Hillary Clinton is Gangster

Interestingly two of my most read posts ever have been on sexism and gender issues.  I find them to be extremely interesting for a number of reasons, most obviously was because of how I grew up.  I am most proud of the post about my feelings on Anne-Marie Slaughter's treatise on the mythical work-life-balance.  Slaughter's epic was based on her time in the Clinton State Department.  And it appears that Hillary Clinton, life-long woman, has a few words for her former staffer.

If there was any question if Hillary Clinton is an abject badass, this interview clears up any confusion:

Last summer Anne-Marie Slaughter, Clinton's former director of policy planning, caused a stir among the State Department ranks when she wrote a controversial cover story in The Atlantic, entitled "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," about why she felt an obligation to quit Clinton's staff because she found "juggling high-level governmental work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible."

Once the dean of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, she is now back at Princeton as a professor.

When asked by Marie Claire about the piece, Clinton didn't hold back.

"I can't stand whining," she told the magazine. "I can't stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they're not happy with the choices they made. You live in a time when there are endless choices."

She pointed out that she spent her life advocating on behalf of women and tried to make work places, including the State Department, friendlier to women with children. Another dig at Slaughter suggested she just didn't have what it takes to play with the big girls.

"Some women are not comfortable working at the pace and intensity you have to work at in these jobs … Other women don't break a sweat."

Oh yeah. I don't believe that she is done either. 

Why No One Can Have it All

Or Why Anne-Marie Slaughter is wrong.

While a number of very smart women have chimed in and written great articles about why this interminable essay was bad, missed the point, is dangerous, or simply stupid, there aren't a lot of men who have or will.  I grew up in a household were my mom went to work and climbed the corporate ladder.  My dad stayed home, ran his own business, and waited until both kids were in or done with college to have what you could call a traditional career.

Arguably you could say, my home life was very much a product of the feminist revolution. I have been called on occasion a feminist.

But before going on to my thoughts on The Atlantic article, I asked two people who also lived in my house to comment on the article:

“Jesus, I got to the end of the first page and saw there were six more pages. No wonder she couldn't get her work done. Fucking academics -- they don't know when to shut up. – Mother, 58, Senior Executive at a Fortune 50 Company

“Ugh. This has been floating around all day and I've been avoiding it, because I don't give a shit why The Atlantic thinks I'm going to be barefoot in the kitchen.

“I just think [the concept of the article is] so stupid. Men make the same choices, it's just that they don't care as much -- or maybe they do! And then they step down too! Like, cool the fuck out; life is full of compromises…obviously you have to make compromises. I just think this is so dumb and backward ...  You can't be a traditional stay-at-home mom and a high powered executive in the same way you can't be a high-powered executive male and coach all your kids’ sports teams. There are 24 hours in a day, regardless of your sex.” – Sister, 25, Ivy League Graduate and Third-Year Medical Student at a Top 10 Medical School

My mother went on to say that the unbelievably long essay was a "six page cop-out" of the ideals that the author allegedly still supports and was riddled with hypocrisy and contradictions. 

And I agree.  The issue at the heart of this essay should be what do you value you more, not finding a way to have everything at once.  Feminism, as I understand it, was (and is) a fight for choices, not a fight for women have the same life as men.

Everyone, as my sister notes, must make choices in life.  This does not mean that society couldn't shift slightly to help make those choices easier.  And there is no doubt that because of women (and men) who came before my sister, she is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and is well on her way to earning her M.D. at one of the best medical schools in the world.

The only thing she has to thank them for is opening the door.

And while that door was a real pain to open, she had to learn, study, lose sleep, sacrifice health, and make many other CHOICES to make it to where she is today. You cannot take away the fact that my sister -- not some conceptual fem-ubermench -- worked hard.  There were real sacrifices that were and continue to be made. 

The entire concept of work-life balance is a myth.  You either work more or you "life" more. There is never a perfect mix if you are racing to the top. Something has got to give.  And the sooner you realize that, the sooner "having it all" becomes just as meaningless as an essay written by an academic who had to live through two years of what every female executive at a large or growth company deals with everyday.

Course Records and Social Media

Yesterday was pretty interesting.  As you know, I wrote a short blog post about Jon Gugala's sexist and disrespectful engagement with fellow journalists and members of the running community online.  This post garnered a lot of attention, not only from my friends and family who normally read this blog but from about one thousand other people as well.

Without any doubt, I did not expect that kind of reaction.  Over the course of my personal blog's lifetime, it averaged between zero and 60 hits per day.  Yesterday, after some proactive social media promotion, which I do with most of my posts, the blog saw over 900 visitors. By this morning the post had over 1,040 hits and eight comment (including two about a typo that I didn't remove after fixing the mistake). OK, enough with the self-congratulations.

After posting and pushing my post out to my small Twitter and Facebook community, the re-Tweets started coming in with small edits about how this is unacceptable.  It would appear that the call to email the editorial and publishing executives at his major outlets also was successful, in that by yesterday evening Runner's World's official Twitter feed published two Tweets distanced itself from Jon (H/T Charles Mandel).

Now, Jon is entitled to his view and should be free to express said views, however, he can't expect others not to react.

Sexism is ok when funny, right Jon?

My running chum Tracy wrote about Jon Gugala's sexist remarks in his Twitter Feed from yesterday's Boston Marathon.  But the strange thing was that when he was called on it by a fellow journalist and my other running chum Sara, he replied with an ill fated attempt at humor and more sexist commentary.

Here are some choice tid bits:

Today Jon Gugala, who is a freelancer for "Runner's World, Running Times, Competitor, RunBlogRun, and more," [sic] according to his Twitter bio, said that Tracy, as an amateur blogger, should stay in the shallow end. The shocking assumption he makes is that he is a professional blogger, considering his extremely impressive social media presences puts his Klout score at 12 out of 100 and he has a breathtaking 218 followers on Twitter and 60 likes on Facebook (as of the writing of this post). It is even more shocking because this professional blogger had the time to engaged me in a back-and-forth on Twitter for hours about his "perceived" sexism. 

Granted I am not trying to measure up to this professional writer with my admittedly amateur blog post or more highly ranked Twitter feed.  What I want talk about is the acceptability of his sexism within sports reporting.

Some facts for Jon and others: Women make up more than 50% of the US population and have been the fastest growing segment of the running community over the past several years, according to Running USA.  My current PR will not qualify me for the Boston Marathon and I am OK with that.  I hope one day to come close but I don't see it happening. However, I do not believe my current pace per mile has anything to do with my ability to identify sexism.