None of the polling or the focus groups indicate that people are … (snubbing) her because she is a woman but because of a deficit in how she is projecting leadership.
…says Reuters.
So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.
…says Gloria Steinam in today’s NYT.
The central issue in this election is the crisis of leadership. Voters are reacting against partisan gridlock. Obama and McCain both offer ways to end this gridlock. Obama wants us to rise above it by rediscovering our commonalities. McCain hopes smash it with fierce honesty and independent action.
…says Dave Brooks in the same.
Obama is going to win in New Hampshire today, is going to win the nomination in Denver, and the White House (along with VP Richardson). Quotations one and three speak to this, but what hasn’t been addressed to my satisfaction is the extent to which Obama has managed to control the predominant question of the campaign. That Clinton has been speaking incessently of change in the past four days, that Romney attacks McCain’s insiderism using the vocabulary of change, all are reminders of the extent to which Obama has already won.
Game, for the most part, over.
More troubling to me is Steinam’s question. Her point that gender is essentialized, that is treated as something inherent to a person’s existence (with all the included baggage). That is to say; you are a boy, therefore you must be tough, stoic, successful, better at sports, etc.
Summarizing it thus trivializes the point. The influence of enforced identity on an individual is as evasive as it is insidious. Categries such as race and gender are culturally relevant, but also reductive and dangerous.
So which is worse: race or gender? Growing up in a small Ohio town hardly made me an expert on the former, and this in no small part influenced my opinion that gender was embedded further in race than vice versa. Working my job for the last 19 months has made me question this. When I look at the most stuck, the most problematic of my students, many are black and (of course) female. In many ways it seems to me that the black, the ghetto, family ruin, and societal muck is the worse fate.
But in the end I really don’t know. My brain locks up after much thought on the subject. Thoughts welcome.
Bedrock & Paradox 
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