It wasn’t a happy ending for some who were watching the full-length film that was this year’s Democratic primary.

As Sen. Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination yesterday (we’re pretty sure this time), there was no shortage of Sen. Hillary Clinton supporters crying “sexism!”

Many are now vowing to vote for presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain in November.

For these women, Clinton is a symbol of their struggles against the glass ceiling, and Tuesday’s events only served to intensify that image. Her presumed loss to Obama now reinforces the idea for them that there’s only so far a woman can go in a male-dominated world.

I’d venture to say that the younger generation is perhaps not taking it so personally. I greatly admire Clinton. But when sizing her up as a candidate for president, the mere fact that she is female doesn’t occupy so much space on my Positive Qualities pie chart as it might for, say, someone who lived through the women’s rights movement. I relate to her, but I do not feel that her success is my success; her bitter defeat is my bitter defeat. Having seen how women my age can succeed in the workplace, I’m more optimistic.

As Jonathan Chait, 36, wrote in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times two weeks ago: “People of my generation tend to have a less personal view of Clinton. She’s not us, she’s not our ex-wife, she’s just a politician.”

At the same time, I also agree with Chait when he writes: “If I spent years being disrespected and discriminated against in my household chores and my workplace, though, maybe I’d see it differently.”

Whether or not her campaign was ultimately done in in by sexism, strategy, media coverage or simply a very formidable opponent, Clinton had a very difficult line to walk during the primary. Whereas Obama has had to find that balance between being too black and too white, Clinton struggled between expressing femininity and showing that she can play hardball with the guys.

What I find upsetting is the millions of Americans, many of them men, who were turned off at the outset simply by the idea of a “strong woman,” a female who exhibits qualities traditionally thought of as masculine traits: aggressiveness, assertiveness, a fighting spirit.

That’s opposed to feminine qualities: emotional, intuitive, nurturing. But God knows how much criticism and ridicule Clinton drew for BOTH that beer chugging AND those tears. You can’t win.

It will be a great day when a White Woman running for president and a Half-Black Man running for president will simply be Two Candidates running for president.

The bigger question will be how the Democratic Party plans to reconcile hard feelings lingering after the protracted primary battle, and whether it can regain a hold on its ideals, including overcoming both sexism and racism, when all is said and done.

photo: AP

Women: What if you walked into the ladies room and saw a person standing up to pee?

Men: What if you entered the men’s room and saw someone applying lipstick and mascara in the mirror?

According to an article in The Williams Record (my college paper), a group of students are asking the school to make campus bathrooms more welcoming to the transgender community by removing gender designations from all single-use restrooms. The students have the support of some senior staff members of the administration and would eventually like to see locker rooms modified (for more privacy for those who feel uncomfortable changing in front of others) and all campus buildings outfitted with gender-neutral restrooms.

It’s one thing to switch the signs on single-use bathrooms, but as the article acknowledges, adjustments beyond that are going to require more resources … and more acceptance from the community.

The public reaction to Thomas Beatie, a pregnant man who used to be a woman, indicates that the “T” in the GLBT acronym might very well be the hardest for our society to accept. As homosexuality is accepted gradually, transgendered individuals are still met with stares or awkward glances. Media still struggle with how to refer to transgendered people — whether to call them he and she, or “he” and “she,” or even he/she.

As more people now identify themselves as transgendered, there’s a new call to avoid separating people based on “male” and “female.” In one example, a former (mostly straight) dance club in Scottsdale, Ariz. transformed itself into the premier spot for the GLBT community following a widely-talked about 2006 incident involving the owner and a transgendered woman.

According to an article in The Arizona Republic, the owner asked the woman, Michele de LaFreniere, to leave the club after female patrons complained about men in dresses using the bathroom designated for women. De LaFreniere responded by filing a claim of sex discrimination with the Arizona attorney general, and the owner, Tom Anderson, became the subject of dozens of articles pitting him against the GLBT community.

(Anderson reopened the club in Dec. 2007 with a gender-neutral restroom and the place now caters to the GLBT community, attracting more than 700 patrons on Friday and Saturday night. Each.)

I’ll never forget walking into a multi-stall mixed-gender bathroom in a club in Beijing, which was attended mostly by gay men. In the stall to one side was my female friend; in the stall on the other side, a guy. The stalls were private; the bathroom was bathed in soft red lighting and the sinks with their basins of smooth stones and soft cascading water made you feel like you were washing your hands in a small waterfall. It was a weird experience, to say the least. But surprisingly, “uncomfortable” wasn’t one of the feelings that came to mind.

Many people would feel uncomfortable. Williams has a fairly open-minded student body, but even there, as with most places, you’ll likely find people who want to keep the women’s room for women and the men’s room for men.

Is our traditional way of thinking about gender confining? Are we ready for all things gender-neutral?

pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_bathrooms