Category: Gender

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Apple Pie &

Crisp air and pommes-picking season. Time to make Apple Carol.

The New York Times takes on motherhood as its latest silo. Grouping people into labels. Gender, race, economic class, education, DNA.

Amy Coney Barrett has a multi-cultural ménage. Kamala Harris came to step-motherhood late in life. So what?  Each has a unique experience and took different paths to great career success.

Let’s evaluate everyone on their own merits and rejoice in the many factors which they’ve been lucky enough to be born with and/or have had to overcome to get there.

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Entrenched Tropes

Here we go again. If you criticize a woman you are sexist. If you question a person of color’s statements, you are racist. Valerie Jarrett says you cannot talk about a woman’s appearance. What?

Hillary’s jellybean-colored suits were silly. Trump’s hair and skin tone are fair game. Of course. Everyone notices what someone looks like. Protecting women and/or persons of color is both sexist and racist.

What if Kamala Harris runs against Nikki Haley in 2024? No one will be allowed to say anything.

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Boxes Ticked

Woman. Check. Not white. Check. Knew Beau. Check. Younger than 70. Check. Okay. If as Joey3Sticks says. It doesn’t matter more than the crab grass growing on his lawn, then fine.

Kamala Harris. Jamaican father who left when she was a girl. Indian mother who raised her and her sister as a single mom. And yet. It’s historic because she’s the first … ?? Anchors are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to characterize her color without mentioning her Asian heritage. It’s actually kinda funny.

So. Anyway. She ran her campaign into the ground early on. But. Hey. Now she’ll get to run the country. Maybe. Game on.

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Ms. Veep

Maureen Dowd writes about Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman Vice Presidential nominee with Walter Mondale in 1984. How she was called a bitch and worse. And that Biden’s choice will likely be subjected to similar treatment because she will be a woman.

The truth is that Biden himself has set up whomever he chooses to be called a token pick when he announced that his primary criterion was gender. Rather than saying he’d want the best person to be able to run the country on day one. And then naming a woman.

Of the women on Biden’s “list”,  only Susan Rice has the gravitas to take the lead if necessary. As illustrated in this The Atlantic  piece, as Obama’s NSA, she even anticipated and planned for a global pandemic.

Yet. Rice is saddled with baggage of the Clintons and her experience as a Washington establishment insider. It’s a trade-off, but Biden is too weak to run with anyone else.

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She’s Baaack

Hillary never seems to leave the stage. She had dinner with Mike Bloomberg a couple months ago in NYC, and now the leak is that he’s considering her for VEEP.  No!  But. Maybe he’s taking a page from Trump’s troll playbook. When people start criticizing him for past women or criminal justice issues, throw out a crazy shiny object to distract the press. It works. Plus. Hillary’s a woman.

If Mike really does choose the old baggage as his running mate, though. He’s dead to me.

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Turned World

So. In today’s world. The hottest events are gender-reveal parties. Balloons. Skywriting. Cakes. And. Public marriage proposal surprises at stadiums or on live television. Where a man still gives a woman a ring. And she gushes with glee. Okay. Yay.

In this same world. Gender is no longer allowed to be a thing. He and she have become they and we. And. The logical extension of that is crossover into women’s sports. Where brawn is key.

Get it? You tell me.

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Toxic Feminism

Trigger warning. Bill Maher had an enlightening discussion with Christina Hoff Sommers on Real Time. She’s written that feminism has become a toxic brew of misandry and women’s self-victimization as cowering snowflakes afraid to be in mixed society.

#MeToo’s backlash an offshoot of such thinking. It is rare that Sommers can speak on college campuses any more. As a contemporary from the ’70’s, we were part of a wave of feminists who wanted equality. That has morphed into a crazy man-hating cult.

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Voice Male

Sexism Alert? It shouldn’t be a gender thing. But. Maybe it is. Bottom line. Bad voices attract us to people or can be off-putting. Why does Kamala Harris sound like a pedantic lecturer with a courtroom cadence. Elizabeth Warren a hyper-breathless school marm. Kirsten Gillibrand yelling in a small room. Do we react differently to women’s voices. Or. Are they just different. Rarely in a good way.

Okay. Bernie’s accent is annoying. And. Biden um’s and ah’s. So.

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Toxic Misandry Alert!

Gillette Ad takes Toxic Misandry to new lows. When did men become bad? Those I know and have known are wonderful people. Bad behavior comes in many forms. It is not a gender.

Kirsten Gillibrand on becoming the newest Presidential candidate for 2020 – “The notion that all women are the same and that women should be judged on anything other than their own merit is just offensive and wrong.” Okay. I like that statement!

So. Maybe that’s why there is a NYC Women’s March on Saturday. And a competing protesting NYC Women’s Rally on Saturday. Yeesh.