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15

Cartoonist portrays female U.S. Senator wide-mouthed w/hands pushing “gags” “socks” “corks” at her


Attribution is to the New York Daily News (you can see the original here):

bramhallgillibrand

Isn’t that just lovely?  Didn’t I just last night, barely 12 hours ago, post an entry on BlogHer called, “How Much Do We Have To Put Up With?”

Gawd.  Here’s the address for writing a letter to the editor of the New York Daily News: voicers@nydailynews.com.

UPDATE:

There is an online-only poll that asks whether visitors to the blog think the cartoon above is sexist.  I left the following comment:

The cartoon is sexist, period. Show me the portrait of Bill Clinton going on too long at the DNC convention, or anyone else for that matter, and having “Gags” pushed toward his face. If you can show me that, I’ll back down. However, not all manners of showing certain sentiments with illustrations work the same on men as they do on women – to wit, the commenter who mentioned the “dickhead” arrow on Reagan’s head. We don’t call women “dickhead” for the most part, so that would not work on a woman.

Would the socks, corks and gags have worked as well with a man having his mouth shown wide open as Sen. Gillibrand’s is shown?

No. Why not? Because the stereotype is of a “loud-mouthed women” and bolsters the notion that women talk more than men, can’t stop talking, etc.

Again, show me some portraits in political and editorial cartoons that show loudmouthed men in elected office – and there are many who drone on (Mark Sanford – anyone do a corks, socks and gags one of him after his four hour chat with the AP?), and then I might back down.

Otherwise – yes, it’s sexist, no matter what rationalizations in fantasyland you come up with.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:20 pm July 15th, 2009 in Culture, Ethics, Gender, Media, Parenting, Politics, Sexism, Social Issues, Women, senate 

Comments

4 Responses to “Cartoonist portrays female U.S. Senator wide-mouthed w/hands pushing “gags” “socks” “corks” at her”

  1. 1 Chuck Butcher on July 15th, 2009 2:05 pm

    Note: I clearly remember B Clinton as the object in one.

  2. 2 Matthew on July 16th, 2009 11:07 pm

    Years of fake blogging outrage really gets old, Jill.

  3. 3 Amanda Montague on July 17th, 2009 1:32 am

    I found this post from links in various places and just wanted to comment that I completely agree with you. This is a nasty cartoon.

  4. 4 Jill Miller Zimon on July 20th, 2009 8:46 pm

    Amanda – thanks for taking the time to click over to here and to comment. Yeah – totally a “what were they thinking” – except we know.

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