The Last Time I Will Ever Have This Argument

If there is one thing we, as a people, have learned from the election, it is this: women be shopping. Oh, and that conventionally attractive women are stupid sluts.



Oh, and also that competent, intelligent women who do not apologize for speaking in an authoritative manner are ugly bitches who should shut the fuck up already and get to cleaning.



So, yeah, it was totally Sarah Palin's fault that McCain lost. Remember how she was solely responsible for choosing all of the mendacious and negative ads that caused McCain to lose the respect of a huge portion of the voting public? And how she had those three debates with Obama, and performed incredibly poorly at all of them? And how she "suspended" her campaign in a gimmick that all but the most gullible people recognized as a shallow attention-grabbing move unbefitting a serious and credible candidate? Oh, yeah, and there was that time that she said "the fundamentals of the economy were strong" right before the economy blew the fuck up in all of our faces. That really hurt the campaign.

To be fair, though, it's also completely Hillary's fault that Obama lost. Her refusal to leave the race after she won on Super Tuesday and had been projected to win it all for quite some time was so totally divisive. The fact that she endorsed him when he won and gave a speech on his behalf at the DNC was just super nasty and bitchy and totally showed her bitterness and unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of his campaign. Let's be honest here: Hillary Clinton campaigning for something she had been projected to win as if she actually wanted to win it, and only dropping out after it became clear that she could not win it, was completely the reason that the Democratic party was divided against itself and Obama did not win by a huge margin.

So, clearly, we don't have a President now, which totally sucks. You know who ruined it for the two men in question? Fucking women. When men are elected, it is completely due to their own merits, and the reason that no woman has ever been elected to the Presidency or the Vice-Presidency of the United States is that no woman has ever been good enough. But, even though women aren't smart or powerful enough to serve in those offices, they do have the magical power of completely derailing campaigns run by otherwise blameless men. We've come a long damn way.

What It Looks Like

So, yes, I burst into tears last night, but now I want to tell you why.

A few days ago I wrote this:

Most people do not belong to the (incredibly small) demographic of white, straight, middle-class men at which most "mainstream" media is targeted; most of us will, at least once per day, be smacked in the face with a message that tells us we are unimportant or inferior, and most of us learn to shrug those messages off.

I was thinking about the election when I wrote that. I was thinking about the election, and I was thinking about the most basic and most urgent task that I engage in every single day: looking at that white/straight/middle class/male narrative of America - the atmosphere through which I move, every day, absorbing its countless messages that only those people truly belong in this country or this world, that only they matter, that only they can ever be imagined when we say the word "American" or even "person" - and understanding that for what it is, and talking back to it. I don't do this because I want to; I do it because I have to, in order to believe that I belong in this world.

There were two men who shaped the course of my education: Sekou Sundiata and Gary Lemons. Sundiata taught me to write. He insisted that I learn the necessary discipline and technique, while acknowledging that writing was - or should be - only one facet of a greater engagement with the world. He told me that your message is your instrument: it doesn't matter how beautiful that instrument is if you can't play it. Lemons shaped the nature of my political engagement. On the day I met him he stood in front of the classroom and told us about his childhood: his father's violence, his mother's pain, and how he learned to internalize racism, which told him he was worth nothing, and sexism, which told him that black women were worth even less. He spoke of political engagement as a life-saving action, a recovery, which allowed him to overcome the ugliest aspects of his own socialization and work to heal the same wounds in others. I do not engage with this theory because it is intellectually interesting, he said, I do it because without it I would be insane or dead.

I knew that it was true. It was true for him, and it was true for me. I was falling apart that year. I was living with the memory of my father's violence, and my mother's pain. I was coping with the ways that I had swallowed the misogyny embodied in that family dynamic whole, and had treated myself - or allowed others to treat me - as a piece of meat or a garbage dump because of my gender. I was coping with my departure from the very white, very racist community I had grown up in, and was uncovering unconscious prejudices and attitudes of entitlement in myself to which I had never consciously admitted - and I had never had to admit them, because within that very white, very racist community, they were simply normal.

You want to talk about hope: I will tell you about Gary Lemons and Sekou Sundiata. I do this theory because without it I would be insane or dead; your message is your instrument, so learn to play it. These men were never easy on me, or on any of their students. They called me out, over and over again, for sloppiness in my work, for errors in my arguments, and for exhibiting a privileged, entitled white middle-class feminism which reified the system I claimed to be working against. I owe them more than I can express.

Lemons, who had been openly critical of the school's student diversity and faculty hiring policies, was fired a year after I met him; he had served at the college for more than a decade. Sekou Sundiata died last year.

So, yes, directly after Obama's victory speech, I excused myself from the room, and I went out onto the sidewalk, and I cried, harder than I have cried in years. It was not about the Democrats winning, or about me getting what I wanted, which was a Democratic win. It was about the fact that people have given their lives to this work, and many have suffered for it, and many have died, and some may have believed, as they died, that it was worthless. Many have developed, as I have, an ugly cynicism - we push for things that we don't honestly believe can be achieved, so that, when we lose, we don't mourn. We just say, what more would you expect from this country? I want you to believe me that, when I cried last night, I was grieving. I was also feeling that cynicism lift from me. I was realizing that it had been so, so, so heavy.

The narrative is wrong. It has always been wrong. "People" and "Americans" and "America" do not look like forty-three white married men of means. They look like this:












Yes, evil still exists. No, electing Barack Obama did not magically solve racism or end the dominance of the master narrative. Yes, we have a lot of work to do. You know, last night, this kid showed up to the party:

He is still going to grow up in a world where his success and his comfort are prized more than those of others, because of his gender and his race. He will still see that people who look like him occupy the most respected and powerful positions far more often than people who do not. He will still be taught in schools where the intellectual and artistic accomplishments of people who look like him are considered "canonical" or "foundational" or simply "great" works, with no identity-based qualifier, whereas the contributions of people who do not are typically described as "great works by women" or "great works by African-Americans" or what have you, rhetorically and conceptually separated from pure (white, male, straight) "greatness." He will still be encouraged to consider his successes as entirely his own, without taking into account the privileges and support networks that people who look like him necessarily inherit, which have made his success not only possible but likely. He will still live in a world where it is unlikely for him to gain the critical apparatus necessary to understand his own privilege, or the empathy necessary to join others in dismantling the institutions and assumptions which make it possible. He is still, most likely, going to make things harder for the rest of us, without entirely knowing what he is doing, or why.

I know this. I know this because I am a white, straight, college-educated, middle-class professional, and I am constantly extended privileges that I do not deserve, and I am constantly encouraged to simply embrace those privileges as my birthright. It is easy, safe and comfortable for privileged people like me - and lots of people are privileged, like me - to affirm and reinforce the structures of oppression; it is painful, dangerous, and difficult for us to resist them. But I believe that, in order for last night's victory to happen, millions of people had to vote against their own privilege. They had to defy that master narrative for long enough to cast their votes. I hope that we are able to continue this; I hope that we continue to reach past the politics of pure self-interest. I hope that boy is going to be able to carry this moment with him, and to serve its spirit. He is going to need good teachers.

Vote Yes on Michelle Obama

Happy Voting Day! How was your experience? No matter how good it was, it can't compare to the experience that these folks had: 

That is because they have the Most Amazing Marriage of All Time. 

I will be honest with you: I've liked Barack Obama since 2004. After his speech at the DNC that year, I, like many people, believed that he had the capacity to be a major figure in American politics - maybe even President. He had good politics, a clear vision, and a capacity for energizing people that I thought would be extremely valuable. I did not love Barack Obama, however, until I found out that he was married to Michelle. 

I know, I know: for most of this country's history, the most prominent political position available to women has been that of Lady Who Is Married to the Dude In Charge, and that is lame. Still, I think you can tell a lot about a person's character by who that person chooses to partner with and how they relate to each other, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. You can definitely tell a lot about a man's relationship to feminism by watching how he relates to the women around him. John McCain called his wife a cunt; John McCain put air quotes around "women's health." These two incidents are not unrelated. As a feminist, I respected Barack Obama more, and was happier to support him, after learning about his relationship with Michelle, and with their daughters. 

Because Michelle Obama scares people. She's opinionated. She's accomplished. She's politically engaged. She's funny - and not in a broad, crowd-pleasing way, but in a deadpan, sarcastic way that can be cutting. She is most likely smarter than you. She's also a black woman, and she exists within a cultural context where all of these qualities are feared, demonized and suppressed in women (we're called "bitches") and black people (they're called "bitter" or "angry") and especially in black women (for God's sake, the Angela Davis thing). To fall in love with a woman like Michelle Obama, you have to fall in love, not only with these qualities, but with the sheer strength it must take for her to own them and wear them on her sleeve when every day, everywhere, everyone around her is pressuring her to shut up. You have to be one hell of a man to do that, or to earn that woman's love and respect. You have to be her equal. 

Which is a tough job, because look at how awesome this woman is: 

Of the Iowa State Fair's corn dogs and candied apples, obligingly gushed over by hopeful First Ladies every four years: "Stuff on a stick." Here's Obama, talking to me in her motorcade halfway between Sheboygan, Wisconsin and Green Bay about Obama Girl, the young woman who professed her crush on Obama's husband all over the internet: "That was a little weird, because, you know... I just assumed, you know, there's no way anybody's gonna hear about that. And one day Sasha comes home, and she's like, 'Daddy has a girlfriend. It's you, Mommy.' And it's, like, 'Oh, shhhhhhhhh -- yeah.'" Curse word averted, barely.

Traditionally, candidates' wives - including this year's alternate model, the hollow-eyed corpse of Betty Draper - speak of their husbands in reverential platitudes, rhapsodizing about their roles as perfectly submissive helpmeets to the Great Men and painting their relationships in sugary pastel tones that would ring false even if they hadn't been repeated a million times in other elections. Here is how Michelle Obama describes her position on her husband's campaign: 

Obama has been open about the value of her ability to speak to black audiences in cadences that reflect their experience, but she makes clear her distaste for the notion that she is a niche tool, wielded by her husband's campaign to woo black voters solely on the basis of their shared racial identity... "I mean, I've been to every early state," she told me... "I was 'deployed' to Iowa," she said, making air quotes with her fingers. "I was 'deployed' to New Hampshire."

So, Michelle Obama: invested in the campaign, committed to involving communities of color in the electoral process (her thesis, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community," was about being assimilated into an overwhelmingly white establishment through education while being aware that, within that environment, she was treated as "black first and a student second" due to continuing institutional racism - BECAUSE SHE'S BRILLIANT) and not about to let herself be described as a passive tool of her husband's agenda or a person who can be exploited by the Democratic party on the basis of her race. 

So much for the helpmeet theory! How about their relationship? Surely she's deferential to the mighty Barack Obama: 

"We would have this running debate throughout our relationship about whether marriage was necessary," Obama told me. "It was sort of a bone of contention, because I was, like, 'Look, buddy, I'm not one of these types who'll just hang out forever.' You know, that's just not who I am. He was, like" - she broke into a wishy-washy voice - "'Marriage, it doesn't mean anything, it's really how you feel.' And I was like, 'Yeah, right.'"

So, let's pause for a moment. You are in a relationship with a really great guy, who you really like, and you end up having one of those Commitment Discussions, in which he takes the inevitable "but it doesn't meeeean anything, it's just a piece of paaaaaper" route, pursued by dudes all over the world since approximately forever. You know damn well it means something, because if it didn't, he wouldn't be freaking out about it. Still, you really, really like this guy - you wouldn't be having this discussion if you didn't - and breaking up with him would hurt like hell, but then again, so would staying in a relationship where the other person always has one foot out the door. Then AGAIN, his argument is insanely well-framed and persuasive, because he is BARACK FREAKING OBAMA FOR GOD'S SAKE, and can you even imagine having a Relationship Discussion with Barack Obama? By the end of it, you'd be sobbing with joy and chanting, "yes! I! Can! Take! Out! The garbage! You! Are! Tired!" So you look this man in the eye, and you say, with resounding conviction, "whatever, dude - get on the train before it leaves the station." 

How awesome is that? Please rate your answers on a scale from "one" to "Michelle Obama." 

Anyway, we all know how that turned out: 

And: 

And: 

AUGHHH GOD THE BEAUTY IT BURNS MY EYESSSSSS. 

So, long story short, he's probably going to be President. He deserves it. He deserves her, too. Which is saying something.