"LIKABLE"

[niyad]

http://sadydoyle.tumblr.com/post/135664586198/likable

My first book, "Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock and Fear... and Why," is coming September 2016 from Melville House. Pre-order here to read the book people have described as "I have no idea what's in there, I have to pre-order:" http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/trainwreck/


Likable



My affection for Hillary Clinton is hard to explain. It wins no fights and earns you no friends to admit it: Actual warmth, even protectiveness, toward this impossible, frustrating, contradictory, polarizing, disappointing woman. My finding Hillary intensely “likable” is weird, and I admit it. It doesn’t signify universal approval of her decisions. I can and do disagree with Hillary Clinton, regularly and strongly. But some part of me also hopes that Hillary Clinton is having a nice day.

I’ve come to believe that, in some ways, saying nice things about Hillary Clinton is a subversive act. I spent much of this year working on a long project on how women are demonized in the media. Hillary Clinton was a fairly large part of that story – she had to be; if you want to talk “women that people hate,” she’s kind of unavoidable – and I spent a while sorting through Clintoniana, dating back to the early ‘90s, to find nasty things people had said about her, or common narratives about her personality. It wasn’t pretty – the worst stuff for Hillary was way worse than I’d expected, and there was way more of it than I expected to find – but it was also illuminating, in some key ways. I got a better sense of the pressures that she has to live with, and how they’ve informed her decisions.

I also realized that, unless you really take a look at those pressures, the narrative around Hillary Clinton’s “likability” is doomed to be inaccurate, in some way. She might even be very easy to dislike, if you weren’t looking at those narratives, or if you underestimated their severity. But, in my experience, trying to parse Hillary Clinton without also parsing Hillary-Hate is like trying to drink water without touching the glass. As long as you refuse to deal with the container, the actual substance tends to stay permanently out of reach.

For example: Female politicians are stereotyped as “soft” and incompetent when it comes to foreign policy and national security. It’s a basic, entrenched form of sexism: Only boys know how to fight, or play with guns. So, in order to be taken seriously, Hillary has to prove that she’s as tough as any man, or tougher. But she can’t actually be as tough as any man, or tougher; that plays into the stereotype that women are fonts of petty malevolence, prone to irresponsibly starting conflicts for no reason. (Here’s a joke I first heard from my father, and heard from many men throughout my lifetime: “Why can’t you elect a female President? Because, when she gets her period, she’ll launch the nukes.”) She has to look either “soft” and passive, or “hard” and aggressive. Either one is bad for her.

. . . .

[djean111]

1. I would not vote for a MAN who was a Third Way warmonger.

And the thought of Hillary being "tougher", with the lives of other peoples' children, is nauseating.
I will pass on Hillary. Be happy to vote for Liz Warren, though!

[NCTraveler]

2. Thank you for sharing.

Because Hillary Clinton, you see, would like to be President. And the thing is, there’s no right way for her to do that, either. The problem is that, if she campaigns too hard, or works too much, she (again) looks “pathologically ambitious,” obsessive, “ruthless,” selfish, and over-confident in her own abilities. (Unlike, say, anyone else who thought they deserved to be the leader of the free world.) On the other hand, if she actually wins anything, or succeeds in any way, everyone is pretty certain that she didn’t earn it: She slept her way to the top! The media is being unfair to Bernie! This whole thing is rigged!!!! She works too hard, and wants to succeed too much, but when she succeeds, it’s apparently never due to all that hard work. The only way for her to campaign “appropriately,” in this scheme, is to sit back and let a male opponent win. Or to not run at all.

[niyad]

4. that pretty much sums it up, even though there will be screaming denials that any such thing is

occurring.

[NCTraveler]

8. I enjoyed every bit of it.

The screaming denials provide transparency.

[Surya Gayatri]

6. Nailed it!

[auntpurl]

7. This is so true it makes my teeth grit on her behalf.

Ooh, I can't wait until she shuts up every last one of her detractors and is standing at the podium taking the oath of office.

[elleng]

3. hard to explain

indeed.

[niyad]

5. did you read the whole article?

[sheshe2]

9. Amazing read.

Every word the TRUTH!

Thanks, niyad.

[niyad]

10. you are most welcome

[bettyellen]

11. A whole lot of truth in that- the likable thing matters too much....

And it's how we got Bush. People can be piss poor judges of working women.

[niyad]

12. as the article points out, no matter WHAT HRC does, or says, or looks, somebody is going to gripe

[bettyellen]

13. I think once she is the nominee and people read about and finally -!!!- listen

To what the candidates are saying she will earn people's respect. Like Obama, she has learned there is only a certain low level of anger she is allowed to display without alienating more than the 20% of dudes who will hate her no matter what. Luckily those guys matter less than ever.