Mistrust, hatred based on gender and woman fear is driving a lot of the "I just don't like her" stuff the press keeps reporting about Hillary Clinton. We shouldn't be surprised. Woman hatred has roots stretching back to the beginning of the Judeo Christian religious tradition; and even today many evangelical faiths treat women as servants. "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." says Genesis.
So isn't it a bit naive to think a woman with smarts, committment and nerve who has mounted the most serious challenge by a female politician for the White House in American history won't be victim to some misognystic push back? Of course it is.
The real question is how to respond. Because, as with most things in life, that push back offers immense possibilities. If we just label it for what it is. Then all the irrational "I just don't like her" and "I just don't trust her" and "She's just a scheming, manipulator" can be seen for what it is: plain, ole ugly and irrational woman hatred. So let's start saying so. And start saying loud and clear that those who assert this crapola, as if it is rational and reasoned, are engaging in misogyny or hate-mongering based on gender.
Jack Kennedy who faced a similar sort of irrational hatred connected to his catholic faith delivered a speech on September 12, 1960, to the greater Houston Ministerial Association in which he said, "But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me--but what kind of America I believe in.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
Unfortunately, nearly all that JFK warned about in this speech has come to pass since Bush. And religious zealots who would turn back the clock on women's rights and who would turn this country into a theocracy rather than a democracy--to which they swear no allegiance-- have been ascendant.
But Kennedy did a full tilt boogie with the hate and the prejudice. And in my opinion Hillary would do well to do the same. Of course if she gets the nomination the jackasses of the right will step up their hateful slash and burn sort of techniques. We will hear about her "cackle" ad nauseam. [Cackle is related to witch is related to woman-hating--get it?]
Of course,like Kennedy who had no desire to see his campaign for President reduced to a referendum on the Catholic church, Hillary cannot let her campaign become derailed by a referendum on the place of women. But to some extent that issue is unavoidable, and it must be addressed. She is actually doing it brilliantly right now. But I think the subject of woman hating has to be addressed Directly for what it is. And all those voters who are on the fence, who can't quite decide, just might move to Hillary if the anti-female backlash against her is exposed for what it is. Hillary's voting record speaks for itself. And when voters meet her and see her the little whisper that women are 'bad' drivers and make 'poor' soldiers and cannot be expected to behave rationally fades into nothingness, a vapor left over from the hatred of another era.