Tina Fey, Hillary, and the b-word....

In a way, women have had the same problem as any other minority. The people who had been in charge, (and considered being in charge their right) become intimidated when another group aspired to their positions. It is a lot easier to dismiss a woman as a 'bitch" than to realize that maybe she got the job that you wanted because she was better qualified.

Hillary has been the first female contender in history to aspire to the presidency. Forty years ago, even the idea of a woman president would have been dismissed out of hand. No more. And THAT is threatening to men.

Point is, women in power are not that rare any longer, I don't buy into the
just-because-she-is-a-woman-they-call-her-a-bitch to discredit her, Hillary is not very likable, or as the Latinos would say - sympatico, and
she does very little to polish up her personal image.

Bitch" is a pejorative that is pretty much equeal to the word "a$$shole" that would be used for a male.

I feel, that most women think along these lines too: it's okay for a
woman to call another woman a bitch, but it becomes sexist when men
do it, thus Tina Fey's usage of the word.

You seem to be arguing against the people who say "yeah she's a bitch and that's good," then, Phoenix. You're saying that it's never OK to call a woman a bitch?

Roxxxanne, jeez, any chance of you taking it down a notch?

Are you being a bitch, in your own estimation? Is that a good thing, and if so, why?

What is the "feminist" meaning of "bitch"? Is it ironic or not?

Hillary has had her career handed to her because of who she married.

C.J.-You may be right as far as Hillary's personality, but that does not alter the fact that bitch is a word used for females. I have never heard her being called an a$$hole, which is gender neutral.

real life wrote:

Hillary has had her career handed to her because of who she married.

simply because of nepotism, eh ?

unlike l'il george dubya, right?

howz about john quincy adams?

jeb bush ?

the cheney girls ?

michael powell ?

if what you say is true, hillary would have been the dem nominee a long time ago.

Phoenix32890 wrote:

C.J.-You may be right as far as Hillary's personality, but that does not alter the fact that bitch is a word used for females. I have never heard her being called an a$$hole, which is gender neutral.

Methinks the reason you haven't heard anyone refer to her as an a$$hole is because it isn't as geneder neutral as you are claiming it to be.

I can't think of a single instance in my entire life when I've heard a woman referred to as an a$$hole.

Of course, we weren't delusional. Even before Tina Fey declared, "Bitch is the new black," before female outrage had been anointed a trend by the New York Times, many women were clued in to the numerous gender-related issues that lay, untouched and unexamined, at some subterranean level of our culture:

In particular, the campaign has divided women and the men they know on the subject of race. Indelicate as it seems to bring up, the oft-repeated question is, why do overtly sexist remarks slip by almost without comment, while any racially motivated insult would be widely censured? A few women told me that when they raised this issue with men, the discussion broke down, with the men arguing that racism was far more pernicious than sexism. "If you say anything about the specificity of Hillary being a woman, you're just doing the knee-jerk feminist stuff, that's the reaction," said one woman who asked not to be identified in any way. "Thinking about race is a serious issue, whereas sexism is just something for dumb feminists to think about." The point is not to determine whether it is harder to be a white woman or a black man in America today, nor which candidate would have more symbolic value. At issue is the fact that race is, as it should be, taboo grounds for criticism, but gender remains open territory.

None of this is to say Obama hasn't had his own stereotypes to confront during this campaign. He has faced criticism for being "too black" or "not black enough." He's had to battle the unfounded yet persistent Internet rumor that he's a radical Muslim. And when his controversial pastor evoked questions about race and patriotism, Obama promptly dealt with the matter, giving one of the most complex and sophisticated speeches a politician has ever delivered.

There has been clamoring for Clinton to make the gender equivalent of Obama's race speech.

The past few months have been like an extended consciousness-raising session, to use a retro phrase that would have once made most of us cringe. We've parsed the gender politics of the campaign with other women in the office, at parties, over e-mail, and now we're starting to parse the gender politics of our lives. This is, admittedly, depressing: How can we be confronting the same issues, all these years later? But it's also exciting. It feels as if a window has been opened in a stuffy, long-sealed room. There is a thrill at the collective realization. Now the question is, what next?