Here is Romney’s lie from last night’s debate:
“And so we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders of women.”
Here is what happened:
“Following the election, MassGAP [Massachusetts Government Appointments Project] formed committees for each cabinet post in the administration and began the process of recruiting, interviewing, and vetting women applicants,” said Marissa Szabo, associate director of the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus, which founded MassGAP. “Those committees selected top applicants for each position and presented this information to the administration for follow-up interviews and consideration for appointment.”
Just one more thing and I am done here, because I have got to get back to Fairyland and my book. Hillary Clinton has got Obama’s back. Like so many times in the past, I am amazed by what a brilliant politician she is. And her husband, of course. You could be cynical about all this, but I like that she knows exactly what to do. I hope this means she is running in 4 years. I want this kind of political mind to be president.
Tamara,
How do you get from: Morgan disagrees with regard to what is to be done on the affirmative action issue
to…
Morgan does not understand “privilege,” which is really nothing more than “a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most” (your link does not provide any edification that goes anywhere beyond this dictionary definition)?
Seeing a lot of this going around lately. It’s the same mistake President Obama was making in the debate the other night: Romney does not agree on the cuts to the military, therefore Romney must not know what an aircraft carrier is. What’s up with this rush to exclude as a possibility that maybe, just maybe, the other person disagrees about what is to be done, and might not be missing any of the relevant information?
Thanks for replying with a fresh comment, the nesting was getting ridiculous!
To be honest, I think that you don’t understand male privilege (not just plain ‘privilege’) because, as aninha91 pointed out, you refer to it as a “smaller inequality in life” that an individual person can compensate for. The masses of writing on this topic, in my view, makes it quite clear that this is not the case. There is nothing that a woman can do to “compensate” for not being a man.
How about this one:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/
…[Y]ou refer to it as a “smaller inequality in life” that an individual person can compensate for. The masses of writing on this topic, in my view, makes it quite clear that this is not the case.
Isn’t that discussion pretty much ended, the first time someone does successfully compensate? Jeannette Rankin joins the House, Rebecca Felton joins the Senate…if one can do it, they all can do it. Barack Obama becomes President, then a woman becomes President…
The concern is with moving goalposts. If the “glass ceiling” has been smashed, there should be some resentment in recession — some kind of “ah hah” moment in which people realize the obstructions they imagined to exist, were never there in the first place.
That’s different from saying the resistance was never there or the difficulty was never there. Women have difficulties men don’t. So what? Men have difficulties women don’t, especially now. But my point is…why dwell on such things? If you have a vision, and you’re GOING to succeed, at some point you’re going to have to have your “Well, am I over it yet?” moment and push on. Whether you’re a man or a woman, that’s just part of prevailing and succeeding. You don’t dwell on your handicaps, you dwell on your strength.
It may be worth me pointing out that I’m channeling my mother here. Thirty years ago she was running a word processing and secretarial service; she joined a fellowship of small business owners, which put out a newsletter. One day she read a column by a woman who owned a business similar to hears, and it was really just a lot of grousing…customers “abusing” her, “victimizing” her. The interesting story here is my mother’s worldview of it. She was just so obsessed and angry, she couldn’t see straight, and finally wrote a rebuttal that was printed up the next week. I still to this day think she might have overreacted on that one a little bit, but since then I’ve come to understand. Mom was absolutely dedicated down to the marrow of her bones that people are not victims unless they choose to be, and the message had to be put out that you don’t NEED to choose this. But she didn’t want to spend her time and energy writing the column, she wanted to spend her time and energy running her business. She just eventually realized she was so angry she couldn’t concentrate on anything until she got it out of her system.
I mentioned moving-goalposts. If we can complain “There’s never been a [blank] who’s a [blank]” — for decades — and then it happens, and then a new complaint comes up “Yeah, well your arm had to be twisted, and besides, you don’t have enough!”; what you have, then, is a perpetual motion machine of resentment. An aggrieved victim group that will never, ever be satisfied. And notice I’m not just singling out the women in pointing this out. If it’s worth the trouble to start the struggle, it’s worth the time to define the objective and to stick to that definition. Otherwise, you fall into the victim-trap, and that stuff just eats you alive. Nobody needs that.
“Isn’t that discussion pretty much ended, the first time someone does successfully compensate?”
No, that’s ridiculous. If a white, cis-gendered, upper-class woman whose parents were completely ahead of their time could succeed, that doesn’t say anything about the women who don’t have that ton of privileges and just missed out on the male privilege.
The “you’re choosing to be a victim” is equally false. No one chooses to be a victim, the situation we have was never a bunch of people who could succeed if only they tried but they were just to lazy to do it. You see one poc or female succeeding and every single obstacle that one might get and most certainly will just for being poc or female suddenly vanishes?
“No one chooses to be a victim…”
No one? Really?
I think we part company here. To the contrary, victimhood is very alluring to some, and there are those who spend their entire lives invested in it. After awhile, they don’t even know what to do without it.
That’s not a man/woman thing, by the way; this is gender-neutral.
“No one chooses to be a victim…”
“No one? Really?”
Yes.
“I think we part company here.”
I never was in your company, you’re words on a screen for me as I am to you, sorry if that happens to be an idiomatic expression though.
“To the contrary, victimhood is very alluring to some, and there are those who spend their entire lives invested in it.”
Sight.
“After awhile, they don’t even know what to do without it.”
Then it’s not a choice, if you do something out of despair, you’re not choosing, the ability to choose implies you see more than one option.
“That’s not a man/woman thing, by the way; this is gender-neutral.”
Thanks for this aside note, though I disagree with the premise.
Morgan, saying that because some people escape something then it’s wrong to consider that something of any gravity is simply a fallacy.
Would you tell me fire is not dangerous, does not burn and kill a person because you’ve known of people who escaped their houses while it was catching on fire?
You wouldn’t, you also wouldn’t tell me that because some people survive being shot on the heart, those that died from it must not have bothered to live and felt allured to die.
Then why would you tell me, without doing reading on the matter, that women must simply be choosing to not succeed if some women managed to and that further they must be imagining they have a problem that isn’t their fault to begin with, namely male privilege?
I’ll tell you why, because that women are lazy and stupid, that women cannot tell they’re being injusticed without whining, that women would get the same oportunities if they wanted enough, all these, are stereotypes you see everyday.
Ask yourself, is a man accused of whining whenever he complains about anything, as a rule? Or are the problems men complain of treated as universally relevant? If it were a man talking to you about problems he perceives men face, would you dismiss it so naturally as to nearly refuse word by word to look into it?
“No one chooses to be a victim…”
“No one? Really?”
Yes.
++blink++ Wow, what a fascinating absolute. I won’t be able to find any examples anywhere? Promise?
Would you tell me fire is not dangerous, does not burn and kill a person because you’ve known of people who escaped their houses while it was catching on fire?
No I wouldn’t. But, if you chose to freeze all winter long without the benefit of a furnace, or fireplace, or cooked food, because you were terrified of burning the house down, then like any rational person I might have something to say about the thought process. And that analogy works much better when we consider this post-Clinton, ultra-victim-obsessed recent feminist mindset. Men enjoy a lot of special advantages, so do women, and the outcome of this is simply that each gender toils away with a mixed-up concoction of benefits & liabilites as its members compete for jobs, promotions, money and other resources.
For people to obsess over their strengths instead of their weaknesses is just common sense. Gender-neutral common sense, as I said.
“++blink++ Wow, what a fascinating absolute. I won’t be able to find any examples anywhere? Promise?”
I don’t promise because I have a particular dislike for promises, but you won’t.
“And that analogy works much better when we consider this post-Clinton, ultra-victim-obsessed recent feminist mindset.”
I don’t think so.
“Men enjoy a lot of …….. and other resources.”
You won’t research it in detail because you’re too convinced that in the end women don’t have it worse then men, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so …..
“For people to obsess over their strengths instead of their weaknesses is just common sense.”
I never questioned that at all. I’d take “obsess” and put “focus” instead.
Reblogged this on Chronicles of a Travel Addict and commented:
Just one of the MANY lies Romney presents as a “solution” to the U.S.’s problems. If this country was founded on freedom, why, oh why, regress to a time before Roe V. Wade? Why is it logical to take away the rights of the middle class, of women, of minorities, in the honor of “business men”? What have these CEOs and billionaires done for US lowly lumpenproletariats lately???
The point is that Romney didn’t go out to woman’s groups, MassGAP did.
And, do you even know what communism actually is?
Yes, and Barack Obama qualifies.
How about, drop the talking points and tell me specifically where I’m going wrong and saying that. What does a communist have to do to be a communist, that President Obama has not done yet.
Based on what I’ve been reading about the White House hiring females and then compensating them…it seems Mitt Romney actually has the better track record here. By specifically requesting these “binders of women,” Romney is actually guilty of discriminating against MEN. So outside of Human Resources discussions his phrasing might be hard to understand; how does that make him anti-woman? He discriminated against men, exactly the way feminists want and in exactly the way they like.
This all supports the stereotype that feminists “are never happy.” Meanwhile, the Obama White House is paying women eighteen percent less than men tasked with equivalent responsibilities.
Are you guys making the right friends & enemies here? It seriously does not look like it.
Most feminists don’t want to discriminate against men, actually; we just want to be afforded the same opportunities, and it’s things like male privilege and bias that keep them from us. I also suggest you read this post on why Mitt Romney is so out of touch on feminism: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/mitt-romney-doesnt-get-women.html
I’m also really, seriously struggling to wrap my head around how someone who is roughly on a level with my country’s Conservative Prime Minister (though less of a smarmy git) can be a communist. I’d appreciate examples of things Obama’s actually done that qualify as communist.
Please explain how Barack Obama qualifies as a communist.
Sorry, I should have credited Margot’s earlier post on this as well.
So…it looks like Mitt told the truth. Where’s the discrepancy I’m apparently missing?
If your point is that there’s a scandal here because Gov. Romney should have been finding the best qualified people REGARDLESS of whether they’re women or not, I can get behind that. But the nomination process is over, it’s him or Barry, and Barry has to go because communism is contrary to the vision and composition of this country. But…somehow I doubt this is your intent.
At any rate, the content does not support your post title. And real women don’t need to narrow the field when they compete for things, be they jobs, scholarships, diplomas, husbands, or the like.
Based on the other reading I have done on this eg Feministe, the discrepancy is that Romney stated that he initiated the effort to appoint women, when in fact the process was initiated by the MassGAP. He did not go to the women’s groups, they came to him.
What the heck is a “real woman” anyway?
A woman who isn’t fake. Just like a man who isn’t fake. Faced with competition, she either opts to put her best effort forward to come out on top, or concede that the competition is a better fit and drop out. But not resort to dirty tricks or misguided affirmative action policies to eliminate that competition.
Helpful post explaining privilege Morgan. Actually, the internet does have heaps of helpful information for those keen to educate themselves.
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/faq-what-is-male-privilege/
You don’t understand how affirmative action works nor why it exists. Do some research on privilege, please.
Where am I going wrong? Specifically.
I can’t be specific, you really just need to do some reading on these subjects.
Figured as much.
http://www.peekinthewell.net/blog/specifically/
Tsk. I didn’t even read that through, the flaw in what he or she is assuming is that other people have the obligation to educate him or her. Maybe I should have worded it different, maybe I can be specific, I just don’t want to. Books have been written about all sorts of subjects, there’s no reason you shouldn’t read them, that’s how I learned a lot of the stuff I know today.
As for what I suggested you’d research, there are tons and tons of links with articles you can read for free. I also did not mean to imply you’re stupid, if I thought that, I’d just ignore.
Right, in other words you can’t back it up you were just bullying, and it isn’t working.
Look there’s no reason to go reading entire books on this. Preferential treatment according to gender or national origin is just WRONG. It doesn’t get any more complicated than that, wrong is wrong.
Bullying? Wow. Okay, then.
“Do some research” has to do with specific details, or else intimidation.
I called your bluff and it turns out you have no specific details to offer. It’s as simple as that.
Hi Morgan,
I haven’t read been able to through this whole thread but I hope that you are not harassing commenters on my blog who try to respond to you. I know I did not respond to your comment that romney is good for women because I have blogged about why he isn’t good for women. My latest blogs on this have to do with contraception being basic healthcare for women and for insurance not to cover it by law (which Romney supports) is sex discrimination. Often, when I debate not only conservatives, but really progressive men on this, they go on and on defending freedom of religion and the catholic church, always bringing the argument back to a sexist framework in place, when what I am saying is THE FRAMEWORK OF THE LAW IS SEXIST. That is often why I stop debating. Part of the reason I started my blog is because I got in similar debates with progressive men over which was worse in movies: sex or violence? This was them arguing against the MPAA, saying violence is so much worse. But for women, that division doesn’t even make sense: sex and violence in movies are so often correlated: women getting raped by sexy leading men, women in wet T-shirts being sliced open in horror films, women’s dead, naked bodies, on and on. This is what I was blogging about when I wrote about “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” or “women’s issues.” It gets frustrating to be always drawn into debates where the rules of the debates are set up by men.
MM
You took it more seriously than I intended it, I didn’t mean to intimidate or upset you. I do think understanding male privilege (and white privilege too) is important if you want to discuss anything sociological. Though I don’t mind if you don’t want to do it. It was just a suggestion, especially because many men do open their eyes after reading books that explain their own bias to them, bias they got after being force fed several images and ideas again and again.
“And real women don’t need to narrow the field when they compete for things, be they jobs, scholarships, diplomas, husbands, or the like.”
This is a common argument against all sorts of affirmative actions, and the problem with it is that it assumes we live in an equal world and if any group is not getting their share piece of the pie it must be because of their own incompetence and not say, institutionalized sexism and racism. Affirmative action is an attempt to compensate the advantage people born with a penis and light skin get from the day they’re born. Your probable reply is “nobody is born with more rights than others”, and, that’s not true, it is a nice idea that doesn’t reflect our world, to get to understand the several ways in which some people are benefited privileges though, you’ll have to do the research, you’ll have to see the numbers and hear stories about minorities told by the minorities in question, stories about women told by women.
I don’t deny the inequalities exist. What I deny is that there is some reasonable objective to be achieved in trying to even them up, and I further question whether such policies soothe away any equal or greater share of disharmony and disunity than what they simultaneously introduce. Ultimately it’s up to the individual to compensate for the smaller inequalities in life, so when we debate the benefits and pitfalls of affirmative action what we’re really debating is whether we’re past that point of diminishing returns, whether the policies have started to create more problems than they’re solving. And my opinion is, we were past that point before we ever headed down the road.
Hope I didn’t come off as harassing you, I meant it exactly the way I said it. You plainly indicated I needed to learn something, I said what, specifically? And you didn’t have an answer. So yes, I was being shushed up, the suggeestion that there was some nugget of valuable previously-missed information for me to go chasing, was just an empty pretext.
Now…Margot. I’m harassing your commenters when they bluff, I call them out on it, and it turns out they don’t have anything? WTH?
“I don’t deny the ……………… simultaneously introduce.”
You question does have merit. To see about that we would need a mathematical model however, not something that can be solved by mere exchange of words. If you know of any such model or maybe a sociological researcher devising it, send me a reference and I’ll get back to you.
“Ultimately it’s up to the individual to compensate for the smaller inequalities in life,……”
That’s the thing, these aren’t “small” inequalities by any means.
“And my opinion is, we were past that point before we ever headed down the road.”
I disagree entirely.
“Hope I didn’t come off as harassing you,”
No.
“You plainly indicated I needed to learn something,”
Yes, from my first answer to you: “You don’t understand how affirmative action works nor why it exists. Do some research on privilege, please.”
That meant I thought you had to learn about affirmative action and privilege.
“I said what, specifically? And you didn’t have an answer.”
Yes, I did, again, affirmative action and privilege, male and white.
“So yes, I was being shushed up,”
No, I didn’t suggest you had to become literate or anything else that would take you years to do. The basics of privilege and affirmative action you could learn in a matter of hours. Besides, my suggestion only refered to “At any ……., or the like.” That wasn’t your entire conversation, what you mainly was trying to talk about was Obama vs Romney, you could still do that leaving out the aside note about “real women”.
“the suggestion that there was some nugget of valuable previously-missed information for me to go chasing,”
Not a nugget, just a tad bit more, and I still think it’s an important information.
“was just an empty pretext.”
No, pretext for what? You insist on thinking I was trying to do you some harm, I wasn’t.
“I’m harassing your commenters when they bluff, I call them out on it, and it turns out they don’t have anything? WTH?”
I wasn’t bluffing, I suggested you researched privilege, you asked me what was it you were getting wrong, again I said I just imagined you didn’t have that knowledge, in yet another post I said I thought that knowledge was important in my opinion for any conversation about something sociological. That was my one and only point, I never bluffed about having something I didn’t have, a suggestion was and is all I have and am giving you.
Now about Romney:
http://victimblaming.tumblr.com/post/34230628475/so-that-mourdock-thing
This is one of the reasons I don’t consider him a good candidate.