In this clip from The Daily Show, Jon Stewart reflects on the mass media's perception of the women voter. At one point, the media claims that "single women vote democratic because they don't care about the future of America, and only are concerned about abortion."
In relation to the class, this statement can be seen as a genderization, or when gender based distinctions are made within a group. Since the media is referring to all single women only voting for Barack Obama based on their views of abortion, they have essentially clumped all single women into one category based on their claim. Although this is not true, all single women are seen to only care about the one issue, and therefore their votes are unfair in the election.
In the Baynton reading, a similar issue is discussed. At one point, he states that people believed "women's flaws made them incapable of exercising equal political and social rights with men." Just like the statement discussed on The Daily Show, women are seen to be incapable of voting for the good of America. Instead, they are physically incapable of voting for the good of the country, and just vote to benefit themselves. This flaw (as Baynton would call it) is what the current media believes is holding America back, and has led to the election of Obama for a second term.
Here is the video clip discussed if anyone is interested in watching it:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/425435
It's a very interesting point that single women vote for Obama for abortion and don't care about the future of America. I think genderization, in this video, are not only reflected on voting but also on how the society define "motherhood", which kind of associates with eugenics. From those who think women are responsible for American's future, they actually ignore the social impact on women. For a long time, women belong to the vulnerable groups that suffer oppression from government, the majority of which are white males. Since the beginning of last century, the idea of eugenics manifests itself in western countries, women, as a general group, not only have been genderized but also racialized. The idea that women shift from wives to mothers as "national duty" divided women group into two groups: good mother equals to good citizen while bad mothers equals to bad citizen. For the upper- and middle-class women, mostly whites, they were not allowed abortion for sake of the country's future while lower class women, mostly people of color, were encouraged or forced to do sterilization also for sake of the country's future because they are "bad mother". So we can not say that eugenics has gone in this new century. It combines with other ideas, under the power of mass media, keeping influencing our life.
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