May 13, 2008
Hillary Clinton and the Undoing of a Stereotype
Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation:
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 Chávez, Kim Jong-Il and the rest of them--or I'll rip you a new one.
There's a reason 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?
Posted by Robin Varghese at 04:27 PM | Permalink





Comments
Ruthless aggression is spurred by male hormones in many vertebrate species as in spotted hyenas.
In human beings these tendencies seem to be unleashed by bitter drives for control and blind narcissim.
Hillary, by far, surpasses Bill, and many men I know, in cockiness and petulance. Thence, the analogy of the phone call during the night and the personal identification with a boxer --- not with Joan of Arc.
Maybe that's what America needs: a woman with cojones as our next president.
Posted by: Felix E F Larocca MD | May 13, 2008 7:03:33 PM
Ah, Felix. What 3QD thread would be complete without one of your strange, rambling interjections? Keep on truckin', friend.
Posted by: Hobophobic | May 13, 2008 11:41:03 PM
I'll agree with Felix's "..bitter drives for control and blind narcissim."
but might expand (or narrow) the analysis to the failure of yer average bloke to get sufficient phallic worship and all the rest is displacement.
Posted by: epicene | May 14, 2008 6:04:51 AM
If it weren't for the voters' rejection of the gas tax holiday bagatelle, I'd say that the U.S. presidential election has by now become a purely image-driven, fantasy affair, wholly divorced from any relationship to aspects of the real world. (The guy running for "maverick-in-chief" is certainly firmly in that territory.)
Why not run Rocky himself for Prexy? That's what a lot of people seem to want. For photo ops and other occasions when a live human being is needed to impersonate him, I'm sure that Mr. Stallone could be hired for a relatively modest sum.
Posted by: JonJ | May 14, 2008 7:36:04 AM
Post a comment