Feminism Again

Providing a running commentary on the daily news is a tried and tested method of blogging. Blogging about blogging is now becoming a subject for successful bloggers. One thing I've always tried to avoid is blogging about the personal - the everyday happenings of my immediate friends or family. Obviously, that provides entertaining reading for those directly involved, but not so much for those who come across this blog by chance. However, I feel ever-encouraged to blog about those things on my mind; express a simple thought-experiment, if you will. My first one concerns Hillary Clinton. I've always liked to think that people won't vote based on gender or race, and I was glad to find the very opposite result yesterday - in fact, no; people vote based on what they see, hear, agree with, and appreciate. Moreover, say you were a feminist, but didn't like Hillary Clinton for whatever reason (there are many). Are you then, as a feminist, embarrassed, ashamed, let down when Hillary Clinton is voted into office because you don't see her as a good representative of the educated, intelligent, female majority? Of course, the banal feminist would declare that any female president is a good president, but would a thinking-man's feminist actually deplore the idea of having a poor female president. I assume it depends on what side of the fence you sit - Amanda, it seems, can be ascribed to the former. On the topic of feminism, this newspiece caught my eye. Here's one for you (thought experiment #2): would the same outcome have occurred had the victim been female? In other words, if you reverse the genders here, would the man only get 15 moths in jail? Bearing in mind the supposed provocation was as follows: "her husband would physically abuse her, swear in front of their children, use pornography and often appear glassy-eyed and intoxicated, apparently on drink or drugs. The judge said there had been a "cumulative period of provocation" punctuated by bursts of violence and "unpleasant verbal threats"." Is that justification to kill someone?