Yeah, yeah Tiassa, sure its all Bernie fault. Look Hillary could not win in 2008, was that Bernie's fault as well?
Yeah, yeah, you ... uh ... have a clue. Is there some reason you need to change the subject?
(
sigh)
But I am willing to concede that the republicans seem to have a deep throbbing hate for democrat women and find what ever dirt they can and sling it over and over and over again, and it seems to stick a lot more than on male democrats either because the republicans throw a lot more on the female democrats or because of general misogyny or both.
It's both.
It's kind of like grim joke about "rapemongers and the women who love them"; it's a bit more complicated an expression, but has always been a curious phenomenon involving "supremacist conservatives and the ostensible liberals and leftists who love them". It's one thing to consider the conservative misogynistic hateon, but that says nothing, in and of itself, of people who identify as liberal or, at least, Democratic supporters, who buy into the rhetoric of prejudice and hatred. Sure, concede that Republicans have a problem, but it sticks more to women because people who identify as something other than Republican are so willing to accept and promote it.
Like email: We get it if Republicans suddenly aren't so interested in email practices when it comes to Colin Powell, who conducted some State Department business via Yahoo Mail, an account that was hacked; or the twenty-two million missing, possibly
hidden emails including evidence relevant to known misconduct, but, hey it's George Dubya, so, whatever, y'know; or Donald Trump willfully violating security protocols; or Scott Pruitt and his years of private email servers; Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, Stephen Miller. And we get that Republicans will say things like "illegal", even if the Clinton server was legal when it was established. And, sure, when Republicans wail about the investigative process and standards in a manner pretending they are somehow ahistorical, yeah, that makes sense, too. And Republican voters? Well, sure, they're going to believe it.
But what about identifying Democrats and Democratic supporters? Why do they so anxiously buy into what Republicans say? And what about Leftists who are supposed to be smarter than all that?
Yeah, the part about Republicans is pretty obvious, but that only begs the question of what anyone else's problem is. Like the friend
I recalled↑; if he had believed Hillary Clinton was so awful the whole time (he didn't) and had, over the years, refused to vote for any politician showing elements of what counts in its anti-Clinton context as corruption, incompetence, danger, or otherwise disqualifying behavior, that would be one thing, and pretty damn impressive. But virtually nobody does that.
But there is also Ivanka Trump doing White House business on private email, among other behavior much criticized for mixing public and private concerns. And, meanwhile Kirstjen Nielsen is apparently about to depart DHS, and the scuttlebutt is that she isn't malicious and incompetent enough to satisfy the President. That misogyny drives some part of the disdaining backlash against these women in societal discourse is inevitable; if it seems more difficult to discern, or its portion harder to determine, it is because they are effing up in truly spectacular terms such that it doesn't matter what sex they are inasmuch as people are going to notice. And many days Melania seems loathsome in her own human dimension, but the fact of her womanhood seems nearly intrinsic about how society measures her.
I wonder though, is our disdain for Sarah Palin or Michael Backman also just misogyny?
As it goes, so it goes; even if an underlying complaint is in and of itself fair, society is virtually unable to avoid some degree of misogyny in its assessment and response. With Palin, a particular human stupidity that, we have learned over time, is as stubborn and domineering as it is human, manages to complicate the question. She has a habit often seen in conservative circles of overreacting in particular ways; I recall a passing moment that seems nearly quaint, in which she responded to someone disagreeing with her by complaining on behalf of her First Amendment rights as if the disagreement itself was a violation, and if I have a hard time finding that one, it's because she has managed to bury it under an avalanche of breathaking stupidity in the time since. Nonetheless, in the question of misogyny, I have no idea how to account for the part when Republicans complained that asking a vice presidential candidate what she reads was misogynistic, except perhaps to recall the Couric interview as such and leave it to make its own point. Palin has deliberately blurred the boundaries of misogyny around her such that, sure, there's some stuff we can obviously tell is misogyny when we see it, but Bill Maher once called Palin, Bachmann, and O'Donnell the "lovely MILFs of the New Right", or some such, and the thing about the misogyny is that they all advocate judeochristian patriarchy; the
punch line version↗ was that they remind men of something they want back, what Maher called the "traditional idiot housewife". It's worth noting that while we know what he means, "traditionalist" might be the better word; the idiot housewife is not
entirely a myth, but if you've ever actually known one, there is no question that her existential status is that of a victim. In other words, what men want back, in Maher's setup, is a sex fantasy that never quite came true.
Some of our willingness to pick a given issue, or how the discourse goes about it, reflects inherent cultural misogyny. To the one, if Palin and Bachmann are somehow literally stupid because they are women, that, too, would be a result of misogyny; again, what existential status such outcomes describe. In more human terms, Palin is just a loud, low idiot. Bachmann's problem is something else; she has a Master of Laws from William & Mary, for phuckall sake, and shouldn't be so damn stupid. Extracting the particular misogyny even she describes is difficult in its particular contexts; generally speaking, though, she is, after all, an End Times Christianist so afraid of the Second Coming she preaches that people should find someone to blame. No, really, think about it: Only Michele Bachmann could be so damn stupid as to go on the radio and say Jesus is coming so find someone to accuse; Christ the King returns, be angry, be afraid, blame Obama. It's not misogyny to think she's being an idiot. If we count it off as another reason why she's a bitch, sure, that would be misogyny. In between, the range might seem mysterious, but attending matters of purpose, function, and priority about our critiques reminds it isn't so difficult to figure out.
The thing that seems confusing is how conservatives can largely say whatever they want and people will run with it or, at least, shrug it off. Compared to everything else, Bachmann's line about blaming Obama for the Second Coming, or an obscure moment when Sarah Palin seemed to describe mere disagreement as a violation of her constitutional rights, might seem somewhat trivial; but compared to what passed for normal political doublespeak and nonesuch, these moments of vicious simplicity should actually count for something. What about the way Republicans have governed under Trump defies the bizarre epistemic surrogacy of conservative alternate facts and beliefs extant and effective before, during, and after the height of Palin, Bachmann, or even, as such, O'Donnell?
And in the question of society being unable to avoid a certain dose of prejudice about various responses, such as misogyny affecting the assessment of these women, or even Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN07), who just got a promotion to the U.S. Senate, the appropriate questions do in fact include what we can do to purge those elements of irrationality from our assessment. Blackburn might make no sense when she argues that women would be insulted if their rights were enforced under law, but it's what the Party needed her to say, and she seems happy enough to play the role, but who knows, these days, after what happened to Ellmers. In no context, though, should prejudice about women in general drive or directly shape our assessment and response to her nonsense. The only part prejudice against women has to play in our assessment is where it comes up in what we must assess, such as what role it plays in Blackburn's argumentative construction. Like the point Maher chose to exploit about Palin, Bachmann, and O'Donnell, the underlying trope of Blackburn's appeal to conservatives is found in the subordination of women.
In any case, stupidity and antisociality ought to be sufficient denunciations. Calling them assholes works well enough.
I don't know if you remember an old
Anthrax↱ line about, "And this ain't sexist, either!" but neither would it work if I went out of my way to call Donald Trump a spent tampon and say it ain't sexist because I'm just declaring him worthless bloody trash. That is to say, at some point it's just putting effort into laying on. And he still wouldn't be facing the same societal prejudice assholes like Blackburn, Palin, Bachmann, or O'Donnell do.
