The media has created a circus around our Secretary of State being queried about her husband’s opinion.

It’s a throwback to the days on the campaign trail when Hillary Clinton was dogged by remarks about her looks (“bad hair”), her suits (“unflattering colors”), and her political competence (dangerous menopausal woman with her finger on the button”). And, the ever-present rumor she is really a lesbian. 

And, we all know being interested in women’s issues (meaning human issues, vital issues concerning the viability of our planet) is solid gold evidence one is a lesbian, right?

The continuing diminution and trivialization and the outright contempt for women in the US of A in 2009 is astounding. To undercut women whether we are in political office or on the street by bashing our looks, misreading and misconstruing us simply because we are women, and calling us lesbian to discredit us is openly sexist and homophobic. 

New York Times’ columnist Judith Warner’s dead-on analysis puts global misogyny into a very palpable perspective:

“She [Hillary] traveled to eastern Congo, where hundreds of thousands of women have been raped over the past decade. She visited a refugee camp and met with one woman who was gang-raped while eight months pregnant; she heard of another who’d been sexually assaulted with a rifle. She was told of babies cut from their mothers’ bodies with razors. She spoke of “evil in its basest form.” She promised $17 million to fight sexual violence. And back home, all anyone could talk about was Bill.”

Does anyone wonder about the young man who did or did not ask our Secretary of State about her husband’s opinion? Will be become one of the Congo’s mass rapists? Does anyone wonder about the women there who are being systematically raped and have no voice? Does anyone care about the reason for Clinton's trip to the Congo? Or do they only really care about her hair?