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You are in the Warren 2020 Group. Only members who have selected Elizabeth Warren as their preferred Democratic presidential candidate are permitted to post in this Group.
The Sexism Is Getting Sneakier
Is Elizabeth Warren overly “angry”? The media are just asking questions.Yeah, sure!
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/11/elizabeth-warren-and-sneak-sexism/601876/
This is a long, but thoughtful article about how, once again, a woman must be at least twice as good as any man.
Snippets
...
Anger may be an ethic of the moment. But anger, flung as an accusation at Warren, is not about economic disparity or racial injustice or environmental catastrophe. It is about the familiar standbys: “likability.” “Electability.” “Charisma.” Anger, rendered as a criticism, summons those ideas—without explicitly invoking them. It summons history, too. It is a targeted missile, seeking the spaces in the American mind that still assume there is something unseemly about an angry woman. It is attempting to tap into the dark and ugly history in which the anger displayed by a woman is assumed to compromise her—to render her unattractive precisely because the anger makes her uncontrollable.
The tensions of that situation—anger seen as a liability; anger seen as a point of pride—present a challenge for the media outlets trying to cover the candidates fairly. Late last week, The Washington Post published an article under the headline “Is Elizabeth Warren ‘Angry’ and Antagonistic? Or Are Rivals Dabbling in Gendered Criticism?” The piece did what campaign journalism will often do: It summarized lines of attack that have been used against a candidate, and assessed them. (One of those attacks came from Pete Buttigieg, who recently accused Warren of being “so absorbed in the fighting that it is as though fighting were the purpose.”) The Post’s article was nuanced; it cited experts describing how anger, used as an accusation against a woman, abets sexist ideas. It cited Biden advisers arguing that anger leveled as a charge against a female candidate is not, on its face, sexist. But headlines often have an outsized impact. And look again at the one the Post chose: “Is Elizabeth Warren ‘Angry’ and Antagonistic?” This is the question that lingers. This is the question that insinuates. This is the question that ends up asking, “Is she likable?”
...
In one way, such treatments are evidence of reporters doing their job. In another way, though, they offer a case study. This is how unfair narratives take hold: Biased ideas come packaged not as declarations, but as questions. [Emphasis mine.] As debates. Did John Kerry, the recipient of multiple Purple Hearts, lie about his service in Vietnam? (No, he did not.) Did Hillary Clinton’s external server mishandle classified intelligence? (No.) Did Edmund Muskie cry while defending his wife to reporters in 1972? (Probably not, but the specifics of the event have since fallen away; today the candidate once considered Democrats’ best hope to beat Richard Nixon is remembered most readily for the apocryphal tears.)
...
The just-asking-questions approach can be especially damaging to candidates who aren’t straight or white or male—people who, deviating from the paradigm that still shapes the American public’s views of what a president should look like, are not typically granted the benefit of the doubt. Which is to say that the querying style can be especially harmful to the political fortunes of women and candidates of color. Warren’s candidacy, for its part—the question of her “anger”—is contending with an additional cultural challenge: Americans are accustomed, still, to extremely sanitized depictions of women’s empowerment. Wonder Woman was notable not only for its effortless portrayal of feminine strength, but also for its framing of its heroine as fundamentally cheerful and caring and compliant. People might buy the future is female T-shirts for their young daughters, but they might be less enthused about what the slogan could mean in terms of structural change. The media, in the words they choose—and in the events they decide to elevate with their attentions—will help to shape ideas of what feminine power looks like when that power is allowed to be more than a slogan. Every day, the media make assumptions about what kind of change is normal, and what kind of change is radical.
...
Anger may be an ethic of the moment. But anger, flung as an accusation at Warren, is not about economic disparity or racial injustice or environmental catastrophe. It is about the familiar standbys: “likability.” “Electability.” “Charisma.” Anger, rendered as a criticism, summons those ideas—without explicitly invoking them. It summons history, too. It is a targeted missile, seeking the spaces in the American mind that still assume there is something unseemly about an angry woman. It is attempting to tap into the dark and ugly history in which the anger displayed by a woman is assumed to compromise her—to render her unattractive precisely because the anger makes her uncontrollable.
The tensions of that situation—anger seen as a liability; anger seen as a point of pride—present a challenge for the media outlets trying to cover the candidates fairly. Late last week, The Washington Post published an article under the headline “Is Elizabeth Warren ‘Angry’ and Antagonistic? Or Are Rivals Dabbling in Gendered Criticism?” The piece did what campaign journalism will often do: It summarized lines of attack that have been used against a candidate, and assessed them. (One of those attacks came from Pete Buttigieg, who recently accused Warren of being “so absorbed in the fighting that it is as though fighting were the purpose.”) The Post’s article was nuanced; it cited experts describing how anger, used as an accusation against a woman, abets sexist ideas. It cited Biden advisers arguing that anger leveled as a charge against a female candidate is not, on its face, sexist. But headlines often have an outsized impact. And look again at the one the Post chose: “Is Elizabeth Warren ‘Angry’ and Antagonistic?” This is the question that lingers. This is the question that insinuates. This is the question that ends up asking, “Is she likable?”
...
In one way, such treatments are evidence of reporters doing their job. In another way, though, they offer a case study. This is how unfair narratives take hold: Biased ideas come packaged not as declarations, but as questions. [Emphasis mine.] As debates. Did John Kerry, the recipient of multiple Purple Hearts, lie about his service in Vietnam? (No, he did not.) Did Hillary Clinton’s external server mishandle classified intelligence? (No.) Did Edmund Muskie cry while defending his wife to reporters in 1972? (Probably not, but the specifics of the event have since fallen away; today the candidate once considered Democrats’ best hope to beat Richard Nixon is remembered most readily for the apocryphal tears.)
...
The just-asking-questions approach can be especially damaging to candidates who aren’t straight or white or male—people who, deviating from the paradigm that still shapes the American public’s views of what a president should look like, are not typically granted the benefit of the doubt. Which is to say that the querying style can be especially harmful to the political fortunes of women and candidates of color. Warren’s candidacy, for its part—the question of her “anger”—is contending with an additional cultural challenge: Americans are accustomed, still, to extremely sanitized depictions of women’s empowerment. Wonder Woman was notable not only for its effortless portrayal of feminine strength, but also for its framing of its heroine as fundamentally cheerful and caring and compliant. People might buy the future is female T-shirts for their young daughters, but they might be less enthused about what the slogan could mean in terms of structural change. The media, in the words they choose—and in the events they decide to elevate with their attentions—will help to shape ideas of what feminine power looks like when that power is allowed to be more than a slogan. Every day, the media make assumptions about what kind of change is normal, and what kind of change is radical.
...
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For Elizabeth Warren, in many ways this election is just as 2016 was for HRC.
5 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
The whisper campaign is VERY sexist. I always remind people that they said Obama didn’t have a chance, either.
She makes their knees shake and that is why they are going after her.
tRump
similar events occur in our lives.
Nevertheless, we have persisted. And we have achieved our goals.
The attitude is not necessarily to be ignored, IMO. It is rather to be defied, as you yourself did. 
Elizabeth id definitely a persister and defier! That is why she has my support. 