No, Obama’s Address On Women And The Economy Wasn’t Sexist

Yesterday, we were delighted to see President Obama’s address on women and economy. Specifically, it was nice to hear a politician talk about women’s issues without it sparking gargantuan levels of vitriolic debate and opportunistic faux-outrage. If you catch my drift.

Of course, it would seem we had spoken too soon.

This morning, the internet was ablaze with accusations of sexism against Obama — and nearly all missed the mark.

Of particular concern on an ABC political blog was this joke from the president:

“I was going to head over here earlier and [my staffers] said, ‘no, no, this place is full of women and they’re still settling down.’ What do you mean, settling down? What are they doing over there? Just creating havoc.”

ABC blogger Mary Bruce argued that this was a ham-handed attempt at the old ‘women take forever to get ready’ joke. But as far as I could tell, wasn’t this Obama making fun of his own staffers for their ‘the women are settling down’ statement?

Meanwhile Jezebel also took issue with Obama’s jokes. And they pointed out this particular segment from his speech:

“There’s been a lot of talk about women and women’s issues lately, as there should be. But I do think that the conversation has been oversimplified. Women are not some monolithic bloc. Women are not an interest group. You shouldn’t be treated that way.”

The author then argued that, “That’s a fine thing to say except that, to a politician — a campaigning politician, no less — every person of voting age is part of a demographic.” But wait — is “women” really its own special demographic? That is to say, do all women really have the same interests? Because I’d venture to say the last few weeks have proven that’s demonstrably untrue.

Are we approaching a point at which the outrage becomes outraging, at which time we rage and feel outraged at the outrageousness of it all? It feels like it.

TAGS: obama forum women economy | women and economy

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