Linknado: Clinton and Women's Uncredited Work

A reaction to There's a Strong Feminist Case for Hillary Clinton, on Al Jazeera, with accompanying linknado.

"Women have not climbed the ranks as far as we should have or as far as we seem to think, and women’s work is routinely ignored, derided, underappreciated and rendered invisible."

And that is exactly what people are doing in this election: treating Clinton as if she is inexperienced, conveniently omitting the work that she's done so that she won't get credit for it, attacking people who think that she earned things with her work, accusing her of being owned by Wall Street while ignoring the evidence against that.

But a male candidate who is less qualified, has done far less work, who didn't have such major disadvantages to overcome, and quite frankly, has accomplished very little in his 25 years in Congress outside of stating opinions that I usually agree with? Well, he's a thinker and think of all the things that a thinker can do! Doers are for wimps! Besides, Clinton is responsible for the things that her husband and Sanders did (for which Sanders gets a pass) and "what has she done for me lately?"

Quite a lot, actually, but the tone of this primary has been set by the Internet Anti-Feminist Harassment and Paranoia Brigade, who put out daily calls for blogs on issues, bombard the internet with misleading posts that obscure her qualifications, harass Clinton supporters, set up standards that are "mysteriously" so specific that they can only apply to her, celebrate Sanders for doing what they fault Clinton for, refuse to correct themselves when they turn out to have been wrong, and basically do everything they can to ensure that no one will ever give her credit for her work. I know because I occasionally google reddit for the calls to action on the topic of the day, to find out which group "needs to be silenced."

But a year ago, I don't think any Democrats would have asked "what has Clinton done for me lately?" A year ago, we were celebrating her Congressional eyerolls, and back in 2012 posting Texts from Hillary. People were so proud of her for being bulletproof during the Benghazi and email harassment campaigns, standing her ground, not giving up, giving them hell and being nice about it, and all with a dash of side-eye. 

Now, liberals are furious about the email scandal and lie to justify it. Now, liberals say that she has less foreign policy experience than Sanders, even though foreign policy was her actual job for four years. Clinton increased the amount that she talks about class issues, saying exactly what she said before, and people credit Sanders with forcing her to change her position. She can't even get credit for changing herself.

Did she change? Did we change? Or is this just the same old sexist BS in which women cannot be seen as having earned anything with our work?

Sadly, that last one was a rhetorical question because yes, it is. When it's been targeted at you for decades, it becomes pretty easy to spot. Those superdelegates? She earned them with decades of her work, which makes her "The Establishment." She somehow gets no credit for her work and faulted for earning something with that work in the same breath. It's magical to watch. Horrifyingly magical.

So what has Sanders done for me ever, besides show me that he can't treat a female opponent with basic civility? He's taken a lot of positions that I like but he couldn't convince others to go along with him. He talks the talk, often reluctantly, and he gets credit for that even though he doesn't walk the walk. Meanwhile, Clinton has been working hard, eagerly, passionately, diligently, and we won't even give her credit for talking the talk that she backs by walking the walk, which she has done for her entire career. 

Instead, we omit that she walks the walk, then call the talk "lies" because she doesn't walk the walk. And because women are liars.

Instead, we say that people who say she walks the walk are bribed and we treat those (typically black and/or female) people as untrustworthy chattel instead of the thinking, informed human beings that they obviously are, ignoring that we are referencing historical ownership of people as a reason that people from "property" demographics should be discredited. 

Then we loudly celebrate our fight for that group's equality! Talk about lip service.

Then we call for Congressional term limits that would have removed Sanders from office years ago, in the name of the Sanders Crusade to Fight The Establishment, which includes equal rights organizations and the Democratic Congressional candidates that we need to elect so that any President can get things done.

There's more than one Establishment, and Sanders actively supports the one that benefits white dudes above all others. That Establishment harms me every day. The tone of this fight harms me every day. Every day, I am reminded that people will lie about me, insult me, ignore my work, question my qualifications, doubt my expertise, harass me, justify those things with snide references to my genitalia, and "explain" that they do so to on my behalf. 

Every day, I state my opinion on the issues and people respond about vaginas. Every day, I am reminded that no matter how smart I am, how capable I am, how hardworking I am, or how much I accomplish, in the end, the only thing that matters is my gender. And that only matters because "sit down and shut up." Every day, everything about me is reduced to "vagina."

Every day, I fight The Establishment and The Establishment is us.

Misogyny & Misogynoir: Sanders Supporters, You Might Be Soaking in It

I've had 3 articles in my feed yesterday written by black people who are appalled that any black person could support Hillary Clinton-- appalled, terrified, and shocked at this totally unexplainable thing!

• Every one of them went on to list the reasons why it's appalling and every one of them faulted Clinton for the birther movement, which was started by a Clinton supporter and was investigated as a means to attack Clinton, finding zero evidence that she had something to do with it. This is not even factual, yet every article that I read mentioned this as obviously Clinton's doing.
• Every one of them avoided mentioning any reason that a black person might support Clinton. They did not even cite reasons that the author then countered with information or arguments that they though disproved or diminished the reason.
• Every one of them avoided discussion of other candidates, conveniently avoiding discussion of their race-issue merits or problems. Literally, no other candidate was even mentioned, even though obviously, some people support Clinton because they find her better by comparison.
• Some of them assumed that any black person who supported Clinton did so out of ignorance, so an article had to be written to "inform" those people. People who support Clinton couldn't simply have different priorities based on their own experiences in the world, their own problems, or their own ideas.
• Every one of them exposed that the author had not actually spoken to any black Clinton supporters, who in this case are specifically black female Clinton supporters.
• Oh, right, and every one of them was written by a black man.

Sigh.

Wait for it.

There were none of these in my feed prior to noon on Thursday. None were posted by black people. All were posted white (or passing) male staunch Sanders supporters.

Let's circle back to the Bernie Bros issue for just a second. 

Last week, someone at a major news outlet posted an article about Bernie Bros. The same day, there was a bunch of talk on Reddit that "this Bernie Bro myth must be stopped" because "SJWs are just lying again." The next day, at least 6 articles went out claiming that the media was lying about the existence of Bernie Bros, because [insert sexist trope about women] and a bunch of my white male Sanders supporting friends posted them, I assume without realizing how inherently sexist the entire premise was, because these are pretty feminist dudes. 

[Hint: if women complain about sexism and your disagreement falls into the following list, you fail: those people are ignorant of the facts; those people are lying; those people are exaggerating; those people can't tell discrimination from assholery/trolling; those people don't actually exist; those people are just being emotional; those people are so irrational; those people are incapable of thought; those people just can't be taken seriously.]

Not one of those authors tracked down a woman who claimed that she'd experienced misogynist harassment or attack by Sanders supporters; they simply declared the whole thing a pro-Clinton media conspiracy. (I'd posted about my experience with the issue a few days prior, which apparently makes my Facebook posts the pro-Clinton mainstream media even though I'm not pro-Clinton.) All but one article said the same stuff; the other one said Amanda Marcotte can't do maths (women, amirite?), which didn't address the point of the post but supposedly proved that Bernie Bros don't exist (and was written in October, making it totally relevant last week).

Also, the basic premise of all of the arguments was "I haven't seen it, thus it doesn't exist," which among other things is claiming to prove a negative. (I plan to write about the other things because on a cognitive science level, that's some bullshit, right there. Like, it's going to take me pages to unpack that level of bullshit in an understandable post.)

Translation: women said that Sanders supporters were being sexist and harassing women, but no one can trust women, so we flooded the internet with articles and supporters to claim as a mob that all of those women are liars. Proof of no misogyny or harassment, everyone! Wooooo!

And then the coin toss.

This week, we had some coin tosses and brand new pro-Clinton conspiracy based on developing news that was reported to Reddit and then rereported by a bunch of bloggers who didn't bother to check to see if Sanders had won any coin tosses. (He won at least half and it would have made no difference anyway. Let's all freak out because someone said something that agrees with my bias and thus is totally factual!) How often did I see posts from Sanders supporters correcting this non-factual claim after it became apparent that it wasn't true? 0% of the time!

Now back to black people supporting Clinton.

Wednesday, 170 black female leaders endorsed Clinton as a coalition and of course, the news hit reddit. The reddit reports in general channels were downvoted so that they didn't display on the site. In under 8 hours, several new anti-Clinton posts were posted to reddit about how appalling it is to the black authors that any black person would vote for Clinton, based on pretty much identical talking points. In another 8 hours, white dudes started posting them to my feed. Several posted as proof that I'm lying when I say that there are black women who support Clinton, because obviously, some dude on the internet pissed off that a black woman supports Clinton is proof that black women don't support Clinton, duh! 

"No black woman would support Clinton." (Literal thing that was said to me yesterday by a white guy in response to me saying that some black women support Clinton, followed by a link to an article by a black guy about how appalling it is that any black person would consider voting for Clinton.) Thanks for explaining to me that those black female Clinton supporters that I'd talked to earlier in the day literally don't exist because a guy is pissed off that they exist!

There are a couple of things to take away from this:

1. Women say that they support Clinton or are harassed by Sanders supporters and reddit goes on the attack to "prove them wrong" by being sexist and harassing them.
2. No one actually asks these women why they say that before articles are posted about how [insert sexist tropes] people are who say that.
3. None of them present any reason that these women should support Sanders instead. They only insult Clinton and (female) Clinton supporters.
4. And all of them contain false, well-debunked information and completely illogical rhetoric that pretends to be logic-- as proof that other people are ignorant or irrational.

Now, I know I'm just a white lady and this is an issue where race and gender intersect, so I might be off about what this makes me feel. I hope that black women will chime in on this to give their take on this issue. That said, this series of events makes me want to yell the same thing at all of the men posting all of these anti-Clinton these articles intended to attack female Clinton supporters through misogyny, misogynoir, or just cluelessness, which is this:

Instead of insulting women for our opinions using sexist tropes, listen to us and find out why these are our opinions. And if you do that and still disagree, state your opinions about our opinions in a respectful, fact-filled way that denotes that these are opinions on which we are allowed to disagree-- without relying on implied or stated sexist tropes.

If you want women to switch from supporting Clinton to supporting Sanders, the way to accomplish that is to address our concerns in a respectful way, not have 100 people yell at us that we are ignorant, irrational, emotional wimps based on your ignorance of our actual views. I you want Sanders to win, your goal is to convince women to support him instead of Clinton.

FFS people, women are allowed to have opinions no matter how much they are hated by people who don't actually know what those opinions are. Shoot, we're even allowed to have opinions hated by people who know what those opinions are. It's ok for us to have different opinions.

I do get that an issue comes up and people want to respond to it and they will do so according to their biases-- and they will do so all at once. And I get that there will be posts on candidate support forums about "today's issues," which will result both in multiple blog posts and multiple posts on Facebook. That is the nature of the beast. If you pay enough attention to the trends in issue coverage on Facebook, you can track "argument of the day" issues, in which a ton of people state something that they read someone else state, usually using the same wording and no quotation marks. I find it interesting to watch these patterns.

But I do not get this process by which a bunch of women state an opinion and men call us names, harass us, and use sexist tropes to "prove" that our opinions are "factually wrong" (cause that's a thing), supposedly as a way to convince women to support the candidate whose supporters are being sexist at us and harassing us. It's hard to miss the stated intention to pile on, followed by piled on but identical blog posts, followed by piled on but identical Facebook posts with links.

Seriously, guys, what the fuck is this about?

Oh right, women could never realize what's going on because we're not clever enough. And men totally, naturally understand everything that's happening in this process despite not asking any fucking women or bothering to wonder if these articles are based on sexist tropes.

I swear, I'm about to start whipping out my IQ test results. Because my other option is sitting down and shutting up, which is not particularly uppity and I am decidedly uppity. I admit, even I am getting tempted to just shut up because I shouldn't be subjected to this level of bullshit from people who have my opinion but don't listen to it before they start "correcting" it. I have women friends who have simply disengaged from the internet because they can't take the sexist pile-ons.

And that's the real goal here, guys. The goal is to harass female dissenters into silence. The goal is to apply online silencing techniques to a real world election, as though online silencing is going to keep women away from the polls. That goal will not get Sanders into office.

Do you want to be one of the harassers, even if only unintentionally through cluelessness? And do you want your candidate to win or not?