This has always been our battles
Phil Molé did a Facebook note about this video clip in which Tim Gunn complains about the clothes Hillary Clinton wears and says she’s “confused about her gender.” The clip is a stupid annoying piece of sexist crap.
A woman commented on Phil’s note (Phil’s FB notes are actually articles; I’ve published some of them here; people tell him he should collect them in a book, and they’re right) and said “It has nothing to do with her being a woman.” Seriously. HC is confused about her gender, but it has nothing to do with her being a woman.
She also said “Sheesh. Pick your battles or you’ll be pissed at the whole world. This is an absolutely pathetic reach for sexism.”
“Pick your battles” – but this is our battles. This has always been our battles. Second wave feminism has always been about stereotypes and putdowns and language and mental habits. Always. We do pick our battles, and these are it. We have met the enemy and they are us.
I can think of few things more obnoxious than a gay man pouring scorn on someone for being “confused about their gender.” Oh, well, maybe stupid obtuse people complaining about those of us pointing out how awful that is.
I swear to God I’m so tempted to smash walls lately.
I couldn’t count the number of times one of my female students has begun a discussion sentence with “I’m not a feminist, but…” What has our culture done to these women to make them feel that being a feminist is something to be ashamed of?
Josh, you and me both.
Stu, a million things, drip drip drip over the years. [smashes wall]
Somehow, some people find sexism acceptable if it comes from a gay man. It’s all part of the stereotyping: gays are supposed to be experts on fashion, women should be “properly dressed”. What a giant load of crap.
Darn right it’s always been our battles. How soon people forget!
I guess I should be glad that a 30-something American friend who does indeed class herself as a feminist told me a couple of months ago*had never heard of Phyllis Schlafly*. That is, I hope it means we’re making progress. But still, there’s that thing about remembering the past lest you have to repeat it…
If anybody else is in the same boat: Schlafly used to travel the country speaking to large groups in public auditoriums saying that women should stay home and keep quiet.
She famously said she started every talk by thanking her husband for permission to be there, which she explicitly said she did because it made feminists so mad. But as many interviews showed, she didn’t have the neurons to handle hypothetical questions, and no matter how many times people asked her whether she would stay home if her husband (or her sons, I recall them having some kind of say in this as well) told her to, she just answered that they didn’t tell her to stay home. Next question?
Yep, this has always been our battles.
What… I don’t even…
This particularly rankles because (a) Tim Gunn has carefully crafted a public image of intelligence and grace, and apparently he feels that overt sexist jerkishness does no harm to that, and (b) “confused about her gender” is precisely the sort of insult that is lobbed at gay men and lesbians (cf “mannish”). Homophobia and sexism are two sides of the world’s thinnest coin.
Apparently this is not the first time that Tim Gunn has had something to say about Hillary Clinton’s supposed gender confusion as proven by her boxy pantsuits: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/19/tim-gunn-hillary-clinton-_n_87408.html
The man is tasteless.
It does feel like we are going backwards sometimes, doesn’t it? Thank you for keeping the conversation alive.
Cam – it doesn’t surprise me all that much because I saw 3 or 4 episodes of some show (I forget its name) where he rescued a woman (one per episode) from fashion hell. I watched them precisely because he’s so lovable, but there was a lot of “be a real woman!” stuff so I gave it up pretty quickly.
Still. This was worse – and then to underline it by saying “No, I’m serious” – as if HC were breaking some genuine rule by not dressing to please him.
“And another thing!” *shakes fist*
We’ve spent so much time in the last twenty-odd years trying to build a real LGBT coalition despite entrenched biphobia and transphobia in much of the gay and lesbian community. To see a prominent gay man using “gender confusion” as an insult makes me want to spit hot nails.
I have trans friends, and I’ve seen some of them go through periods of emotional tumult over that, and it… I… Really, at this point I’m reduced to angry hissing. Perhaps it’s time to take a walk.
Melody, it does. [smashes another wall]
Yeah. I’ve been “confused about my gender” my whole life, and I’ve always liked it that way, and Tim Gunn should be on my side, dammit!
Ah, yes. I well remember that. But, never fear. One of her sons has created Conservapedia, which is an endless source of amusement.
One of her sons has created Conservapedia, which is an endless source of amusement.
I think PZ insists that it be spelled Conservapædia. Just to rattle their cage a bit, and avoid spam.
Is that a direct quote? (no facebook account. or at least no account I’m willing to dig up.)
How does that even make sense?
julian: Well, it got your attention, right? ;-) (Also no fb.)
Oh and sorry about the bad formatting on my quote just above.
More than 140 years after this issue was first a battleground and the issue is still considered debatable.
Infuriating.
Yes it’s a direct quote. It makes absolutely no sense, as Phil promptly pointed out.
What year is it?…checks calendar – OK, its 2011, not 1961. Which I guess is why there is an openly gay man in the mainstream media – but he’s saying WHAT???
I have been very fortunate (as an engineer) to have had many years of employment in a profession that is, for the most part tolerant of “gender-inappropriate” clothing. (This is especially lucky for me, as I have no fashion sense to speak of.) As noted above, it often seems to be the women who are taking other women to task – I was recently astonished to read a comment on an internal online forum by an admin assistant who talked about how disturbing it was for her to look at other women who didn’t “keep themselves up”.
It definitely feels like going backwards. When I was a teen, I had a minor epiphany while watching raver-guys at the loveparade run around in skirts (not kilts; not sarongs; standard found-in-the girls-section skirts), that no one blinked at me or my female teachers, or any other woman run around in pants, but men couldn’t wear skirts. I thought to myself “well, now that my teachers’ generation has fought and won the fight for the right of women to wear pants, I guess it’s my generation’s job to do the same for men’s rights to wear skirts”
I guess I was wrong, and we’re back to fighting for women’s right to be pant-wearing women *sigh*
My understanding is that it is in general good fashion sense for an older woman not to show her legs, just as an older man should not leave his shirt untucked. In properly cut clothes (like Clinton’s always are), this means that any lumps or odd shapes can be covered by neat, professional tailored trousers. Of course, a woman of her shape could easily wear an A-line skirt, but the problem with that is that one finishes up looking like an extra in Little House on the Prairie, which Clinton may resent, hence the rather conservative pantsuits.
On gay men: in my experience, there is a broad strap of misogyny in the gay community, something not helped by the exaggerated admiration of many gays for classical Athens, one of the most misogynistic societies on earth before the rise of Christianity and Islam (the latter were worse, but only marginally).
As my Roman law tutor pointed out, the Romans gave gays as many rights as did the Athenians, adding gay marriage to the mix (which the Christians later banned on pain of death for the contracting partners) but reserved the right of Roman women to laugh at the men in particular, which they did, loud and often.
This was borne of the assertion by Greek theatre producers that women could not play the parts of women in plays, because they were ‘too close’ to the feminine to appreciate its essence. The Roman response (where women played female roles) was a very typical tu quoque, and an invitation for Greek men to play women’s roles before a Roman audience. They were booed off the stage under a hail of rotten eggs and rotten fruit, by both men and women, which settled that particular dispute until the rise of the commedia in the medieval period, where in Europe, women played women’s roles, but in England, the women’s parts were played by boys.
Very often, gays and women are not natural allies; it is something that has to be worked at.
scepticlawyer, I was not presuming that gays and women should always be natural allies, what disturbed me was Gunn’s reification of “gender-appropriate” dress.
As for actors, the current production of Richard III in Stratford (Ontario, Canada) features a woman (Seana MkKenna) playing Richard (http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Entertainment/20110531/seana-mckenna-stratford-shakespeare-festival-110531/)
The video clip reminded me of the saying: “big people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about other people.”
FWIW, this actually represents a step forward… for Hilary, at least. Considering the truly vicious smears aimed at her in the past, having her pantsuits critiqued by a “Mr. Blackwell” clone probably doesn’t even register on her radar.
While we ought to have the right to wear skirts, and have long hair-dos, I personally have no desire to wear a skirt. And yes, I know this is not a comment with a point.
This next part has a point. We still live in a culture where back in college (2001?02?) I had to make a choice: cut my shoulder-blade length hair, or have a significantly decreased chance of finding a job. It’s still a culture where employee dress codes often have significantly different requirements for men and women. Thus, I’m not surprised by Gunn’s comments. It seems like more of the same.
#6
You misspelled Möbius strip.
Lady Gaga apparently said about the Tim Gunn clip: “You know, I think Hillary Clinton has more things to worry about than her hemline.” No kidding.
Then there’s also what kind of pictures the media chooses to use of her, as illustrated here
And even more egregiously, here
The true secret to hunting beneficial in skirts is discovering the proper kind to go well with your entire body form,good thank you very much.