Eugene Volokh discusses the new liberal line being taken by Elena Kagan advocates, i.e., "She can't be lesbian, she's dated men." Says Volokh,
seems to me pretty odd to see assertions...that she must be straight because she has dated men.... As I understand it, the great majority of women who are not purely heterosexual are actually to some degree bisexual.
That's certainly what the surveys, and everyday observation, seem to suggest (not to mention lessons learned from TV's Grey's Anatomy).
But the Obama administration and its fellow travelers-including, it seems, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, as quoted here-have decreed that questions about Kagan's personal relationships are out of bounds (unlike, say, for relationship questions about nominees who are unquestionable straight), and any suggestion she might not be exclusively heterosexual is a smear. (Reminds me of how so many feminists joined with liberal men to argue that it was a terrible thing Sarah Palin wasn't staying at home, where she belonged, to raise her children.)
More. In response to the disbelieving commenter, here's one example (hat tip: Bobby)-the Washington Post's Sally Quinn, as recounted by Politico: " 'Her first priority has to be her children,' Quinn wrote. 'When the phone rings at 3 in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make?' "
But I grant you, liberal men were far more likely to engage in this sort of thing, and worse.
14 Comments for “Liberal Line: ‘Bisexual Erasure’”
posted by BobN on
Wow… we really are milking this issue for partisan cream, aren’t we?
posted by Mike A on
Strawman argument.
HRC and GLAAD are Democratic, not “liberal.”
posted by Barry Deutsch on
I frankly doubt this is true. Can you quote three feminists saying this? (Three seems like a reasonable minimum to qualify as “so many.”) Can you quote one?
posted by Bobby on
Barry, there was sexism from the left against both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13129.html
posted by Barry Deutsch on
Bobby, I certainly agree that there was sexism from some liberals against Palin. (Although I also saw many feminists — as opposed to liberals — object to sexism against Palin.)
That wasn’t the claim of Stephen’s I asked him to back up.
Stephen claimed that “many feminists joined with liberal men to argue that it was a terrible thing Sarah Palin wasn’t staying at home, were she belonged, to raise her children.” It’s not unfair for me to ask him to back up this charge with evidence.
posted by BobN on
Not only is Miller a rank partisan, he’s not a very good Googler, it appears. Of course, why go to the source when you can hide behind a caricature…
Is she prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job? She is the mother of five children, one of them a four-month-old with Down Syndrome. Her first priority has to be her children. When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make? I’m the mother of only one child, a special needs child who is grown now. I know how much of my time and energy I devoted to his care. He always had to be my first priority. Of course women can be good mothers and have careers at the same time. I’ve done both. Yes, other women in public office have children. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has five children, but she didn’t get heavily involved in politics until they were older. A mother’s role is different from a father’s.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/sally_quinn/2008/08/sarah_polin.html
Her argument was that Palin wasn’t ready yet. (Not that I think she’ll ever be.)
posted by Lori Heine on
To return to the central theme of the post, the O Administration has recoiled from the very suggestion that Kagan might be a lesbian with great sighing and clutching of pearls.
“What a charge! O, the humanity!”
I didn’t come out until I was thirty-five. I had sex with men for years, and almost married three of them. Even after twelve years of being out, I still have a ways to go to catch up on the female side of the ledger. By the standards of those who wish to transform Kagan into a bisexual, I’d be one, too.
I am, however, quite comfortable and satisfied with the knowledge that I am a lesbian. And I would be insulted if the president who nominated me for a position — any position, no matter how lofty — regarded even the suggestion that I was gay as a slur on the par of an accusation of murder.
Obama is a bigot. He gets away with it because he’s half African-American, and — more importantly, to his “base” — because he is a “progressive.”
Align yourself with the proper ideology, and you can get away with anything. Probably even murder itself.
posted by Jorge on
She is, she isn’t, she is, she isn’t…
I’ll admit, I’m fascinated by all this. What is this ridiculous notion of proving she is or isn’t gay?
You know… I didn’t say this at first, but this is probably just a form of bullying. You get someone with an odd presentation, and you get a small group of people who start spreading rumors that they’re gay. And they embellish it will all kinds of earnestness and innuendo to fool the unsophisticated people, and they get powerful people like CBS News to believe them.
And despite having no evidence, despite it being pure bias on their part, there becomes an investigation, people ask her the most humiliating questions, and a certain innocence is lost. It is pure harassment.
I cannot hold GLAAD and the other liberals blameless. Maybe the White House is speaking for Kagan, fine. But everyone else needs to chill out and accept what they know, and go forward on that. Either she’s straight and she’ll decide gay marriage, not straight and she’ll decide gay marriage, or closeted and she’ll decide gay marriage–it really doesn’t matter.
posted by Barry Deutsch on
Sally Quinn — a religion columnist famous for her defense of Ken Starr and attacks on the Clintons during Monicagate — isn’t a fair example of a feminist, because if anything she’s opposed to feminism. Quinn has written columns with titles like “Feminists Have Killed Feminism,” compares NOW to the Soviet Union, and says women see “the feminist movement as anti-male, anti-child, anti-family, anti-feminine.”
Unless you’re able to back up your claim “so many feminists joined with liberal men to argue that it was a terrible thing Sarah Palin wasn’t staying at home, where she belonged, to raise her children” with facts — and it’s obvious you can’t — you should have the integrity to withdraw the claim.
posted by Jimmy on
“You know… I didn’t say this at first, but this is probably just a form of bullying. You get someone with an odd presentation, and you get a small group of people who start spreading rumors that they’re gay”
Or they, say, print a picture of Kagan playing softball – a completely off the wall thing to do given the office. Gee, whatever could that action be communicating?
It wouldn’t surprise me that Kagan is, in reality, asexual, which is something no one knows how to deal with.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
Can you quote three feminists saying this?
Oh, there are plenty.
Lots.
An embarrassment of riches.
Everywhere you look.
In short, the Obama Party treats women the same way it does any minority — they support them as long as they stay on the plantation and do exactly what Massa tells them to do.
Sarah Palin did not obey her Obama Party massas. Therefore, she should be treated like scum and hunted down and destroyed. Barack Obama demanded it, and the gay community obediently repeated Barack Obama’s statements that Palin faked her pregnancy and that she should be assassinated.
posted by Barry Deutsch on
North Dallas Thirty, you seem to think “feminist” and “woman” are interchangeable. However, just because a writer is female doesn’t show that she’s a feminist.
The first three links you gave were to writers who, while female, don’t seem to be particularly feminist. The final one, to a writer in a student newspaper, is making some feminist-sounding arguments – but she nowhere claims that “it was a terrible thing Sarah Palin wasn’t staying at home, where she belonged, to raise her children.”
If feminists were commonly arguing that “it was a terrible thing Sarah Palin wasn’t staying at home, where she belonged, to raise her children,” then it should be possible to quote some people who work for NOW or the Feminist Majority, or who is an established feminist due to her other writings, or who at least write for the hundreds of established feminist blogs, who ever said such a thing.
On the other hand, if you can’t show a few examples of feminists working for feminist orgs, or writing at feminist blogs, saying such a thing, then I don’t think it’s fair to say that “feminists” in general were making such a sexist claim.
posted by Debrah on
Stuart Taylor provides a rather formidable defense of Kagan in National Journal’s Recruiters: Kagan’s Forgivable Sin
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
Thank you for demonstrating the point nicely, Barry: namely that, in the Obama Party, whether or not a woman is s “feminist” depends upon whether or not white males like yourself designate her to be. If you decide she is, she can be, but if you don’t think her writings meet your standards of what a feminist should be, she isn’t one.
Kind of ironic that the definition of feminism in the Obama Party is administered solely by males and is dependent on belonging to specific organizations designated by men as feminist or in having your writings reviewed and deemed “feminist” by men.