When do sex and violence go bad? Well, some would say immediately and honestly if you would prefer to keep your ignorance to the topic and believe it is just good ol’ party fun and the occasional song lyric, I can’t really blame you. However, if you start scratching the surface the plethora of information opens up like a hot spring. In spending less than 1o minutes researching rape I found some joke of an anti-rape contraption that was more offensive than funny (more on this in a minute), I found organization upon organization supporting rape awareness, anti-rape ad campaigns, brochures, websites, grassroots movements, artist contributions. You name it, it is out there. So why, if it is so prevalent, is IT so prevalent? Why are so many people still being raped? Yes, I did mean to say people. It is NOT JUST WOMEN. Women are still, by far, the majority. But men get raped to.

How many of you know a woman who has been raped? This question is posed often to people. They say that nearly everyone knows a woman who was raped. When was the last time you wondered if you knew a man who was raped? I do.

Rape is a violent crime. It is not about sex. It is about power. It is about control. It is about dominance. It is a symptom of a mental illness. It is the reptilian part of the brain running out of control. It is commonplace. It happens because sometimes ambiguity is easier to accept than distinction.

She said no. But did she? Do you really hear it? Did she really say it? If she is too drunk to say no, does that still mean no? Come on people, we have all seen the after school specials about this. We know what is right and what is wrong and what is ambiguous.

After a conversation this afternoon about the need for being proactive, I did my 10 minutes of research and discovered that we are being proactive. But what does that mean? We have great organizations like rapeis.org . There are ad campaigns like:

Though I appreciate the effort and the message. This seems to be one of those posters on the campus bulletin boards and on the walls in hallways that we all read a thousand times and just ignored. Just like do your monthly breast exam and get the flu shot.

There are good artistic voices getting the proactive word out. This is a moving slam poetry piece on poetry and feminism.

Or you can go the route that South Africa has gone with the Rapex anti rape device. Just looking at the thing and you can see why it is controversial. But as its challengers rightly point out, doesn’t this put the onus on the victim. When do we stop doing that? We do have a responsibility to protect ourselves from being victims. But does is have to involve putting teeth in our vagina’s? Apparently in South Africa it does. In Brazil they have all women police stations to deal with crimes against women. This is progressive. We certainly do not offer that in the US. Of course those police stations do nothing to prevent the crime. They are there because the government has accepted that the crime is inevitable and therefore should provide a more effective and protective way to deal with it. Well, they aren’t wrong. Not yet at least.

So why are our current efforts of being proactive so ineffective? Maybe we need a shock campaign to scare the issue into the forefront. This is a question to which I have no answer.

First she is not “human” enough.

Then she is too emotional.

Now she is dependent upon her husband.

Can the politics of president be separated from gender? It doesn’t seem that way.

Feminism has become skewed since the second wave movement in the 1970’s. Now women don’t want to identify as a feminist. To many it is synonymous with Femanazi, a term used to disenfranchise the feminist movement, equating women libbers with man hating, castrating, over bearing, dictator, hate driven women. Of course women like this exist, but they are a minority. To be a feminist is a good thing. It is to say we are women and we are equal. We are as good as men. We are as smart. We are as capable. We deserve equal pay, equal rights, equal lives. We deserve to be thought of and treated as equals. We are not objects here with the sole purpose of your sexual gratification, but we are sexual! We are mothers and daughters and business women and home makers. We are all of these things and do not have to compromise in order to “have it all” but neither do we need to be thought less of.

Hillary Clinton is trying for the ultimate “all.” Where she cannot necessarily be attacked with some of the more traditional “keep your woman down” slogans, she can be attacked with some of the more passive socially acceptable sexism that is pervasive in the US.

I agree with Gloria Steinum when she says that in this country gender trumps race. Sexism is still considered acceptable because it is considered a part of the natural order. Different is still not valued as equal, because different is different. One cannot be better at one thing than another, he must be superior in all things superior and dismissive of all things inferior.

Gender crosses the racial line! Woman does not mean white or republican or Christian. Woman means everybody, well everybody but men. It is an exclusive gender club that so many of us seem to be running away from. We are barred from the white mens club. We are barred from the black mens club. We are tolerated in the periphery of all men’s clubs as wives, mothers and daughters, and we accept this relegation gladly before we find the solidarity in our own club. Our club that crosses race, religion, politics and nationality.

So is it possible in this day where sexism is still accepted social banter and a part of the natural order to view a woman presidential candidate separate from her sex? Can we view her politics without tainting it with her gender? I don’t think so, at least not most of us. But don’t worry, no one will say that directly. We will just take hits at her that no one would conceive of holding against a male candidate. For instance Maureen Dowd in the NY Times said, “It’s odd that the first woman with a shot at becoming president is so openly dependent on her husband to drag her over the finish line.” Other candidates and presidents are given credit for consulting their spouses. What a healthy relationship they have! But Hillary asking her husband, and ex-president, opinions, well obviously that is a sign of weakness. George Bush Sr. consulted with him, but his wife better not. That is weakness, in him it is strength.

I think we need to stop dancing around this sex issue and address is head on. Do women have a responsibility to vote for Hillary? Should gender trump race in the vote? Should solidarity weigh more, and to whom do you share that solidarity with? Can we at least use this as a reason to really address sexism in this country? As Bob Herbert from the NY Times says, “If we’ve opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let’s have at it. It’s a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service.”

A woman in a power position is a difficult position to manage. We are quite backwards in the US…or maybe we are just in the middle. There are countries far more progressive when it comes to women in politics and business and, of course, there are ones that are more conservative. But when Pakistan, an Islamic State, can have a Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister, I think it is time to question why in the brief but dramatic history of the United States we do not want to elect someone who isn’t white and male. One of the most controversial, and well loved, Presidents was John F. Kennedy. He was controversial because not only was he young…but he was Catholic…shhhh. I don’t think we should even ask the question, Isn’t it time to elect a more progressive President?, because it is obviously the time. Justifying our lack of ethnic and gender diversity in the white house by saying, hey at least we aren’t China. Oh wait, China has had a female ruler even though the Confucists believe that having a female ruler is about as unnatural as having a “hen crow like a rooster at daybreak.” Empress Wu Hou of the T’ang Dynasty was China’s first and only female ruler.

Women rulers are not a modern concept. But it doesn’t make the US modern by being in a minority grouping of nations without a female leader.

I am not arguing for Hillary or Obama. In fact, I am a Canadian legally living in the US since I was 4 (seriously, I have a green card!), so I can’t vote. What I am interested in is this potential move towards opening up the idea to yet again become a progressive country! Wait, did I say yet again? Was there a time when we were ever truly progressive? Was there a time when the conservative action did not overshadow the progressive, or when someone did not beat us to it. Slavery, nope the Brits eliminated that way before us. Civil Rights, yeah, France has us beat. Gay Marriage, oh yeah the Brits again (and anything still associated with the Brits) have legalized that. We did go to the moon first…but we were racing Russia.

I do believe that we are a progressive country in many ways, both historically and currently. I also believe that our isolation from the world view and our America-centric knowledge of the world and society has lead us to believe that we are far more progressive than we really are. So I think this election is less of a return of progressive politics as it is a beginning to a progressive period in American history.

But what I really want to discuss is Hillary Clinton’s crying fit in New Hampshire. Ok, my description is a bit sensationalist. I am prone to hyperbole, but there were tears, or at least tearing up. Right now, there is a lot of back and forth discussion on whether this show of emotion was genuine or a political move. One blog said the polls predicted it. There is discussion to whether it was good for her campaign or bad? Some are criticizing her emotional break down as a ploy and others have softened to her. I would like to look at the reason behind the tears, and I don’t mean the stress of the campaign.

Women in powerful positions are asked to be an exercise in contradiction. They are resented and admired for being there. They are sluts or lesbians, emotional or cold, domineering or week, needy or distant, abrasive or ineffective. Women are never men, is what it comes down too. It seems that in order for us to be accepted as “equals” we have to be made sure that we know we are not.

Hillary has been criticized for not being feminine. She has been called a lesbian. She has been criticized for being overbearing, domineering, cold, abrasive and generally a she-devil. It is as though a desexualized Lillith has crash landed into the democratic garden of Eden. But move over Adam it might be time for Eve to start handing out the ribs because the role of head Gardener is up for grabs and though she brought out the tears now, I don’t believe Hillary is in the least bit intimidated by her fellow residents of Democratic Eden.

Hillary’s crying episode did for her what a male politician cannot do for himself, ok, well not a Republican. Sitting in a room full of women, speaking to how hard it is to be a woman in a position of power, Hillary broke down. The surrounding women nodded in appreciation and silent recognition. The country saw her as human and as a political machine. It does not really matter if the tears were of crocodile origin or not. It has been repeatedly commented upon how crying has helped humanize her.

The reason crying would not humanize a man is because he doesn’t need humanizing to begin with. Being strong, unemotional, authoritative, decisive are all positive qualities in a man. If he is not sexual, then he is a father figure. If he is sexualized, even better because he becomes more real to us on a instinctual level. Who doesn’t want a president who the men want to be and the women want to marry…or at least sleep with? Oh wait, maybe the whole country? The value of a president is not in directly proportionate to his GQ rating. But if a woman is sexy then she is using her womanly wiles to seduce people and therefore is manipulative and conniving. If she is matronly, then she is nurturing and emotional. Maybe we would want her to bandage our skinned knee, but she can’t make any real decisions, she isn’t capable! If she is strong, she is a bitch. If she is understanding, she is weak.

Basically, if it makes a man a better candidate, it acts against a woman.

Does John Edwards need to cry? No, he is our sexy southern sweetie pie. Who doesn’t feel connected to that charming-thank you mom and dad for braces- smile? What woman doesn’t want to run her fingers through his hair? And what man doesn’t want to shoot some pool and throw back a Bud? What man or woman other than a republican I mean. With all that in his pants do we remember what he stands for?

Does Barack Obama need to cry? Wait, he also has good looks. He has video admirers sending him love notes on YouTube. He has the power and passion of an entire 1960’s civil rights movement. He is witty and intelligent and every person (well, maybe the republicans) want to have him over for cocktails to discuss currant affairs and golf.

Hillary Clinton, well does it really matter? She is a woman. As Gloria Steinem just wrote “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.” Why is this? As one of my favorite Smith alumnae, Miss Steinem, says, “why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.”

There is nothing beneficial in debating who has it worse, that is a circular argument and achieves nothing. The abolitionist movement and the suffrage movement both progressed when both parties worked together…this is also true of second wave feminism an civil rights. What is concerning, as Steinem points out, is that Obama is seen as unifying because of his race and she is divisive because of her gender.

Maybe Hillary cried because she really is stressed out. Maybe she cried because she needed to humanize herself, because he is a woman in a boys club. Maybe it was a political ploy. Regardless, she cried because it was necessary for her campaign to show that she is balanced as a woman, compassionate and capable. Why is this still our reality?