Posted on 11/04/2007 10:17:36 AM PST by vietvet67
After jeers from her Democratic rivals and many commentators, Hillary Rodham Clinton has backed off her suggestion last week that her opponents were ganging up on her because she is a woman.
But the debate is still churning in feminist circles, where some women's activists said she had every right to invoke sexism and gender stereotypes as a defense on the campaign trail — and predicted that this tactic will prove effective against fellow Democrats and against a Republican, if she is the general election nominee.
“It goes beyond logic — it’s a gut response,” Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said of the spectacle of Clinton onstage confronting seven male rivals and two male moderators at a debate in Philadelphia on Wednesday night.
Smeal, who has endorsed Clinton, compared the debate scene to the congressional grilling of Anita Hill when she challenged Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination in 1991.
“Every woman — it was just so visceral — that panel was all male,” Smeal recalled. “It didn’t matter almost what was being said. It [was] a visceral gut reaction, and I think that’s what you’re seeing here again.”
Clinton’s campaign this week accused rivals of engaging in “the politics of piling on” after they roundly criticized her evasive and confusing answers at the Philadelphia event about whether illegal immigrants should be eligible for driver’s licenses.
The next day, Clinton called the political world a “boys’ club,” and a union chief endorsed her with the observation that the debate had been “six guys against Hillary.”
“They are being very, very strategic” by playing to sympathies that virtually every woman in a male-dominated professional world can relate to, feminist writer Naomi Wolf said of the Clinton campaign. At the same time, she said, “They are yielding to gender stereotypes.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The "I'm a minority and people pick on me because of it" defense only indicates a weakness, no matter who uses it.
And yes, I am a woman.
Can the beast’s gender be stereotyped?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The aptly named Eleanor Smeal.
I guess the MSM’s definition of a “strong woman” is one who rides her husband’s coattails and whines like a crybaby.
Real women vote Republican
That’s why I hate feminism.
It turns women into whiners.
Are these the same feminists who gave Bubba unlimited free gropes and a couple of free rapes?
Hillary is a WINO - a Woman In Name Only.
Will Russia, China, Iran and North Korea back off when she tells them, “Don’t be mean, I’m just a girl?”
I hate feminism for many, many, many, manymanymany reasons. : )
Hillary is a WINO - a Woman In Name Only....
yeah...but she is still a lesbo!!!!
Everything feminists do and say is beyond logic. Inherently irrational beings.
Exactly! Feminists complain about women being stereotyped as irrational, emotional, and bitchy by being irrational, emotional, and bitchy.
and the Breck Girl Edwards,
and the hard hitting conservative moderator:
Tim (the liberal) Russert?
Pooooooor Hillary, how dare they gang up on little "girl" Hillary.
Why a "lady" should be treated with deference, put on a pedestal..
Margaret Thatcher would have outdebated all those clowns and Tim Russert too.
Fifth-rater Hildebeast can only complain and whine about all the unfair meanies.
The Islamists certainly won’t back off because she’s a woman.
“Wait, we can’t attack the U. S. Their President is a woman. What were we thinking?”
Sheesh.
First, it has to be determined.
If she can’t stand the heat from the wimps the Democrats lined up against her, how do you think she’ll handle pressure from all of the men who are world leaders?
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