misogyny and politics: a new taste sensation

I love new experiences. I can't help it, really. It's an asset or a defect, depending on who you ask. I like to try new things, go new places. So I consider myself lucky this election season. Hillary is running for President. Obama is running for president. Romney is running for president. Woman. African American. Mormon. It's exciting, right? Because I'm a woman and a feminist, though, I most gravitate toward what's going on with Hillary and how her being female is impacting the political landscape.

So what is going on out there? Yes, folks. It is a new taste sensation. It's acrid, like a cotton ball wrapped in barbwire. It's misogyny, stripped bare and totally out of the closet. Forget political correctness. Forget that piddly little word "equality." Forget your girlfriends, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers. Hillary is running for president. And it's balls to the wall. And it's Hillary's balls we're after.

Consider this statement, from Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, who recently appeared on PBS with Bill Moyers to talk about what Moyers called "this avalanche of misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton."

"[U]nderlying many of these assertions is the assumption that any woman in power will, by necessity, entail emasculating men . . .

So, why shouldn't you vote for Hillary Clinton? Well, first, she can't be appropriately a woman and be in power. She must be a man. Hence, the site that says Hillary Clinton can't be the first woman president; Hillary Clinton's actually a man. But also explicit statements that suggest castrating, testicles in lockbox. She's going to emasculate men. It's a zero-sum game in which a woman in power necessarily means that men can't be men."

It's Hillary at the center of the bull's-eye: She's attacked for her laugh; she's attacked for wearing a top that's too low-cut; she's attacked for not being able to "handle" her man; she's attacked for being too much like a man. Jamieson later asks whether these types of attacks make women increase their identification with Hillary or not? Do we specifically distance ourselves from a woman who's being attacked, or do we rally and say we will not stand for this, whether we support Hillary's candidacy or not.

It's ironic this week when news is flowing out of Argentina about the election of their first female president. And there's plenty of precedent for female heads of state in countries that don't tout their own enlightenment the way we do. We have an iron grip on that moral ground we're holding onto. And yet we're witnessing a cliche so passe it would make our grandmothers uncomfortable---that a woman is somehow fundamentally flawed or incapable because she's a woman, because she can't use her uterus and her brain.

Let's call it for what it is folks: Woman hating. And it mixes real nice with politics, where everything's a free for all and no low is too low. And so as I sit on the sidelines reveling in the newness of it all, I'm also taking deep breaths and willing myself to get through it, to speak to it, to denounce it as the rot that it is, and to wish that we didn't have to sink to such dastardly places just because a woman is running for president.

---Brooke

and seal just keeps on . . .

As 2007 comes to a close it's pretty crazy to look back at everything that Seal has been through this year. I'll leave it to Krista to do a year-end State of Seal post later this month, but suffice it to say that this has been a year of change.

We are moving this week. This isn't the first time I've packed up an office space. It's a pain in the ass, but it's also pretty amazing, the things you come across. Packing up files and recycling old book folders is a little window into Seal's history. Official letterhead declares Seal: "THE SEAL PRESS: A NORTHWEST FEMINIST PUBLISHER." I love that. This is such an amazing place, a publisher that's managed to hold onto its small press roots and sensibility even though it keeps getting absorbed into larger and larger parent companies. Seal continues to shift and morph and move and transform. Reading through old emails, looking at the production files, seeing proofs for books that put Seal on the map---like Getting Free and Cunt; old novels that played a role in solidifying Seal's role as a publisher of cutting-edge lesbian fiction, like Out of Time, The Dyke and the Dybbuk (both Lambda Award winners), and Sarah Schulman's Girls, Visions, and Everything---is just very cool.

So Seal is moving to Berkeley. From its humble small beginnings in Seattle to a short detour to New York to landing in Emeryville and now onto Berkeley, Seal has just kept on keeping on. I know Berkeley will be a good home for Seal. Seal has a distinctly West Coast aesthetic, and Berkeley is as quintessentially Left Coast as you can get. So off to bright new pastures. Thank you to our wonderful interns Brittany and Tina for being such awesome packers, who complain way less than I do, and to Tina for delighting so much in old crap that no one wants anymore.

---Brooke

bOObs are sOO tabOO

Here's something that's been bugging me since last week. The Wall Street Journal ran this great story about bra-fitting, in which they extensively quote our very own boob lady, Elisabeth Squires.

Her accreditation, though? "A Seattle-based author of a breast-health and bra guide."

Hmmmmm...


"A breast-health and bra guide" which just so happens to be called bOObs. But they won't print that word in their paper. People, we are not talking about Cunt here. Boobs! So benign. So unoffensive that it's practically a kid word. I don't understand when boobs became not okay to say or print. Breasts are okay, boobs are not. Which is too bad. Look how sweet this cover is? And it's so informative and pro-woman. Go buy it for every girl and woman you know. It's a good Christmas present, I promise.

---Brooke

presidential politics: a rumination (part 1 in an ongoing series)

Like a lot of people I know, I love and hate politics. It's the best and worst thing ever. It's fascinating and fun and gives you gritty stuff, like issues and values, to argue over. It drives me absolutely insane. It gets me all riled up. It gets me into arguments with people I love. There's nothing like politics to make you question how it's possible that your mother gave birth to you, or how you've been able to maintain certain friendships despite profound differences in opinion on things like abortion, war, and the death penalty. It keeps it real and gives me something to freak out over every so often. You know, for when I don't have enough drama in my life.

Ultimately, I decided to take a quiz this week to find out which candidate I most align with. I took four of them just to see what the results would be. Turns out, according to all four, I should vote for Dennis Kucinich, the man who reputedly "stole the show" at the Brown and Black Democratic Forum last week when he asked himself a question about health care. Which I found extremely annoying and not at all charming.

This being the first post of an ongoing political series (initiated by me today), I can predict with 100% certainty that I'm not voting for Kucinich. Today is the first day that I'm starting to feel that swirling sense of hope that I had way back in 2003 slowly starting to revitalize me again. Remember that expectation of not having Bush in power anymore? That sense that there was a light at the end of this long dark tunnel? This time at least we know he's really leaving. And that's something to celebrate no matter what. But as part of the admittedly underinformed voting public, I'm tasking myself with the responsibility of trying to figure out who likeminded women are voting for, who's endorsing who, and getting a sense of where we're going to land come November 08. Which cannot come soon enough.

---Brooke