My Liberal Dude Hero Just Let Me Down
November 10, 2009
by Alison
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Nicholas D. Kristof is one of my feminist heroes. He and his wife, Sherly WuDunn (who is easily one of my feminist heroines) are the writers of the recently published book, Half the Sky. This book outlines the struggles of the most oppressed women around the globe and how women’s rights should be at the forefront of issue to tackle for our generation. In addition, Kristof has been writing about gender discrimination in 3rd world countries for many years and has shed light on issues such as forced-prostitution in Pakistan, rape in Bosnia and family planning in Africa.
But even heroes can let you down.
Recently, Kristof wrote on his Facebook page:
I’m worried about the degree to which the health reform debate is being overwhelmed by abortion politics. If the House, with its strong Dem majority, could pass reform by only 5 votes, then what will happen in the Senate, where Dems have no votes to spare? I’m pro-choice and think the curbs are wrong–but the top priority has to be to get reform through Congress this year.
Gulp. As a Independent liberal-minded woman this comes as a great disappointment. Abortion rights are one of the most resonating issues for liberal women and yet Kristof is all to willing to look past the anti-abortion amendment in the Health Care bill, apparently for the better of the common good. And I must ask myself, does this mean that some liberal men find liberal women’s issues not a crucial element in the common good? And will Kristof advocate on behalf of Western women to the same degree that he advocates for 3rd World Women?
In the United States we have much more gender parity than women in Afghanistan, for sure. But things are hardly equal. Women in the United States have only 17 percent representation in the Senate and Congress. Also in the United States, only 6 percent of rapists ever spend a day in jail. And Democratic women hold dear to them their reproductive rights – so much do they value reproductive rights that it keeps many Pro-Choice women voting Democrat.
So I must ask Kristof if he titled his book wrong. Perhaps he does not feel that women really need to hold up “half the sky”. Because if one of the most basic tenants of gender parity on the Democratic platform is inconsequential to this liberal man (in the face of the common good), then perhaps 17 percent of the sky is enough?
Nicholas D. Kristof – I still love’ya but today you let me down.
There’s always a point at which every man, no matter how “good,” will stick his hands in his pockets, shuffle his weight from one foot to the other, and refuse to meet your eye. They all hit that point, just some faster than others.
There is always a point at which we are not quite as human as they are.
Women != the common good.
Sadly, Janis, you are absolutely right. They may see misogyny, but they are blind to male privilege.
Well, anytime they acknowledge misogyny, they see their ack as some sort of benificent gift that they hand to us — that they can stop giving at any time. We see it as a way-past-time ack of our humanity.
We’re all so desperate and dying of thirst for ANY sign that the ceratures we open our bodies to and push out into this world actually see us as people that we are ready to prostitute ourselves and everything we hold dear just to get one little smile from them. That’s why we cut them endless amounts of slack … and THAT’S why we refuse to cut one another any.
Amy,
I think it is important that you and others express you disappointment to this influential man. It seems that he actually is influential.
Janis brings up a very good point. Women=the common good. And the fact of the matter is, this health care legislation is going to burden women in our already troubled economy. The fact is, that the burdens women are facing as single parents, making minimum wage, discriminated against in raises and promotions and pay, is ruining the economy. Only democratic policies which lift the burden off of women, such as fair pay legislation, raising the minimum wage to a standard of living, legislating how many hours a person can work, and on, will fix the economy. This health care bill will cripple the economy, because men don’t understand that women are the backbone of the economy, and it is their discrimination against women who now have freedom that has shifted the economy and made us a credit nation; a bankrupt nation.
Sigh. Seriously, at some point most heroes let you down. Unfortunately male feminist heroes do have a way of eventually missing the boat. “For the good of all” is a quite common excuse. “We have other priorities now, this is too important to screw up.” For the first time in many years we couldn’t get the Dems to put support for the ERA in their party platform during Kerry/Edwards because beating Bush was urgent. Something is always more important. Always.
Yes indeed, they often forget that “women=the common good”.
great article, great comments. “women versus the common good” By Janis that needs to be quoted. female altruism and motherly caring for others for everybody than themselves can no longer be a given.
found today interesting information at Betty Jean Kling’s blog, one about the bribes for healthcare bill, why the AMA and AARP endorsed and how some crucial votes were bought. the other interesting point of view was a report on Phyllis Chesler’s reaction.
Men like Kristof seem to think that they can compartmentalize ending war, poverty,and environmental devastation separate from women’s rights and welfare. It’s incredibly stupid and sad. They never realize that the whole thing is connected to their willingness to constantly tell women, just wait a little. No, not yet. Just a little more. There is no such thing as a society that achieves peace, justice, and care for the world … Oh and then liberates and cares for women. After all the important stuff is done.
Kristof’s willingness to tell the (fertile) half of humanity to just wait their turn will doom all the other causes he supposedly loves to utter failure. NO society so contemptuous of the means of reproduction as to tell that very means to sit down, shut up, and wait their turn is a society that will EVER achieve peace, environmental respect, OR health care. Kristof’s little boot on the neck of the very means of human reproduction IS the problem. Don’t wait up for him to realize it.
BTW, this is why I think that the species is doomed. Even the best of the best of males … still cannot make the leap to prioritize the means of his own replication above all. The best and most enlightened of male humans cannot get past his monkey instincts and see how putting the means of his own species reproduction second place to ANYTHING is precisely the problem. We as a species will put that one thing in last place every time. And it’s the single most important thing on the planet. It IS the planet.
He loves peace and clean air (and health care). And his own monkey willingness to tell his species’ future to just hold on a second because something else came up will ensure he’ll never see it. And if this is the best the male half of the species can offer …
Anyone who’s read Kristoff for a while knows his schtick – patting himself on the back for championing those little women whom the evil western feminists ignore in their selfish desire for frivolities like equal pay. Ignoring the fact that those evil feminists are often involved in nitty gritty efforts to help those women that don’t result in self-righteous self-congratulatins splashed across the pages of The New York Times or pulling in bucks for themselves and their publishing companies.
Great if Kristoff’s efforts actually result in improvements for the women he publicized, but that doesn’t mean that his motivation is anything but self-promotion. Hence his easy sell-out of half the U.S. population, many of whom are far from the upper-class caricature of feminists he loves to lambaste.
I’m not surprised at all, and thus not disappointed. Kristof’s shtick has always included a big wallop of disdain for American women. He spent years attacking U.S. feminists for not doing enough to help desperately poor girls in the Third World–they’d been doing a ton, but they don’t get media attention because they’re not white men with a NY Times gig–and although the book commendably backs off from most of those cheap shots, he and WuDunn sneer at misguided, allegedly privileged, American feminists for whining about trivia like sexual harassment and Title IX when there’s horrific stuff out there like trafficking and sexual slavery.
Janis nails it as always.
should have refreshed! sister of ye beat me to it, even including the word shtick.
Enlightening comments! Kristof has only been my hero for about a year so I was unaware of his attacks on U.S. feminists. And Janis, I very much agree with your points about peace. Half the Sky has convinced me that we need gender parity to achieve peace and I still would recommend the book to most anyone. But I think Kristof misses the boat on Western women – we need parity in the West also (on the level of 52 percent representation) in order to achieve peace. And I think many “good” men and women have gotten too comfortable with what 17 percent female representation looks like.
Here’s a quote from Half the Sky that may annoy…
“In the wealthy countries of the West, discrimination is usually a matter of unequal pay or underfunded sports teams or unwanted touching from a boss. In contrast, in much of the world discrimination is lethal.”
Doesn’t sound like Kristof has a lot of understanding or empathy for the discrimination that Western women face.
Kristoff has never been my hero. It always seemed to me that his writings are just words on a page. The inequalities we face in this country just simply aren’t sensational enough to be news worthy. There are too many journalists to compete with that cover suffereings in the world. What could be a better sell than a male journalist who empathizes with and writes about women’s issues? He needs a male boss who grabs his privates a few times, sends him out for coffee and lunch, and has him type a few letters for him to gain even partial empathy. The guy is and always has been a phony as far as I am concerned. But his success is pretty much reliant on us women who read his articles. He is just one of many who is not worthy of our overwhelming support.
Time to boycott his book. I seriously doubt many men are buying it.
OMG. When will you liberal women realize that liberal just means pro-pornography and a token ‘i give a darn’ towards race and environment. Oh, and pro-abortion as long as it is free and easy and will not interfere with health care for all.
The lie of liberalism is that women are part of the equation as an equal. You are not. You are something to fuck, something to trade, something to make fun of, something. heavy on the thing.
I got banned from most liberal blogs when after the DNC became Obamanation, I asked them to leave liberalism the same way the Democratic party left women–in the lurch and fast and easy. I was called a republican (me–a very radical progressive feminist lifetime agitator extraodinaire) by the libs and a racist by the dems (me–a domestic peace corps volunteer my whole life helping others mostly women/children of color). Both were wrong, and both are blinded by the same inability to focus on the problem.
So I will break it down for you. Until freedom and equality means women too we are just part of the problem. And it will NEVER mean women too unless women demand it. This means no more pornography (Canada banned it because they found their constitutional promise to women’s equality could not coincide with demeaning and degrading pornography), nix on the fashion world, nix on bobbleheaded women, nix on rape is a great fantasy, nix on blogs like Feministing (and a double fuck to this blog), nix on voting for women like Nancy Pelosi (is she really one of us–NOT), and a fight that means you may have to change everything in your own personal world including your sex life. It means WOMEN MUST BE FREE if FREEDOM IS GOING TO BE REAL. And right now women are so not free.
Such a radical thought this is, that women are to be free and equal to men. And by women I mean all women especially poor women and women and color. I am tired of the N. Wolfe’s and MS and NOW faux feminists talking and getting paid to be handmaidens to the enemy. I am tired of the blogs like Feministing that have 99% of their topics relating to sex and it is all good (s & m, rape fantasies, etc., etc), I am tired of political correctness saying that Islam and all other sexist woman-trading woman-killing religions are acceptable, I am tired of being called every name in the book when I am right.
We have been paying for viagra for men for years. I protested, I wrote letters, but I gave up. We pay for men to have erect penises in a world where the penis is the problem. With our tax money. Girls I do not know how you live with yourselves at this point in the history of the world but I grow tired of it all.
I challenge all women everywhere to stand up and stop denying the problem. Face it head on because as soon as you can live with reality the sooner we can change it, but this denial is killing us. Literally.
FREEDOM MUST INCLUDE WOMEN. FREEDOM MUST INCLUDE WOMEN. FREEDOM MUST INCLUDE WOMEN. FREEDOM MUST INCLUDE WOMEN.
“He needs a male boss who grabs his privates a few times, sends him out for coffee and lunch, and has him type a few letters for him to gain even partial empathy.”
If he were a woman, he wouldn’t have the career he has nor the spotlight to talk about women’s issues and have it matter because now a mayun is saying it. He’d just be yet one more whiney, spoiled white Western bitch who thinks her stupid little career matters as much as a man’s when other women were dealing with so much worse elsewhere, and who’d see her book thrown out by seven dozen publishers because who gives a crap about some chick writing about chicks?
And I’m sorry, but “unwanted touching?” Sexual extortion is called RAPE, dumbass. And if you don’t complain and raise a stink to high heaven when it’s a hand up your crotch, it turns into beatings and rape pretty fucking fast the minute they know they can get away with something. That is, when it doesn’t start out as beatings or rape right out of the gate.
“Unwanted touching.” What oversensitive souls we.
If we stop pushing for our spoiled Western girlie rights like MONEY and BODILY SAFETY, pretty soon, we’ll descend to the same low level as the rest of the world. Yeah, that’ll be MUCH better!
“Unwanted touching.” FUCK him. I’d love his boss to shove his foot in Kristof’s crotch during lunch and see what he thinks of “unwanted touching.”
One more because I can’t shut up:
“In the wealthy countries of the West, discrimination is usually a matter of unequal pay or underfunded sports teams or unwanted touching from a boss. In contrast, in much of the world discrimination is lethal.”
Rape never happens in the West, apparently. Wide-beating, wife murder … eh. BFD.
Yes Jennifer is right. Men needed women for liberalism to move forward, and were happy to go along with “women’s rights” when it meant freedom to stick their thing in many other places then they currently had, and reducing or eliminating the shame of their sexual perversions. It’s easy to see Liberalism for what it is now, when women’s rights are something to mock, not take seriously, and degrade as selfish, when liberal men have achieved their freedom of and to pornography, limitless sexual perversions, and of sticking their thing all over the place freely. Free speech wasn’t free speech, it was free -sexual- speech, that they cared about, and only that. Some men care about abortion because they think they would like the ability to force a woman to have an abortion, or see a benefit to controlling her body that way. Other men see anti abortion as crucial to controlling a women’s body. But make no mistake about it, the issue for men all around is controlling a woman’s body.
You don’t see women telling American men how good they’ve got it; they shouldn’t whine about this or that because of how bad men have got it in other countries. It’s as if men believe they granted us our rights.
Kiuku, that’s a brilliant comment.
Hey Nicholas — why are YOU giving such a huge fuck about passing healthcare AT ALL when men in other countries are locked up, tortured, and die of far worse diseases?
Oh. That’s right. Spoiled, white Western men don’t HAVE to compare themselves to everyone else on the planet before they’re allowed to Care Passionately™ about their own problems.
Kiuku,
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
And Janis I would pay money to see you give this liberal dude some unwanted touching. Lots of money, and I’d still be laughing years later….
Eew. I can think of about a billion guys I’d rather grope (consensually) before I ever arrived at Nicholas Kristof’s junk. His wife married him, his junk’s her problem.
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