirit in Lori Gottleib, whose argument for "settling" came down, basically, to "chicks need men more than men need them.") Way to show we don't need feminism anymore, ladies!

(And yes, I KNOW this is uncharitable, but it's more than a little ironic that a woman who proselytized about how women should do most of the work, including staying at home (aka "opting out") to keep their marriages together, is--like nearly half of married American couples--getting a divorce.