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"LIKABLE"
http://sadydoyle.tumblr.com/post/135664586198/likable
My first book, "Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock and Fear... and Why," is coming September 2016 from Melville House. Pre-order here to read the book people have described as "I have no idea what's in there, I have to pre-order:" http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/trainwreck/
Likable
My affection for Hillary Clinton is hard to explain. It wins no fights and earns you no friends to admit it: Actual warmth, even protectiveness, toward this impossible, frustrating, contradictory, polarizing, disappointing woman. My finding Hillary intensely likable is weird, and I admit it. It doesnt signify universal approval of her decisions. I can and do disagree with Hillary Clinton, regularly and strongly. But some part of me also hopes that Hillary Clinton is having a nice day.
Ive come to believe that, in some ways, saying nice things about Hillary Clinton is a subversive act. I spent much of this year working on a long project on how women are demonized in the media. Hillary Clinton was a fairly large part of that story she had to be; if you want to talk women that people hate, shes kind of unavoidable and I spent a while sorting through Clintoniana, dating back to the early 90s, to find nasty things people had said about her, or common narratives about her personality. It wasnt pretty the worst stuff for Hillary was way worse than Id expected, and there was way more of it than I expected to find but it was also illuminating, in some key ways. I got a better sense of the pressures that she has to live with, and how theyve informed her decisions.
I also realized that, unless you really take a look at those pressures, the narrative around Hillary Clintons likability is doomed to be inaccurate, in some way. She might even be very easy to dislike, if you werent looking at those narratives, or if you underestimated their severity. But, in my experience, trying to parse Hillary Clinton without also parsing Hillary-Hate is like trying to drink water without touching the glass. As long as you refuse to deal with the container, the actual substance tends to stay permanently out of reach.
For example: Female politicians are stereotyped as soft and incompetent when it comes to foreign policy and national security. Its a basic, entrenched form of sexism: Only boys know how to fight, or play with guns. So, in order to be taken seriously, Hillary has to prove that shes as tough as any man, or tougher. But she cant actually be as tough as any man, or tougher; that plays into the stereotype that women are fonts of petty malevolence, prone to irresponsibly starting conflicts for no reason. (Heres a joke I first heard from my father, and heard from many men throughout my lifetime: Why cant you elect a female President? Because, when she gets her period, shell launch the nukes.) She has to look either soft and passive, or hard and aggressive. Either one is bad for her.
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"LIKABLE" (Original Post)
niyad
Jun 2016
OP
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)1. Maybe she's likeable but she still shouldn'ta killed Vince Foster.
niyad
(113,235 posts)2. you forgot th sarcasm icon, yes?
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)3. Oh dear. Do you really need it?
niyad
(113,235 posts)4. given some of the vitriol against her just on this board, yes.