“Warren is hardly the only woman professor to be diminished or overlooked on the political stage lately. Remember psychology professor Dr. Christine Blasey Ford? She of the impeccable, detailed testimony against Brett Kavanaugh? On the witness stand, Blasey Ford was learned — drawing from her professional understanding of the brain and memory to describe Kavanaugh’s alleged assault on her years ago. She spoke like the professor she was and in return she got … ridicule and death threats. Think of Trump impeachment witnesses Marie Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill who, while not technically professors, evinced great scholarly expertise in their remarks before Congress, only to be mocked, their testimony largely ignored.
Or think of the many women professors who regularly appear on even liberal TV political stations, such as MSNBC, who are virtually always addressed casually by their first names — as Maya (Professor Wiley), Joyce (Professor Vance), or Mimi (Professor Rocah). Male on-camera professors, on the other hand, receive exaggerated deference. Who has ever dared call Professor Tribe “Laurence” or Professor Dershowitz “Alan?” It’s almost unthinkable. But why?
Because the archetype of the learned man looms large in our cultural imagination as an authority figure deserving of respect. But a learned woman remains an aberration, an unnatural creature to be diminished and implicitly sent back to the appropriate realm for women: the care and education of children. And with its connotation of prudish virginity, “schoolmarm” reminds us that women are still defined by their relationship to men. A schoolmarmish woman has no obvious sexual “owner,” no husband to confer the status of wife or mother. (By contrast, consider the wives and girlfriends of Trumpworld and their endless parade of mute, hypersexualized adornment. They are the anti-schoolmarms.) Unadorned and “unattractive,” the schoolmarm is deemed unworthy. This is the only archetype we seem to have for the woman intellectual.”
Author: Dallas Taylor
Dallas Taylor is the grandson of a rum-runner, a valedictorian, a handyman, and a good Catholic girl. He lives and writes in Port Angeles, WA, and builds things for a living in his spare time.
Why Blue No Matter Who
Copy/pasted from FB:
If it turns out to be Biden — as disappointed as many of us would be — or if turns out to be Sanders—as disappointed as many of us would be, please remember:
1. You’re not just voting for President.
2. You’re voting for who replaces RBG on the Supreme Court.
3. You’re voting for the next Secretary of Education.
4. You’re voting for federal judges.
5. You’re voting for the rule of law.
6. You’re voting for saving national parks.
7. You’re voting for letting kids out of cages.
8. You’re voting for clean air and clean water.
9. You’re voting for scientists to be allowed to speak about climate change and for rebuilding the CDC.
10. You’re voting for what a President says and does on Twitter.
11. You’re voting for housing rights.
12. You’re voting for LGBTQ people to be treated with dignity.
13. You’re voting for non-Christians to be able to adopt and to feel like full citizens.
14. You’re voting for Dreamers.
15. You’re voting so that there will be Social Security and Medicare when you retire.
16. You’re voting for veterans to get the care they deserve.
17. You’re voting for rural hospitals.
18. You’re voting so that you or someone else can have health insurance.
19. You’re voting for the preservation of PBS.
20. You’re voting to have a President who doesn’t embarrass this country every time she or he attends an international meeting.
21. And you’re voting against allowing the USA to become yet another authoritarian regime.
22. You’re voting for sensible gun laws.
23. You’re voting for climate action, that is, for a habitable planet.
24. You’re voting for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and many more organizations that make our lives more artistic, healthier, and more knowledgeable.
25. You’re voting to rebuild the Department of State, for ambassadors in every nation with whom we have diplomatic relations.
26. You’re voting for compassionate immigration policies.
27. You’re voting truth and facts and against misinformation and propaganda.
28. You’re voting for food stamps, school
meals, Meals on Wheels, Medicaid, and other programs that help the most vulnerable among us eat and receive healthcare.29. You’re voting to help people with overwhelming student debt and to make public education affordable.
30. You’re voting against white supremacy.
31. You’re voting for our alliances, for national and global security.
32. You’re voting for reproductive rights.
33. You’re voting for investments in infrastructure and green technologies.
No Democrat is perfect.
Your first AND second choices may have dropped out. Your third might. But the nominee, no matter who he is, won’t be perfect. They won’t pass your purity test. And yet every single one of them will be better than four more years of Trump!!!
I’ve Thought This Myself, but Here’s a WoC Explaining Why African-Americans Prefer Joe Biden
“Let me explain something to you about Joe Biden and why some of the shit that he’s done in his past doesn’t matter. This old rich white man played second fiddle to a black man. Not just any black man, but a younger black man, a smart black man. Not just for a day. Not 1, not 2 but eight years.
He took his cues from this black man who had more power than him and was virtually unknown when he took the presidency, and Joe Biden had been around forever. He was willing and proud to be his wing man. Not once did he try to undermine him, this black man. Instead Joe walked in lockstep with him, he respected him, he loved and trusted him. He was led by him and he learned from him. And Joe did not have a problem with it.
You tell me what 40+ year “establishment” white politician has ever done that. Joe Biden is cut from a different cloth. And black folks understand that and for good reason. He has shown it. This is what showing up and being an ally looks like. When black people say they know Joe, this is how we know.”
– Laurie Goff”
Opinion | I Am Burning With Fury and Grief Over Elizabeth Warren. And I Am Not Alone. – The New York Times
“Consider every moment, since the dawn of woman, when a female aspired but to no avail. She asked to attend school but was denied. She raised her hand but wasn’t called on. She applied but wasn’t hired. She enlisted but wasn’t deployed. She created but wasn’t credited. She ran but wasn’t elected.
Imagine the sadness and frustration of every such instance as a spark, their combined energy the size of many suns. That is the measure of grief and fury I felt rise inside me as I watched Elizabeth Warren’s bid for the Democratic nomination wane.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/opinion/elizabeth-warren-women-president.html
Amanda Marcotte is Right: We didn’t deserve Elizabeth Warren | Salon.com
“If Warren was a man, this would be over by now,” is a statement so painfully true that it became a cliché the moment it was first uttered. And yet it somehow failed to capture the scope of the unfairness that greeted Warren on the campaign trail — the way she was held to impossibly high standards, met them, and still saw male competitors who met much lower standards keep scaling past her in the polls.
[…]
Americans apparently couldn’t see that she is a once-in-a-generation talent and reward her for it with the presidency. That is a shameful blight on us. She wrecked Bloomberg in the debate and, in the process, may well have spared us from seeing a presidential election purchased by a billionaire. We responded as we so often do for women who go above the call of duty: We thanked her for her service and promoted less qualified men above her.
This feels personal to women, and it should. The same forces that pushed Warren out of the race — such as asking her to do the work of figuring out how to finance Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan, and then criticizing her for it while he skated by on generalities — offer a microcosm of how we treat women generally, and the reasons why women work so hard both at home and on the job yet make less money.”
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