Wednesday Morning
6/2/08 08:46![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsI'm a feminist. I'm old enough to remember--and have experienced--the sort of casual "isn't she cute/isn't she strident" discrimination that the women who came before wrestled with all the time. It's fascinating to watch a film from the 30s, 40s or 50s with my kids: they pick up immediately on the subtexts that whizzed right by me when I was their age: the "isn't she cute, trying to be a lawyer like the boys" attitude aimed at Katharine Hepburn in Adam's Rib (as well as the damning portraits of her client and the victim as the dreary, tawdry housewife and the dreary, tawdry kept woman). The "isn't she brash, trying to be a reporter like the boys, and what she really wants is a good man" attitude aimed at Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. I was once told by a prospective employer that I should polish up my typing because being a secretary is a good job for a woman--which it is, if that's the job you want.
Part of me wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton yesterday just on accounta. Being president is a good job for a woman--if it's the job she wants (me, I wouldn't go near it with a ten foot pole. As my younger daughter said, you have to lie and deal with creepy people too much). But I didn't. I voted for Obama. This kind of sums up why. I didn't see this until after I cast my vote, but it made me feel good that I had.
Clinton took California, although not by much. So I guess I kind of had my cake and consumed it, both. The truth is that I'll be happy with either one (I would have been very happy--maybe even happiest, with John Edwards, but that is no longer an option). If anyone had told me, when I was a new voter, that I'd be in the position of voting for a woman or an African American in the same presidential primary, I would have thought that was utopian SF. Happy to be proved wrong.
Part of me wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton yesterday just on accounta. Being president is a good job for a woman--if it's the job she wants (me, I wouldn't go near it with a ten foot pole. As my younger daughter said, you have to lie and deal with creepy people too much). But I didn't. I voted for Obama. This kind of sums up why. I didn't see this until after I cast my vote, but it made me feel good that I had.
Clinton took California, although not by much. So I guess I kind of had my cake and consumed it, both. The truth is that I'll be happy with either one (I would have been very happy--maybe even happiest, with John Edwards, but that is no longer an option). If anyone had told me, when I was a new voter, that I'd be in the position of voting for a woman or an African American in the same presidential primary, I would have thought that was utopian SF. Happy to be proved wrong.