It is sickening and heartbreaking to see how far they’ve pushed us back. The Backlash was real – 20 years later I think the sexism was more visible, more acceptable and much worse.

I liked Ferraro’s letter in support of Hillary Clinton.
All she did was tell the truth.

All this talk about ‘good girl’ and ‘bad girl’ reminds me of the whore/virgin split. I am neither. It’s hard for people to place me. And for that I am grateful

Emma: word. Women’s liberation is never seen as necessary, or as valuable, or as good and proper the way men’s liberationist movements are. The Left lionizes and celebrates the Civil Rights and Gay Rights movements, whereas it still is ambivalent or resentful of feminism.

“The Left” always has a revisionist view of its own history with respect to feminism, too. It never wants to embrace feminism as it is, only the feminist accomplishments of previous generations. (Like this: In 1950: “Well, of course women and men should be educated equally, so long as women aren’t competing for the same jobs.” In 2000: “Well, of course women should have equal educational and professional opportunities, but they have them now so we’re all postfeminist.” Etc. That’s the male left for you: at least two generations behind the times when it comes to teh wimminz.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

I think she’s right: the country was caught up in the concept of a Black man becoming President. I would add what I think is implicit in Ferraro’s comment: the country was caught up in that concept in a way it was not caught up in the concept of a white woman becoming President.

I think it’s fair to use Ferraro’s comment as a jumping off point to discuss WHY the country was not equally caught up in the historic possibility of a white woman becoming President.

Because I think her comment brings up really thorny issues of the intersection of race and gender, in particular how white feminist women specifically have been made the go-to boogiemen for racism in a way that leftist men/organizations have almost entirely avoided. Is that because leftist men/organizations are less racist? Or is it because male supremacy insulates them? I would argue the latter.

I also don’t think it’s out-of-bounds for feminists to really think about and discuss whether race or gender or neither was a more constricting factor in the 2008 primaries and election. I’m not presuming the outcome of that inquiry. I’m just saying it’s a valuable inquiry for learning how the mechanisms of white and male supremacy work and interact. But that inquiry is short-circuited by dismissing Ferraro’s comment as wholesale racism.

But I still think your major point is valid, truffula. I guess family just money looks cleaner and smells fresher to some people even today than going to all of the trouble to make it yourself.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.”

Maybe Ferraro meant to say that Obama was lucky to be a man, unmodified, as you suggest. But most people heard her to say he was lucky to be a black man. Ferraro specifically said that a white man would have been less lucky.

Unfortunate, as you note; maybe even racist. But these sentences weren’t the sum of Ferraro’s career, even though Walsh put them at the beginning and the end of her piece, like headstones. I agree that the Obama remark had to be included for the sake of readers who don’t remember 1984. But a better essay would have said more.