1. Everyone on the teevee is saying this takes the "experience" argument away from McCain, but I don't buy it. McCain will still hammer Obama on experience, mostly by insinuation -- the "celebrity" taunt isn't going away, and Palin doesn't take it off the table.

What this does do, though, is alter the Obama camp's line of attack against McCain. Up until now, they've been really tentative in pushing the issue of McCain's age and frailty. By picking Palin, McCain makes that kind of push a lot more appealing. When they raise concerns about McCain's health and vigor going forward, they'll be reminding voters of Palin's greenness without broaching the experience question directly. Look for McCain to be portrayed as a doddering fool a lot more often in the weeks to come.

(Saturday morning update: Huh. I sure wasn't wrong about the age and frailty thing -- one day in, the phrases "Sarah Palin" and "heartbeat away" return 142,000 Google hits in conjunction, while "Joe Biden" and "heartbeat away" turn up just 21,000 after more than a week. The experience question is definitely breaking harder against McCain than I expected it would, though, at least in the short term.)

2. On the gender front, I suspect this choice will, counterintuitively, cement the return of the Hillary faithful to the Democratic fold. Hillary and Bill's speeches at the DNC went a very long way toward making that sale, and the typical Clintonista is going to be revulsed by the idea of sending an aggressively anti-choice conservative woman to the White House in Hillary's place. This pick may win McCain some female votes, but I don't at all see them coming out of Hillary's base.

3. Palin is apparently a strong supporter of Alaskan oil drilling, and her husband is an oilfield worker. I have a hunch that her presence on the ticket will shake up the environmental dynamics of the race a bit, though Obama's shift on offshore drilling may dampen her effectiveness on that front somewhat. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Update: Here's something else. It's only sixty-seven days until election day. That's not a lot of time for the country to get comfortable with someone who is essentially a complete unknown. This isn't the choice of a presidential candidate who thinks he's sitting on a comfortable lead.

One more: Obama represented twenty-five times as many people in the Illinois state senate as Palin did as mayor of Wasilla, AK, and nearly half as many as she does as governor of Alaska. The Bronx Borough President, Adolfo Carrion, presides over a constituency twice the size of Palin's.

Tags: gender, obama, politics

Anyone have an opinion on the best place to donate money in opposition to the California anti-marriage initiative?

C1 and I are invited to a wedding in Sonoma next summer if same-sex marriage survives the challenge, and I'd hate to see the thing moved to a Boston venue.

Update: Thanks to kmelion for passing this question along to folks with answers, and thanks to those folks for answering! Gotta love the net.

Tags: gender, politics

I have it on good authority that despite what the website says, Camgirls is finally in stock at Amazon. So go buy a copy, if you've been putting it off.

Tags: activism, gender, internet, politics, pop culture, work

No work is more fun for me than editing, and I've never had more fun editing than I did last December when I worked on Terri Senft's Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks.

Camgirls is a book about women who live their lives in public on the web, and it concentrates on webcams in their heyday, but that's really just its hook. It's a book about how celebrity and community operate online. It's a book about LiveJournal. (Terri has been participating in and observing LiveJournal culture as tsenft for eight years, and she's got a huge amount of smart stuff to say about how LJ operates as a tool for building connections between people.) It's a book about feminism, about sex work, and about how gender is lived on the internet. It's a book, fundamentally, about the construction and presentation of the self in the online era --- about how we establish and maintain ourselves as people and as personae when we live our lives online.

It's a hell of a book. Really. I bought two copies, so that I can lend one out and not worry about getting it back. Go get yourself one. If you do, and you regret it, mail it to me. I'll pay you for it, reimburse you the shipping, and find it a good home.


Update: Forgot to mention --- If any of you are interested in reviewing Camgirls, or if you or anyone you know is teaching a course in cyberculture or women's studies for which you might be interested in assigning it, let me know. I'll get Terri to hook you up with a PDF reader's copy.

Further Update: So it appears that Camgirls is not yet quite available. Consider this a pre-publication endorsement, and I'll post again when the book is actually on offer. I'm still happy to make arrangements to get PDFs out, though.

Tags: activism, gender, internet, politics, pop culture, work

C1 informs me that the NY state legislature approved a bill yesterday giving unmarried couples with no children access to Family Court in domestic violence cases. This law will make it easier for lesbians and gays, as well as unmarried straight people, to secure orders of protection from their abusers, and strengthen the provisions of those orders when granted.

C1's agency has been fighting for this law, the "Fair Access to Family Court Act," for twenty years, and yesterday it passed.

Tags: gender, politics

I've got one comment on each of the three candidates, and one on delegate math. Those comments will be humorless, tendentious, insubstantial, and boring, respectively.

Humorless, on Clinton: I remain flabbergasted by the casual misogyny of the pundit class. Flipping through the political blogosphere this morning, I see that Ezra Klein is portraying Clinton as a girlfriend who refuses to accept that she's been dumped, Andrew Sullivan has put up a "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead" clip from The Wiz, and John Aravosis is saying that she is "just a nasty nasty woman." It really is ubiquitous.

Tendentious, on McCain: In his speech last night, McCain said "I don't seek the presidency on the presumption I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need." I'm not particularly interested in defending my gloss on this line, so I won't articulate it here quite as earthily as I did to C1 on the couch. I expect I'll be coming back to it in a post on sub rosa racism in the campaign before too much longer, tho.

Insubstantial, on Obama: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was a fusty artifact on the day it opened in 1967, but the events of last night lend this scene a certain strange poignance.

Boring, on delegate math: Obama's delegate count stood at 2162 at the end of last night, including 63 pledged delegates from Florida and Michigan. If the DNC were to seat full slates from those two states, those 63 would transform into 126, putting his total at 2228, comfortably above the 2210 needed for the nomination. And even if the party were to seat the Michigan delegation under Clinton's proposed breakdown, he'd still be at 2220. That's just on the basis of what was announced yesterday, and it doesn't reflect the effect of doubling the votes of Obama's MI and FL superdelegates, which I couldn't be bothered to sort out. Put simply, MI and FL are now moot, and all the squabbling over the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting was for nothing. Yesterday would have put him over the top whatever they did.

Tags: gender, obama, politics, race

New York governor David Paterson has ordered all state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions, and a new California poll shows that state's anti-equality referendum being rejected by a 51-43 margin.

The New York Times says the governor's action will "make it clear that gay couples wed in other states [are] entitled to all of the benefits of marriage in New York," though it is not yet clear whether legislative action will in some cases be needed to implement the order.

The agencies have been directed to report back to Paterson by the end of June.

Update: I was optimistic about the chances of defeating the California referendum even before this poll came out. The trend in support for same-sex marriage is strongly positive nationally, and the Massachusetts example shows that when SSM becomes a fact on the ground in a particular state, that trend accelerates.

Tags: gender, politics

The following thoughts on Hillary Clinton's recent reference to the Robert Kennedy assassination have been cobbled together from various comments I left at Shakesville this afternoon, in this thread and this one.

( Jump! )

Tags: gender, obama, politics, race

karnythia has posted her thoughts on the Obama "sweetie" incident we discussed here last week . An excerpt:

My husband and his brothers have all been taught a specific way to interact with women. Now that lesson comes from a few places. Some of it is just what's referred to as good home training, namely that you're supposed to be polite to women at all times, you're not supposed to intimidate them with the difference in size or make them think they're unsafe in your presence. If someone else is making a woman feel unsafe then you're supposed to step up and put a stop to that behavior. You open her door, you pay for dinner, and you generally follow the script that says that even though you know she's strong and can take care of herself, you're showing her respect by being willing to take care of her. Our communities tend to run off a paradigm where the only men that are likely to show us respect and engage in chivalry are MOC. We're not objecting to it in the same way that white women might because we get enough of being ignored, treated like one of the guys, or disrespected by men outside of our communities, and by the knuckleheads inside our communities. It's nice to know that I don't have to deal with that crap at home and it's exceptionally nice to be treated like a princess when the rest of the world wants to treat me like a pack mule. Do we always agree about his attitude? No. But, I know he doesn't think I'm less than he is or incapable of taking care of myself so much as he is trying to show me love and respect in the way that he knows best and I love him for that effort.

There are some aspects of her take on chivalry that I part ways with, but there's a lot to chew on in what she says.

(karnythia also posted this entry at feminist and debunkingwhite, and the comments to all three posts are worth reading.)

Tags: gender, obama, politics, race

First, here's an email that Andrew Sullivan got today:

My Beloved, Samantha, just asked me to update my Facebook page to confirm that I'm engaged to her. My mother just called for the third time this morning and choked out through her tears, "I promise this is the last time I'll call this morning, but I understand that the proper protocol is that the mother of the bride pays for the wedding." I've left a message for our minister to see if he is available in 30 days to officiate our wedding.
This marriage will allow us to be recognized within the state as we are recognized in our neighborhood, in our church, and with our friends: as a family with all the rights, protections, and responsibilities that come with that commitment. This marriage would allow us to expect acceptance rather than anticipate discrimination of our family. Marriage would protect our children. Marriage would attach recognition to what we know is true, that the love that brought us together as a couple and binds us a family matters just as all families matter. Families comprise neighborhoods, churches, friends, and the state. Families are why we have civil marriage in California and why our family deserves the same recognition.

I'm attaching a photo of our family. From left to right is Sophie (turned 8 last Friday), Samantha, Anneliese (4.5), and me. I figured since I've viewed your wedding photos, you should see a photo of my family. We are all looking forward to our marriage next month!

And here's how the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives responded to the ruling:

I welcome the California Supreme Court’s historic decision. I have long fought against discrimination and believe that the State Constitution provides for equal treatment for all of California’s citizens and families, which today’s decision recognizes.

I commend the plaintiffs from San Francisco for their courage and commitment. I encourage California citizens to respect the Court’s decision, and I continue to strongly oppose any ballot measure that would write discrimination into the State Constitution.

Today is a significant milestone for which all Californians can take pride.

The Speaker of the House. The Speaker of the House. God damn.

Tags: gender, politics