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Obama, Larry Summers, & Feminism

In efforts to avoid thread hi-jacking, I thought I’d just create a post about this.  Recently, a comment I made about how I wouldn’t count on Obama to defend women’s rights led to an argument.  As I stated there, I did not vote for Obama.  I’m a registered independent in my state, so can’t vote in party primaries for President.  As a Socialist, I also have no more use for the Democratic Party than I do for the Republican Party.  I voted for Cynthia McKinney in the general election because I felt she was the only candidate to really commit to all of the world’s oppressed people.

So, what does this specifically have to do with Obama and feminism?  One of Obama’s first acts after being elected was to appoint Larry Summers to his transition team.  He later gave Summers a position in his administration that, conveniently, allowed Summers to avoid Senate confirmation hearings.  Those hearings would (hopefully) have been used as a forum to out Summers on his sexist views on women in science, engineering and math.

As I stated in my comment, Summers has made comments about the genetic inferiority of women when it comes to math, science and engineering.  Some tried to jump to his defense, claiming he never said any such thing.  Sadly, he did, as discussed in the following quotes. 

Summers exact words (bolding mine) are as follows:  "In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic ...