

so last night sometime this morning, as i was preparing for bed, my eyes happened upon a little-read development that negatively effects more than half of the united states. the title of the article says it all: "senate republicans block unequal pay bill." and i was so furious, so OUTRAGED, that i had to put on some le tigre to get in the mood to break shit---namely, the backs of every republican (and democratic) senator who voted to enshrine unequal pay for equal work.
even more grating? the article is nowhere to be seen on cnn's politics page, even though it was published yesterday. (articles on tuesday's primary are still up.) the new york times didn't cover it, though they did write about barack obama's abercrombie boys. for what it's worth, the washington post did publish an article, and it's on the main page.
the point? gender discrimination is so rarely talked about. and it's so omnipresent.
i decided to search for videos tagged as "feminist" on youtube, and i found a pro-feminist video entitled "this is what a feminist looks like." and then i read the comments.
IndianObserver writes,
"It's true men haven't done everything right but have women done anything at all to even be wrong! The whole of civilization, the inventions, the discoveries and everything else was accomplished by man and continues to be so to this day.
Acknowledge the zeal of man to build new things. A woman may well fire a machine gun fairly accurately and call herself an equal but she will never venture to invent it. Or even a peaceful device for that matter."
and how do people respond? one young woman stands up for herself, but a presumably older person (under the handle of TheAntiFeminist) condescends to her--and might as well have stabbed her in the face:
" LoL! Wait until Hillary takes over, and everyone is broke and waiting on lines at soup kitchens. Way to go FemNazis!"
then, later:
"My Daughter, who is just about your age, would clean your clock! She is a Smart, Independent, Beautiful Self Assured Woman, who HATES FEMINISTS such as yourself!"
usually, i have a rule that allows me to discount ignorant bullshit like this: if the syntax sucks, adjectives are arbitrarily capitalized, or the writer employs an antiquated expression, i can't take the person seriously. but this stinging rebuke transcends whatever rules i've established---the vitriol is just too sincere, too entrenched, too unchangeable.
it's mad distressing.
and it makes me want to elect hillary clinton even more. because the truth is, her gender is one reason (of many) why i support her. i want to break that ultimate glass ceiling and show assholes like IndianObserver and TheAntiFeminist that they are, frankly, wrong. and then maybe they can change. and then maybe the world can be a better place.