I don’t. I could stop smiling forever right now, and it would just make me a Very Serious Person. I remember job interviews — what I had to do was convince the committee that I had what it takes to do the job. “Ingratiating” could be a perfectly alien concept to me, and I could still function perfectly well.
So it’s eye-opening when Sady Doyle flips the table.
I watch Hillary Clinton’s face. She smiles. You always smile at the job interview. She smiles like a motherfucker, that woman.
She smiles while she assures the moderator that she won’t make her husband do stupid lady things like – ick! – decorating. She smiles while assuring the world she won’t forsake her duty as a woman, that she will still “pick the flowers and the china for state dinners and stuff like that.” She smiles while answering the question of whether female Presidents are fundamentally unnatural, whether she is fundamentally unnatural, whether electing her will emasculate not only Bill Clinton but the nation itself. And she has been the second-most popular Secretary of State in history, and she has been the member of the Obama administration with the highest approval rating, and she has been one of the most liberal Senators in Congress, and she has been an early pioneer whose work laid the ground for both CHIP and eventually Obamacare, and she has been one of the single most visible advocates for feminism globally and in the United States since the mid-90s, and she has done the work, the basic work level of the work, the coming-in-when-you’re-sick-don’t-be-late-don’t-take-a-vacation work, and she still has to answer this fucking question – the one that’s not about her, but about her gender; the one that’s not about policy, but whether she could govern in a way men can accept – but smiling is just what you do, if you’re a woman, and a feminist, and you have to field questions like these. You don’t challenge the premises. You don’t tell them to fuck off. You let them test you to see if you’re an angry feminist, and you pass the test by letting them insult you to your face and not getting angry. Because after everything you’ve done, everything you’ve fought for, that’s still what most men want to know. They want to know they can insult you and get away with it. They won’t work with you if they can’t.
Hillary Clinton lets them insult her with a smile on her face, because she wants the job. Because there is no way to just flip a table, throw the coffee, walk out of this bitch in protest, and get the job she wants. There never is. Not for her, not for me, not for any of us. She smiles.
So that’s what it looks like when a woman stops smiling. Like me.
And then she’s criticized for smiling all the time and not being a serious person. Because, really, the point is to criticize Clinton and any excuse will do.
Or I should say, to be more accurate and more generalizable, that the point is to criticize any woman who dares try to get power, no matter who or what the context. Clinton happens to be the one who is closest to getting this particular piece of highly publicized power, but the details of her campaign or personality are not the point.
There is more than enough to criticize Clinton about without dragging her gender into it.
I’ve tried, a time or three, to imagine living my life without having heard “Smile! It can’t be that serious” or “You’d look so much prettier with a smile on your face!” from strangers all the godsdamn time. Or not being told, by an employer that smile, smile, smile, is a superfuckingimportant part of my job, even if that job was being stuck in the back of a building in the art room. Smile! Smile as if your life depends on it, because guess what? It does.
Gregory in Seattle @ 3:
Do random strangers tell you to smile, Gregory? Do random strangers comment on your looks or mood, based on your lack of smiling? Does your boss make a point of telling you to smile? Do you have people assume you are a total b!tch if you don’t smile?
I’m not thrilled with Clinton, because she’s too establishment, and to tied to the old horrendous order of things that I want to see overthrown.
But if she gets the nomination, I will accept her as an incremental improvement — a substantial increment, but not yet all the way to where I want this country to be. But I’ll take it.
And she doesn’t have to smile at all, unless she wants to.
And yet no one, especially not the mainstream media, Republicans, or Bernie boys, seems capable of criticizing her without bringing her gender into it. Sanders himself is actually half decent about not using gendered insults, which is why his supporters haven’t quite driven me away yet.
Gregory in Seattle
It’s not about Clinton’s politics. It’s about the fact that people obviously cannot just criticise her politics and instead go for her gender.
This particular observation is NOT about Clinton or Sanders but about the fact that she’s subject to a whole fucking amount of bullshit that has nothing to do with her politics.
Also, why did the discussion of Clinton as an example of someone who is having problems getting a job she wants because of gender issues turn, within 3 comments, to criticism of Clinton’s policies or perceived policies? Can we not say that, yes, Clinton is facing sexism without prefacing the comment by saying, “of course, I don’t like X, Y, or Z about her”? I mention this partly because I note that I have a tendency to do that. As though I’m not allowed to simply be upset at the sexism Clinton is facing because she’s too Wall Street or establishment or too named “Clinton” or whatever other excuse people are using today to explain how their opposition is totally not about gender.
I also have to add, though, that in many ways and on many issues, Sanders is also a bit regressive and far away from what people want this country to be. So I can’t condemn people who prefer Clinton to Sanders for being insufficiently progressive. This is a case where a compromise will be hammered out on the forge of the primaries, and no matter who is ultimately chosen, they’ll have some shiny bright spots and some ugly flaws.
I just wish we could get past this unendurable, tiresome chaos of sprawled out primaries and idiotic media coverage, and get on to the important matters: crushing the thuggish Republican party, their ignorant know-nothing followers, and the theocrats who guide them.
I’m guessing rich, white males are at the top of list of people who don’t have to smile when the crap gets shoveled at them. The rest of us 99%–keep those shit-eating grins handy.
Redwood @ 11:
Yep.
@ Giliell #8, And that in order to get where she hopes to go, Clinton has to politely, consistently, passively allow that bullshit and engage with it as if it was relevant, smiling all the while. She can’t pound tables or yell because when women get our ire up we are not seen as passionate go-getters but as emotionally unstable. Immediate disqualification.
Sanders doesn’t get half the shit Clinton gets, nor is he expected to handle the shit he does get with perfect composure and grace at all times. He gets to be loud, serious, confrontational, even angry.
http://bluenationreview.com/bernie-pushed-to-dump-nuclear-waste-on-low-income-community/
Hillary and Bernie are both great candidates and expedient politicians. If Bernie is less connected it is more likely due to his less experience within certain circles. He is not purer. He is tainted as well. But Hillary is demonized by her taint while evidence of Bernie’s political taint is ignored. They are alike. She has a higher profile and has had one for much longer than Bernie. Her circle of taint is perhaps larger but I believe his would be too if he had been moving in similar circles with a similar constituency as Hillary. Only his taint would then not be a taint. It would be considered an asset. He would still be considered pure. Because of this I go with the one who sent her director of her national campaign to Flint to find out what she could do to help when the horror was first reported, not just called for the governor to resign and moved on. I just met that director, Amanda Renteria, here in Texas with my grandson. I got to see what kind of people Hillary will surround herself with. I was impressed. Hillary all the way!
http://www.shakesville.com/2016/02/i-want-to-know_8.html
And this too.
Maybe Hillary is generally amused by some of the shit thrown her way. And that includes the discussion of whether she smiles too much or not enough.
And I do see her getting tough, aggressive, whatever you want to call it.
Bernie Sanders said the right thing to try to tamp down some of the sexist remarks coming from “Bernie Bros”:
I thought a smile was a good thing.
@tsig
A smile is a good thing if you are genuinely compelled by your emotional state to smile. If a smile is just something you force onto your face because it’s what’s expected? Less wonderful.
Yes. I think Clinton (and Elizabeth Warren, and Carly Fiorina, and Sarah Palin, and all women*) should be allowed to get angry and yell if she wants to, or smile if she wants to, or whatever. But she gets to pick between ‘shrill harpy’ and ‘fake’, while a male politician has many more options without being seen like a robot or unstable. Trump or Sanders can be criticized for what they are yelling about, while Clinton can barely take a stern tone of voice.
* Sexism hurts all of us, even when you don’t like the targets much. Attacking someone for their gender or gender performance indicates that is ‘fair ground’.
@tsig
Yeah, a smile is great when you’re smiling because you feel good.
Less good when you’re being instructed/ordered to smile by a random on the street as you walk past – because you could be so *pretty* if you just smile, and why wouldn’t you want to be pretty for him? Why wouldn’t you want to look nice for all the dudes in the world as you quietly go about the business of existing in the world while female? Why wouldn’t you be smiling? What could possibly be going on in your life that you can’t possibly drop right now, for this random guy, so that he thinks you’re pretty? What possible business could you have that is more important than making sure this random guy and his sad boner?
Smile sweetheart!
tsig @ 17:
What I described @4 is a good thing?
To be fair, there’s an entire discussion here
http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2016/02/06/why-do-people-take-an-instant-dislike-to-ted-cruz/
of a male politician’s smile. There was also the case of one of Rubio’s boots. So male candidates do get some of this scrutiny as well — but it’s true that it doesn’t seem to be as damaging or as heavily promoted.
Of course, the obvious way to fix the problem would be to have half the candidates or more be women. By then, hopefully this issue will be off the table. We can hope, anyway. I think a reasonably strong argument for voting for Clinton is just so the next woman won’t have to deal with as much of this.
brucegee1962:
Oh yes. That will automagically change the attitude of every man on the planet, and there will be zero expectation on the part of people everywhere that an unsmiling woman equals ugly b!tch.
@Lynna
“…invented novel sexist terms such as “clitrash.” […]”
Exhibit number one for why I have no problem opposing the people who try to argue that words like “*unt” don’t contribute to misogyny. The instinct to have insults that disparage based on the mere ownership of a vagina is alive and well in modern society so I have to assume that the software for receiving the generalized negative emotion associated with a female person’s body part is a relevant factor in my social environment.
It’s one of the easiest to see sexist double-binds. If you don’t smile, you’re a frigid bitch. If you do smile, you’re an airheaded ditz. You can’t win either way.
Reminds me of that social experiment I saw a while back where women responded positively (rather than denying it) to comments on dating websites. It always went something like:
It’s one of the easiest to see sexist double-binds. If you don’t smile, you’re a frigid bitch. If you do smile, you’re an airheaded ditz. You can’t win either way.
Reminds me of that social experiment I saw a while back where women responded positively (rather than denying it) to compliments on dating websites. Almost every case, dudes were quick to rescind the compliment and call the women names for affirming that they were hot or whatever they were complimented on.
It’s a classic sexist double-bind. If you smile, you’re frigid. If you don’t smile, you’re a ditz. The best way to retain power is to ensure literally every action the people under you take either hurts them or helps you.
@Vivec
Pretty sure you mixed those up, but the point stands. Gender politics are chock-full of catch-22 scenarios like that.
Looking at Ted Cruz instantly makes me think, “Used Car Salesman” in all the most horrid, slimy, underhanded connotations of that phrase. It’s worse when he smiles.
Marco Rubio makes me think of an evil Energizer Bunny type person when he smiles….
@26 Indeed, had to rewrite it two or three times and I got the two mixed up this time.
This all reminds me of that social experiment where women replied positively to comments on dating websites, only for men to immediately rescind the compliments and insult the women.
How can people possibly miss that Sady Doyle is writing about Hillary as a relevant example of a larger point?
You don’t even have to read the rest of my comment, you should rather go back and reread the quote in the post. Reread it again if even the second time, thinking about Clinton’s politics overshadowed your reading comprehension.
Women are told to smile. By stranger. By friends. By coworkers. When we are being complimented and when we are being insulted. Even when we are just going about our business.
Relevant: Scientists have discovered what causes Resting Bitch Face, a selected quote:
So we smile.
I used to have a nearly permanent smile pasted on my face, as a result of people in high school making nasty remarks about my eternally serious expression. So I learned to smile whenever in company of others. Even when I was sitting in the tram, with only strangers paying me absolutely no attention. Whenever someone addresses me, my reflex is still to smile. They could be spitting on me ,and I’d probably smile before moving onto shock. Only in the recent year or so have I managed to make my face behave normally again. And yes, that results in “why so serious” remarks.
Because serious men are serious when they work, that’s not questionable. But women… wouldn’t they be prettier if they smiled?
How can people possibly miss that Sady Doyle is writing about Hillary as a relevant example of a larger point?
You don’t even have to read the rest of my comment, you should rather go back and reread the quote in the post. Reread it again if even the second time, thinking about Clinton’s politics overshadowed your reading comprehension.
Women are told to smile. By stranger. By friends. By coworkers. When we are being complimented and when we are being insulted. Even when we are just going about our business.
Relevant: Scientists have discovered what causes Resting B____ Face, a selected quote:
So we smile.
I used to have a nearly permanent smile pasted on my face, as a result of people in high school making nasty remarks about my eternally serious expression. So I learned to smile whenever in company of others. Even when I was sitting in the tram, with only strangers paying me absolutely no attention. Whenever someone addresses me, my reflex is still to smile. They could be spitting on me ,and I’d probably smile before moving onto shock. Only in the recent year or so have I managed to make my face behave normally again. And yes, that results in “why so serious” remarks.
Because serious men are serious when they work, that’s not questionable. But women… wouldn’t they be prettier if they smiled?
[There’s a naughty word in the link, so the first iteration of this comment didn’t post. I’m reposting it without the word, so you’ll have to edit the link in order for it to work. In case PZ rescues the original comment from the filter, I apologize in advance for the duplicate]
Beatrice:
Oh Christ, I still get that one. It never ends.
It’s more than that though. If a Republican wins, not only will the Republicans very likely control all three branches of Congress, allowing them to speedily reverse all of the meagre progress we’ve made over the last eight years (and more), but they could easily establish a dominant right-wing majority on the Supreme Court for another full generation causing damage that could take decades to undo. Imagine three or four more 50-something Scalias or Thomases on the bench by the end of the next Presidency. Could happen.
So, for me, any incremental improvement is a bonus. Sad to say, but given the current state of politics in this country at the moment, even a holding pattern is a win in my book.
Things I’ve been told when I’m not smiling:
What’s wrong?
Are you ok?
Are you having a bad day?
Are you sick?
No really, what’s wrong?
Looks like you’re having a bad day.
Smile, it can’t be that bad!
I don’t know why you’re not telling me what’s wrong, I thought we were friends.
It’s exhausting.
My apologies for my post above: that’s what happens when I respond to something early in the morning, before the caffeine kicks in and I’m too rushed to do more than skim what I’m responding to. Sorry about that.
Carlie @ 32:
Yes. It doesn’t stop, either. Going by the article Beatrice linked, I not only have RBF, I have RSF (Resting Serious Face).
I have RDFWM Face.
If I try to force a smile, I look like I’m being stabbed.
feministhomemaker @14
It’s also been pointed out, reguarding Clinton’s “untrustworthiness” that “Twenty-five-year-olds have literally never lived in a time where there weren’t whispers (or nationally televised shouts) about Hillary Clinton’s evil schemes“.
Love me some Sady Doyle. I’m leaning Bernie in the primary myself, but her writings on Clinton have been thought-provoking, entertaining, and pointed out more than a few things I hadn’t been aware of while crystallizing a lot of stuff I had been.
In particular, I have to recommend this one, which hews pretty close to my views on HRC: “I can and do disagree with Hillary Clinton, regularly and strongly. But some part of me also hopes that Hillary Clinton is having a nice day.”
http://sadydoyle.tumblr.com/post/135664586198/likable
@#5, Caine
(I’m not Gregory, but…) No, they don’t, but even if they did I wouldn’t think that, as a result, my actual policies and history ought to be free from scrutiny.
I know that Clinton is having a harder time because she is a woman, because I have seen it happening in media interviews. I don’t doubt that she’s getting sexist criticism from Sanders supporters, either. But I haven’t actually seen any. (For example, the only times I’ve seen Sanders supporters deliberately misspell her name, they’ve used “Killery” because of her pro-war stances or “Shillery” because of her pro-corporate stances, which are both childish but not sexist.)
What I have seen, over and over and over again now, is Clinton supporters replying to criticism of Clinton’s positions and actions by claiming that the accusers are “Bernie Bros” and that the criticism is nothing but sexism. Most of them go so far as to claim that nobody would support Sanders at all if he weren’t running against a woman. (The comments sections over at Salon.com, for example, are full of these people.)
Sure, sexism is a part of all this — when is it not? (If Hillary Clinton were a man, then the sexist contingent would instead be trying to decide whether Clinton or Sanders was the more conventionally manly.) That still doesn’t change the fact that Clinton has a long history of bad judgement, standing on the wrong side of issues (hey, remember when she actually laughed at someone who asked if she was for legalizing marijuana?), and throwing her supporters under the bus the moment it becomes politically opportune to do so. Hillary Clinton in the White House would be a disaster for both the party which is nominally hers and the country as a whole, but that’s irrelevant because Hillary Clinton as a nominee would be unlikely to be able to win the general election. Conventional wisdom is that Clinton is “more electable” than Sanders, but I am telling you that that looks like wishful thinking to me. Sanders is the one who actually has the numbers; Clinton merely has the party apparatus, and that can’t win by itself — look at Kerry.
@#10, PZ Myers
On any issue where Sanders articulated a position and then Clinton came out, after that position proved to popular with the base, and said “oh, yeah, I’m for that too, I just never mentioned it” or “oh, okay, I can be for that, too”, I don’t believe she actually holds those views. She certainly does not seem to hold them in the sense of actually believing them, which means that she won’t try to fight for them. In the last 12 years, we’ve had enough Democrats who threw up their hands and said “we can’t do anything at all because the Republicans have a majority” and then spent the rest of their term basically asleep. We need a fighter, like Obama wasn’t. Clinton’s proposed strategy is apparently to let the Republicans do whatever they want unless they go “too far”, and then veto that. Given that Clinton has said she doesn’t think the banking industry is out of control enough to warrant significant government action, I don’t trust her judgement when it comes to making a determination of what constitutes “too far”.
Once you discount the recent hollow claims of Clinton’s and just look at what she has actually stood for — the things she voted for as a Senator, the things she said while First Lady or while campaigning with Bill, the positions and actions she took while Secretary of State, the people she hangs around with and gets money from — she is actually horribly regressive. She’s pro-war, pro-rich, anti-environment. Even if she means it when she says she’ll pick up Sanders’ positions, since she didn’t arrive at them by any process other than trying to fool all of the people all of the time, she’s likely to sell them out and return to her initial positions at the first sign of difficulty (or the first sign of money going the other way).
As a male I hesitate to judge people on their feminist credentials — not for me to judge — but it seems like when she has to make a snap judgement, which ought to reveal her inner tendencies, she’s not even very feminist. (When Planned Parenthood was attacked with that faked video, her initial reaction was to throw them under the bus — “Planned Parenthood has a lot of explaining to do” — and then there’s the way she has reacted to women who claim Bill harassed them.) On practically every policy where Sanders can be criticized, Clinton generally has a history which is much worse, the one exception being gun control where Sanders is unquestionably worse. (On the other hand, if you believe the anti-Green Party arguments in the other thread, taking an action which you know will be overridden by the opposition makes you a collaborator with the opposition, which means Clinton is just as guilty as Sanders.)
And then there’s the fact that Clinton’s “incrementalism” seems to be very much the Obama-style “let’s reduce what we’re asking for before we even talk to the opposition” nonsense. ISTR a poll of non-voters after the 2010 elections, and one of the major reasons left-leaning non-voters gave for not showing up at the polls was that Obama had done this pre-compromising tactic over and over. It hands control of the discourse and, effectively, the policy over to the Republicans. If I wanted to do that, I would just vote for a Republican.
I would, in short, rather fight Sanders on a few things like gun control and Israel than end up having to constantly watch Clinton betray everything over and over and over again, because that’s what will happen if she somehow manages to get elected.
@#27, The Other Lance
Here’s something to try on a rainy (or snowy) day: find a full-face picture of Cruz online. Then find a full-face picture of Colin Mochrie on Whole Line Is It Anyway while he’s mugging it up for the camera. Cut both of the faces out — that is, cut away the hair, ears, and chin, just leave the mouth, nose, eyes, and eyebrows. Now show those two faces to someone who didn’t see you cutting them out and ask which is which.
My theory is that the Cruz campaign is an elaborate hoax to promote the show. At some point, “Ted Cruz” will whip off the wig and reveal his true identity to a round of good-natured chuckles by all.
(I can dream, can’t I?)
@#31, tacitus
Very true. Could happen. So, who are the Republicans likely to get the nomination? Right now, on the very limited data of the Iowa primary, looks like Cruz and Rubio, unless Trump makes a comeback. The problem with that is that Clinton no longer necessarily beats Cruz and Rubio in polls — without the Republicans showing a single attack ad, she is now projected to quite probably lose against them both. She still beats Trump, but by a smaller margin than before — and I reiterate: the Republicans haven’t even started their campaign yet. They have warehouses full of anti-Clinton material ready, and have had it since around 1995.
Those same polls that show Clinton’s position being too weak? They show Sanders beating Cruz and Rubio, and beating Trump by a larger margin than Clinton.
In other words: if you’re really serious about wanting to keep Republicans out of office by electing a Democrat, you should be out there boosting Sanders as hard as possible, and trying to get Clinton out of the race entirely. She is a dangerous liability to your stated position.
On the flip side, when the woman smiles: “It’s all good! She doesn’t mind being called a …….. or my ‘jokes’ – she was smiling! See?!!
No need for feminism – the women are all smiling all the time! Surely they wouldn’t smile if something was not ok?
I knew that some women could have been traffiked, but they were smiling at me so there was no need to worry!”
I have actually heard all of the above from colleagues.
L. Minnik @ 39:
Yes, this too. I’ve heard those, too, except for the trafficking one, and that’s…uh, beyond appalling somewhere.
As for the other commentary, I’ll just repeat Beatrice @ 29, ’cause people, men in particular, love to miss the point when they can yak about anything else:
No, they don’t, but even if they did I wouldn’t think that, as a result, my actual policies and history ought to be free from scrutiny.
The entire point of Doyle’s post is that her policies and history are being scrutinized through a lens of “but is she a bitch or what”? But no, that’s not interesting to you, because nobody tells you to smile so who fucking cares, ladies, let’s get back to talking about Serious Politics. (Also, don’t think nobody noticed your not-especially-subtle attempt to play the #whataboutthemenz card by pretending Hillary Clinton would get the mirror image of the current sexism if she were male.)
#7 dianne
You must haunt different politically minded blogs than I, as I have as yet only seen policy-based criticism of Hillary. Mano Singham’s blog comes to mind in particular.
And I expect you’ve never seen any sexism in this campaign either. Yep, nothing to see here, move along.
Holms:
Oh look, a man, seeing only what he wants to see. Gad, how unusual. :eyeroll:
@The Vicar 41: Two questions:
First, why do you feel the need to write this long rant about Clinton’s policies or perceived policies in a post that is essentially about sexism? If PZ wrote a post about, say, the ways Neil Tyson’s career was influenced by racism, would you feel the need to write a thousand or so word comment detailing all the times Neil used a student’s t-test when a Fischer’s exact test would be more appropriate or used a 1D model where a 2D would provide more data? I hope not, because it would be irrelevant. Likewise, there are plenty of places you can discuss Clinton’s policies and your discontent with them to your heart’s content. Why do you feel compelled to bring them up in such detail in a thread about the sexism that she or any woman faces in the public arena?
Second, in terms of electability, you are aware that the Republicans have been running against Clinton for literally decades. When Bill was seeking election and re-election, one of the Republicans’ “best” arguments was that we wouldn’t want Clinton as the first lady because she’d…have opinions of her own about more than how to arrange the furniture. They have not yet begun to run against Sanders. Do not count on Sanders being more electable. Vote for him in the primary if and ONLY IF you think he’d be a better candidate. Don’t even worry about what the head to head polls say, they aren’t in the least bit reliable this far in advance. If you don’t believe me ask Ben Carson about his win in Iowa. Or Trump, for that matter. Both ahead in polls at various points, both losers in the actual election.
Gregory @36: Thank you for not doubling down but instead thinking about what people have said.
I hope I made clear in my response to your comment, I was irritated partly because I am perfectly aware that I do it too: Any time we talk about sexism in the presidential campaign, it seems like there is an automatic impulse to preface it with “not that I agree with Clinton” or some similar comment. Because, apparently, no one wants to be contaminated with “pro-Clinton” cooties. It reminds me of nothing so much as the opposition to the Iraq War a few years ago where everyone had to say, “Of course, I understand that Saddam Hussein is a horrible person” before making an argument–any argument–against the war that resulted in the creation of ISIS.
Love this bit of gaslighting too: Clearly Holmes is reading blogs that are vastly superior to the ones I’m reading. The blogs he frequents contain only rational discussion of politics and such messy issues as gender bias never come into them. How do we know that? He said so. And if he never noticed, it must not be happening.
Perhaps my comment was too brief, so I’ll clarify. Firstly, I’m viewing this election shit from Australia, and hence am probably not immersed in it to the same degree; and also I read blogs but not twitter, so that may account for not seeing stuff that you see.
But in replying to your #7, I repeat that I have yet to see criticism of Hillary based on sexist criteria, nor have I seen these ‘BernieBros’ infesting the comments of said blogs. Of course, both of these could very easily be explained by the simple matter of which blogs I frequent, but it remains that they do not criticise Hillary for being a woman, nor for the poorly disguised woman-specific criticisms of smiling enough / smiling too much / clothing / eww wrinkles / time of month / will she be assertive enough for the oval office? Just asking! / too assertive, what a bitch / and so on through the list of disingenuous shit thrown at female bosses everywhere.
#50
Not only are you reading far too much into my #45, but even then… that’s not even what gaslighting is.
Meta.
@#44, neverjaunty
Very interesting. Let’s see… in the post I just blockquoted, first you do exactly what I said I have already seen, try to dismiss criticism of Clinton on the basis of her gender, and then you make an actively false claim about what I think. I never said that if Clinton were a male either candidate would necessarily come out ahead. Way to go. I’m not sure exactly what idea you’re ascribing to me, thanks to your phrasing, but it’s irrelevant because I don’t actually care. Can you, you know, go try to help the Republicans a bit? If this is your idea of a winning argument, I want you on their side.
@#46, dianne
Way to prove you didn’t even read the first two sentences of that paragraph. I was saying that I hadn’t seen a Sanders supporter specifically criticizing Clinton on the basis of gender. And at that point, I hadn’t. Somewhat ironically, between when I wrote that and now, I actually did see a bona fide Sanders supporter attacking Clinton purely on the basis of gender. He was promptly yelled at by his own side, which proves nothing either way, just as the lack of Clinton supporters coming out to yell at you for trying to dismiss all criticism of Clinton as nothing but sexism proves nothing. We are electing candidates, not their supporters.
@#48, dianne
If you’ll notice, everything I wrote was in response to other posters already talking about things other than sexism. But more directly to your point: I feel it is necessary to point out that Clinton is, above and beyond all debates of gender, a bad candidate. Clinton is dangerous because she stands a chance of getting the nomination, and she is such a terrible candidate. Discussions like this one tend to do exactly what you are trying hard to do: dismiss her flaws as being nothing but perceptual, just a result of sexism in the minds of her critics.
If this were Harry Reid and we were discussing Mormonism, say, and there were significant numbers of people saying “you just don’t like him because he’s a Mormon”, I would feel it was just as important to point out that the man has a long history of shady back-room deal-making, warmongering, and bad policy. Frankly, if we had a justice system which ran on actual justice and real ethics, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton and all the rest of the “New Democrats” brought to use by the DLC would be serving long prison sentences. “New Democrats” are like “trickle-down economics” — we tried that already for a period of several decades. It didn’t work. Let’s move on to something which actually does work — the same actual leftism that got us a minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act. The Clintons of the world are a failed experiment, let’s leave them behind.
Since Tyson isn’t trying to get in a position to unleash unprecedented pollution, assist the banks to further destroy the economy, and apparently declare war (Obama has demonstrated that Congress is now irrelevant), and furthermore has shown no particular tendency to favor doing any of those things anyway, I wouldn’t feel that there was any need. Hillary Clinton is hoping to become President of the United States, not “tenured professor” or “vice president of the sales and marketing division” or even “manager of the local grocery store”. As the usual tribal Democrats keep pointing out: this election is not a game. Someone with a long history of bad judgement and bad policy should be resisted in every way possible.
Congratulations on not actually asking a question there. I blockquoted it specifically looking to answer one, and then discovered that it’s just a bunch of statements. But leaving that aside, I don’t think you have a valid point. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Baby Boomers are no longer an overwhelming majority, even when selecting “likely voters”. Which is, of course, a good thing for the Democrats in general, since the Baby Boomers are now getting pretty old, and old people tend to go for Republicans — so we are in an election where the youth vote is going to be more important than it has been in any election since the 1960s. And do you know what the youth vote generally shares in common? They haven’t heard the Republicans’ attacks on the Clintons yet!
Put that together with the fact that Clinton’s attempts to go after the youth vote, like her attempts to go after ethnic minority votes, tend to consist of wrong-note attempts to “fit in” and statements which come off as incredibly condescending, and you (and she) have a problem.
It’s funny: Sanders doesn’t try to pretend he’s young when talking to young people, and it works — he just shows them respect. Clinton, on the other hand, shows young people no respect, and it doesn’t work. She talks to them like they’re mentally stunted five-year-olds, and trust me, they notice the difference. It’s like when she gives speeches to crowds of working-class ethnic minorities and tries to pretend she’s more ethnic and more working-class than they are, she who was raised as an upper-class white WASP par excellence and is a millionaire many times over thanks to the very rich ensuring that she got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour for speaking engagements.
I will indeed be voting in the Democratic primaries for the candidate I believe to be the best. It will be Sanders, not particularly because I think he’s a saint but because Clinton is totally unacceptable as a Democratic candidate. I will also be voting for the candidate I believe to be the best in the general, and that won’t be Clinton, either — voting Green is a better choice than Clinton is. Heck, writing in “Mickey Mouse” is a better choice than Clinton is. I’m almost tempted to suggest that sticking my hand in a blender is a better choice than Clinton is; at least with the blender, only one American would get hurt in the event of “success”.
If you take my #45, and my “that’s not even what gaslighting is” reply to both be examples of gaslighting, then yes, “that’s not even what gaslighting is” is indeed meta. But neither of them are, soooooo yeah.
(In before meta x2)
@51 Holms:
Consider another possibility. What you are describing, and what you’re attuned to, are some of the more obvious sexist aggressions, whereas the less obvious-to-you microaggressions which you aren’t attuned to and have not learned to identify via a lifetime of being on the receiving end are passing you right on by.
I’ve been thinking about this since I first saw Stephanie Svan bring the topic up and saw the same thing happen at Almost Diamonds. I had the same compulsion to point out the things that I saw as being problems with Hillary Clinton, but in my case I saw that this was not what she wanted to talk about and I could not think of anything constructive to say at the time so i said nothing. However this is a behavior that I had already learned to adopt after seeing many others try to hijack conversations on many other topics for various reasons. I spoke up earlier in the conversation here because while I did not have anything to say about the broad topic of how female people are conditioned to look happy, I did have something to contribute with respect to social control of female people with respect to the emotional content of language that uses references to female genitalia.
After seeing the pattern play out a couple of times with respect to Hillary Clinton and thinking about my own introspection this is what I believe is going on (Note that this is a model and individual examples will deviate to various extents in different directions):
*These are people who are motivated to oppose a threat represented by a person.
*They feel that the threat represented by Hillary Clinton is a greater social threat than the social threat represented by the sexism that Hillary Clinton and other female people face.
*This felt threat suppresses their sensitivity to content related to that sexism (emotional content, rational content and other logical content) within the text of others and directs them to hyper-focus on other content in a social conflict disposition. Ones privilege is related to this since they do not share the experiences and perspectives associated with the negative feeling related to social sexism, and because they are often used to being able to assert themselves into any public discussion without resistance.
*Instead of a discussion about the sexism and being satisfied about being able to discuss threats represented by Hillary Clinton in other places, goals are centered around treating her as a social enemy to be defeated as a priority in social encounters. Maximization of their own issues and minimization or total avoidance of issues having to do with institutional sexism becomes a goal.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-practice/201301/50-common-cognitive-distortions
*Anything positive or advantageous to Hillary Clinton needs to be avoided or minimized despite the discussion at a social level being important to many people, and discussion needs to be shifted to the individual level and be focused on her negatives. More moral and ethical people that do this in a way that does not use deception/obfuscation tactics on the issue of sexism, but they are still actively shifting and minimizing the conversation flow in a social space.
I guess it’s pretty hard for some people to learn to inhibit their negative feelings about an individual that they perceive as threatening their social world in order to a
near-fatal eyeroll.
Ack, here is the rest of my post.
I guess it’s pretty hard for some people to learn to inhibit their negative feelings about an individual that they perceive as threatening their social world in order to allow female people and their allies to publicly discuss threats by social sexism that might strategically support Hillary Clinton if addressed. I see this kind of thing happen a lot during election season as social conflict instincts become harder to suppress, if an individual has ever even learned to suppress them when appropriate.
Can you tell me what the problem with the link is Caine?
Is “being an asshole” on that list?
@Beatrice
No, but patterns of thought that occur when encountering something that arouses strong feelings are on that list and those can lead to a person acting like an asshole.