A problem hiding in plain sight

"Hillary, stop running for president and make me a sandwich" is the joking name of one facebook.com group. Haha, very funny, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) is a woman, so she belongs in the kitchen, not the White House. It's a joke, playing on stereotypes, and if you're into that sort of thing it's funny. But just imagine if someone made a Facebook page called "Obama, stop running for president and go pick some cotton." Would anyone find that even remotely appropriate, much less consider creating such a group?

Perhaps it is the violence of the long history of racism that makes us cry out in horror at both legitimately offensive comments and the most innocent remark that could possibly, if you screwed up your eyes and turned your head and listened to a totally different remark, be termed racist. When it comes to the issue of race, we tiptoe around on eggshells. But even as we do this, we laugh off sexist comments as possibly offensive but certainly not inappropriate jokes. How can we justify our hyperawareness of potentially racist comments when we hardly even notice derogatory comments about women?

I'm not trying to suggest that we should be more blase about truly racist comments, or that the long history of racist oppression and slavery can in any way be made into a joke. But what did women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony fight for if a century later chauvinism is so pervasive that we don't even deign to notice it and are totally unconcerned with derogatory, sexist comments? Call me a crazy feminist, but these women were my heroes when I was a kid. How can we throw away everything they fought for - everything women are still fighting for?

You don't need to like Hillary, but to suggest that she is completely unqualified is a lie. She was the first student to deliver a commencent address at Wellesley, went to Yale law, was twice named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, was a powerful first lady, is a senator and now is a leading candidate for president. Though she may not be winning, she has a lot of support. She didn't just break the glass ceiling, she completely shattered it.

It may seem like there's no parallel between sexism and racism, and certainly the history of black oppression is far more cruel, violent and inhumane that what American women were subject to. But we claim that all citizens of this country are equal, and that should include everybody, black or white, male or female. That these derogatory stereotypes of women exist and are unchecked even by a sense of political correctness means that we haven't actually made as much progress as we pretend.

This is evident in that even people who praise Hillary don't praise her as a woman - they praise her for her "testicular fortitude," something Maureen Dowd made much of in a recent New York Times column. It's certainly a high compliment, but it's belied by the idea that these good qualities of toughness, bravery and perseverance are decidedly male qualities. A woman, it seems, can't have these qualities, and if she does, then it's because her womanhood is somewhat in doubt, due to her possession of testicles.

The point is that this is a country where all citizens are supposedly equal. Derogatory comments based on someone's sex aren't anymore acceptable than derogatory comments based on someone's race. You can't help your gender anymore than you can help the color of your skin, and to devalue someone on either basis is inappropriate and disgusting. So next time you hear someone call Hillary a bitch or a slut, before you laugh, stop and think, and imagine what your reaction would be if someone were to call Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) the n-word.