Here’s the problem: while some of these guys know enough to mouth the right things, i.e., appointing pro-choice judges is important, they haven’t actually *done* a whole hell of a lot in the past 30 years to prevent the chipping away of rights, other than get pro-choice judges appointed when they happen to have a Dem in the White House. And even when they’re in control of Congress, they haven’t done a whole lot to prevent anti-choice judges from being appointed, nor have they managed to push through pro-choice legislation, pay equity legislation, legislation to protect the right of women to receive medication their doctors prescribe, etc.

And now, they’re cheering on misogyny as a campaign tactic, and then getting upset and threatening women with loss of rights if we don’t fall in line without question.

Roe v. Wade has been used so many times as a club to keep women voting for Democrats without offering them anything in return other than the maintenance of the hollowed-out shell of Roe that it’s lost its effectiveness.

If we’re talking about cases in which there’s a consistent pattern of racist/sexist/classist behavior and an unwillingness to take seriously criticism of it, then I agree with you and zuzu. And yes, there are far too many of these cases out in the left-liberal blogosphere. I would (and do) have serious questions about who is on my side and who is not.

I’m talking about more “mixed” cases in which there is discernible support for liberal/progressive causes and issues but also some myopia with respect to, say, sexism. Sometimes I see - or I think I see - a tendency to point to such cases as proof that aha! you’re (generically) not really a progressive and are instead really a racist, sexist, what have you.

I may have misread zuzu’s post and maybe she was talking about the more clear-cut cases you describe. And, perhaps, my point is entirely trivial. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about in recent weeks.

I have a hard time looking at the morass the blogosphere has descended into and thinking that these people are on the whole superprogressive, but they just happen to have the flaw of rabidly hating everyone who isn’t exactly like them, unless we can toe the line and fins a way to become one of the tolerated ones–for now. What are they doing on the positive side that could compensate for the misogyny, classism, and racism they spew on a regular basis? Those aren’t tangential to liberalism, they’re definitive.

(Sorry if I overstepped there, I only discovered this blog recently and am not sure if it’s appropriate for commentors to talk to each other, I understand you were speaking to zuzu and certainly not me.)

I agree that there’s a lot of really ugly sexism and racism that’s bubbled up over the course of the Democratic primary race. Certainly liberal/progressive people are not immune to demonstrating these behaviors and they’re serious issues that needs to be addressed. It takes constant introspection and work, which is not easy, and people don’t do it enough.

That said, I tend to look at these things holistically. Granted, as a white dude myself, I don’t experience sexism or racism the way women and people of color do, and so I need to be aware of that reality and how that skews my perspective. But sometimes I wonder if, in our work to overcome social ills like racism and sexism, we are tempted to slip into a kind of all-or-nothing mode of thought in which we create dichotomies like misogynist/not-misogynist, racist/not-racist, etc. Then when someone who is on the whole liberal engages in a racist or misogynist behavior, this is taken as evidence that this person is “really” one of those -ists.

Let me say before I continue that I am not trying to excuse racist or sexist behavior or say that people should not be confronted when they do these things. I think your example of that word (which I find so vile I don’t even like to type it) and pointing out its misogyny is one way we combat these problems.

People are complicated, and I think attitudes run along a gradient. It’s entirely possible (and, I think, the norm) to hold conflicting views about other people, and to behave progressively in some (even most) instances and not so progressively in others. At what point is someone not-really-liberal instead of being liberal, but flawed?

I suspect the answer has something to do with acknowledging behavior and changing it, but even then, we’re not always successful at doing so.

Also, ITA on the scary, scary stuff that Clinton’s campaign has brought to light.