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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/18/hadley-freeman-hillary-clinton-elizabeth-warren-two-women-in-charge
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Hillary Clinton in charge is OK, but Elizabeth Warren, too? That’s pushing it | Hillary Clinton in charge is OK, but Elizabeth Warren, too? That’s pushing it |
(2 months later) | |
It’s so hard to keep track of what a woman still can’t do these days. I guess it’s because I have a ladybrain, which is covered in glitter, you see, and that gets into all the crevices and short-circuits the synapses. The most recent additions to the list include the following: bust ghosts; be James Bond; be vice-president to a female president. | It’s so hard to keep track of what a woman still can’t do these days. I guess it’s because I have a ladybrain, which is covered in glitter, you see, and that gets into all the crevices and short-circuits the synapses. The most recent additions to the list include the following: bust ghosts; be James Bond; be vice-president to a female president. |
Last week, Senator Jon Tester mused about the possibility of Hillary Clinton choosing Senator Elizabeth Warren as her vice-president: “Is the country ready for two women? I don’t know,” he said. Not “these women” – literally, any women. Tester later apologised, but he had no reason to: he is, after all, by no means the only one to wonder whether America can cope with so much oestrogen in the White House after a mere 230 years of testosterone (which has always worked out so well, of course). Clinton herself said last week, when asked about America’s willingness to tolerate both a female president and vice-president, “Maybe this time, maybe in the future.” As feminist triumphalism goes, I’ve heard better. I don’t think “Votes For Women! Maybe! Possibly One Day!” would have accomplished much. | Last week, Senator Jon Tester mused about the possibility of Hillary Clinton choosing Senator Elizabeth Warren as her vice-president: “Is the country ready for two women? I don’t know,” he said. Not “these women” – literally, any women. Tester later apologised, but he had no reason to: he is, after all, by no means the only one to wonder whether America can cope with so much oestrogen in the White House after a mere 230 years of testosterone (which has always worked out so well, of course). Clinton herself said last week, when asked about America’s willingness to tolerate both a female president and vice-president, “Maybe this time, maybe in the future.” As feminist triumphalism goes, I’ve heard better. I don’t think “Votes For Women! Maybe! Possibly One Day!” would have accomplished much. |
Yet a female president and vice-president is considered positively mainstream compared with changing the sex of male fictional characters. The prospect of a female James Bond (which will never happen) and women wearing the Ghostbusters uniforms (which has happened) has driven internet manboys around the world to declare their childhoods “ruined”. Which is weird, because if Ghostbusters really could destroy people’s childhoods surely Ghostbusters II took care of that 27 years ago. | Yet a female president and vice-president is considered positively mainstream compared with changing the sex of male fictional characters. The prospect of a female James Bond (which will never happen) and women wearing the Ghostbusters uniforms (which has happened) has driven internet manboys around the world to declare their childhoods “ruined”. Which is weird, because if Ghostbusters really could destroy people’s childhoods surely Ghostbusters II took care of that 27 years ago. |
People-by-which-I-mean-men have been making rules about what ladies can’t do since they realised women could literally create life while they were sitting in the corner of a cave scratching their balls. Even aside from little things like voting – women weren’t given equal voting rights until 1928, presumably out of concern they would rub their boobs all over the ballots – women were banned from ski jumping in the Olympics until 2014. Yes, as in two years ago. | People-by-which-I-mean-men have been making rules about what ladies can’t do since they realised women could literally create life while they were sitting in the corner of a cave scratching their balls. Even aside from little things like voting – women weren’t given equal voting rights until 1928, presumably out of concern they would rub their boobs all over the ballots – women were banned from ski jumping in the Olympics until 2014. Yes, as in two years ago. |
“Don’t forget, it’s like jumping down from, let’s say, about two metres on the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view,” Gian Franco Kasper, president of the International Ski Federation, explained in 2005, and you can’t deny he had a point. We ladies know our uteruses get in a right sulk when we jump around and are only mollified if we watch Sex And The City and buy at least three pairs of shoes. | “Don’t forget, it’s like jumping down from, let’s say, about two metres on the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view,” Gian Franco Kasper, president of the International Ski Federation, explained in 2005, and you can’t deny he had a point. We ladies know our uteruses get in a right sulk when we jump around and are only mollified if we watch Sex And The City and buy at least three pairs of shoes. |
Concern about women’s reproductive organs has long been the excuse for banning women from all manner of things, from marathons to pole vaulting, by men who apparently don’t realise that they have internal organs, too. This kind of essentialist biological baloney is frowned upon today. But honestly, I might prefer it to what has taken its place. | Concern about women’s reproductive organs has long been the excuse for banning women from all manner of things, from marathons to pole vaulting, by men who apparently don’t realise that they have internal organs, too. This kind of essentialist biological baloney is frowned upon today. But honestly, I might prefer it to what has taken its place. |
Now, when people say, “But can a woman do x, y, z,”, they don’t mean, “Can a woman physically do this without stabbing herself in the ovaries?” They mean, “Can I bear to watch a woman do this without my testes crawling back up inside my body?” No longer do we have the polite pretence of concern for a woman’s physical wellbeing; we just have straight-up, unapologetic misogyny. When anyone says, “Can we have a two-woman ticket for the US presidency?” they’re saying, “We all know that the thought of two women in the highest office of power will cause a lot of people to throw up all over themselves. So let’s not hurt their ickle feelings by suggesting it, ’kay?” | Now, when people say, “But can a woman do x, y, z,”, they don’t mean, “Can a woman physically do this without stabbing herself in the ovaries?” They mean, “Can I bear to watch a woman do this without my testes crawling back up inside my body?” No longer do we have the polite pretence of concern for a woman’s physical wellbeing; we just have straight-up, unapologetic misogyny. When anyone says, “Can we have a two-woman ticket for the US presidency?” they’re saying, “We all know that the thought of two women in the highest office of power will cause a lot of people to throw up all over themselves. So let’s not hurt their ickle feelings by suggesting it, ’kay?” |
Clinton has been getting kicked about for 24 years and is still determinedly making history. But even she looks at this last hurdle and says, “Whoa, that one might be too hard.” That’s how entrenched the idea that a woman is niche or “other” still is; even Clinton partly accepts that a man is needed to normalise her. There are as many reasons she might hesitate about picking Warren as her running mate (political differences, for a start) as there are reasons people might not want to vote for her. But the first thing that comes up is gender. | Clinton has been getting kicked about for 24 years and is still determinedly making history. But even she looks at this last hurdle and says, “Whoa, that one might be too hard.” That’s how entrenched the idea that a woman is niche or “other” still is; even Clinton partly accepts that a man is needed to normalise her. There are as many reasons she might hesitate about picking Warren as her running mate (political differences, for a start) as there are reasons people might not want to vote for her. But the first thing that comes up is gender. |
It is now just about accepted that it looks bad for a leader to have an entirely male team, yet wholly female is still too perverse, too out-there; there is a sense that women are pushing their luck (and few things are less feminine than luck-pushing). The reaction to even the suggestion of an all-female anything, from a movie to a presidency, proves not just that it’s exciting – but that it’s necessary. | It is now just about accepted that it looks bad for a leader to have an entirely male team, yet wholly female is still too perverse, too out-there; there is a sense that women are pushing their luck (and few things are less feminine than luck-pushing). The reaction to even the suggestion of an all-female anything, from a movie to a presidency, proves not just that it’s exciting – but that it’s necessary. |
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