itsmeeeeeee

By Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich: Hillary's Gift to Women - Politics on The Huffington Post


In Friday's New York Times, Susan Faludi rejoiced over Hillary Clinton's destruction of the myth of female prissiness and innate moral superiority, hailing Clinton's "no-holds-barred pugnacity" and her media reputation as "nasty" and "ruthless." Future female presidential candidates will owe a lot to the race of 2008, Faludi wrote, "when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys."

I share Faludi's glee -- up to a point. Surely no one will ever dare argue that women lack the temperament for political combat. But by running a racially-tinged campaign, lying about her foreign policy experience, and repeatedly seeming to favor McCain over her Democratic opponent, Clinton didn't just break through the "glass floor," she set a new low for floors in general, and would, if she could have got within arm's reach, have rubbed the broken glass into Obama's face.

A mere decade ago Francis Fukuyama fretted in Foreign Affairs that the world was too dangerous for the West to be entrusted to graying female leaders, whose aversion to violence was, as he established with numerous examples from chimpanzee society, "rooted in biology." The counter-example of Margaret Thatcher, perhaps the first of head of state to start a war for the sole purpose of pumping up her approval ratings, led him to concede that "biology is not destiny." But it was still a good reason to vote for a prehistoric-style club-wielding male.

Not to worry though, Francis. Far from being the stereotypical feminist-pacifist of your imagination, the woman to get closest to the Oval Office has promised to "obliterate" the toddlers of Tehran -- along, of course, with the bomb-builders and Hezbollah supporters. Earlier on, Clinton foreswore even talking to presumptive bad guys, although women are supposed to be the talk addicts of the species. Watch out -- was her distinctly unladylike message to Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-Il, and the rest of them -- or I'll rip you a new one.

There's a reason why it's been so easy for men to overlook women's capacity for aggression. As every student of Women's Studies 101 knows, what's called aggression in men is usually trivialized as "bitchiness" in women: Men get angry; women suffer from bouts of inexplicable, hormonally-driven, hostility. So give Clinton credit for defying the belittling stereotype: She's been visibly angry for months, if not decades, and it can't all have been PMS.

But did we really need another lesson in the female capacity for ruthless aggression? Any illusions I had about the innate moral superiority of women ended four years ago with Abu Ghraib. Recall that three out of the five prison guards prosecuted for the torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners were women. The prison was directed by a woman, Gen. Janis Karpinski, and the top U.S. intelligence officer in Iraq, who also was responsible for reviewing the status of detainees before their release, was Major Gen. Barbara Fast. Not to mention that the U.S. official ultimately responsible for managing the occupation of Iraq at the time was Condoleezza Rice.

Whatever violent and evil things men can do, women can do too, and if the capacity for cruelty is a criterion for leadership, as Fukuyama suggested, then Lynndie England should consider following up her stint in the brig with a run for the Senate.

It's important -- even kind of exhilarating -- for women to embrace their inner bitch, but the point should be to expand our sense of human possibility, not to enshrine aggression as a virtue. Women can behave like the warrior queen Boadicea, credited with slaughtering 70,000, many of them civilians, or like Margaret Thatcher, who attempted to dismantle the British welfare state. Men, for their part, are free to take as their role models the pacifist leaders Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Biology conditions us in all kinds of ways we might not even be aware of yet. But virtue is always a choice.

Hillary Clinton smashed the myth of innate female moral superiority in the worst possible way -- by demonstrating female moral inferiority. We didn't really need her racial innuendos and free-floating bellicosity to establish that women aren't wimps. As a generation of young feminists realizes, the values once thought to be uniquely and genetically female -- such as compassion and an aversion to violence -- can be found in either sex, and sometimes it's a man who best upholds them.

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Jonesy

People who think men and women are so different seem to forget - women breed with men.

HarperLee

Hillary Clinton smashed the myth of innate female moral superiority in the worst possible way -- by demonstrating female moral inferiority. We didn't really need her racial innuendos and free-floating bellicosity to establish that women aren't wimps. As a generation of young feminists realizes, the values once thought to be uniquely and genetically female -- such as compassion and an aversion to violence -- can be found in either sex, and sometimes it's a man who best upholds them.

I have to think that strong young women -- with the exception
of Chelsea Clinton -- cringe at Hillary's candidacy.

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When an intelligent, truthful man appears, he will be easily identified by the confederacy of dunces arrayed against him. Jonathan Swift

RK77

It really goes beyond that! Hillary has murdered the feminist political central premise---that there are traits that are uniquely female that would enhance and improve the lot of the nation if they were to become part of the political landscape.

Hillary's growing a dick defeats the entire concept---especially when she uses it to violently assault the entire Democratic party!

itsmeeeeeee

exactly. clinton is setting women BACK!

tho i have him on "ignore" i've seen enough of his comments quoted to know that cosmo would like everyone to think i'm bitching about hillary because i'm an elitist snob, which of course, would embarrass the shit out of him if any of you could actually meet me. i couldn't be LESS of an elitist if i spent my entire day trying to be. i have no college degree. i have no money. and, as anyone who reads my posts can tell, i'm sure as hell NOT by nature sophisticated.

but i'm an elitist according to him and other hillary supporters because i've educated myself, i base my opinions on hard evidence, and i call a spade a spade.

the reality is, that translates NOT into an elitist, but into to a strong woman.

i raised my son with NO help from his deadbeat dad, moved to alaska and lived in a one room cabin with no running water or electricity on a mountain for a year when my kid was getting in trouble in the city, worked harder physically than most men i know throughout my entire life, have spent MY spare time educating myself in both comparative religion and nuclear physicists via college level text books from lending libraries to the point where i can carry on intelligent conversations with experts in both fields who are stunned to discover i don't have a degree, and even now that i've completely blown out my back with physical labor, and am disabled, i STILL have found ways to live in, completely restore and maintain a 200 yr old abandoned settler's cabin (with no furnace) and 5 acres of overgrown meadow and gardens with nothing more than my own willpower, a lot of special tools, and the occasional helping hand on a couple of large projects from family or friends in the space of 9 years.

but because i see through hillary, and think she's a disgusting racist pig, and am completely repulsed by her politics, i'm an elitist. yeah, right.

people who are racist and/or too lazy to educate themselves are nothing but fucking whimps with excuses for everything in their miserable lives and NO courage or ambition to improve their lives. and people who defend them are nothing more enablers.

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RK77

Could you move your before and after photos of your cabin here to emphasize you point please?

There is a REASON why racism and ignoranance go hand in hand! AND there is a HUGE reason why those people become hyperpatriotic! They are totally dependent on leeching off the positives of a nation that they have had little or nothing to do with building! They have NOTHING else to pride themselves in---so they take pride in something obtained by sheer providence! If they had had to work for it---they would not have even attained that much!

itsmeeeeeee

gladly! it's off subject, but i like to show what a strong woman can do if she sets her mind to something! i am WOMAN! hear me ROAR!









ps: i've done this WITH my back injury, and WHILE i work full time to support myself.
i'm no wimpy woman!

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aloysious

What war did she start? The Falklands? Argentina invaded a British Territory, an act of war.

She succeeded to a large extent. G. B. has been much stronger economically since.
This Barbara Ehrenreich sounds like a nut.

itsmeeeeeee

well, first of all, i suspect you're not a woman, so it's pretty difficult for a man to understand how a LOT of women - including MANY feminists - think hillary's REALLY setting women BACK by taking the lowest road a woman can take, on a lot of different levels - from her whining that the press was picking on her, to her schizophrenic personalities, to her race baiting and catty exploitation of innuendo, ridiculous rumors, and outright lies.

hillary's the kind of unscrupulous woman who'd trap a man by getting pregnant and then leave him the second something better came along.

and second of all, i think you're totally missing the forest for the trees regarding this article if THAT'S the part of it you're focused on.

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aloysious

I agree with the overwhelming majority of it, but the author decreased her cred with her obvious dislike of M. Thatcher and lie about her starting a war.