Someone who has been fascinated with the “I won’t vote for Obama” reaction of some of the ‘Clintonistas’ wrote to me to say that she thought, perhaps, that women of a certain generation are sore losers when it comes to outright competition because they were never taught to compete with grace, and that’s mostly because they were never allowed to play team sports.
I’m pretty sure she’s onto something, because losing with grace takes training & effort.
However, for many of them, and for someone like Hillary herself, there is always this extra burden of not only gaining for yourself, but gaining for ALL women, which is an awful lot to carry into a competition. That is, it’s not about the presidency only; it’s about all women, the history of women, and the future of feminism. Losing all that – and not just her bid for president – is bound to make the stakes higher, which makes it harder to lose gracefully.
Imagine if your average businessman went out in the world every day to earn points of Capitalism. Look at the Cold War for a good example of when carrying an ideology around gets to be absurd.
One of the things that has amazed me is not the bizarre commentary about race and gender that’s gone on, or the lack of it. What amazes me is how much the dialogue about race has changed. Obama is, no doubt, expected to score one for the team. But the burdens of that are not obvious, nor talked about. & I think that’s precisely because he felt forced to address race issues due to Rev. Wright.
I know I was sitting there listening to Senator Clinton give her suspension speech and endorsement of Obama and thinking, “I’d have voted for her if she’d made her feminism a little more obvious earlier on.†It was how she was NOT addressing gender that bugged me, & instead we got Ferraro talking about racism, which didn’t make any damn sense. Because that comment about the glass ceiling having 18 million cracks in it was very empowering and positive; she personalized the politics in a way that spoke to me and to many women, I bet.
The whole thing about being “othered” is that you don’t get to pretend you aren’t. If you’re a woman, you have to be a woman; you don’t get any choice in the matter. You have to address gender issues publicly, all the time. Likewise for being a gay person, or a black person, or a disabled person. It sucks. I’ve complained about having to be a woman writer. But you can’t pretend the world doesn’t see your “otherness” as much as you’d prefer a world like that. & That goes doubly for a woman who is a politician, and who has to deal with the oldest of old boys’ networks and the public policies they’ve devised.
The weight carried by any woman who aspires to anything beyond the wife and mother track, with a full time job thrown in is huge.
Every woman who chooses in anyway to stand out, to draw attention to herself is going to get slapped down in a hundred ways.
Most ( I said most, not all ) men, and I think I need to add women who were born with male bodies as well, just do not see this, get it, or believe it exists.
Whatever level you aspire too, writing, a musical career, president, the first thing most of the men you must deal with looks at is your tit’s, your ass and them perhaps your face, after assessing your appearance they will , hopefully listen to your ideas, see your gift, or talent.
Saddest in all this is that other woman may fight the hardest to keep you down on the same level with them, and if you do get ahead they will be the first to tear into you.
The view from where I sit.
really interesting post, helen.
A profound post. Perhaps the zeitgeist is learning there are issues of causality that seem to appear to pertain to race or gender when, in actuality, they reside at far deeper levels of causality, perhaps like Jungian archetypes that drive culture.
Example: Rev Wright (phenomenon) perhaps is not really about race, but something driven entirely by subconscious ghosts within each psyche.
This drivers of this election cycle seems so different from others. Is it possible that some archetype, previously hidden is emerging…. or that all the archetypes are transforming?
I thought Hillary’s biggest problem was that she did look womanly enough. Look at those women leaders who came before her, going all the way back to the queens of Europe. What did Thatcher, Meir, Ghandi, Bhutto have in common? They were proud to be feminine, and dressed femininely. Maggie Thatcher even became endeared for her pocketbook and court shoes. But what did we get with Hillary? Pantsuits. Say what you will about women wearing pants, pantsuits are horribly declasse, and not only conjur the past (think the double-knit 70’s), they are neither here nor there sartorially. Are they suits? No. Are they pants? Sort of. Next to a man in business suit, the pantsuit looks like a leisure suit. Imagine a male presidential candidate showing up in a leisure suit. When you see Obama in the Armani suit next to Hillary in the nondescript pantsuit, he looks sharp and businesslike. She looked like a hausfrau getting gussied up for dinner at the Black Angus. Where were the beautiful designer dresses and skirts? Where was the dark blue skirt suits, silk blouses and ties so sexy and de reguir with women lawyers and CEO’s? I won’t even go into that hairdo of hers. I know it sounds catty and trivial, but believe me, it really really matters.
I mean she DIDN’T look womanly enough!!!