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Sexism is a prominent human value

By DONALD KAUL

SUPPORTERS OF Hillary Clinton and others have complained—think death threats—about what they saw as the sexist news coverage Ms. Clinton got while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“It was pretty appalling,” said Howard Dean chairman of the Democratic Party. “She got treated the way a lot of women get treated their whole lives.”

To which my teen-aged cousin might say: “Well, duh.” Of course the media’s coverage of Hillary was sexist.

That’s the American way. Commentators on the public airwaves have learned to be very careful to avoid overt racism but sexism? Not so much. This is particularly true of cable TV, which if it did not have bad taste would not have any taste at all.

THE MEDIA PEOPLE deny everything, of course. They see no sexism and no racism in their coverage, only fair, honest and aggressive reporting. (The first thing they teach you in journalism school is to “get it right.” The second thing is “never admit that you didn’t.”)

Actually, it would have been far more amazing had Hillary’s coverage not been tinged with sexism. Sexism is the international default setting. Name me a society or culture of any size anywhere that is not sexist. I’m waiting.

Oh, I’ll admit that Western Europe has made strides in women’s rights, particularly northern Europe, where they’ve managed to elect a few women to head governments, but even there true gender equality lies somewhere in the far future. And when you look east from there—the Middle East, the Far East, India, Africa—forget it.

I BLAME religion. Religion is the great machine societies have for passing on values and one of the chief values religions pass on is that women are second-class citizens, useful in their way but not to be entrusted with leadership. And the more orthodox the religion, the more likely to be hostile to the idea that women are the equals of men.

Thus women are denied the priesthood or forced to sit in a segregated section of the church or made to cover their faces in public, not allowed to drive or appear in society unescorted or are expected to walk behind their husbands.

Why? Because the rules are made by and for men and they know a good thing when they see it. Men have to do some heavy lifting from time to time but for the most part, it’s more exciting running things than being run. So they want to keep doing it.

To that end, they work to keep women “in their place.”

Not mothers, of course. Mothers are sacred. Women in other roles, however, women trying to make their way in the world get harassed, exploited, passed over, patronized and overlooked. And that’s in the advanced (less religious) countries don’t forget. The oppression women face in the developing world is beyond the imagination of the rest of us.

So, yeah, Hillary experienced sexism from people who should have known better. And some people voted against her because she was a woman.

BUT NOT AS many, I think, as Barack Obama lost because he is black. Sexism may be more widely held in our society, but racism goes deeper. There are people, men and women both, who will not vote for a black man. Period. (Hillary suggested as much during the last days of her campaign as she thrashed around for votes.) But a lot of people voted for Obama because he is black, just as a lot of women were thrilled to be able to vote for a woman. Who knows how that evened out?

The reasons I disliked Hillary had nothing to do with her womanhood. I don’t like Newt Gingrich either and he’s not a woman. I don’t like her because I view her as shifty and untrustworthy, a less charming version of her husband. If that makes me a misogynist, so be it. I’d vote for her against John McCain though. In a New York minute.

Don Kaul is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-losing Washington correspondent who, by his own account, is right more than he’s wrong. dkaul1@verizon.net (Distributed by MinutemanMedia.org)

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