I would totally vote for her

I mentioned a couple days ago that Elizabeth Warren is exploring running for president and that the misogyny has already begun. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville explores details.

Three years ago a lot of dudes were saying something like this:

Hillary Clinton isn’t likeable. I won’t vote for her. But I’m not a misogynist because I would totally vote for Elizabeth Warren.

Today a lot of dudes – the same dudes – are saying something like this:

Elizabeth Warren isn’t likeable. I won’t vote for her. But I’m not a misogynist because I would totally vote for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

McEwan explains:

Elizabeth Warren was oh so very likeable when she was a hypothetical presidential candidate in a theoretical presidential race — not an actual woman seeking actual power in an actual contest for the actual presidency, but a prop in misogynists' game of deflecting the rank misogyny they were aiming at Hillary Clinton.

Now that the stakes are real, and it's not just an abstract exercise in denying their bias, suddenly that likeability factor has vanished in a cloud of stinking sexism.

(And welcome Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to being the new token Woman for Whom I'd Totally Vote Who Isn't This Woman Who's Actually Running.)

All the better that Ocasio-Cortez is 29 so can’t run for president for six years and has just gotten to Congress so doesn’t yet have a record at the federal level that can be trashed. Can’t run and a clean slate – she is a safe way for dudes to say they would vote for her.

McEwan includes a tweet from Ashton Pittman that shows whenever Clinton ran for an office – Senate in 1999, president in 2007 and 2015 – her approval rating dropped by 20% or more. She was well regarded (approval above 60%) as First Lady a Secretary of State, but not once she became a candidate.

Commenter EmmyRae adds:

There are so many layers of problems this causes:
1. straightforward ones like Hillary Clinton losing the presidency to a fascist bigoted criminal
2. reminder to women everywhere that our success comes at great personal, professional and political cost
3. how much harder it is to accurately assess female candidates - both to celebrate their positive attributes ("Hillary-bots" etc) and push back against their faults
4. time wasted fighting or persuading the people supposedly on our side rather than building a winning coalition

Commenter LSM wrote:

They know, the minute a woman gets her hands on the levers of power, our journey towards a more just and equitable society becomes inevitable.

If women can be president, we can't just be relegated to sidekicks. Or helpers. Or foils, or muses, or emotional laborers, or nurturers or one of the other many, many subordinate roles that the patriarchy foists on us. And we will start believing we can shape society to work better for us.

Commenter KaterTot replied:

The linguistic structure that's propped up to support the idea of "likability" pisses me off every time. The very word is just such a thin use of the passive voice. Like instead of saying "I don't like her," people jump to "She isn't likable." It leaves to the ethers/sands of time/mists of misogynist avalon the question of why the subject likes or doesn't like the object and instead blames the object for being/not being liked, suggesting that the subject *would* like the object, but it's just not possible.

Though not directly related another commenter included a chart from Robert Reich and the New York Times* from back in 2011. It shows that from 1947 to 1979 productivity increased by quite a bit and average hourly compensation and average hourly wage pretty much kept pace. Then in 1980 productivity still steadily increased, but wages and compensation essentially flatlined.

That is when the GOP started its war on democracy. The nasty guy is just the latest combatant.