This is a long one, so I'll try to be as charming as possible to make it easier on you.
I get a zillion action alerts in my inbox every week. So every Monday, I post a bunch of links to online petitions on my blog. A couple of weeks ago, one of the petitions I linked to was from NOW urging President Obama to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. And the shit storm begins.
Some guy: I'm curious. If you're all about "equality", why should I "urge" Obama to appoint a woman? I would urge him to appoint the most qualified person for the position, regardless of gender. Appointing a woman for the sake of having a woman on the SC is ridiculous. Appointments based on gender are not equality, they are sexism.
I was surprised that someone would think that encouraging the President to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court meant that the new justice wouldn't be qualified. So, I said that and added,
The purpose of appointing a woman is to have a more representative Supreme Court. There's only one woman on the Supreme Court. To represent the 51% of Americans who are female, the Supreme Court needs closer to five female justices. Given that bit of information, there's no need to get your thong in a knot over suggesting to bring the grand total of women justices to two.
Seriously, don't be afraid, some guy. People who look like you still have the majority of the Court and the rest of government, despite the fact that women make up most of America. But this guy's fears went way beyond challenging his privilege and escalated to serious paranoia.
Some guy: Yes, but you're saying "appoint a qualified woman and ignore qualified men." [don't know where the quotes came from, since I didn't say that]. Equality, again, would mean appointments based on skill, not gender. It shouldn't matter what the sex of the person is. Sadly, most feminists (apparently like yourself) wish to elevate women over men, regardless of any other factors. You just want a woman there because you're a woman. She could be less qualified than a likely male candidate, and you'd still be satisfied, because someone with your genitalia would be in a place of power. And that's sad. I want qualified individuals in my government, not a selection of vaginas and penises.
He's the only person on earth other than Stephen Colbert who doesn't see gender, and Stephen Colbert is joking. And again, this guy is assuming that "qualified" and "woman" are mutually exclusive. But now we're all getting a better idea of what this guy's really afraid of. One more powerful and erudite woman in government takes us one step closer to the grand lady takeover of the country. Well, he's got us there. Now where did I place that teeny violin? I thought this guy was in a better place in front of the computer instead of huddled in the fetal position in his sock drawer, so I said this:
I'm encouraging him to appoint a qualified woman to the Supreme Court to balance things out. The Supreme Court is hardly representative; it still wouldn't be if the President appoints a woman. I don't think I'm asking for much to have better representation on my Supreme Court. You talk about equality, but you're satisfied with a Supreme Court with 8 men and 1 woman, and you become outraged at the very thought of a Court with one less man. Excuse me for being suspicious over what your real problem is. President Obama is most likely going to be appointing a woman to the Supreme Court. She's going to be the kind of justice that he's been describing for the past couple of weeks. She's not going to be less qualified than any man he could have chosen. She's going to be at least as qualified as any man he could have chosen. The only difference is that she's going to be a woman. Her mere existence on the Court is going to make it more representative, which is something a male justice can't do.
Yes, no matter how qualified any male nominee would be, he couldn't make the Court more of a cross-section of the electorate. And that bothers the guys who look over their shoulders nervously while walking alone at night hoping nobody sneaks up behind them and takes their privilege. This guy gets real flustered and picks apart my argument sentence by sentence, which is something only a really pissed off person on the Internet does. He's also so bewildered that he forgets what "representative" means and tells me this:
If Obama's views match your own, would you say he represents you? Even if you're (for instance) a white geriatric female [one out of three ain't bad], and he's an early-middle aged black man, he's still representative of you. That's the kind of point I'm getting at. Whether or not the appointee has a vagina isn't going to matter. Would you feel represented if he appointed someone like Ann Coulter? She's a woman, after all, but her views are markedly different than yours [then he calls me paranoid for questioning his intentions, which is real rich] . . . . You look at the court and say "Oh no! Too many penises! Not enough vaginas!" and see a problem. I look and say "Too many conservatives, not enough moderates/liberals." . . . . I really don't think people like you would be satisfied until the entire government was populated with women only [which, according to this guy, shouldn't make a difference, because gender doesn't matter].
I call bullshit. No one in their right mind would be afraid of the President appointing anyone but a good lefty. Well, maybe he's blinded by his privilege, so he doesn't recognize that. And no one with an IQ above their shoe size would think that I was only talking about myself when I was talking about better representation on the Supreme Court. If 8 out of 9 Supreme Court justices are men, but only 4.9 out of 10 Americans are men, that's not representative. Something just isn't right. This guy doesn't understand that, since the mere mention of a powerful woman in the political world gives this guy diarrhea. He continued to stand by his delusions for the next couple of comments, I told him he was too big of a nutbar to talk to any longer (in so many words), and now I ask those readers who stuck around this long:
What the hell is wrong with people? I mean, this country has been ruled by men and patriarchal values since . . . always. Most of us, thankfully, have survived and continue to thrive in the patriarchy, but it's still a huge struggle. All I ask is for the American Supreme Court to look more like the America in which we live. Values are important, and I cared more about values when George W. Bush was nominating justices. But we already know that a staunch progressive is going to be appointed. Why not make that staunch progressive a woman? Why do people think the male options have to be exhausted before a woman is considered? It's purely ridiculous how anxious people get at the thought of losing a man in a powerful position to a woman.
And why don't people recognize the value of having a diverse group of people on the Supreme Court? Remember the pictures of little African American children watching Barack Obama speak? It makes a big difference to see people who look like you in influential positions. If young girls and women only see men in positions of power, no matter how great these male politicians represent the girls' and women's values, they're never going to grow up thinking that they can aspire to in those positions. That's why representation matters.
Thanks for listening.
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I think your analysis is very good. Here is the the weird thing with individuals like this guy you were speaking to - they somehow have the idea that for every job position there is one objectively Best Candidate. He seems to think that Obama can simply quantify and add up the justice-worthiness of all of the candidates and pick the candidate whose number comes out highest.
In what world do such individuals live that they believe this is the way qualifications and job appointments actually work? In any field?
There are a number of possible Justices worthy of consideration, who have proven with strong academic records and distinguished careers that they are capable of holding a position on the Supreme Court. I don't think the abilities of these judges are different in quantity, but rather in quality. And guess what - when it gets to that level there is no objective measuring stick which you can apply in order to choose.
And perspective does matter in the practice of law. Judges are humans, not automatrons. The more diversity, the more aspects of an issue are accessible.
The court should reflect the makeup of the American public for the exact reason you described in the conclusion of your post.
That's exactly it. People like him think there is ONE best candidate and if that candidate is a man and Obama chooses a woman then something went wrong. (Of course he doesn't wonder how many times in the past the better or equal candidate might've been a woman but a man was chosen).
You hit the nail on the head with your comment about there being no single, objective "Best Candidate."
I encountered this same argument when Justice Roberts was appointed. My male friend insisted that gender should play no role. (I find the white men frequently claim this absolute equality standard. Same thing happened in college when I was in a class that discussed affirmative action.) I agree that you handled it very well, BackOfBusEleven.
(Side note: this is exactly why nominations of women like Harriet Miers and Sarah Palin enrage me. It leaves the idiots believing that ALL women are underqualified.)
Where's your blog?
I choose not to link to it here. I disagree more with the commenters here than on other feminist blogs, and I would rather not give the commenters here an opportunity to follow me to my blog. I don't think people here would do that, but I'd rather not take my chances.
My Women in Politics prof put it like this--if the Supreme Court were made up of all female Hispanic women, do you think Americans would feel they were being represented fairly?
Emphatically, I think America's answer would be no. But somehow 8 white guys and 1 white woman representing all of us just fine.
There is something so wrong with that sentiment.
exactly. i find it kind of amusing and kind of sadly infuriating that he's whining about a woman getting picked over a "more qualified" man, and never really considers that, oh hey, women have been getting passed over for "less qualified" men for, i don't know, ever?
I must say that this discussion seems to show some ignorance on the function of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not "represent" anyone except the Rule of Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law). Its primary function is to uphold the Rule of Law.
The representation is done through the legislative and executive branches where people literally choose who they want to represent them. The legislative and executive branches are, just like all government activity is supposed to be, constrained by Rule of Law. If women wish to be represented so much the only way they can (and ought to) force this is through electing more women.
The only requirement for a supreme court judge is his or hers qualifications and experience. If this person happens to be a woman then so be it, but if this happens to be a white man he should be the replacement.
Social engineering you are suggesting through positive discrimination is entirely arbitrary. It goes entirely against against the classical liberal ideals that the Philadelphia Convention envisaged when they wrote the constitution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_classical_liberalism).
In my country, England, I may go for a job and be the best qualified for it only to be shunted aside as another candidate is picked because they are black/muslim/woman to fill a company's equality quota. Yet in trying to promote diversity and equality they are being discriminitive towards me as I am a young, white male and I do not fit thier bill. It is not who is represented, it is who is the best. And if the author feels that her power is being threatened, of course she will respond in kind by demeaning her foe on the grounds that he is a man.