And for my first trick...

While we're waiting with bated breath for the returns in Indiana to come in, I thought I'd write a little about sexism in the campaign.

Not the usual bit about sexism in the campaign, of course. That's been done. Yes, Hillary Clinton has faced sexism. (And Racialicious has a great post about sexism and racism in the campaign that you should read.)

Now her supporters are using it against her opponent.

And that, along with the "obliterate Iran" comment, has made me lose any last bit of positive feeling that I had about her possibly being the first woman president.

I blogged before about why my feminism leads me to be critical of Clinton's tactics and to support Obama.

Words have power. And the way they are used tells you something about the person using them. Hillary Clinton is not stupid. When she says "obliterate," she knows the message that she's sending and the person that she's appealing to at least as well as Obama knows what he implies by saying "the claws come out."

And Carville straight-up saying that Clinton has balls is just doing overtly what her campaign has been doing more subtly for months now. While he's at it, of course, he's attempting to emasculate Obama.

Aside from being troubling in its similarity to tactics used by the current administration, this crap bothers me because I feel that it confirms what I've felt all along: Hillary Clinton isn't interested in pulling women up behind her, unless it's when she can say it and get a few votes. She's not out there trying to prove that women can be president. She's out there trying to prove that she's an honorary man and thus gets a pass.

Ariel Levy wrote about this phenomenon in Female Chauvinist Pigs, a book I both liked and found problematic. Levy wanted to site the problems with this phenomenon in "raunch culture," but her strongest arguments were not against raunch itself but against the commodification of sex and against this very "honorary man" phenomenon--hence the title.

Like Margaret Thatcher and many other women leaders, Hillary Clinton spends lots of time trying to prove she's got, as my father says, the "balls for the game." And in an article in The Nation about the Pennsylvania primary, one man at least showed that she'd proved her point.

A construction contractor who gave the name Mike Giordano said he did not watch Obama's speech on race after the Wright controversy broke because "I don't listen to those people. They don't make sense when they talk." And he summed up the presidential contest this way: "They put a senior citizen for President, a woman and a black man. What do you got? Nothing. But that woman's got balls."

The greatest irony of this is that Hillary Clinton, back when her husband was running, was seen as way too powerful and emasculating, so much so that his (and her) approval ratings actually went up among men when rumors of his infidelity and sexual harassment charges came out. Stephen Ducat wrote about this extensively in The Wimp Factor So how is it that now she can get away with being that emasculating woman? Is it different now that she's running for office herself, rather than as first lady, or is it going to play right into GOP hands for the fall?

Perhaps Clinton's rhetoric works against Obama, who got my vote precisely because his language and that of his advisers appeals to my feminist sensibilities, but it won't work against an actual war hero and certified White Guy, John McCain. It's just one more example of her handing arguments to the Right while making arguments that do nothing for her against McCain.

I suppose the best thing I can say about this is that it allows Obama an easier time attacking the both of them. He can knock militarism and it hits both opponents. (And don't get me started on the gas tax.)

And if the superdelegates are dumb enough to overturn the majority of the voters to hand the nomination to the person who's headed right at every opportunity, they may well watch those voters defect to McCain--as well as watching those on the left, particularly the black voters who've been disenfranchised one too many times, vote third party again. (Cynthia McKinney, are you listening?) You can't draw votes away from the Republicans by being just like them.

(cross-posted to Season of the Bitch.)