If we in this country are ever going to move beyond Hooters, beyond date rape, beyond the wage gap and the glass ceiling, beyond Girls Gone Wild, and bulimic 12-year-olds, we need to start working together. We need to work with men on the gender signals called out by the media and with business about the value of women workers. We need to talk to one another respectfully and listen to one another's complaints.
-- "What if Hillary Clinton Gave a Speech about Gender? (And Why She Won't)," Slate, Mar 21, 08
Putting aside the premise of the piece for a moment -- that HRC won't ever give a speech on gender because she's not about transcending old insults so much as she is about profiting from them -- putting that aside, I urge you all to look at the outline of this never-to-be-given speech. I excerpted part of it above. Many of the other ten points had me nodding along, including:
3) But I would ask the women of this country to stop engaging in petty warfare over who has suffered more—women or blacks, women or men—as it is corrosive and fruitless. This country was founded on the promise that you can become the best thing you can dream for yourself; you are not trapped by the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
4) Things have improved for women in America in the last decades. They are not perfect; there is still much to be done. But women have made enormous strides in a few short decades, and to suggest otherwise is to devalue the life's work of too many heroes of the women's movement.
5) It is possible, indeed it is probable, that just as women have faced barriers and obstacles and derision, so have Hispanics, so have blacks, and so have men. No one in America can corner the market on suffering. Who the hell wants to spend their life in a corner, anyhow?
Like I said -- take or leave the analysis of why HRC isn't going to give this speech. But I think some of the points can be discussed anyway.
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