Hillary and Kamala lost by small-enough margins that I don’t think Michelle is right about America “not being ready for a woman president.” They were basically one variable or coin-flip’s toss away from winning the White House.
i have to disagree with you on this point: didn’t you read all the rants/threats from Trump over this, and the current legal actions to fight “birthright citizenship”?
It’s a dog whistle, but “birthright citizenship” is not the same as race. And while I wouldn’t put it past him, Trump has not, as far as I know, talked about repealing the 15th Amendment.
Perhaps I’m wrong. Has he?
Instead, the Right wants to strip them of citizenship and deport the entire non-white population. No need to take away the vote if they aren’t allowed to be citizens or live in the country at all.
The Far Right in every nation consistently wants to eliminate everyone who isn’t them, by whatever means. The key difference is that they can’t do that with women without literally dying off. So the goal for oppressing women almost always tops off at reducing them to slavery, rather than killing them or driving them off.
In the ideal world of the American Right everyone who isn’t an American is dead, as is everyone who isn’t white. While women are still alive, but non-citizen slaves. If you want to know what they want, basically ask yourself “What would Hitler want if he was an American?”
The thing about racism is that, unlike sexism, people recognize it. They know when they see or hear it. They know when they feel it. Most people are oblivious of the normalized, pervasive sexism that exists everywhere. They don’t even realize when their own statements, acts or ideas are blatantly sexist. Un-intentioned–and, worse yet, well-intentioned–sexism and misogyny are omnipresent. It will persist in human society much longer than racism will.
To add to this, the physical differences between men and women are a lot greater and un-changeable than the physical differences between races. That, then, makes society view men and women permanently in a different way or with different assumptions than we may feel about black, Hispanic, Arab, white, people etc.
And how many MAGA men take/took issue with how Trump talks about and treats women? Would they want their wives/daughters/sisters treated so disrespectfully?
I expect that they do treat their wives and daughters as badly.
Sucks, but it’s true.
Sidestepping the issue of who is actually more oppressed, or where most of the effort of oppression is directed, if we reduce such “-isms” to the belief that some people deserve different things because of the facts of their birth, then sexism is stronger than racism.
Racial minorities who say and do the right things can be deemed as provisionally “white” as far as what they deserve from society. A Black man can become “one of the good ones”. But no woman is ever going to get that kind of consideration, she can never really become “one of the boys”, and the harder she tries, the more she’ll have to give up for it, only to be attacked more severely for trying.
Minorities are no longer seen as slaves. Yes they’re broadly considered lower class, but not because they have a purpose to serve by being there. But there’s still a widespread attitude that women must surrender some liberties because nature made them into baby factories, housekeepers, and cooks. Women’s equality is contingent on whether they do all their women stuff first. They have to be a “good woman” who has earned consideration. Not so with men. Men don’t even get “equality” we just get liberty for free.
I think if we waved a wand and somehow got rid of sexism, then I expect womankind would eliminate racism shortly after. Not unanimously of course, but by strong accord. I don’t think think the same could realistically be expected of men.
One of the ways that sexism asserts itself as being a benefit for women is that it splits them into two groups - the “good women” who adhere to the sphere that sexism allots to women and the “bad women” who go outside those boundaries and therefore give up the protections that given to the first group.
Trump merely portrays himself as being the scourge of the “bad women” and thus his insults and treatment are simply a way of policing the sexist boundary. No sexist person need fear that Trump would treat women in their lives that way, because those women are obviously “trained correctly” and are the “good women” who need not fear such treatment. (Ignore, for the moment, how someone like a Megyn Kelly can move from one group to another simply by asking a pointed question.)
It’s not unlike the “model minority” designation of racism, often applied to Jews and east and south Asians of late. You can get preferential treatment based on your adherence to the prevailing norms.
I think the comparison is complicated and “stronger” isn’t necessarily the most revealing inquiry. There’s a lot of racial segregation in our society, which means that some people don’t directly encounter people of other races very often, or only interact with them superficially, which lets a lot of biased and distorted notions grow unchecked. There has probably always been xenophobia in various forms, but the types of racism we’re familiar with are generally just a few hundred years old. (e.g., racism towards Black people seems to have its origins in the enslavement of Black people from the 1500s)
Sexism is different. Very very few of us live in isolation from sexes other than our own. Even lesbian separatists often have sons, grew up with fathers, brothers, etc, or, if they don’t, some of their friends do. So extreme prejudices are more rare, the hostility more nuanced and entwined with less harsh attitudes. Because of sexuality and reproduction (and the pervasiveness of heterosexuality), the perception of difference can be eroticized — all the ways in which people of a given sex may appear to be different can become signifiers of sexuality and sexual attraction, which in turn increases the likelihood of people embracing beliefs about how the other sex is different from us. Meanwhile, patriarchy is a social structure that has been around for a very long time, thousands and thousands of years, long enough for deeply entrenched beliefs about how people of each sex should be and behave, and how their behaviors should be assessed differently depending on the person’s sex.
I think, therefore, that racism is more harsh, but sexism is more deeply entrenched.
Just remember that there is every chance that Hillary would have won, had not James Comey decide to interfere with the election. Well, he got his reward, didn’t he?
I have to admit that in my own way I am sexist. Once our first child was born, my wife decided (I had nothing to do with her decision–in fact she surprised me) to be a SAHM. As such she did most of the cooking and most of the other household tasks, like cleaning, laundry, etc. for about 18 years. When our youngest turned 12 she got a job, but also continued to do most of the household tasks. I didn’t really think about it and we never discussed it. To some extent, this continued after I retired and she didn’t. Although I have gradually taken over most of the tasks as her memory is failing. And we have housecleaners who do a lot for us.
On the other hand, I don’t think I am racist at all.
Makes me sad, but it seems to be true. This is where ranked voting would come in handy, I think.
More Americans thought Hillary Clinton should be president than thought Donald Trump should be president.
Yes, but - not to derail the thread, but Hillary’s qualifications were so vastly far ahead of Trump’s that the fact that she got only 2% more of the popular vote than Trump shows that gender was a huge issue. The popular vote in that election doesn’t debunk the gender disadvantage, it illustrates it.
Then how do you explain Trump getting more votes when he ran against Biden than he did when he ran against Clinton? If support for Trump was a reaction against a female candidate, shouldn’t his number of voters dropped when his opponent wasn’t a woman?
Would you rather be a black man or a white woman in these situations?
- Running for president or governor
- Pulled over by a cop at night
- Managing a team of white men
- Applying for a lease
- Complaining to the manager
- Walking down a sidewalk during the day
- Walking down a sideway at night
Sexism and racism are both bad in America for different, and sometimes the same reasons. I don’t think there are a set of metrics that could isolate and compare them.
The only thing I do know is that, as a white man, I have no idea. I don’t mean that as some type of virtue signaling. I mean that I have heard too many stories from friends of biases I would never have imagined in the 21st century, liberal Chicagoland.
In 2016, Hillary got 48% of the vote to Trumps 46%.
In 2020, Biden got 51% of the vote to Trumps 47%.
In 2024, Trump got 50% and Harris got 48%.
I know misogyny played a role, but there are other factors too. The economy collapsed under Trump due to covid, giving Biden a tailwind. Hillary was running for a 3rd democratic term, and that’s a harder election to win.
I’m sure its been studied though. I’m guessing a white man who is a democrat wins on average about 1-2% of the popular vote more than a POC woman.
But either way, both Harris and Hilary got 48%, but Biden got 51%. However both Harris and Hilary were running to continue democratic presidencies when the US is very anti-incumbency right now.
The sad part is that no matter how evil, dangerous, corrupt, criminal or incompetent a republican is, he is guaranteed 45%+ of the vote as long as they treat out-groups like garbage.
I’d also point out that for Clinton at least she screwed up election strategy in both 2008 and 2016. In 2016 she got garbage time yards without even scoring. There’s also a good argument that in 2008 letting Obama get easy wins in a number of caucus states helped propel him to the nomination.
I’ve never really liked the woman but there’s no way she loses to McCain. Especially with the economic collapse.
“garbage time yards”?