Estrogen Blog

When I was in high school, I excelled in math and science. I remember talking to my guidance councilor about my future career options and he suggested I become a math teacher. I became an electrical engineer. Now while this choice certainly wasn't average, there is nothing really extraordinary about it. Plenty of people are electrical engineers. And most of them are probably better at it than I am. But whenever I mention that this is my career of choice I generally get a look of surprise followed by one of the following responses:

"You don't LOOK like an electrical engineer"
"Well you are the prettiest electrical engineer I've ever seen."
"Wow. That must have been really tough. Weren't you like the only girl?"

Although I do not attribute any of the above statements to sexism, they do point to a kind of gender stereotyping that can be dangerous. Throughout school and my career I have experienced a significant amount of sexism. Most of it was subtle. I always tried to deal with it internally. There were probably times I should have been more vocal, but it IS intimidating being a minority. And you come up with defense mechanisms that may or may not be in your best interest.

Now I have been and Obama supporter since I started paying attention, but I loved Hillary Clinton. I didn't always love the way she ran her campaign. But I loved how intelligent and well spoken she was. I loved the way that she was representing women in politics. I understand why so many women felt so passionately about her. And this may be an unpopular thing to say, but I thought that she had every right to call people out on sexism when she did. I realize that it was part of the political game, but I don’t think that she used the so-called "gender card" lightly. That is something that I could relate to.

That is why it is so excruciating for me to watch this Sarah Palin debacle. She is pretty. She is popular. She is everything that Hillary is not. But that is not what this is about. This is about the future of our country. This is about our environment and our freedom of choice. This is about our jobs and our troops overseas. And John McCain has essentially nominated Paris Hilton as his running-mate. I'm sick. I'm sick of watching the right abuse the "gender card" after crucifying Clinton for even mentioning it. I'm sick of wathing the left refer to her as a "Bimbo". I'm sick of watching Katie Couric cringe while she gets caught up in Palin's nonsense.

Sarah Palin is ignorant. She is small minded. She is uneducated. She CANNOT represent my gender in politics. She CANNOT be the one that young girls and women look up to. This is a huge setback for women in politics. I think that this Slate.com article sums it up pretty well:

"But Palin's gender is at the center of another set of reactions I've been hearing and reading among women who don't support her ticket, filled with ambivalence over how bad she is. Laugh at the Tina Fey parodies that make Palin ridiculous just by quoting her verbatim. And then cry. When Palin tanks, it's good for the country if you want Obama and Biden to win, but it's bad for the future of women in national politics. I'm in this boat, too. Should we feel sorry for Sarah Palin? No. But if she fails miserably, we might be excused for feeling a bit sorry for ourselves.

Palin is the most prominent woman on the political stage at the moment. By taking unprepared hesitancy and lack of preparation to a sentence-stopping level, she's yanking us back to the old assumption that women can't hack it at these heights. We know that's not true—we've just watched Hillary Clinton power through a campaign with a masterful grasp of policy and detail. Clinton lost in part because she was the girl grind. Complex sentences, the names of Supreme Court cases, and bizarre warnings about foreign heads of state invading our airspace weren't her problem. The fear now is that Palin is the anti-Hillary and that her lack of competence threatens to undo what the Democratic primary did for women. Palin won't bust through the ceiling that has Hillary's 18 million cracks in it. She'll give men an excuse to replace it with a new one."