Saturday, March 7, 2020

Prizes for Good Little Girls Syndrome

Thesis: Elizabeth Warren lost because of sexism.

Wait, wait, don't leave yet! This is not the blog post you think it is. I'm not about to start blathering about supposed "glass ceilings" or whatever. What I want to talk about is the soft sexism of low expectations.

If a woman has spent her life marinating in the left-wing feminist subculture, a few things are highly likely to be true:
  • She's been told she's great - fabulous! - just the way she is.
  • She's been taught to dismiss all push-back as misogynistic.
  • She's been assured that she's entitled to success -- and that any failures to achieve said success are the fault of men.
  • She's been trained to demand that these dastardly men - who are totes holding her back - kindly step aside and let her take the trophy -- whether she's actually earned it or not.
You might think I'm being unfair here, but frankly? I don't agree. Given all the stuff I've read in the news for the past decade plus, I believe I'm right on the money. 

Everywhere I look, I see illustrations of all four of the above bullet points. I hate to keep harping on the fat acceptance movement, but really: isn't that a textbook example of point number one? Go ahead, ladies: eff those unrealistic beauty standards and rock on with your 300 pound selves. Yas, queen, slay! (And don't worry that you can't make it up a single flight of stairs without getting winded. The negative impacts of extreme obesity are way over-stated, amirite?)

Then there are all the times leftists of the distaff persuasion have thrown down the poor-me-I'm-being-harassed-by-meanie-sexist-men card each time they start losing an online argument. To be sure, in the absolute dumpster fire that is internet discourse, such women probably do get burned with the occasional "die, bitch!" PM or email. But as I noted on my fan blog, men get that crap too -- and oddly, I don't see them whining about it nearly as often. (Probably because crying doesn't work for men. Only women get picked up by the waaaaaambulance.)

And just to hit on bullets three and four: everywhere I look, I see leftists justifying moves to ease standards to give vag a hand up. Just last month, for example, it was reported that Oxford is considering removing Homer and Virgil from a foundational classics course due to "attainment gaps between male and female candidates." Don't buckle down and study your Latin and Greek, dears. We'll remove that pesky obstacle for you. And oh my great and fluffy Lord, I can't even count the number of times I've heard feminists complain about the academic weeding that goes on in engineering or computer science -- because apparently, advanced math is oppressive and patriarchal. As a woman who numbers pretty good - indeed, I even teach that stuff for a living! - I headdesk so hard whenever I hear this BS that I'm surprised my skull is still intact.

Where does all this anal-smoke-blowing lead? When you're told constantly that you should get prizes simply for being a good little girl - as leftist women are - the result is predictable: you stop developing. If you're already Ms. Polly Perfect, well -- that obviates the need for critical self-examination and the consequent moves towards self-improvement. If your naysayers are all dismissible as "women-hating men bitter over the loss of their privilege" (or as women suffering from "internalized misogyny"), then your arguments are almost certainly untested and malformed. And if people have always been clearing the road for you and shielding you from any real challenges, you're no doubt much stupider than your competition -- and much weaker.

In short, if you're a leftist woman, you have not been equipped to survive in the hurly-burly world of American politics.

If you've come up in the anti-feminist milieu, on the other hand, you've learned to fight -- and you've learned to take ownership of your agency. That's because anti-feminists, in my view, have far more faith in women and their abilities. Anti-feminists, in the end, are the true anti-sexists.

So to circle back to the beginning: Like Clinton, Warren didn't fail in her bid for the presidency because of the so-called misogyny of the voting public; she failed because she's been surrounded by yes men who've never bothered to tell her how unlikable she really is. (And oh yes: the naked pandering to the left's various mascots and the lying about her heritage probably didn't help either.)

Warren was the victim of sexism -- just not in the way her cheerleaders think.

16 comments:

  1. Excellent post. Frankly, I think you are correct also. =]

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  2. Wonderful post.

    Most people who run for US President fail. I'm not clear why it's sexism for Warren to not succeed but is not sexism when a dozen men dropped out of the race.

    On the broader subject, we teach women that they should always succeed, and if they don't, it's because (a) sexism or (b) they just are inherently not good enough. Both are nonsense: if you aim high enough, you will eventually not succeed. The people who do amazingly well in life are those who are not afraid to fail, try something that most people fail at (even really talented, hardworking people), and, if they do fail, pick themselves up and do it better next time.

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    1. I guess they forgot to tell our (older) generation. My older sister is a whiz with higher Math, has a degree in Physics and a Master in Numbers Theory, I guess they forgot to tell to tell her she couldn't, or she didn't listen. SHE'S 84)
      the

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  3. I enjoyed your article. I love when the writing and reasoning come together so brilliantly. It should be an assigned essay in all schools.

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  4. Quote: "Like Clinton, Warren didn't fail in her bid for the presidency because of the so-called misogyny of the voting public; she failed because she's been surrounded by yes men who've never bothered to tell her how unlikable she really is."

    Shhh! Don't say that too loudly. It's good that these women are so unlikeable they have trouble getting elected. We don't want them to learn to fake likability.

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  5. What drove me crazy was her cheer squad keep blaming America when it was the Dem electorate that didn't want her. Speak to them.

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  6. I get annoyed watching Chopped on Food Network. The female contestants usually say something about being there to prove they are as good as a man and to prove women should be chefs.

    And then they put the cameras on the judges who are often women and quite successful restaurateurs. Contestant, you aren't proving anything. We already know.

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    1. THANK YOU! Sick and tired of women and so-called minorities decrying this country and it's lack of opportunities. F'n ridiculous.

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  7. You are probably right, at least partially. The phenomenon you describe is more than plausible. But,it doesn't have to be that complex or nuanced. The fact is Warren's a harpy and Clinton's a harpy and the longer they speak the more people recognize them as harpies. They both hate men and who wants to be led by someone who hates half the population. Their entire political slates are built on the premise that men suck at life, that women are better at everything important, all the while demonstrating their incompetence while depending on the press to cover for them.

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  8. I always thought it was funny that the same people who prays Samuel L Jackson in movies saying never take anything from the white man will embrace set aside for women. Do you not understand how demeaning that is?

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  9. This is the answer to “why you can never trust a woman.”

    You can never trust a woman because they don’t know how to take a punch.

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  10. You turn a wonderful phrase. I particularly enjoyed "I headdesk so hard whenever I hear this BS that I'm surprised my skull is still intact."

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  11. "Anne of Green Gables" taught generations of little girls that success in life is about going to school, doing well on tests, and being nice to people.

    Being young, fertile, and female has a lot to do with it too, but if you ask a fish if he likes the water, he'll say "What's water?"

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  12. Well done. Couldn’t have said it better.

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