Sexism in America

Mykal Sandifer

                                                      ENC1102

The United States has many problems, but the biggest one is sexism.

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of sexism is the attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of gender roles. It includes all kinds of prejudice concerning gender. According to Women Issue, it is the belief that a certain gender is inherently better than the other; therefore, it should be in charge of the most significant spheres of political, financial, and social life. It principally involves the abomination of, or bias opinion towards whichever gender or the appliance of stereotypes of masculinity to all men or the femininity to women. In the political article on Huffington Post, sexism is known as male and female excessive patriotism and been narrowed down to be described as the practice of dominance of men over women. If you research on the internet or go outside and observe everything carefully you will see sexism occurs in different types of institutions like family, media, religion, sports, video games, the military, language, and politics.

According to Women Issue, women in politics for a long time had endured sexist remarks and comments about what their appearances, clothes, and personality that are rarely made about male politicians. There is a study by the Women's Campaign Forum Foundation shows that sexist attacks and sexist media coverage seriously hurt women in politics. The study found that “to mitigate the damage and regain lost ground, female candidates must respond swiftly and strongly to such attacks by identifying them as inappropriate and damaging to all women.” Sam Bennett, the CEO of Women's Campaign Forum Foundation happens to be one of the female candidates who tried to ignore sexist attacks and attempt to rise above this sort of behavior but failed. In an interview, she said that she never understood the toxic level of sexism in our society until she experienced it firsthand.

In 2001, Sam Bennet had run for mayor in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She was well known in her hometown because she was a former PTA president; she was a pillar of the community, having founded, led, or served on the boards of various civic organizations. During her first speech, she was interrupted by the chairman of that meeting who said “Sam, I want to ask a question all the men in this room have been dying to ask you: Just what are your measurements?” As what she wrote in the Huffington Post she was in disbelief. And if this wasn't bad enough, a reporter who witnessed this unabashed display of sexism wrote an article about that stump speech--and didn't even mention the incident. Unfortunately, that horrible experience was only a hint of what would happen next come when she ran for Congress in 2008.

In 2008, she tried her luck again and ran for congress in Pennsylvania. According to Lehigh Valley Rambling blog site, Bennett was running against Pennsylvania State Senator Lisa Boscola, and Boscola's chief of staff, Bernie Kieklak. Bernie Kieklak was well known in political circles for saying disrespectful words in local blogs. During the congress run, he went on the Lehigh Valley Rambling blog site and talk about Bennett. What Bernie Kieklak said in an interview was that “Sammy Bennett is a phony political whore who gives good head and makes cheap, blatant political opportunists look like Mother Fucking Teresa, even her vagina is made of plastic.” What he said are big signs of sexism and shows what many women candidates face today in the United States. According to Sam’s camp, she was very disgusted by the comments Bernie said but reasoned to herself that it was just an opinion on a not a big blog site. In the Huffington Post interview sam had she said “If I made a fuss, it would only draw more attention to something  I believed very few people would ever come across.” But that was the biggest mistake she made in her career. A couple of days later, her local newspaper, the Morning Call, decided to print the quote on their front page and not just once. They ran it day after day, with a big picture of Sam Bennett right next to it and it affected her chances of winning. Sam wanted to sue the paper because of this but she said that “I was advised by my attorney never to sue anybody who prints ink by the barrelful.” Also, her top tier national political consultants also insisted that she don’t criticize the paper, because they would have to cover for her later in her campaign. Eventually she ended up losing in the congress race because of this problem that couldn’t be solved.