HRC, Sexism, and Female Democrats Over 40

I fully concede that sexism (perhaps subconsciously) is playing a role in her wretched media coverage.  This many women this angry can’t all be wrong.  There’s definitely some there there – some “there” that I wasn’t seeing (or perhaps ignoring). -- Publius, Obsidian Wings

There's been a bump of mild guilt among Obama fans lately for not being sensitive enough to...well, something that might have to do with the motivations of 'women' to have voted for Hillary in New Hampshire, or for 'women' outside NH to have felt shared desiderata with the Hillary-supporting ones inside. Why do I phrase it like that, single-quotes and all? Because nothing in my Pundit's Home Internet Astral Projection Kit tells me that any of the females who were affected by The Quavering Voice or The Negative Coverage -- much less those females who voted for Hillary in New Hampshire -- were not Democrats over, say, 40.

I don't have any ready empirical data to back up this allegation, but this is a good-faith effort to flag the issue now, and do so in a rhetorically arresting manner, because I think there's something very rotten in the logical and indeed empirical claim that if some women feel that sexism is damaging Hillary's campaign, then, because they are women, it must be true. And the only reason I really care enough about this to write this post is because I have deep, deep suspicions that very large numbers of women thirtysomething and younger, probably particularly non-Democrats, do not have a flicker of concern that sexism is damaging Hillary's campaign. I suspect that being a Democrat inclines a woman to entertain the sexism-damage idea at least because it imposes very little (or zero or negative) cost to do so. But I also suspect that some significant number of younger women, including Democrats, would be pretty insulted at the idea that they might 'automatically' think sexism is damaging Hillary's campaign 'just because of their gender'. And indeed this is a sign of smartness and, paradoxically, maturity.

And that's the bottom line here from where I'm standing: there is a very particular kind of woman for whom the sexism-damage thesis carries a profound weight. There are plenty of reasons for this, some of them solidly grounded in experience, but some of them the result of a lot of desperate hope for payoff on lifetimes of sacrifices and disappointments playing often-unfulfilling men's games in a man's world, hope bottled up in a kind of echo chamber with a small release valve which is now letting off a lot of weird and hyper-intense energy and noise. Younger women don't have that kind of baggage. Maybe that's in significant part the result of the protracted martyrdom operation conducted by their elder 'sisters', but maybe that's simply because they're now savvy enough to recognize that they can find Hillary smugly off-putting in victory and psychologically creepy in defeat without betraying the tenets of chromosomal solidarity.

Another possibility is a more analytically sophisticated, but complicated and boring, combination of these. Regardless, the generational factor here seems positively to be shouting at me, and hopefully at you too. Something in the psycho-social makeup of younger Americans, including women, prompts a visceral reaction to Hillary's choked-up performance that's basically "uh, dark needy manipulative lost-the-vote-for-student-council psycho-ex gross," not "we've come so far, and in that regard Hillary's the embodiment of the shared saga of our lives." The young, including younger women, have grown up in a culture in which the tools of female emotion are never to be taken at face value, because nobody's emotions are to be taken at face value when the context is people trying to get things they want. Everyone's got baggage and hangups and neuroses and dark corners and desires, and we know, like the Ghostbusters, when there's something strange in the neighborhood. Hillary's emo moment doesn't look like a genuine reaction to the unfair expectations and criticisms of a crypto-sexist power infrastructure, it looks like the sort of pathetic-yet-dangerous crap that your self-abusive significant other pulled in college when they were trying to pull you into codependency. (And go back and watch in that light Bill Clinton's also-bad-vibey grandstanding-and-drunk-aggro-boyfriend routine.)

Or so I might suggest. It's fun to play up this angle, if mostly because I haven't heard anyone else do it yet. At the risk of exaggerating, though, I did it. Because I think for a lot of young women, Hillary isn't the kind of person they want to be when they're her age, whereas for a significant number of Hillary supporters, she's exactly the kind of person they feel they've turned out to be.

UPDATE: Non-naive Paglia proves it's not even a strictly generational thing (of course), shoring up the above while daring to add the class variable:

Hillary's disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package, which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip. Steinem's fawning, gaseous New York Times op-ed about her pal Hillary this week speaks volumes about the snobby clubbiness and reactionary sentimentality of the fossilized feminist establishment, which has blessedly fallen off the cultural map in the 21st century. History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary.

[...] Hillary herself, with her thin, spotty record, tangled psychological baggage, and maundering blowhard of a husband, is also a mighty big roll of the dice. She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ("Cue the tears!"). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary's real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same.

I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee of my party, because I want Democrats appointed to the Cabinet and the Supreme Court. But I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity. Obama has served longer as an elected official than Hillary. He has had experience as a grass-roots activist, and he is also a highly educated lawyer who will be a quick learner in office. His international parentage and childhood, as well as his knowledge of both Christianity and Islam, would make him the right leader at the right time. And his wife Michelle is a powerhouse.

Comments

[William Simon]

And speaking of exaggerating . . . Are you really a Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)? USC lists only two recipients of that degree -- Ted Koppel and Joyce Kennard -- (http://www.usc.edu/admin/provostoffice/honorarydegrees/past_recipients.html)

If your name was mistakenly omitted from the list, it should be corrected.

I have briefly considered the possibility that your degree is the slightly more common JD, or juris doctor. But surely you would not pass one off as the other.

[Roger Evans]

Odd that you should mention that. My eye was drawn to the claim to hold a novel degree, that of a Bachelor of Political Science. Surely no such degree exists?

[James]

Okay, guys. Now please don't tell me there's an actual decoration called the Free Lance.

[William Burns]

Have you thought about asking one of these young women what she thinks about the issue, or would you rather keep relying on internal astral projection?

[James]

That and Katherine Marsh:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/
the_plank/archive/2008/01/09/how-ron-paul-ended-up-in-my-pants.aspx

[Juris Doctor Hartman Esquire]

Well, if we were in Latin America you'd have to address us as "Doctor."