What was your reaction to the Pfleger episode?

[Critters2]

I've never posted in this forum before, so I'm here rather humbly asking for your reflections. Btw, I've read some threads, and believe me, I'll be here much more often. You women rock!

Let me introduce myself. I'm a woman and a pastor in the United Church of Christ, the same denomination as Trinity UCC. You know, the church Obama left over the weekend. So, as you can imagine, I've been following all the trials and tribulations about Jeremiah Wright, and now Michael Pfleger. I've been discussing these things on a clergy discussion board with a lot of UCC clergy, men and women.

Here's the thing. I found Pfleger's outburst sexist, even misogynist. I was offended much more deeply by this aspect of it than by the "white privilege" nonsense, though that was bad, too. There is something downright frightening to me about a man standing in front of a congregation and berating a woman like that because she cried, because of who she's married to, and because she's white. But I still think that the gender thing was the real issue for Pfleger and for those who were cheering him on.

You can imagine I'm not finding much support on this clergy board. I'm the crazy, uppity woman. One woman even told me it was understandable that Trinity's congregation reacted that way, because they're feeling "castrated" (no shit--that's a quote) by all the media and public scrutiny.

That this happened in a church, and even more disturbingly in a church of the denomination that has nurtured me since I was baptized at the age of 14 days, is devastating for me.

But maybe I'm the only one seeing the sexism, the misogyny in Pfleger's "sermon". So, I'm just wondering. Among you who think in terms society's treatment of women...Was that a sexist rant I was witnessing? Should I be upset about it as a woman?

I'd appreciate your thoughts!

Thanks!

Critters

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

1. what specifically was "sexist"?

Rather than a general condemnation of this, why not tell us specifically
what you didn't like, which sentences, which words?

Or was it a general dislike that you have?

About the misogyny thing:

I recall Hillary saying "I'm your girl!" at one rally.
And calling herself "Paulette Revere" when talking about the economy.
And about how historical it would be if a woman was elected president.

Seems like she brings up her sexual identity frequently.

And yes, she has distinguished herself amongst other candidates by
crying in public. This looks either manipulative or weak to me.

Campaigning has been her job, but somehow she thought that crying was
the act of a strong professional woman or person for that matter?

[Critters2]

2. Crying is not either manipulative nor weak.

It's what human beings do to express emotions. And the misogyny is in comments like yours. To assume that a woman couldn't be expressing a sincere emotion, but that her crying must be an act, well, that's what I mean by misogynist.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, the president of Chicago Theological Seminary, points out in her blog that Pfleger's attack on Clinton supports the same old stereotypes of women: women who cry are manipulative. Women who don't cry are cold and unfeeling. I found this in her blog after my own sense that Pfleger was being sexist, but I was glad to see someone agreeing with me.

My sense is that Pfleger is threatened by a woman in power. The depth of his loathing for her was palpable, more than seemed appropriate for what his words were saying. Of course, he is part of a faith tradition that will not let women into leadership positions and doesn't believe women should control our own bodies. I suspect he was speaking out of his tradition. But it seemed especially inappropriate in the pulpit of a church who's denomination likes to boast that it ordained the first woman.

And as I said, the feelings that this was misogyny were gut feelings for me. I've been a woman my whole life. I may not be able to pinpoint the moment, but I know misogyny when I see it.

[sandnsea]

3. To assume that a woman can't be manipulative

is also sexist. What's so horrible about thinking a person used tears to manipulate voters? Yes I know it's a stereotype, but I also know it's sometimes true. I think Hillary is just as phony as Bill is. I think his little episode in SD today, about this being his last campaign boo hoo, was to manipulate voters too. Has nothing to do with gender. It has to do with character and neither one of them have any.

[Critters2]

5. Sorry. I mistook this for a women's rights forum.

Apparently, it's just one more place for the "hope and change" people to spew hatred and anger.

[sandnsea]

8. Look. I find her a disgrace to feminism

I think she stayed married to a pig of a man who abused her emotionally and disgraced her publicly because she didn't have enough confidence in herself to get what she wanted on her own. I don't think there is a thing about her that represents feminism. Everything she's done, she's done on the back of Bill Clinton.

And just because you disagree does not give you the right to attack me.

[Critters2]

9. She already had a successful law career and impressive educational

credentials before she married Bill Clinton. That you only see her in terms of the man she's married to, well, that's an interesting understanding of feminism.

[sandnsea]

10. Thirty years ago

Too bad she didn't step out of his shadow, but she didn't. Teresa Heinz, now she is her own woman. As is Michelle Obama. But Hillary? No, she has always ridden Bill's coat tails. That's an understanding of HER, not feminism. See, feminism means not every woman is the same and women aren't automatically good just because they've got a vagina.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

14. she stayed with a man who disrespected her repeatedly - a feminist would not do so

Does a feminist stay with an abusive spouse? One who disrespects her
and their marriage? That makes a mockery of their marriage?

I hope not.

[PeaceNikki]

20. Abusive? What evidence is there that he (Clinton) is abusive?

The only thing we know is some of his indiscretions. I think it's a stretch to imply that he's abusive and deem the whole thing a "mockery". Their relationship has nothing to do with her stance on women's rights. Implying it does is nothing more than a right-wing talking point. Women's rights are about allowing women to do what's best for them. I don't imagine that you have any more information on the intricacies of their relationship than the rest of us. To make judgements and or implications like you have is ridiculous and offensive. Look, I am a FAR cry from a "Hillbot", as they're called here, but using their relationship as a talking point is right out of the GOP playbook.

Some of the strongest relationships I've seen have been able to move past infidelity. Sexual fidelity is in NO way the totality of a relationship. It's a dealbreaker for some, but not all.

[lukasahero]

23. A feminist wouldn't judge another woman like you are doing

The point of feminism is that women are FREE TO CHOOSE their own way in life and not be judged by someone else's ideas of what a woman is or should be or how she should behave.

[iverglas]

33. yeah, I'm sorry, that's bullshit

and I get tired of being told what I as a feminist must do. I'm not a liberal, and I will be intolerant of intolerable behaviour if I like.

The point of feminism is that women are not free to choose their own way in life, and that this has to change.

And until it does, I'll look at women's "choices" and judge them all I want, while judging the women who make them by whatever standard I think appropriate.

If the woman in question has chosen to stay home and pretend that rearing children is a career, I'll consider the fact that her society does not offer decent child care or allow for shared parental leave to care for very young children, and that the family's economic success may depend on the father's continued secure employment because the employment she has access to is more precarious and less well remunerated, and all that jazz. I won't blame her for making a lousy choice, but I'll still call the choice inappropriate for an autonomous adult.

And I'll criticize the choices made by privileged women whose choices are destructive for less privileged women, and that includes Clinton. Yup, she did not have access to the opportunities that her husband had; she very likely could not have become governor, let alone president, and one reason is that she is a woman: no matter how much better at the jobs she might have been than him, they were not open to her. Would she have been better at the jobs? We will never know, and that may be our loss, and that's one of the reasons that women have to have equal opportunities.

But she didn't do anything to show that women are equal in merit. She was successful and worthy in what she did do, but she skipped over the whole part where you get where you want to be on your merits. Yeah, so did George Bush. So?

So we get President Hilary Clinton who may or may not merit the position -- we just don't know. We do know that when she should have been demonstrating her merit, accomplishing the things that would show her to be a person worthy of the position and capable of doing the job, she was instead lying in the fouled bed she had made by choosing to take the back door route. She chose to make it through a man, and she was then stuck with the man, who turned out to be a pig whose conduct toward women -- from his sordid sexual exploitation of a subordinate to his gutting of the economic benefits that poor women and their children depend on for some small semblance of a decent life -- was despicable. It just looks like proof, to me, that it while may take longer to get where we're going the right way, it's the only way that will work. Each of us individually may be stymied and unable to achieve our aspirations or fulfil our promise, but that's life as a woman in a patriarchy -- or as a person of colour in a society based on racism, etc. etc.

All that being said, I still favour Clinton over Obama. Given a different opponent, I might not. I'd take Joe Biden over Clinton any day. But Obama is too obviously an empty shirt, without principles or substance, exploiting a whole lot of stuff himself and demonstrating little merit of his own. Clinton at least appears capable. And once someone is in a position, how s/he got there tends to lose significance if s/he performs in it well. And having a woman performing well in the position of president of the US isn't something to be sniffed at in terms of the necessarily corrosive effect it would have on patriarchy.

But damn, I'd like to see a little more honesty and a little more critical thinking about the whole bleeding thing. And telling me that I am not to criticize a woman's choices because feminism is about choice ... sheesh. Where do I line up to praise Phyllis Schlafly?

[Warpy]

34. Don't judge until you've been there

and by "there" I mean in a long marriage that has produced offspring.

People have a very different view of each other's faults when they've been together for a couple of decades than they do when they're young and love is blind.

After all, his wandering dick is his character flaw, not hers, and she has come to terms with the fact that he isn't perfect, that he's a human being with warts just like she is.

Ownership of a partner's sex organs isn't that big a deal after enough years have gone by.

[femrap]

39. Where do you get off telling another woman

how to live her life and with whom? You have no idea of their relationship.

He behaves like an ass and SHE gets the blame.

Blame the victim.....again and again. She decided to stay with him. It's her decision and I certainly wouldn't berate her for that. Maybe she actually takes the vows of marriage seriously and can forgive him...he is an alley cat and she knows it.

[jobycom]

11. Your post is the essence of sexism to me.

You've constucted a role that she has to play, based on her gender, and that shapes your opinion of her, and allows you to categorize her in gender-specific (and factually inaccurate) ways, such as "Everything she's done, she's done on the back of Bill Clinton." No respect for her individual decisions. No consideration of the reasons she had for doing whatever she's done. Just assumptions based on what she as a woman should have done, and what role she fits into.

I wonder if you'll see the parallels when the Republicans do that to Obama over race in the general election.

[Critters2]

16. Thank you. nt

[sandnsea]

17. She played the role, I didn't ask her to

She could have stepped out and done anything she wanted on her own. She didn't. It has nothing to do with gender. McCain is scum for what he did to his first wife and for using this wife's money and notoriety in Arizona to his benefit. I'm not putting any gender stereotype on it - you guys are.

And I have every expectation that the Republicans are going to be brutal to Obama so you can just stuff that tired line as well. I am so sick of the condescension of all of you Hillary supporters.

[jobycom]

26. You don't even know what role she played.

You just think you do, because you know what role you believe women should and do play. That's the sexism part, where you make assumptions.

Also, consider this aspect. She had no appointed position, yet she was a top cabinet adviser. If she divorced Bill, she would have no role in his government. Leaving him would not only have ended the marriage, but would also have been a resignation from her job--a job she had worked her whole life to be in a position to hold. A job where she felt she was doing good for the causes she's always championed. She would have had to quit that, through no fault of her own. Again, the sexism, where a woman's role as spouse is so identifying that she must sacrifice all other aspects of her life to make some statement because of something that was done to her. Her life is at the whim of her husband.

For that matter, we don't even know what was done to her. We don't know the history of their marriage, what agreements they had. Many marriages survive multiple adulteries because a couple decides to stay together for the kids, or for the business, or because they figure they are past the romance life-partner stage anyway, or just because it's their decision and no one else's. Many are arrangements for some reasons other than sex or romance. We don't know what really happened. ANd we don't know what arrangement they've had since then. We can only make assumptions, and that's where the sexism appears.

[sandnsea]

28. You just made my point

She had a role in the government because she was married to Bill. That isn't a "family business". That's using him to get what she wants which is why "her life is at the whim of her husband". She chose it. And she chose to let him publicly humiliate her and abuse her for years, to use his name because that was their arrangement. I'm not sexist for calling her what she is - a leech, a user, a manipulator.

[jobycom]

29. Actually you just made mine.

She had to choose. She couldn't be a wife to a man she loved, a mother to their child, and a top ranking official in his administration. She had to choose which roles society would allow her gender to play, and that put her at his mercy. Powerful men leave their wives all the time without losing their power. But women are judged by the assumptions and prejudices you are displaying, so they don't have that right.

Look at Michelle Obama. She's done a lot of work for her husband in this election, but if she left him, she'd lose all she worked for and have to start over. Not him. So he can fool around if he wants, and she would have to keep it quiet, or lose everything. Oh I know, he's perfect and would NEVER do that. But if he did, those would be her options. On the other hand, if she fooled around on him, he could dump her and she'd have lost everything, anyway.

[sandnsea]

30. lol, she could have HER OWN CAREER

What is so complicated about that for you to understand? Attaching yourself to your husband's work is a choice. She chose to do it. Michelle has not. Michelle is campaigning for her husband. When he's in the White House, she can choose to do whatever the hell she wants. For all the women who are elected to office, I don't know and don't care what their husband's do. Debbie Stabenow's husband cheated on her. I don't care what she does, but she can sure as hell leave him and continue on with her political career because it's HERS. It's not 1960 anymore. Women are not defined by their husbands and haven't been for a long time. Sorry Hillary, and I guess you, missed the feminist movement.

[femrap]

38. Blame the victim...right on cue.

You don't know squat...if you look at HRC's career, she has done a multitude of things to benefit women and children. When she graduated from Yale, she went to Arkansas and started the first program of Head Start in that state.

Willfully ignorant you are for not looking at HRC's bio.

Listen... when you grow up, you'll learn that whatever a woman does, IT'S WRONG! HRC was wrong not to divorce him. If she had, millions would have given her hell for doing so. And the woman gets blamed for what her husband did. I'm so sick and tired of women carrying this attitude around.

Just wait till your spouse/boyfriend cheats on you. It'll be YOUR fault. Just like when a woman is raped...it's HER fault.

You are woefully uneducated and misinformed. That is a fact not an accusation.

Go read some Dworkin.

[iverglas]

42. for the love of fuck

HRC was wrong not to divorce him. If she had, millions would have given her hell for doing so.

Who the hell cares???

Reminds me of the poor whining men: if I hold the door for the lady, she'll berate me; if I don't hold the door for the lady, she'll berate me. Whine. I just can't do anything right.

How about: do the right thing, and if you get berated, deal.

I'm not saying Clinton should have divorced her husband; that's not my own objection to her conduct in the matter. I really just don't think "the bible thumpers who think a woman should stand by her man would have berated her" -- or whoever else these millions are -- is particularly relevant to the discussion.


Just wait till your spouse/boyfriend cheats on you. It'll be YOUR fault. Just like when a woman is raped...it's HER fault.

That's an appalling misrepresentation, and a disgusting way to speak to another woman.

[Name removed]

44. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[iverglas]

45. no, I don't, but how nicely disingenuous of you to say I do

I don't care what people say about me when I do the right thing, and I don't care about other people who whine about what people say about them when they do the right thing.

And fuck the 'right' thing: DO WHAT YOU WANT AND NOT WHAT OTHERS WANT YOU TO.

Yes, and I'm sure that's very different from what you know I meant.

Unless, of course, you're saying "do what you want and demand that no one else express an opinion on it". Wouldn't life just be lovely if that's how it worked?

It may be nobody's business what I do if I marry and stay married to a misogynist asshole. But if I publicly defend him and in the process disparage the women he has exploited, it is, because *I* chose to make it public business.

And if someone does that and then wants me to vote for her because she's an advocate for women, she's going to have some explaining to do. Or not. Her choice.

I was speaking for our culture...'it's a woman's fault if she is raped.' Geeez.

No you weren't. Geeeeeez. You accused the person you were addressing of BLAMING THE VICTIM, and being just like the culture that says "it's a woman's fault if she is raped". And THAT was what was disgusting about what you said, in case you actually missed it.

I've missed where anyone in this thread did what you alleged: And the woman gets blamed for what her husband did. But you might want to quit before you say too many more unpleasant things.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

13. I hope that the next president of US won't cry in public on television

but that they will exhibit strength and grace under pressure.

[jobycom]

27. I hope the next president won't call women "Sweetie" and make pastors visible in their government.

but will instead obey the Constitution and exhibit equality towards all people, all genders, and all faiths or lack thereof in all their actions and statements.

Tears I can deal with. That's a physiological response out of people's control--a symptom of actually being alive. We need more tears from our presidents.

[femrap]

40. Shit...when the boys cry, everyone is so happy

that he is sensitive and feeling and in-touch with his feminist side....yak yak blah blah.

BTW, why is crying looked down upon? Because women do it. Testosterone won't allow for tears. So when a man cries, he is probably manipulating.

[lukasahero]

22. Lots of us have made that mistake

(assuming this is a women's rights forum, that is.) There's actually nothing here that suggests you have to be FOR women to post here and there are several posters who come here deliberately just to stir shit. Sorry.

Have you checked the Feminists Group? It's restricted to only those who play by the rules. There have been some rifts over there during this primary season as well but as a whole people do at least see, and are open to discussing, the role sexism has played in the campaigns.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

12. I find her crying in public to be a sign of weakness for a potential world leader

It has nothing to do with sex.

It shows a lack of control, or it is a manipulative tool.

Women in the professional world are expected to meet equal standards with men in
the professional world.

Leaders of the most powerful countries in the world are supposed to be
able to keep calm under pressure.

Instead, if Hillary wasn't acting, then she wilted under pressure.

Not good. Not a sign of a leader. Male or female.

[Critters2]

15. So you've said. In four different posts.

You can repeat it all you want. I do not think crying is a sign of weakness. I really thought we'd grown beyond that kind of thinking as a culture. Thanks for opening my eyes. Four times.

[TellTheTruth82]

24. wow..only one definition

Some people think of crying as a weakness, others do not. To say we as a culture has grown beyond that means you think everyone has to subscribe to your particular definition of crying is not a weakness, just as a person who says crying is a weakness.

Crying is an emotional/physical response - sometimes of joy, sometimes of frustration, sometimes of sadness, sometimes of other things. I would think it depends on the context, and I would think an intelligent person could make up their own minds as to what it means to them.

[Warpy]

35. That's a sign of America's emotionally constipated culture

more than any sign of weakness. Other world leaders, male and female, cry publicly and without censure.

Only in America! Land of the free!

[femrap]

41. AAAH Yes,

The land where Macho-mania runs wild and the violence is free!

[gaspee]

31. You'll get nowhere in this group

People (mostly men, but some women) come here to argue with women, so the name is a misnomer. Try the feminist group.

As you can already see from the comments, they don't get it and I don't know if it's on purpose or not.

White privilege, they see no problem. Male privelege... er... not so much.

[femrap]

36. Organized religions are the bastion

of women's oppression. The US was so close to passing the ERA as an amendment to the Constitution when all organized religions united to stop it.

I can't think of an institution that has done more to keep down than organized religion.

I give you lots of credit for standing up to these guys who become flaccid at the sight of a woman with confidence, intelligence, and assertiveness.

[iverglas]

43. not quite true

As an atheist for some 40 years, I'm not exactly a booster of organized religion. Nonetheless ...

http://www.ucc.org/ucnews/june-july-2007/a-heady-exasperating-mix.html

'Looking through the lens of UCC history' <United Church of Christ>

"A heady, exasperating mix." Perhaps no other descriptive phrase in the UCC's 50-year history has been used as often, or as accurately, to describe us.

It comes from a widely-read, widely-celebrated article written by the late Rev. Oliver G. Powell in the September 1975 issue of A.D. Magazine, a predecessor publication of United Church News.

... Organizational theorists might have well advised this still-new church to stay close to home and mind its own fledgling institutional concerns, but the UCC's "heady, exasperating" membership — and leadership — would have none of that. They had more important issues with which to contend than mere ecclesiastical order.

They were busy being the church in the world: joining protests, resisting militarism, confronting racism, supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, standing alongside migrant farm workers — and talking about sex long before other Christians knew it existed.

The UCC is kind of the sister church to the UCC I grew up in, the United Church of Canada. The social gospel. My old UCC has been ordaining women for decades, and gay men and lesbians for some time now, and performing same-sex union ceremonies, and now marriages, for some time as well.

I imagine the Unitarian Church in the US took the same position.

This pro-ERA document from Iowa lists among the "supporters of equality":

http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/iowaera/doc4.htm

American Lutheran Church, Iowa District
Des Moines Presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church
Iowa Inter-Church Consortium for Governmental Concerns
United Church of Christ
and Republican Party of Iowa???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian_Church_in_America

According to the PCA's official website, it "separated from the PCUS in opposition to the long-developing theological liberalism which denied the deity of Jesus Christ and inerrancy and authority of Scripture." Additionally, the PCA espoused a complementarian interpretation of Scripture regarding the matter of women in church offices, excluding them from the offices of elder and deacon, whereas the PCUS had begun accepting the ordination of women over a decade earlier. According to PC(USA) author Rick Nutt, a less explicitly stated motive that was likely also influential in some quarters was the dissatisfaction with the PCUS's general opposition to the Vietnam War and support of the civil rights movement and the Equal Rights Amendment.

In Canada, the mainstream protestant churches generally all oppose reinstituting criminal laws dealing with abortion, for instance.

Churches in the social gospel / liberation theology tradition actually manage to do more social and political good than harm in the present circumstances, generally speaking. And women's rights is one area where that's true.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. I personally was disgusted by the good father's performance

on so many levels that it's hard to pick just one. Mostly I'm disgusted with him for putting Obama in the position that he did, surely knowing that the media was scrutinizing the church closely. Jeremiah Wright's sermons were one thing, because they were made at a time when the spotlight was not so much on the church, but Father Pfleger knew or should have known what a media phenomenon this would be. I think he did a great deal of harm all the way around.

[Critters2]

6. And the youtubes of Wright's sermons really were taken out of context.

I know Jeremiah Wright. I know his take on liberation theology, and I knew when I saw the youtube clips what the rest of those sermons would say. When I saw the whole sermons, I was right.

But there's no context in which Pfleger's comments are appropriate.

[Blue_In_AK]

7. There was nothing wrong with Jeremiah Wright's words

in the context in which they were given, in my opinion. I was not familiar with him before, but I was quite impressed by him in the Bill Moyers interview and agreed with almost everything he said.

[curious one]

18. There is nothing to think about. By making it an issue, it shows we know nothing

about black church. Whatever he said was funny. People are making it big issue. I look at it as Obama bashing. What about the time when HRC mocked Obama? Nobody said a thing. What about MCTheSame spiritual leaders? He sought after them. I am not hearing anything there too.

[murielm99]

19. I think there is too much partisanship in this thread for you

to get an honest answer. Of course if it had been a display of racism, we would be at Defcon 3.

I was upset about what Pfleger said for more than just his words. His body language made me angry, too. The way he mocked Senator Clinton was there in the way he moved, in a sort of mincing and prancing manner. I thought he was mocking women in general.

I remember seeing DU posts before she "cried" that criticized Clinton for being cold. Then there were DU posts after the incident that accused her of fakery. That was no surprise to me.

To get back to Pfleger, I was offended by the incident. I found it very sexist, but it raised a series of other questions for me. I wondered about why he was doing this publicly. Is it that acceptable to mock women in this way, or just Clinton? Are the late night comedians this bad? (I don't watch them). And why was he doing this in that setting? Was he playing to his audience? I think he was. Is the black community more sexist than the white community? I don't know. I do know that if any pastor did this sort of thing in my United Methodist church, there would be an outcry. We are a white congregation, but we have had a female pastor, a person of color as our pastor, and we now have an Asian-American male. All were well-loved.

If some of the posters here choose to dismiss my questions out of pure partisanship, it will not surprise me. I have seen very little honest discussion in this thread.

[Loisenman]

21. I appreciate the sincere tone of your post

I really appreciate the sincerity and the civility of your post. I am feeling discouraged by the tone of so much of discussion on DU. I am sorry to see it spill over into this forum. People can disagree with others in a respecful way that deepens discussion. Even partisans can make their case in a respectful way. I would be much more interested in hearing why people feel the way they do in a sincere way. There is a "hard" quality to many of the comments. I suspect that behind this, there is alot of vunerability that is being paper-ed over with judgements of others and partisanship.

[Annces]

25. It was offensive toward Hillary

and it struck me as hypocritical for him to be talking about white entitlement, when he is a member of an organization that feels women are not equal, and cannot hold the highest offices of the Catholic Church.

It also seemed to me, he loves getting attention, much like a stand up comic, but found himself exposed and that was the opposite of what he wanted, approval.

Also my Godmother is Dorothy Day. Though I never met her, my parents were close friends with her in the 1950s. That is a strong model of a Catholic woman.

[iverglas]

32. if I may take a stab ...

I've looked into Pfleger a bit because of his run-ins with gun militants, and explored a bit of his activism.

First, as far as his association with the misogynist entity that is the RC church: I think we can say for pretty definite that Pfleger is pro-choice, for starters. It's not something he can say out loud, but his lecturing of his flock about spending to much time fretting about fetuses and not enough doing important things (I've read some of his material) gives a solid indication. In fact, he's been in shit with his Cardinal for having what the brigade refers to as "pro-abortion" speakers at the church and supporting pro-choice political candidates.

I don't think Pfleger is a dogma kinda guy. And his misogyny, if such there be, would be personal rather than institutional.

Second, I don't think Hilary Clinton is a feminist or even a decent role model for little girls. I think she's a blindly ambitious and self-interested climber who exploited her marriage to achieve things that I expect people to aim for on their own merits, and in the process tacitly approved the degrading and exploitive behaviour of her husband and must bear blame for that.

(And I still don't care what anyone else's opinion on that question is, thank you.)

None of that means that Pfleger's actions and words were not misogynist. The fact that he supports women's reproductive rights, as I'm sure he does, and that Clinton is a lousy example of a woman, doesn't mean that he's not capable of misogynist actions and that criticism of Clinton can't be misogynist. One does not have to defend Clinton to object to misogynist attacks on her, and acknowledging Pfleger's misogyny doesn't imply denying his other good deeds.

The way it looks to me is that Pfleger is like many converts. In this case, he's determined to be blacker than black. He chose to work for/with the African-American community, and seems to have abandoned all nuance and lost his peripheral vision in the process.

It's to be expected that he would support Obama, since he's devoted his entire life to the welfare of the African-American community, and since Obama is the hometown favourite. It may also be expected that a principled progressive would oppose Clinton vigorously. (I don't think one has to oppose Clinton vigorously if one is a principled progressive; I think that's something on which reasonable people of goodwill can disagree, in the circumstances.)


... Okay, I just watched the video. That was one of the most disgusting performances I've ever seen. For fuck's sake, it was virtually a minstrel show. If any other white person had put on a black-preacher performance like that, s/he would have been dragged from the stage with a big hook.

Try this for contrast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0wvQMqSzTM&feature=related

He doesn't actually talk like that. He talks like a regular USAmerican white guy, and he can talk circles around any stupid person trying to trip him up. Ten minutes of owning FoxNews, off the cuff in a sidewalk ambush. He's what some might call articulate.

Maybe he came late to the cause, and missed that whole women thing in the late 60s. How women are an oppressed group, as are people of colour. And while Clinton may have grown up with white privilege, she also grew up with female subjugation. How male is not the gold standard any more than white is, and how women have a culture and characteristics that deserve as much respect as male culture and characteristics -- and as African-American culture and characteristics. How women of colour may just have interests in common with Clinton and in fact be victimized by men of colour, both individually and collectively, and including by the denial of their subjugation as women.

It's so hard to distinguish principled criticism of Clinton from misogynist criticism of Clinton, because principled criticism of her has to include her exploitation of women's interests in her own interest, and so it's too easy to hive Clinton off from women and make the misogyny deniable. But I do tend to see allegations that her sense of entitlement vis-à-vis Obama was race-based, however entitled she may indeed feel for whatever reasons, as dishonest, and as a denial in themselves of her own status as a member an excluded group. She is just as much a woman as Obama is an African-American. And frankly, he shares no more of the collective, common experiences of the African-American people than she does of the collective, common experiences of women. They're both outliers exploiting their commonalities with a group of which they are not representative and whose problems they cannot claim to have suffered in the way the people they are asking to adopt them as their standard-bearers have.

So I guess all I have to do is look at the situation in reverse. If Pfleger were a privileged white man who had rejected his privilege in order to join forces with women in their struggle for equality, and decided to put on some lipstick and do the equivalent of his blackface routine to mock Obama for dragging the gospel singers along with him on the campaign trail and charge him with relying on his lifetime of privilege as a man, based on centuries of oppression of women, to deny a woman the chance to make it big ...

Well, he'd look like a fool and a racist. Wouldn't it be nice if someone engaging in that discourse about Clinton was seen for a fool and a misogynist, just as readily?

Yeah. I think the performance was misogynist. And it confirms my feelings about Pfleger and his weird over-identification with a group he is not one of. Jesus may have told him to go walk in his parishioners' shoes, but he didn't actually tell him to forget about everybody else whose shoes pinch.

[PunkinPi]

46. Hi.

Of course, change of any kind, especially in a man 'his position', would be problematic for him.

Frankly, I think Pfleger's comments were more about race than they were about sex. The laughs that he illicitated were because "laughter" is a way to deal with something that is unknown. Barack Obama, though he stated certain positions on certain issues, is an "unknown factor" He is somewhat of a "novelty". Therefore, as a hold over of the status quo, what are you supposed to do?