{"id":380,"date":"2003-09-19T04:52:08","date_gmt":"2003-09-19T12:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/09\/19\/double-standard\/"},"modified":"2003-09-19T04:52:08","modified_gmt":"2003-09-19T12:52:08","slug":"double-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=380","title":{"rendered":"Double standard?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kathleen Parker<\/a> is complaining about double standards among both feminsits and conservative women’s groups:<\/p>\n

The important thing is that, when it comes to politics, women’s principles apparently are fungible. Either male hostility (enjoying dunking a woman’s head in the toilet, for instance) is unacceptable or it isn’t. Either sexual harassment in the workplace is unacceptable or it isn’t.<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton did have sex with that woman while holding the highest office in the land. He clearly was enjoying one of the perks of power while helping to advance policies that punished lesser mortals for inferior infractions. As a matter of principle, the feminists might have condemned the behavior. (They were mum.)<\/p>\n

As for Schwarzenegger, he does have a reputation at least as titillating as Bill Clinton once had, based not on made-up media reports but on the claims of real women from his past. Yet the same crowd that rallied for Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick and others can’t find anything believable among the women who claim that Schwarzenegger groped them.<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve got several problems with this.<\/p>\n

First of all, Parker seems to assume that all feminist groups (and conservative women’s groups) are interchangeable. For instance, one of the feminist groups she criticizes for attacking Schwarzenegger but not Clinton is CodePink<\/a>. But CodePink didn’t even exist <\/i>during Clinton’s administration, so blaming them for not leaping on Monicagate seems unwarranted. Similarly, did the California Federation of Republican Women really criticize Clinton for his treatment of women? Parker doesn’t say, but without establishing that, criticizing the CFRW for their double-standard is premature.<\/p>\n

Second, even looking at feminist groups that existed during Clinton’s reign, the idea that they didn’t say a word about Clinton is an antifeminist myth. NOW, for instance, criticized Clinton in harsher terms <\/a>than any other liberal group I know of: “[Clinton] seems to be a man who divides women into two unfortunate traditional categories: women he must treat with respect like Janet Reno, Madeleine Albright and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and those he can use and toss aside like tissue paper. We would like better options for president in the future.”<\/p>\n

The real complaint seems to be that NOW and other feminists criticized Clinton but did not call for impeachment. But how is that hypocritical? Plenty of right-wing politicians have committed adultery without NOW calling for their impeachment, after all.<\/p>\n

Third, there’s an important difference between a candidate for office and a sitting President. Asking “is this candidate a person of good character or a scumbag?” is reasonable during an election, when such criticism might have the practical effect of keeping a scumbag out of office. Once a scumbag is in office, however, yelling “scumbag” over and over won’t change who is in office. When dealing with a sitting president, it makes more sense to criticize his policies than his character, because the policies are much more susceptible to change.<\/p>\n

Linked via Sara at Diotima<\/a>..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathleen Parker is complaining about double standards among both feminsits and conservative women’s groups: The important thing is that, when it comes to politics, women’s principles apparently are fungible. Either male hostility (enjoying dunking a woman’s head in the toilet, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-feminists-and-their-pals","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}