{"id":839,"date":"2008-05-21T07:05:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T12:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=839"},"modified":"2008-05-21T07:05:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T12:05:00","slug":"guest-post-boy-support-for-hillary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2008\/05\/21\/guest-post-boy-support-for-hillary\/","title":{"rendered":"GUEST POST: Boy Support for Hillary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Well, HRC’s days as a candidate in the 2008 race may be numbered, but not so the impact she’s had on the electorate. Weighing in here today is Kristen Loveland, offering an inter-gender, intra-generational conversation with her brother, Andrew. Kristen, an MPhil in Modern European History and a staffer at the Association for Jewish Studies, has a great blog called The Choice<\/a>. While an undergrad at Columbia University, Kristen co-founded the university’s first progressive student magazine, Ad Hoc, and became its Editor-in-Chief. I am proud to call her my (very over-qualified) summer intern, and to introduce her as a new regular here on GWP. Welcome, Kristen! -GWP<\/p>\n

<\/span>An Inter-gender, Intra-generational Conversation<\/span>
<\/span>Kristen Loveland<\/p>\n

Taking my view that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better to dialogue than snipe to the streets, I found someone even younger than me (age 24) to talk about Hillary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s candidacy. That person? My brother, Andrew, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 17 and one of the only Hillary supporters in his high school. As an Obama fan myself, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible both to be a feminist and to not support this particular female candidate. But after speaking with Andrew about his classmates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 take on a woman president, I almost wanted to switch teams.<\/p>\n

Kristen: <\/span>So let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cut to the chase: why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t your classmates think Hillary should be prez?<\/p>\n

Andrew:<\/span> Well, a lot of them joke about her not having masculine characteristics and say her crying on TV proves she couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t run a country. They joke that she should be making sandwiches for the men instead.<\/p>\n

K<\/span>: Do girls in your class object to this sort of thing?<\/p>\n

A:<\/span> Well, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say girls should just make sandwiches, but some don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think a woman can run the country. They think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all about perception and that a woman leader wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be respected, especially when dealing with leaders of other countries where women are second-class citizens.<\/p>\n

K: <\/span>But what are they taught in history? Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they know about England\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Margaret Thatcher<\/a>, or Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Golda Meir<\/a>, or Pakistan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Benazir Bhutto<\/a>, who led a Muslim country?<\/p>\n

A:<\/span> They never talk about other women leaders. They just say women are generally too weak. But the guys are more vocal and use a lot of Family Guy <\/a> jokes to put Hillary down.<\/p>\n

K: <\/span>Family Guy? But isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Peter (the husband) a complete idiot in the show and Lois (the wife) the smart one who always gets him out of scrapes and drunken stupors?<\/p>\n

A:<\/span> Yeah, but they ignore that and just think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funny that Peter always puts Lois down for standing up for women.<\/p>\n

K:<\/span> I feel like in my day, which was not so many days ago, girls were being told that they could be the first female president, and Murphy Brown was a high-powered news anchor, and Jessie Spano<\/a> was class president and calling A.C. Slater a chauvinistic pig\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s changed?<\/p>\n

A:<\/span> We learn in history about the 1950s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cult of domesticity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and it seems like nothing has changed. In business class we were trying to determine projected earnings and some of the kids said women would make less than men. When our teacher asked why, they said it was because the girls would have to stop working to stay home with the kids.<\/p>\n

K:<\/span> Do you think they assume this because their moms are stay-at-home?<\/p>\n

A:<\/span> Maybe, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also TV shows, where you primarily see women home making dinner. Even in Arrested Development, which is an awesome show, all the women do is spend money while men solve the problems. And Laguna Beach <\/a>is really bad: you have a lot of stuck-up girls, who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work, spending their husbands\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or fathers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 money. So the girls get into this idea and then guys think girls are weak because all they want is handbags.<\/p>\n

K: <\/span>So, why do you support Hillary?<\/p>\n

A:<\/span> I do like Obama and they share many of the same viewpoints, but for me it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like picking out a car; sometimes one car just feels better than the other. Also, I think she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a better public speaker, and her views on women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rights are more progressive.<\/p>\n

K: <\/span>Would you consider yourself a feminist?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Well\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not much into protesting, and I do think Family Guy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funny, but I guess I take it more seriously than others. Even if shows portray women in a certain light, we shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take that as the way it is in real life. Oh yeah, did I tell you how my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last days\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sticker got keyed off my car? And my Hillary sticker would have, but I pasted it on the inside of the window.<\/p>\n

I think a few conclusions can be drawn from our convo. First, high school history curricula must be augmented with a critical supply of celebratory women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history. The National History Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Project<\/a> is a good place to start, but this must be implemented on an expansive basis\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand not just during Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History Month. Second, role models are some of the most important factors influencing girls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 perceptions of their future selves\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand we need better ones. Third, we need to continue the conversation. I hate to draw conclusions from afar. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m infuriated whenever writers condemn today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s college hookup culture<\/a> without seeming to have ever spoken with the many women I knew who engaged with it on their own terms.) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vital to talk with young people so as to better understand the cultural and social factors that influence placid acceptance of patriarchy and misogyny in their generation. Oh, and finally, my brother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of awesome, even if he does compare choosing a president to picking a car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, HRC’s days as a candidate in the 2008 race may be numbered, but not so the impact she’s had on the electorate. Weighing in here today is Kristen Loveland, offering an inter-gender, intra-generational conversation with her brother, Andrew. Kristen, an MPhil in Modern European History and a staffer at the Association for Jewish Studies, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10745],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-political-campaigns"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}