2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Refusal to accept Clinton as the Nominee is Rooted in Misogyny and Racism [View all]Hekate
(90,681 posts)...anyone's ability to attain the kind of godlike objectivity we were supposedly being trained in. Proto-feminist that I was, I spotted things in literature that went right past the men in the seminar, and shocked them into denial when I said it (Joseph Conrad was a bastard to his wife; I saw the pattern while looking through a stack of books for something else).
But godlike objectivity in scholarship was what we were trying to attain in 1970, and that meant adopting the male gaze.
Some 25 years later when I went back to grad school, some attitudes had undergone an incredible change, due to the feminist women who had stuck it out in the scholarly world and had moved into the political world. It was great.
But in 2016, here we are, still talking about public life and public thought and whose voice actually counts. And so many men still think it's all about them and only their voice counts, because they have not been adequately and consistently challenged and made to think about it.
Every freaking generation is going to have to keep doing this, I sometimes think. Look at this nation's response to Barack Obama, who is one of the great men of our time... There's nothing post-racial about it. It will be the same with Hillary. Gods willing she will be elected safe and sound -- and the backlash will be awful. It already is.