Heckler to Hillary: "Iron My Shirt."

One of the dope things about this campaign is that Clinton and Obama provide ample chances for topical discussions of gender and race. Hillary was accosted by some cats carrying signs that read “Iron My Shirt” at a campaign event. And in that ‘Black Primary‘ article we linked to, a schoolteacher named Carolyn Reed-Smith said she supporting Obama over Clinton in part because he was a man.

“I had been really drawn to Hillary at first,” she explained. “Because I voted for her husband. I thought, ‘Wow! Now we’ll have him and her.'” But then in June Obama came to Reed-Smith’s church, Mount Moriah Baptist, and made a convert. “He had such a calming presence. It’s sort of biblical, but I believe in men having dominion and having some sort of mystical power that God gave them,” she said. “I believe Barack has acquired that.”

Ouch.

It’s also interesting to see consider how people’s ideas about gender will play into their interpretation of her lachrymal campaign appearance today. Will she be judged more harshly because she’s a woman? Less so? How would a male candidate’s tearful public comments be taken?

Timothy Noah said that the press has largely been approving, so the tears worked.

Update: Gloria Steinem opined on race and sexism in this campaign (and weighed in on Hillary Clinton’s side) in a New York Times editorial.

So 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.

I dunno. Vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s a woman? Shouldn’t the stance be that you ride for her right to run, and not, say, ride for her because she’s a woman?