There’s been some fantastic blogging about this recently regarding the candidacy of Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of the USA. Shakesville especially has been clarifying people’s thoughts this week:
- Melissa: Damned if you do…
- Melissa: Stealth Vote Salon (a roundup of other’s responses to the post above)
- Kate: I Am Not Ashamed
A lot of division is being manufactured over whether white male Democrats, for instance, are going to vote for their gender or their race in the primaries. Nobody in the media is really looking at how close the two front-running candidates are on most issues, and how impressive both of them are in different ways so that, as Kate says, Democrats in the primaries are essentially voting on which kitten is the cutest, and would be happy to vote for either when the actual presidential vote comes around.
Of course, misogyny is a phenomenon that is seen worldwide wherever women candidates run for any public office. We certainly saw instances of misogyny here in Australia in our last Federal election, directed mostly against Julia Gillard, who is now our Deputy Prime Minister, and plenty of the same accusations that women intending to vote for a woman were voting purely out of sisterly solidarity instead of on the issues (implication: can’t trust chicks with the vote!).
I’d love to see a collection of posts from bloggers all over the world about instances of misogynistic attitudes used against women running for office. Please discuss the issue here and add links to memorable posts.
Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog 
Not a woman running for office, but a woman already in office, Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand. There’s some pretty nasty stuff around about her on the web. What gets me is just how stupid it is to attack her for daring to be a woman.
How to lose some critical votes