I watched one night in horror as Bay Buchanon, a conservative female pundit lambasted Hillary for being a 'cry baby' for suggesting that she was not benefitting from the same treatment from the media as her rival Barack Obama. She roasted her for what she characterized as "whining and complaining, something she has always done! It's classic Hillary!" I noted the vitriolic nature of her comments and thought to myself 'well you can disagree with Hillary but why hate and demoralize her this way.' Would John McCain or Barak Obama be accused of whining? Bay Buchanon is an articulate and educated woman in her own right. It got my analytic juices flowing. Why do women turn against a strong female leader just as some male counterparts?
Sigmund Freud wrote a paper, some may be familiar, "Female Sexuality." In it he explains how the female baby comes to turn away from the mother and pursue the father. In opposition to the male baby who never gives mother up and essentially competes with father to win mothers partnership: The Oedipal struggle. The first piece of this dynamic describes the phenomena of penis envy and the mothers lack of penis. The female child comes to notice this that reflects poorly on the mother. Mother is regarded as weak, inferior, perhaps even mutilated, grotesque. At the risk of being horribly reductionist, could this be part of the explanation for the abandonment of Hillary as a potential leader by women?
5 comments:
The competition between women shows itself in many ways. Not all of them are nice. Men play games and learn the ethics and purpose of competition, women, until recently, have not. Some wise, British man once said that the victory in war is learned on the playing fields of Eton, a male prep school. Maybe it will be hard for a woman to be elected, because other competitive women haven't learned the ethics of competition as yet and will attack any way they can.
I don't agree. I believe women have the same competitive skills as men. Its just the aren't allowed to play by the same rules as men. They are held to different standards. But that's not even what I am getting at in this posting. Here, I am talking about why even other women will support those different rules for women on the playing field that essentially works against their own self interests.
in a general sense, doesn't the fact that hillarys strongest support is among women undermine this theory?
Well it is true that women generally support Hillary many, many do not. I also believe it is older women who generally support her more which is also curious.
I wonder how the political scene will change if Hillary is elected. Or, if it will change. Political decisions of a country with the USA's influence reverberate across the globe. It will be interesting.
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