I'm sick of your insane demands.

There's no question that Hillary's gender was used against her by the media (I find Chris Matthews a new kind of disturbing now), but I didn't see it used against her by the Obama campaign.

It seems unfair to say that Obama's race, and name, weren't used against him just as heavily. We did spend the last month watching an angry black preacher yelling at America and Obama explaining himself over and over again.

I think a first female president is right around the corner, with a number of candidates that come to mind. (I'd love to see Kathleen Sebelius run.) I was always disappointed at the number of people in exit polling who stated their preference for Hillary because of who her husband is. I'd prefer our first female president win without a way for the blowhards to say he husband had a lot to do with it.

Thank you so much for this post. You put a lot of work into it and I appreciate it a lot.

Aside from Sen. Clinton herself, you are the only person in the universe that has repeatedly convinced me to remain in her camp despite massive Obamabot pressure. I'm not exaggerating.

P.S. I almost caught a glimpse of her today as she went into the fancy dinner fundraiser in my little town, but the cavalcade was soooo late and I couldn't wait any longer. Bah. At least I finally got a sign to proudly display in my window.

Thank you.

I will, if it comes down to it, vote for Obama in the general election (unless it is a complete blow-out one way or the other in my state, in which case I tend to vote for a third party). However, I will never excuse certain elements of the media for the way they've conducted themselves in this election. To see it all layed out here hurts me very deeply.

As for Obama's campaign: silence is complicity. Furthermore, treating your opponent, whose credentials are as good or better than yours, as some sort of socialite wife because her husband is famous, is insulting to every career woman who has a successful husband.

A-fucking-men! Thank you for this post.

I was directed here from Shakesville. I'm an undecided voter who is leaning towards Obama (b/c of Clinton's use of right-wing framed Rev. Wright nonsense), but I would like to thank you so much for this post. It articulates so much as to why I am still undecided.

Thank you for writing this post. Thank you so much. I've never been a Clinton or Obama supporter, but I'll be damned if this whole race hasn't made me a Hillary sympathizer. Every hit she took for being a woman hit me, too.

Thank you.

As it happens, I *am* a mother of young daughters (age 10 and 6), and it has been hard for me to talk with them about what's going on -- with the older one, mostly, since she's more aware. I have come to believe I will do them no great service by dishing up the standard crap -- excuse me, "teaching moments" -- about how you win some, you lose some and really, a woman can be anything she wants to be, even President.

Instead, I've been telling them that I believe women can do anything, but a lot of people don't agree. Doesn't mean they're right, but they get in the way and slow things down. And it's going to take a lot of hard work -- the rest of my life, and the rest of theirs -- to put women on anything approaching equal footing. Especially when their so-called friends are turning a blind eye when the chips are down.

Re: the voting booth in November: I was thinking this morning that I'm no longer so much a Democrat as I am a "not-Republican." Which means, I suppose, that I'll put the checkmark in the box for Obama in November. Although ... if I read too much more online speechifying about how I Owe My Vote To Teh Party, I might not be able to bring myself to do that, either. Who said there's freebies in politics? Kool-Aid doesn't stop being Kool-Aid just because progressives are pushing it.

I hate to do it, but I think I can top the "mother" stories! I have a quite intelligent 9 year-old daughter whose DH father I divorced quite some time ago. While she was visiting him last, he told her that he "doesn't want a girl president"...NO FUCKING WAY a Dad would say this to his daughter, you say?? YES FUCKING WAY! I asked her how that made her feel?? WTF was he thinking? I was married to the DH all through the Clinton years, while he was listening to Rush and G. Gordon spew their venom, so I already knew his take on Hillary, but it still blew me away that he would say this to our daughter...Thankfully, she at least told me about it, so that hopefully I could use it as a teachable moment, and possibly undo some of the damage, but in my state (of idiots) Obama doesn't stand much chance either. The last 2 elections have show people don't want "smart" for President - and when "smart" comes attached to a vagina?? Fuck, the whole world will surely go to hell...

Thank you for posting this. I have been thinking the same thing.

I read the" Imagine scenario" earlier this week and shared it with my husband. He's not a DH, thank goodness!

About the Obama campaign using sexism. Just a couple weeks ago, while speaking to a group of his "cool" supporters, he gave Hillary Clinton the bird and used the jerk-off motion to put her down for challenging him. He said she had thrown the kitchen sink, the china and he was expecting the buffet next. That's why I thought the Clinton ad that came out the next day using the quote, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen", was such a perfect, in your face, response. Now, that all seemed very sexist and misogynistic to me and I do not want a President who is so blatantly disrespectful and contemptuous of a woman. There have been other subtle and not so subtle instances of sexist behavior or language on Obama's part throughout this campaign. Especially, whenever he was in defensive mode. And, as was noted in a previous post, the silence on the part of him and his campaign to the unrelenting sexism and misogyny in the media, is condoning it.

I am not going to reward such overt sexism and misogyny with my vote. I will not support or vote for Obama if he is the nominee, nor will I vote for John McCain. Beyond that, I'm going to keep supporting my candidate of choice and see what happens next.

Wow, the work you put into this is remarkable! I think every woman I know is gonna have to read this. It's amazingly enlightening.

And scary.

And true.

You are one righteously fierce feminist.

THANK YOU for putting yourself out there; I know it can't be easy. It's so worth it, though. And necessary.

I couldn't agree more.

Put the shoe on the other foot, and imagine growing up in a country that's never had a male president. It's just a coincidence that it's never happened yet, and doesn't look like it will this time, either. But children, listen, males can be president, too!

he gave Hillary Clinton the bird and used the jerk-off motion to put her down for challenging him
I'm sorry but did not happen.

" if I read too much more online speechifying about how I Owe My Vote To Teh Party, I might not be able to bring myself to do that, "

That's one way to think about it.

Another way is thinking how many coathanger abortions you want to be responsible for if McCain appoints people like Scalia or Alito to the Supreme Court.

Or, worse, if he appoints David Addington or John Yoo.

If you're thinking about not voting or throwing your vote away by voting for a third party, then you're not considering the full extent of the damage a GOP presidency would cause.

As annoyed as you might be with the primary process, and the fact that your preferred candidate is likely to come in second, the cold fact is that no party but the Democratic party has a snowball's chance of beating the GOP, so a vote for any other party might as well be a vote for the GOP.

If nothing else consoles you, consider that Hillary would be far more effective as a Senator with a Democratic president than with a veto-happy septuagenarian greedhead in the oval office.

You like her policies? Then vote Dem, so she'll have some chance of enacting them from the Senate.

Unlike most of your readers, I actually went through every single link you put in there. Only 3 of them refer to anything said by Obama or his campaign, a few more by supporters not associated with the campaign. Most of them are examples of the media encouraging more bloodletting in the Primary because it was good for their ratings. The remainder came from the GOP, before they started ignoring her and going after Obama.

If I wanted to dredge the depths of RedState and StormFront, I could come up with things as bad as your examples, or worse. Don't get me started on the media's "objective" reporting on rumors of Obama being a Muslim, or their obsession with Reverend Wright (which turned out to mean absolutely nothing in terms of actual votes). Would it be fair to assign Hillary and her supporters the blame for those?

You say her record was distorted, I say her record is inconveniently inconsistant with her campaign rhetoric. Unfavorable and distorted interpretations of the record are par for the course. This ain't beanbag.

The justification for the "kitchen sink" strategy, going negative on Obama, was that the GOP would be hitting him just as hard. Can you honestly say that Obama, or even his supporters, went after Hillary with anywhere *near* the energy or lack of regard for truth that the GOP would have shown her in November? Nothing on Whitewater, nothing on Bill's indiscretions, no whisper campaigns about Vince Foster.

It's been a hard fought primary, and feelings got hurt on both side, grudges could be nursed. But there are larger issues at stake.

I'm confused.

There is a lot of anger in this post, and in pro-Hillary Clinton sites in general, directed at Barack Obama and his supporters because of misogyny directed at Clinton.

Yet, I clicked on the first 20 or so examples provided here and found they almost all came from either Republicans or Republican-friendly media gasbags like Chris Matthews and Chris Hitchens, the sole exception being that Randi Rhodes comment and the piece in Vanity Fair, which doesn't call Hillary "frigid" but does point out that many people see her as that (which is unfortunate but undeniably true). Oh, and I don't know who came up with that stupid Hillary Clinton nutcracker.

These are all things to be angry about, but why channel that anger against Barack Obama or people who voted for him?

I see some Hillary supporters say they will vote for John McCain because there has been such anti-woman feeling directed against Hillary. Really? This John McCain? This John McCain?

Again, I don't get it.

APoxOnBoth,
I agree totally with your sentiments.

And LOL at silence equaling complicity. Taking part in the niggerizing and fanatical Islamizing of Obama is complicity.

When did Hillary even come to Obama's defense? When she was on 60 Minutes saying "As far as I know?" when she was asked of Obama's faith? Or when she said last week that Obama can't win over "White Americans and hardworking Americans"? Or when a member of her campaign said that Obama should be careful about revealing his teenaged drug use because the right-wing would spin his revelation into something about him being a drug dealer? She also shows great camaraderie for her fellow senator by not addressing mAnn Coulter for her racist and anti-Islamic rhetoric that suggests that Obama is a Muslim terrorist. Why hasn't Billary denounced Coulter's endorsement of her? I mean, she and Russert demanded that Obama denounce Farrakhan yet Coulter fell below her radar when she asserted that Jews needed to be perfected. Billary's camaraderie is much to be admired.

Instigation and piggy-backing equals complicity.

I have to say you put an amazing amount of work into this post, and I agree that it's disheartening to see the gender bias that has come out of this campaign. But I don't want to pick my next president based on who I feel sorry for. And I deeply resent people implying (or in some cases flat out saying) that I should vote for Clinton just because I'm a woman.

Clinton and her camp messed up. It seemed like they expected an easy victory and when Obama proved a more formidable opponent than they thought, nobody in her campaign knew how to handle it. Yes, Obama is likable. Yes, he gives eloquent, moving speeches. Yes, he inspires people. Clinton didn't, in my opinion, step up her game sufficiently to come out looking better against him.

While it can't be denied that she suffered gender based attacks, most of them didn't come from Obama or those working for him. A lot of the racist attacks and implications against him came from her or her people. Maybe he should have stood up for her against media biases. But when has she extended him that same courtesy? When has she checked her own people?

I do feel she's been treated harshly. But just because she's experienced bias doesn't necessarily make her the better candidate.

Good article.

I absolutely agree that her gender is being used against her by the media and other politicians; yes, including Barack Obama and his campaign.

It just goes to show how progressive Obama really is on issues that matter. He's focused so much on one thing that he's blind to everything else.

Preach, it sister! When will people finally see that upper-class American white women are the most oppressed group in the whole world? We deserve to have one of our own elected to the presidency no matter what her voting record may be! And if that doesn't happen, we are perfectly justified in voting for the old, angry misogynist white guy.

As an Obama supporter who will nevertheless gladly stamp the Democratic ticket this November, I agree that sexism (against Hillary Clinton and other female candidates) is one of America's most ignored forms of discrimination--not worse than others, just more hiding heads in the sand. Foolish stereotyping based on gender casts a blight on people's quality of life whether at work, at school at home or out in the community--from the boardroom to the bedroom to the street.

Racism, homophobia, religious bigotry, class prejudice and other social dividing lines that exploit power differences are siblings to sexism. Each and all of these social problem children must be confronted and made to back down by people and movements that embrace equity and openness. Fighting discrimination of all types is a permanent need in society--breaking the will of social forces that act as bullies.

Correction to Previous Post:

On my previous post, I wrote:

"As an Obama supporter who will nevertheless gladly stamp the Democratic ticket this November, I agree..."

Before fellow posters start asking questions, I admit that I left out an obvious piece of that comment, namely that I will:

"..gladly stamp the Democratic ticket this November should Clinton get the nomination."

My bad with regards to leaving that out. Oh well, it's 12:30 in the morning here in Houston.

(I knew what you meant, Progressive.)

I am so disheartened and sickened by the seeming invisibility of the misogyny and sexism in this campaign season that I don't even know what to think anymore.

It's not Obama himself who is the greatest offender, by any shot. He has taken some subtle, cheap shots at Clinton (and I disagree that he did NOT flip the bird at her; every third grader knows the trick he used), but that's politics.

What galls me is that so many of his male supporters who comment on "progressive" blogs feel entitled to say the most horrible things about women. Do these particular supporters believe that's what Obama is about? Do they feel safe in their misogyny because they think their candidate would approve? Or do they just know they will never, ever be called out on it by anyone but angry feminazis and tired old dried up bitchez with an axe to grind?

If Obama had addressed this issue at all, he would have had my vote in the Virginia primary. I didn't see it as "poor Hillary" when I voted for her; I saw it as, "Wow, this man really has no idea of the crap women face on a daily basis, and he is absolutely uninterested in finding out what's going on with 51% of our population."

Hillary Clinton should speak out against racism. She should not have said her "hard working white people" comment. Oddly, she doesn't even particularly speak out against sexism, though she is our latest visible target of same.

I don't know how to vote for a man who does not care about women and our issue. Why do I "owe" him my vote because ZOMG McSame is so much worse! "Worse" in whose definition? Not necessarily mine. So far, all the presidents have been the same in one respect: men advancing the male agenda, on the backs and at the expense of women.

P.S. If Hillary Clinton had shown her ugly willingness to use race to divide the voters earlier on, I would have just stayed home from the primary. Neither of them are any damn good on these issues, in my opinion.

I see you have a whole passel of the Obama400 visiting here. I can only hope that a few of them will end up having their eyes opened.

lectric lady: So anybody who supports Obama in blog-o-space is now a paid shill? Seems like a convenient excuse to ignoring any contrary opinions.

Politics is ugly. Maybe one of the candidates pissed you off because you suspect they may not be genuinely nice people in person or because they seem insufficently concerned with a particular issue that is important to you. That's par for the course. But whoever is elected will probably get to appoint some Supreme Court justices. So I feel pretty comfortable criticizing the "I could never vote for Obama" faction of Hillary supporters as being petty and self-defeating. The Supreme Court is one appointee away from overturning Roe v Wade.

On issues, I probably would've voted for Kucinich or Edwards, even though I don't personally like either of those guys. Obama is closer to the center, but still slightly left of Hillary, so he's my next choice. Hillary is super smart and competent, but kind of an uninspiring public speaker, and politically Clinton Democrats are way too centrist for my tastes. They're practically Leiberman Democrats as far as I can tell -- Republican in all but name. Not quite as toxic for the country as the current crop of robber-barons, but certainly not "progressive" by a long stretch.

Hillary's vote to authorize the Iraq war and more recent votes on Iran are not just window-dressing to me: A lot of people died and continue to die in this war and if Hillary is anywhere near as smart as I think she is, she must have known while she was voting for it that the case for going into Iraq was weak. Which means she voted for it, in all probability, to pander to popular sentiment of the moment. And I understand that this is what career politicians must do in order to get elected, but that doesn't make it okay as far as I'm concerned.

I think her support for the war is a real, substantive difference between her and Obama -- and maybe he would've pandered and voted for it too given the opportunity, but he didn't and so therefore is not carrying that baggage--and raises questions that she has never satisfactorily answered. I realize it's not as important an issue as Sweetiegate, but if you stop to think about it, a lot of the Iraqis killed by our invasion were probably women. So maybe, just maybe, it might be worth thinking about.

ERica...don't get on the bandwagon.

Change your registration and join millions of woman in the US by not voting for Obama. Not voting for McCain but either a write in or blank

Join us.

Keesha, Obama said in Dreams of My Father that he was baptized in 1988. The IHT quotes him here.

Thanks for this Erica. You said it all. How did anyone get lulled into thinking it ought to be a POST-feminist era?

MaddieFL by not voting for a democrat u are obviously voting against Roe vs Wade. I duly accept that there is sexism very visible in the media and ofcourse we should work hard on that front as much as we have done on racism. Please reconsider your decision on writing in.

Overt sexism is more socially accepted than overt racism. Racism is underground, where it can be particularly pernicious. Both intersect and are part of the same phenomenon--discrimination and marginalization of people. With Hillary Clinton, malicious fools cut her down on blogs for clearly sexist reasons. With Barack Obama, conservative commentators create whispering campaigns (and louder ones) to make him seem un-American for being a biracial black man with international roots.

Both phenomena are shameful and part of a corrupt conservative mentality that seeks to hold down those who would fight for openness and equality in society.

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"So anybody who supports Obama in blog-o-space is now a paid shill? Seems like a convenient excuse to ignoring any contrary opinions.

Politics is ugly. Maybe one of the candidates pissed you off because you suspect they may not be genuinely nice people in person or because they seem insufficently concerned with a particular issue that is important to you. That's par for the course."

Criminy!
Who do you think you are talking to with this patronizing, dismissive, everybody does it crap?
No presidential candidtae has ever been subjected to this level of rampant bigotry. Never! Worse yet, when bigotry was expressed, people objected, the press objected, the opposition candidate objected, but not this time.
We will suffer for this mainstreaming of sexist bigotry for years to come.

"Insufficiently concerned with a particular issue"?
You are obviously a member of the half of the population that is NOT being demonized on a daily basis simply for being a female. No reason why you should give a shit.

Anonymous(brave name, by the way.): Ah, so now everybody who disagrees with you is a paid shill and a patronizing dude who just doesn't understand. Interesting how you could tell this purely from the point of view being expressed.

No presidential candidate has ever been subjected to this level of rampant bigotry. Never!

Really? That's covering a lot of ground, historically speaking. I'm thinking back to some of the rhetoric from Lincoln's election race...

I'll certainly concede that Hillary was at the receiving end of a lot of criticism, both fair and unfair (like every candidate) and that yes, in addition to that she was the target of a lot of fully out-of-bounds misogyny that had nothing to do with her political positions or qualifications. I agree that it was ugly but I think the campaign has been ugly on all sides and every presidential campaign I've ever seen has been ugly, a trend seems to be accelerating. I'm not sure why she would be exempt from unfair attacks.

Who do I think I'm talking to? You, I guess. Sorry for coming off patronizing. But if you're one of those people who think that opting out of the voting process or casting a protest vote is going to help your cause or women in general, then I'll keep right on saying it: You're being naive if you think that. Ask a Naderite how that strategy worked out for them. Being right is easy when you don't intend to win.

As for my criminal "not giving a shit" : How about that war? The one Hillary voted for? Am I allowed to give a shit about that? Do you?

He may have been silent, but he never suggested assasination like she did. I will never forgive her for that. In any case maybe he was silent because he feels, and rightly so, that a woman can fight her own battles.