Let them run

The past few weeks have been very interesting for runners of all kinds. An athlete who could not run was carried. An athlete who can run was finally told he could. And in politics, Hillary Clinton was barraged with yet more calls to stop running.

Over 200,000 viewers enjoyed the YouTube video of Western Oregon University athlete Sara Tucholsky’s first home run. In a game against Central Washington University, Tucholsky hit the ball over the fence. At first base, she tore a ligament in her knee. When the umpire mistakenly ruled that one of her own team members could not run the bases for her, two Central Washington players picked her up and carried her around the bases. All over the blogosphere, Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace are heralded as heroes for the selfless act that cost them the game but won them a place in our hearts -- and an entry on Wikipedia.

In other sports victories, double amputee Oscar Pistorius won the right to compete for a spot in the Olympics. Pistorius was born without fibulas (the long thin bones that run from knee to ankle.) Surgeons amputated both his legs below the knee when he was eleven months old. Running on special carbon-fiber blades, Pistorius holds the 400-meter Paralympic word record at 46.56 seconds.

Pistorius is not quite there yet; the qualifying requirement for the 400-meter event in Beijing is 45.55 seconds. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had barred Pistorius from all able-bodied competition including the Olympics, considering his carbon-fiber running blades a “mechanical advantage” over other runners. Their fear was not that he would fail, but that he might succeed.

If Pistorius makes the cut, he will not be the first Paralympian to qualify for the Olympics. Natalie du Toit, a swimmer from South Africa, qualified for the 2008 Olympics on May 3rd. Du Toit was already competing internationally when she lost her left leg in a motorcycle accident. Du Toit swims without a prosthetic, so fairness was never questioned. A poem on her wall states, “It is not a disgrace not to reach for the stars, But it is a disgrace not to have stars to reach for.”

Like Du Toit, Hillary Clinton is a person who is not easily contented by merely having stars out there. Both women are driven to win. In either case, a win represents far more than a personal victory. Clinton is hardly disabled in the political arena – indeed, America would be hard-pressed to come up with any candidate who is sharper, more well-known, or more qualified to lead our country than Hillary Clinton. Yet, in the political arena, merely being female is still a gigantic perception liability, almost like an athlete competing without a limb.

Throughout Clinton’s campaign, this column has recorded and analyzed a steady stream of media misogyny used to smear the senator and former first lady. While much of the onslaught is presented as humor, it is notable that comic references to Clinton’s sex are invariably negative, and frequently downright hateful.

Since Obama first became a serious challenger, pundits have called for Clinton to drop out of the race. As Clinton’s campaign noted, the drop out cries followed Clinton’s victories, not Obama’s. Clinton had become like the runner on carbon-fiber blades, and much of society wanted to deny her the right to even be a contender – not because she could not win, but because she just might.

Obama now commands a strong lead, but a Clinton nomination is still mathematically possible. Why should the Democratic nomination be ended prematurely? Some Democrats want to end it so the Democratic Party can unify against John McCain. Yet polls show that Clinton is a stronger candidate against McCain. Democrats may shoot themselves in the foot by trying to silence their best candidate.

Quitting now would not only mean giving up the nomination. It would also represent an enormous loss to women everywhere. What woman has not been pressured with these same tactics to “just go home?” Month after month, women continue to hear that they cannot “have it all” (i.e. family and career), even as the majority of American women continue to do just that. We are inundated with magazine articles, Internet essays and news items telling us that women are “opting out” and just going home in large numbers. The facts prove otherwise, but it does not stop the media from feeding the guilt complex carried by working mothers and discouraging us with claims that we cannot succeed.

Being female is still a disadvantage in many fields. Where women have made inroads, they still do not receive the same wages and honors accorded to men. The more education and training a woman has, the less likely she is to earn as much as her peers. The wage gap between male and female physicians, for example, is much greater than the wage gap between male and female cashiers.

Oddly, many feminists are among those calling for Hillary to pull out of the race. The Democratic contest has opened a generational divide between older and younger feminists. Younger feminists are apt to say that the gender of the candidate is completely immaterial, so long as he or she supports feminism.

Older feminists recognize a troubling historical parallel. In the 1800’s, the feminist movement was strong and suffragettes were closer than ever to their goal of votes for women. Many suffragettes were also abolitionists, and were willing to temporarily lay aside the cause of votes for women in order to fight slavery. After the Civil War, the feminist movement spent a great deal of energy and resources fighting for the rights of black men, including the right to vote. As a result, black men received the right to vote fifty years before women.

At a campaign stop in Kentucky, Hillary Clinton responds to those who urge her to quit. “You don’t stop democracy in its tracks. You don’t tell some states that they can’t vote and other states that have already had the opportunity that they’re somehow more important. I want everybody to vote and everybody to help pick our next president.”

So run for all you’re worth. Run in your dark pantsuit. Run on your carbon-fiber blades. Run till the wind in your ears drowns out the incessant whining of those who tell you to go home. They’re only afraid that somehow, against the odds, you just might win.