Double Standard? Where Are The Men Who Are "Too Angry"?

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MrsSpringsteen

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By no means do I defend everything about Hillary Clinton (or some of the wacky comments she makes), but it makes me wonder..which men have been called "too angry"? Howard Dean is the only one I can think of, and his "anger" was an object of jokes/humor more than it was of scorn and criticism.

And shouldn't politicians be "angry" about many things?

breitbart.com

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a potential presidential contender in 2008, "seems to have a lot of anger" and voters usually do not send angry candidates to the White House, the Republican Party chairman said Sunday.

"When you think of the level of anger, I'm not sure it's what Americans want," said Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee.

Mehlman cited the New York senator's remarks on Martin Luther King Day in which she called the Bush administration "one of the worst" in history and compared the Republican-controlled House to a plantation where opposing voices are silenced.

"I don't think the American people, if you look historically, elect angry candidates. And whether it's the comments about the plantation or the worst administration in history, Hillary Clinton seems to have a lot of anger," Mehlman told ABC's "This Week."

When contacted for a response, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said, "If the president and the White House spent half as much time worrying about the runaway deficit and the broken Medicare system as they do about Hillary Clinton, the country would be in much better shape."

In an interview with CBS last month, President Bush said Clinton would be a formidable candidate.

As far as the Republican strategy for 2008, Mehlman said: "We're going to focus on who our candidate's going to be who's going to win."
 
It's a way to attack her. People don't like angry women, they don't mind angry men. Same reason the word strident is disparagingly against women.

Don't you know, women are supposed to be "nice."
 
men fear ambitious women.

hence, their ambition must come from somewhere, so it must be anger.

one of the worst examples of the double standards i have ever seen was a few years ago when Sen. Landrieu and her opponent (can't remember the name) were debating on Meet the Press.

if i had a dollar for every time i heard, "well, Tim, as a mother ..." i'd be able to afford a new pair of shoes. it was exasperating, as if women can't be in politics or do anything, really, unless it is somehow presented as a natural extention of their natural roles as mothers and wives.

HRC is a complex woman. i think many criticisms of her are valid.

i also think the rancor and invective so often thrown at her by the Right has little to do with her as a person and everything to do with her as an unabashedly ambitious (how dare she!) woman. it's a gender double standard, no question, and i think it also has something to do with a deep rooted sexual fear -- that she'd be unconquerable sexually, that her ambition is castrating because it goes beyond ambition "as a mother ..."

but it's too early in the week to get too Freudian.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
i don't find hillary to be full of anger... i find her to be full of nothing, actually. she'll change her ideals at the drop of a hat if she thinks it'll help her public image. she makes me want to puke.

:up:
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
i can honestly say that if she was a man i'd hate her just the same. only thing that would change is that i'd probably call her an asshole instead of a bitch.



while i certainly respect your opinion, i still think that gender plays a huge, huge role in many men's dislike/hatred of HRC. it's not traditional sexism -- i.e., women should bake cookies -- but there simply seems to be less acceptance of ambitious women, that they must have some kind of ulterior motive.
 
Irvine511 said:

while i certainly respect your opinion, i still think that gender plays a huge, huge role in many men's dislike/hatred of HRC. it's not traditional sexism -- i.e., women should bake cookies -- but there simply seems to be less acceptance of ambitious women, that they must have some kind of ulterior motive.

I have a problem with the presumptions we use when starting these discussions. A male somehow has to overcome the presumption of sexism if they do not agree with/do not support a political candidate like HRC.
 
nbcrusader said:


I have a problem with the presumptions we use when starting these discussions. A male somehow has to overcome the presumption of sexism if they do not agree with/do not support a political candidate like HRC.



go back and read the original article.

would the use of "anger" be used as much against a male politician -- especially since we've never, ever seen her lose her cool in a Howard Dean fashion? like her or hate her, the woman is cucumbrously cool.

i have a problem when we deal with political figures who live outside of the template -- which is to say anyone who is a woman, or not white, or not Christian, or not a millionaire -- and we think that race and gender and religion have nothing to do with the candidate at hand. it speaks volumes about the privileged position of the person making such a comment probably not having to deal with the million-and-one ways that racims and sexism and any other -ism you can think of manifests themselves in the life of someone who isn't a white male. simply because rich, white, christian senators and congressmen don't have to deal with these things doesn't mean they don't exist.

anyway.

you were watching the Daily Show last week when Jon Steward mocked the human-animal hybrids nonsense in the speech.

what was the joke that got the biggest laugh of the night?

it was when they showed a clip of HRC's reaction to one of Bush's comments, and she had a stern, ultra-controlled look on her face, and what did Jon Stewart say?

"That look is where boners go to die."

sounds like a castration fear if i've ever heard one, and the loud laugh by the left-wing audience speaks volumes about the nerve that specific joke was getting at.
 
Irvine511 said:




go back and read the original article.

would the use of "anger" be used as much against a male politician -- especially since we've never, ever seen her lose her cool in a Howard Dean fashion? like her or hate her, the woman is cucumbrously cool.

i have a problem when we deal with political figures who live outside of the template -- which is to say anyone who is a woman, or not white, or not Christian, or not a millionaire -- and we think that race and gender and religion have nothing to do with the candidate at hand. it speaks volumes about the privileged position of the person making such a comment probably not having to deal with the million-and-one ways that racims and sexism and any other -ism you can think of manifests themselves in the life of someone who isn't a white male. simply because rich, white, christian senators and congressmen don't have to deal with these things doesn't mean they don't exist.

I saw this as a simple early (and weak) attempt to begin framing the campaign. It worked well with Kerry. HRC may be forced to address the "anger" question instead of addressing issues.

It is the same form of argument here. Float the idea that the white, male, Christian, millionaire must have some form of "ism" and force them to address that question, instead of the issues.
 
nbcrusader said:


I saw this as a simple early (and weak) attempt to begin framing the campaign. It worked well with Kerry. HRC may be forced to address the "anger" question instead of addressing issues.

It is the same form of argument here. Float the idea that the white, male, Christian, millionaire must have some form of "ism" and force them to address that question, instead of the issues.



you're right, it is a very weak attempt to frame the campaign -- Kerry was a flip-flopper, HRC is angry.

however, Mrs. S is absolutely right in that a charge of "anger" isn't going to be very effective against a male candidate, but it probably will be effective against a female candidate (i'm 100% certain that the word "anger" was focus grouped and test marketed). clearly, gender matters, and often in very sublte ways that don't lend itself well to direct causal analysis.

you also take words like racism, sexism, anti-semitism, etc., too literally. it's never as simple as identifying a sexist or racist attitude -- it has to do with how things like race and gender play themselves out in everyday life and the expectations we have for members of certain races and genders, and then how smart pollsters will take these perceptions and manipulate them to political advantage. it's less that Ken Mehlman is being a sexist, but that he's using sexism -- our culurally ingrained notions of what we might call "proper" womanhood and woman-in-politics and using them against HRC.
 
nbcrusader said:
A male somehow has to overcome the presumption of sexism if they do not agree with/do not support a political candidate like HRC.
I didn't find any such blanket assumption in MrsS's post. She seemed to be referring specifically to people (and notice she didn't specify which gender; women can uphold double standards against other women, too) who specifically cite "She's too angry" as a reason to loathe HRC. There are all sorts of perfectly rational reasons to dislike Hillary, but it is noteworthy how much of the invective (from both sides) directed at her has been spiked with allegations of frigidity, lesbianism, ball-busting, and other such unseemly-betrayal-of-femininity imagery. Since anger is also stereotypically associated with the above archetypes, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to wonder if such rhetoric might be *in part* fueling the perception of her as exceptionally angry.

(Though I might add, I feel a similar discomfort towards insinuations that Ann Coulter is just an MTF in disguise.)
 
I'm angry that's why I want to go into politics :shrug:

As for HRC, I don't know, she just doesn't really spark any interest in me. As much as I would love to see a woman elected president, I don't believe that now is Hillary's time.
 
yolland said:
(Though I might add, I feel a similar discomfort towards insinuations that Ann Coulter is just an MTF in disguise.)



great post, but the difference between Ann Coulter and HRC is that one is a serious politician, the other sells books (in a teeny-tiny black cocktail skirt -- she knows that part of her schtick is that she's a reasonably good looking woman, and it's much easier to talk about invading Muslim countries and converting everyone to Christianity when you flip your blond hair at the same time).
 
When Howard Dean blew his stack after finishing third in Iowa, the guys on CNN's "Inside Politics" claimed that he'd scared the voters. I thought it was much ado about nothing. So what if he was pissed? Generally, people want some emotion in a politician, otherwise they'll come on too stiff or boring. Remember when they called Michael Dukakis "Zorba the Clerk"? They just don't want too much.
 
indra said:
People don't like angry women, they don't mind angry men

In general I have to agree with that. I also find it interesting that Ken Mehlman gives this whole spiel about voters not liking "angry" politicians, meanwhile the Republican President we currently have sure seems "angry" to me. His policies and personal manner certainly aren't soft and cuddly by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe since he's a guy and can couch himself in that "aw shucks" manner he gets by and people think it's "macho" .

I don't like everything about Hillary Clinton either but there's no doubt in my mind that plenty of people, men and women, judge her by a double standard. "Angry" in this instance can be a code word.
 
A nice man is gay. An angry woman is a lesbian. Such is the circle of the hetero mindset.

Melon
 
Al Gore took the stage in 2000 raging about how he would fight for the American people.

He lost.

Howard Dean jumped on-stage and raged. His violent mood swings were well-documented.

He lost.

On the other hand, Clinton's temper was well-documented. However, he was one of our more popular modern-day presidents.

What we may see is that if people are fairly well-rounded in their personality types, they stand a better chance of getting ahead. Bill, for all his anger (a great book, The Survivor, analyzes his presidency), was a consensus-builder who reached across aisles and is generally regarded as our smartest modern president.

HRC, on the other hand, seems primarily opportunistic in nature. This may hamper her abilities long-term. (The Survivor compares HRC's ideological stance with Bill's pragmatic one -- a key factor in his success as a president vs. her failures with health care.)
 
nathan1977 said:
HRC, on the other hand, seems primarily opportunistic in nature. This may hamper her abilities long-term. (The Survivor compares HRC's ideological stance with Bill's pragmatic one -- a key factor in his success as a president vs. her failures with health care.)

Honestly, I really became convinced of Hillary's "opportunism" when she became a sudden supporter of an anti-flag burning amendment out of the middle of nowhere. I mean, come on. When you vote for a Democrat, are you expecting a conservative?

If I were living in NY, I'd probably vote for her reelection, but I'd also strongly discourage her from ever running for president. Still, considering the kind of paleolithic knuckle draggers that run the Republican Party, it would take quite a lot for me to ever vote Republican.

Melon
 
melon said:


If I were living in NY, I'd probably vote for her reelection, but I'd also strongly discourage her from ever running for president. Still, considering the kind of paleolithic knuckle draggers that run the Republican Party, it would take quite a lot for me to ever vote Republican.


The Senate seems to be a good match for her. She seems to work better when she's forced to play nicely with others. I'm not sure that she'd be effective as (essentially) a figurehead.
 
My absolute favorite description of women who "usurp" what some men deem as their exclusive territory is "unnatural".:| as if women should be interchangeable, but men are not. I've generally found the more secure the man, the less paranoid, the more he is capable of defining a woman by her own terms rather than his. the same way he expects and should expect to be able to define himself.

And to be fair, a lot of women are immensely guilty of sabotaging other women with the same type of derisive language.
 
BonosSaint said:
I've generally found the more secure the man, the less paranoid, the more he is capable of defining a woman by her own terms rather than his. the same way he expects and should expect to be able to define himself

I agree, and I agree about the women being guilty as well

This is an interesting side note :wink:

The state of Bill and Hillary Clinton's union is apparently strong - at least judging by the mongo diamond that Hillary was sporting on her ring finger yesterday.

Sources say the former President quietly gave the iceberg-sized bling - thought to exceed 3 carats - to his wife months ago, in advance of their 30th wedding anniversary on Oct. 11 last year.

But the sparkling stunner is so big that the former First Lady has been nervous about wearing it and hasn't broken it out of her jewelry box on a regular basis until recently.

The big bauble was on full display yesterday, when the junior senator visited University Settlement, an outreach center on the lower East Side, to talk about cuts to early childhood education proposed by President Bush.

"It was a gift from her husband," was all Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Hanley would say.

sounds nice
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
"It was a gift from her husband," was all Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Hanley would say.



and you know how Fox News will spin this ... "did Hillary catch Bill in the act again? is there a new Monica in his life? can the former president ever stop cheating on his wife? is that why she's spoting a massive new ring? will special interests be able to buy Hillary's loyalty the way Bill does? find out when we come back ..."
 
Irvine511 said:
and you know how Fox News will spin this ... "did Hillary catch Bill in the act again? is there a new Monica in his life? can the former president ever stop cheating on his wife? is that why she's spoting a massive new ring? will special interests be able to buy Hillary's loyalty the way Bill does? find out when we come back ..."

Kobe's wife got 6 carats after he got caught :wink:
 
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