President Bush has talked about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" in education throughout the campaign. Other pundits see soft bigotry in racial preferences in higher education. The idea is that the liberal's notion that blacks and other minorities can't compete with whites on a level playing field, without affirmative action, is bigotry, plain and simple.

Today, the LA Times writes that Teresa Heinz Kerry may be a detriment to her husband's campaign simply because she is an outspoken woman:

At a suburban St. Louis shopping mall, lawyer Kim Coffman, 33, said she admired Heinz Kerry, but thought her candor could turn off some voters.

"I think there's a fear, particularly among men, that she's going to run the show," Coffman said as she pushed her 18-month-old son in a stroller. "So I think she's a potential liability for Kerry, if men — or even women — view her as threatening."

The article tries to frame opposition to, and dislike of, Heinz Kerry to the fact that she's an "outspoken woman" and not because of her specific stances on the issues or the rather extremist organizations she supports.

Ruth Mandel, an expert on politics and gender at Rutgers University in New Jersey, thought many women reacted positively. To what she called Heinz Kerry's, "I am woman, hear me roar" passage.

Sabato thought that some men saw it as "feminist state of the world comment, and they were threatened by it."

To me, this is just like the soft bigotry Bush describes. This is soft chauvinism. Love her or hate her, Heinz Kerry deserves to be evaluated by her words and actions, not by how close to or how far away she is to feminist archetypes. By treating her as a woman, rather than Teresa Heinz Kerry, liberals are ignoring the substance of her "outspoken opinions" and instead only focusing on the fact that she's a woman saying them.

Wasn't the goal of the feminist movement for women to be awarded the same rights and respect as men? Don't articles and comments like this undermine that goal?