Yes, no other presidential candidate could have done this better than Obama, but, still, women handed the vote to this guy and he still doesn’t get it.
Here is a statement after which I stopped reading Obama’s State of the Union address:
We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence.
Hopeless. This is just hopeless. The guy just goes and excludes the key constituency that put him in the bloody office from the “we” in whose name he is speaking. He simply told every single woman in the country that he doesn’t represent us. He represents our husbands and fathers who might or might not decide whether we should be discriminated.
Now please concentrate and tell me how this is so much better than Romney’s infamous 47% speech? Do you see a difference? Other than Romney not owing any election to the 47% he dismissed as not being his constituency.
And what’s with the endless pounding on women as purely relational beings whose only role is to be somebody’s wife, mother, or daughter? What about women who are not anybody’s wife, mother, or daughter? Do they deserve to become victims of domestic violence and workplace discrimination?
What do we hear from the progressives on this subject, though? Well, Melissa McEwan protested. Others are lost in La-La Land, dreaming about all of the executive orders Obama is about to issue, as if these dreams had any relation to reality.
What if Bush Jr. had given a speech saying that “We need our Latino gardeners, drivers and maids to live their lives free from discrimination”?
Clarissa's Blog 
He takes women for granted.
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Patriarchy is simply a reflex to him
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And he is not working to educate himself!
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Maybe we should ask Michelle about it…
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no…sorry….his wife. We can’t refer to her as Michelle! 😉
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He doesn’t care since he won the elections and he can’t be the President for the third time. He can do pretty much anything he wants now.
By the way if a woman isn’t somebody’s daughter it usually means she has a much harder life (accumulated wealth and other stuff like that).
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“He can do pretty much anything he wants now.”
– He was making the exact kind of comments since the 1st day of his 1st campaign.
“By the way if a woman isn’t somebody’s daughter it usually means she has a much harder life (accumulated wealth and other stuff like that).”
– Not if her parents died and left her a fortune. 🙂 Not if her parents would have been financial leeches, taking away everything she makes. Not if her parents were gamblers or compulsive shoppers while they were alive.
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Anyone who ever thought he was ‘pro woman’ was deluding themselves or not paying attention. I thought it was horribly obvious from the winter of 2008.
But if someone wants to believe enough then nothing will shake their faith.
As sometimes happens, I’m reminded of Brecht. I can somehow just imagine Obama humming this when he thinks of his female constituents.
“We all make the bed we must lie in,
and tuck ourselves into it too.
And if somebody kicks, that will be me, dear,
and if someone gets kicked that will be you.”
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Yes, that’s exactly what it is. People want to believe, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
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Nothing new. From a post dated Dec. 8, 2011
“It should no longer come as a surprise that the president of the United States is, on perhaps an unconscious level, an old-school patriarch. What’s startling is the degree to which Obama seems not to have learned from any of his past gaffes, how no one seems to have told him – or told him in a way that he’s absorbed – that the best way to address a question of women’s health and rights is probably not by making it about his role as a father.
This might be an especially valuable chat to have with the president as he moves into 2012 and toward an election in which he is going to be relying on the support of people he has just managed to anger, offend and speak down to — women. The least he could do is learn to address them with respect.”
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/08/obamas_phony_paternalism/
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It’s also another failure of identity politics: “He’s ‘black’, therefore he understands the needs of the oppressed,” is metaphysics and false. A lot of non-white people are aspirational. If you take a look at Zimbabwe, American Christianity and quasi-colonial attitudes are seen to mark one’s social ascendance. You can be ‘oppressed’ and also very conservative, especially if there are aspects of yourself you’d rather not own.
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““He’s ‘black’, therefore he understands the needs of the oppressed,” is metaphysics and false.”
– Nobody is suggesting this. All I’m saying is that a politician should speak to his constituency. And in the last election, Obama lost with men from every single demographic group except black men who mostly don’t vote anyway. He is simply being stupid in not speaking to the only people who are likely to keep his party in power. The Congress elections are coming up. Doesn’t he want to work with a Democratic Congress for a change?
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What I was trying to say is that the reason people turn a blind eye to what is really being said is because they believe in metaphysical dynamics, that is: “He is one of the oppressed, so he will do what is necessary for us, as a matter of course.”
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“people turn a blind eye to what is really being said is because they believe in metaphysical dynamics, that is: “He is one of the oppressed, so he will do what is necessary for us, as a matter of course.””
– As I always say, idiots abound.
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bounding idiots.
If we can get rid of metaphysical premises, we can start to make strides, but not otherwise. There are no identities that are permanently oppressed, none that are pure BECAUSE they are oppressed, and oppression does not automatically lead to insight.
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“A lot of non-white people are aspirational.”
Yes.
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It doesn’t even make any sense. How does the economy being stronger do anything for women in the realms of discrimination and domestic violence? In the 80s the economy was supposedly going gangbusters (not for me though), and women were being urged to embrace the “traditional” wife-mother-housewife role by all the propaganda. A big manufactured worry was that women weren’t being “feminine” enough, Laura Ashley flower prints and chintz-covered furniture were in vogue, pink was everywhere, Princess Di was held up as a heroine… As for domestic violence, I don’t know the statistics so I don’t know if it went up or down, but I’m guessing up, as the “stronger” economy of the 80s was paired with a push towards increased consumption, which led to a rise in status-anxiety paired to how much stuff you owned, and in any case any society that encourages giving into your material desires like that isn’t one that upholds self-discipline in other areas.
True story: Back in 1983 or so I went to a party a coworker had at her house and when I walked in the first thing I saw was an entire wall she had dedicated to Princess Diana memorabilia. Plates, mugs, dolls… it was creepy. And every woman who had blond hair or who could dye their hair blond had the “Princess Di” cut. Brr!
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“It doesn’t even make any sense. How does the economy being stronger do anything for women in the realms of discrimination and domestic violence?”
– I didn’t even look at the meaning of what he was saying because I was so hung up on the wording. But you are right, it is a very strange statement. It’s as if he said that it only made sense not to abuse women if it was good for the economy. Otherwise, let’s just stomp on the stupid bitches.
Gosh, this statement is even worse than I thought!
” Back in 1983 or so I went to a party a coworker had at her house and when I walked in the first thing I saw was an entire wall she had dedicated to Princess Diana memorabilia. Plates, mugs, dolls… it was creepy.”
– Scary shit.
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