Casual misogyny and the “Hillary thing”

So, I’ve been talking a lot to a friend of mine who’s a former Obama supporter but is now supporting and actively working for Hillary. Now, this friend (I’ll call her “Molly”) hasn’t quite sunk to the levels Dahlia Lithwick’s making fun of here, but she’s certainly identified some of these weird drunk-the-Kool-Aid behaviors in the Obama supporters she’s had to deal with at dinner parties and social events; never mind the caucuses, many of which evidently involved hordes of poorly behaved Barack boosters and terrified Clintonites yearning to live free huddled in the corners of rooms, such that Molly was actually standing on a chair at one point trying to restore the thing to some civil order (I would have paid good money to see this).

Molly was the first Obama supporter I knew. She called me during his speech at the last convention to say: “Are you listening to this?” She’s the one with the thing for righteous talking, brilliant, politically conscious black men. And yet, now she’s for Hillary. What’s the story?

There seem to be two major arguments. One is, basically, that Molly thinks Hillary’s got the ability to realpolitik our way out of the morass the country’s in now. Obama, in her view, suffers by comparison. This isn’t a stupid “change vs. experience” thing – rather, what she seems to be saying is that all that stuff about Hillary being a steely-eyed opportunistic go-getter could actually work in our favor. I guess I’d agree with this more if I didn’t think that the interests being advanced in the aforementioned go-getting were likely to be of the DLC/big donor type rather than those of the poor, disenfranchised, or otherwise non-Rahm-Emanuel types. But whatever. Toxic Culture’s not in the business of endorsing political candidates.

The second point Molly’s made in conversation about this “switch” is a little more disturbing – she’s observed a lot of casual and not-so-casual misogyny among folks who aren’t for Hillary, even among super-self-consciously-progressive-type Obama supporters in the liberal Pacific Northwest town where she lives. And it seems to have made her think, seriously, about the nature of the arguments leveled against Hillary’s candidacy.

Now, she’s got a good point here. There is a lot of this sort of thing going around, Chris Matthews nonwithstanding. Remember when Biden got in trouble for calling Obama “articulate,” (never mind clean) and how people were outraged at the race angle on that? But nobody seems to think twice about calling Hillary “ambitious” or “driven.” Those of us who’ve been on the receiving end of these kinds of quasi-compliments know they come with an ample serving of bile and a side of male identification.

And this is, as you might imagine, just the tip of the iceberg. A good Seattle Times article from the fall has part of the story. It’s appalling to note, among other things, that there is a Facebook group called “Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich.” This group, now with 37,000 members, nobly includes the following disclaimer:

“Please practice responsible wall posting. We realize there’s a bit of a thin line between humor and prejudice being drawn here, but those of you that blatantly overstep that line need to please refrain from doing so. It’s pretty simple: just don’t be an idiot.”

Presumably, the responsible posting they prefer includes gems like this: “ham and cheese…hold the millions of illegals and no universal healthcare please…bitch.”

Now, I get what’s going on here. It’s a setup, so that people will complain about it and the “founders” can then complain about the complainers not understanding their “sense of humor” and trying to force them to be “politically correct.” And then everyone can feel good about themselves- the occasional people logging on to the thing to harass the convenors, as well as the group managers who are, presumably, keeping it real for whatever remnants of jovial in-your-face-pseudo-chauvinism that suffices for humor in 2008, the 102nd year since Susan B. Anthony’s death.

Casual sexism tends to be about a million times more socially acceptable than acceptable than casual racism. Most people are likely to be much more comfortable making jokes about bad women drivers at a dinner party than, say, racist jokes. This goes a long way toward explaining the kind of conduct and thinking that Molly’s seen up in her neck of the woods.

It’s not a reason to take any particular candidate, and nor is it a reason to in any way stem your annoyance and outrage at the puerile antics on display on Facebook and throughout society. But it’s easy to sympathize with Molly and other serious feminists like her, as the many “progressives” among us show some of their true colors regarding their confidence in the idea of a female president, Hillary or no Hillary.