Is that a bridge in your stimulus package, or are you just happy to see me

When I was studying women's history at UCLA, we used to talk a lot about how things could be gendered, sort of like Romance languages.  For example, In Italian you add an "a" to a feminine noun and an "o" to a male noun.  English does not have specifically gendered nouns, but it does have implicit ones.  Truck, for example, is implicitly gendered male.  So is construction worker, mass transit, freeway, investment bank, financial institution, commercial real estate, prison, infrastructure. It's not just that men predominate in the professions suggested by these words, it's that these word imply the kinds of power and control that we associate with definitions of masculinity.  

Of course, there are also implicitly gendered female words, like healthcare, library, elementary school teacher, arts institution, universal preschool.  Again, it's not just that many women work in fields suggested by these words.  These words themselves are engendered with female connotations about caregiving, service, collaboration and -- let's face it -- lack of profit.  

Now, I'm not an economist, but I know a gendered stimulus package when I see one, and it seems to me that, as the stimulus package is shaping up, it is becoming more and more male.  I'm all for safe roads and earthquake retrofitting, and apparently so are most policymakers.  These are the easy things to get people to agree to fund.  But just this morning I heard that family planning has been stripped from the stimulus package.  Yesterday, NPR did a report on how Republicans don't want to use stimulus money to support arts organizations, even though arts organizations provide jobs and make revenues that are often pumped directly back into local economies.  

It troubles me.  I worry that the privileging of institutions engendered male will weaken the already suspect cultural authority of institutions engendered female.  And I worry that that same privileging will hurt women because the fields in which they often predominate will be seen as unworthy of protection.  And, of course, when you hurt women you hurt children and families, and you even hurt men.  When even our institutions suggest to men that their work is the most worthy of protection, that their livelihoods are the most sacred to our society, we instill in men the kind of patriarchal thinking that can only lead to psychic damage and really bad things.  

On KPCC's Talk of the City, Patt Morrison spoke yesterday of the triggers of familicide.  This very uncommon yet horrific crime is almost entirely perpetrated by men deluded to believe that their success is so important to the family that the entire family would be better off dead than stuck with the humiliation of an inadequate male provider.  How scary is that?

Thus, as this nation tackles with this recession -- another 60,000 jobs lost just two ago -- and as it tries to negotiate its way out of this worrisome place, I can only hope that our representatives will hear the immortal words of Abigail Adams and, please, "Remember the ladies."  And not just the ladies, by their words.  

Misogyny: It's Not Just for Republicans Anymore

Anti-McCain Bumper Sticker seen while walking dog: Old Fart + Bimbo: Our Country Can do Better.  

To the writer of this pithy little statement I'd like to say "Yes!  It can!"  And it can start by getting rid of the word Bimbo.

For the record, let me state that I am not a fan of Sarah Palin.  I do not believe she is qualified to be our Vice President.  I do believe she is anti-feminist, anti-family and anti-environment.  I also believe she has confused the search for a political voice with the search for celebrity, and that, as her refusal to quiet hate-mongering Republican supporters from advocating violence against Obama suggests, she lacks both  a sense of moral responsibility and a love of the democratic pluralism that this country was founded on. 

But let me say this, as a feminist, I am unnerved by the cavalier, almost giddy misogyny expressed by opponents of Palin.  Granted, Obama supporters and people on the left were not the first to cloak Palin in misogynistic terms.  Much has been made of the fact that Palin was called "Sarah the Barracuda" in high school.  Indeed, in a rather impressively subversive act for such rigidly hegemonic organization, the Republican National Committee has adopted Heart's 1980s hit song "Barracuda" as Palin's theme song.  But subvert its intention all they try, to call a woman a Barracuda is not a compliment.  It has long been a demeaning insult to women of power and women who reject -- even temporarily -- a more feminine (which is to say more deferential) gender identity.

Barracuda slides easily into the other b-word: Bitch, another word applied to women who challenge traditional gender roles.  A quick Google search of "Palin Bitch" revealed over three and a half million links, and it doesn't take more than thirty seconds to reveal that most of those links are to people who hate Palin with visceral intensity and who use this all too common label to position her, ironically enough, in exactly the same way people on the right positioned Hillary Clinton when she seemed the likely victor in the Democratic primary.  She's a bitch.  She's mean.  She's loud.  She's strident.  She smiles too much.  She's fake.  She frowns too much.  She's evil.  She uses people.  She doesn't really care; she's power hungry.  Anybody remember how Hillary got pillaried when she talked about her "livelong" experience duck hunting?  She was a joke to people on the right.  Just like moose-hunting Palin is a joke to people on the left.

Attacking the femininity of powerful women who step outside the confines of traditional womanhood is one tried and true way of denigrating women; accusing them of loose sexual standards is another.  Which brings us back our first b-word: bimbo.  Palin a bimbo?  Really? I'm not seeing it.  But over 400 thousand people on Google are.  Bill Maher has called Palin a Bimbo. Obviously, there are those bumber stickers I mentioned, and -- good news if this is what excites you -- there are also PALIN BIMBO T-shirts.  (Again, just Google it.)

How progressive are progressives?  When was the last time Joe Biden stopped a crowd from calling a Palin a bitch or a bimbo?  When was the last time anybody told him he should?  How can we expect democrats to respect gender equality -- to demand gender equality -- when they are happy to let their own base degrade female opponents in the most traditionally misogynistic terms available?  That bumber sticker was right about one thing: Our country can do better.