G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Gender bias remains alive and strong
By Jaime O'Neill
Created Mar 22 2008 - 10:55am
This column for Karen, on her birthday
My 82-year-old mother is bereft. Mom was born just six years after women got
the right to vote in this country, and she thought for awhile there that she
might live long enough to see a woman become president. Now it looks as
though that won't happen.
And, though I personally will be happy to see Barack Obama follow the
catastrophic George Bush into the highest office in the land, I, too, am
disappointed that Hillary's bid for the presidency is floundering and likely
to fail. As the father of two daughters, I know a Hillary Clinton victory
would have had enormous symbolic and psychological significance for younger
women. It would have been "empowering," in the true sense of that
perniciously overused word.
Years ago, I taught at a college up in Washington State, an institution that
prided itself on its pre-med and dental-assisting departments. I routinely
faced classes with large numbers of young women who were seeking
certification to become dental assistants or LVNs. Once in awhile, when one
or another of these students would turn up during office hours, I would ask
why they hadn't considered becoming doctors or dentists. Their answers made
it clear that such an idea was virtually unthinkable because of images of
women they'd inherited from popular culture. If you'd talked to them about
"a woman's place," they would have bridled at the thought, but they'd been
trained to keep their place, nonetheless, and the training was encoded with
such subtlety that it was virtually invisible. They were groomed to be
dental assistants, not dentists.
Like those young women whose horizons were artificially narrowed by
culturally-instilled sexism, our entire nation continues to incubate
attitudes toward women that severely handicapped Hillary Clinton's bid to
lead us. In fact, sexism may prove to be even more intractable than racism.
For starters, let's not forget that black males were afforded the right to
vote some 50 years before the wives and mothers of the white males who held
the power over who would vote, and who wouldn't.
Political punditry surely has been driven by culturally-encoded sexism, from
the rantings of Chris Mathews to the steadily negative commentary from just
about everyone that made Hillary unlikeable if she was forceful ("too
shrill," "too aggressive," "too pushy"), and equally unsuited to be the
commander-in-chief if she was not forceful enough ("weak," "unable to hold
her own against other world leaders," "unsure of her own positions").
It was a classic Catch-22 situation, a catch that seems to apply exclusively
to women, a catch that ensures they will be damned if they do, and damned if
they don't. They are harridans if they act as men are thought to act, and
they are weak if they don't. That catch virtually defines the glass ceiling.
There was just no possible response to the endemic sexism still festering in
the nation's psyche. No tough foreign policy posturing would do the trick,
and neither would a department store full of pantsuits.
Subtract her gender from the equation and the intensity of hatred for
Hillary Clinton becomes inexplicable. Listen to right-wing talk radio or
read any of the right wing blogs and you'll soon discover a vile and
venomous river of filth and fury directed at this former First Lady. Rush
Limbaugh has been at the sport of Hillary bashing longer than most, and his
hate speech even slopped over to young Chelsea when she was a mere
13-year-old girl. Rush, the bully boy of the right, described that teen-age
girl as "the White House dog."
Limbaugh, you'll recall, invented the term "femi-nazi" to describe women who
sought equal rights with men. How deep must male insecurity go to find a
comparison between the least powerful people among us and Hitler's legions
of oppression? But the insecurities of threatened and underachieving males
is surely one source of Hillary hate, the fear far too many men have of
intelligent women. Bertrand Russell once observed that most people would
rather die than think, and in Bush's America, that observation has been
borne out.
If you don't think we have a cultural bias against brains, then you probably
didn't go to high school in this country, where showing signs of functioning
gray matter was nearly always cause for derision. Intelligence isn't
particularly popular for either gender, but to be a bright girl where I went
to school was cause for scorn. If you were a poor kid, it was even more
unacceptable to show signs of smarts because to do so suggested you were
putting on airs, or that you were trying to "rise above your raisin'. For
women, the social pressures to hide or suppress intelligence are powerful.
It takes character to persist against such pressures.
Over a long career as a teacher, I saw this dynamic at work just about every
day I entered a classroom. Any overt display of interest in learning or a
willingness to ask questions was viewed with suspicion by most students, and
the snide whispers were often directed at young women intent on doing well.
Intelligence and a desire to learn were paths to unpopularity.
In one of their final debates, Barack Obama rang in on the subject of his
opponent's likeability," by saying "you're likeable enough, Hillary." But
she wasn't likeable enough, when all was said and done. She had committed
three sins that remain unpardonable in the minds of far too many Americans.
Hillary Clinton was born female, she was born bright, and she had ambitions
beyond those that are culturally-sanctioned for people of her gender. In a
word, she was "uppity."
Those qualities made her hard to like for far too many people, male and
female. For that reason, as much as any other, my mother will probably not
witness the triumph of women that began when she was six years old.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Jaime O'Neill
Created Mar 22 2008 - 10:55am
This column for Karen, on her birthday
My 82-year-old mother is bereft. Mom was born just six years after women got
the right to vote in this country, and she thought for awhile there that she
might live long enough to see a woman become president. Now it looks as
though that won't happen.
And, though I personally will be happy to see Barack Obama follow the
catastrophic George Bush into the highest office in the land, I, too, am
disappointed that Hillary's bid for the presidency is floundering and likely
to fail. As the father of two daughters, I know a Hillary Clinton victory
would have had enormous symbolic and psychological significance for younger
women. It would have been "empowering," in the true sense of that
perniciously overused word.
Years ago, I taught at a college up in Washington State, an institution that
prided itself on its pre-med and dental-assisting departments. I routinely
faced classes with large numbers of young women who were seeking
certification to become dental assistants or LVNs. Once in awhile, when one
or another of these students would turn up during office hours, I would ask
why they hadn't considered becoming doctors or dentists. Their answers made
it clear that such an idea was virtually unthinkable because of images of
women they'd inherited from popular culture. If you'd talked to them about
"a woman's place," they would have bridled at the thought, but they'd been
trained to keep their place, nonetheless, and the training was encoded with
such subtlety that it was virtually invisible. They were groomed to be
dental assistants, not dentists.
Like those young women whose horizons were artificially narrowed by
culturally-instilled sexism, our entire nation continues to incubate
attitudes toward women that severely handicapped Hillary Clinton's bid to
lead us. In fact, sexism may prove to be even more intractable than racism.
For starters, let's not forget that black males were afforded the right to
vote some 50 years before the wives and mothers of the white males who held
the power over who would vote, and who wouldn't.
Political punditry surely has been driven by culturally-encoded sexism, from
the rantings of Chris Mathews to the steadily negative commentary from just
about everyone that made Hillary unlikeable if she was forceful ("too
shrill," "too aggressive," "too pushy"), and equally unsuited to be the
commander-in-chief if she was not forceful enough ("weak," "unable to hold
her own against other world leaders," "unsure of her own positions").
It was a classic Catch-22 situation, a catch that seems to apply exclusively
to women, a catch that ensures they will be damned if they do, and damned if
they don't. They are harridans if they act as men are thought to act, and
they are weak if they don't. That catch virtually defines the glass ceiling.
There was just no possible response to the endemic sexism still festering in
the nation's psyche. No tough foreign policy posturing would do the trick,
and neither would a department store full of pantsuits.
Subtract her gender from the equation and the intensity of hatred for
Hillary Clinton becomes inexplicable. Listen to right-wing talk radio or
read any of the right wing blogs and you'll soon discover a vile and
venomous river of filth and fury directed at this former First Lady. Rush
Limbaugh has been at the sport of Hillary bashing longer than most, and his
hate speech even slopped over to young Chelsea when she was a mere
13-year-old girl. Rush, the bully boy of the right, described that teen-age
girl as "the White House dog."
Limbaugh, you'll recall, invented the term "femi-nazi" to describe women who
sought equal rights with men. How deep must male insecurity go to find a
comparison between the least powerful people among us and Hitler's legions
of oppression? But the insecurities of threatened and underachieving males
is surely one source of Hillary hate, the fear far too many men have of
intelligent women. Bertrand Russell once observed that most people would
rather die than think, and in Bush's America, that observation has been
borne out.
If you don't think we have a cultural bias against brains, then you probably
didn't go to high school in this country, where showing signs of functioning
gray matter was nearly always cause for derision. Intelligence isn't
particularly popular for either gender, but to be a bright girl where I went
to school was cause for scorn. If you were a poor kid, it was even more
unacceptable to show signs of smarts because to do so suggested you were
putting on airs, or that you were trying to "rise above your raisin'. For
women, the social pressures to hide or suppress intelligence are powerful.
It takes character to persist against such pressures.
Over a long career as a teacher, I saw this dynamic at work just about every
day I entered a classroom. Any overt display of interest in learning or a
willingness to ask questions was viewed with suspicion by most students, and
the snide whispers were often directed at young women intent on doing well.
Intelligence and a desire to learn were paths to unpopularity.
In one of their final debates, Barack Obama rang in on the subject of his
opponent's likeability," by saying "you're likeable enough, Hillary." But
she wasn't likeable enough, when all was said and done. She had committed
three sins that remain unpardonable in the minds of far too many Americans.
Hillary Clinton was born female, she was born bright, and she had ambitions
beyond those that are culturally-sanctioned for people of her gender. In a
word, she was "uppity."
Those qualities made her hard to like for far too many people, male and
female. For that reason, as much as any other, my mother will probably not
witness the triumph of women that began when she was six years old.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson