The Volokh Conspiracy

Someone should keep a running tally on the number of absurd conspirator posts about this election.

Contrary to the linked article’s assertion, Clinton’s comment about “people who are nothing but misogynists” was a reference to the media, not primary voters. And does anyone believe that there is not still sexism in America today? I’m sure people disagree on the amount of sexism. But it’s absurd to pretend that there’s no sexism, much like it would be absurd to pretend there’s no racism.

Someone should keep a running tally on the number of absurd conspirator posts about this election.

Can't we just call it infinite already?

Peggy Noonan wrote a money piece about this for yesterday's Wall Street Journal. It's linked on the opinion page.

No, it implies that they're more racist than Democrats, which seems plausible enough.

That's been the backbone of Republican strategy in the South for decades. Fortunately, it may not work as well this year as in the past.

Clearly ours is not a society devoid of sexism, but it seems strange to claim that it is the major reason for the downfall of such a well-known and distinctive persona.

Hillary isn't just some woman, she's someone with a marked political style, rhetorical tenor and ideology, and she has a complex history with the exercise of power in the 90s. For those who see her in purely reductionist terms, I think she is viewed as a symbol of her generation as often as she is as of her gender.

So, sure, people may see Hillary different because she's a woman, but that would seem to pale in comparison to seeing her differently because they remember who she is and what she has done.

No, it implies that they're more racist than Democrats, which seems plausible enough.

Thank you Eliot Reed for demonstrating just how deeply illogical Adler and Boudreaux are. You would think that the chairman of the economics department at George Mason University would have an understanding of the basics causation, but apparently not. (I don't have such high expectations for Adler, who is, after all, a law professor.) That the chairman of this economics department would embarrass himself this badly in an editorial in a national newspaper is pretty shocking. Did he not have time to think through this argument? This just shows that the GMU economics department is truly second-rate. Pathetic.

Even if you set the racism issue aside, the conclusion does not imply that Republicans are less sexist. It could be due to independents, or it could be that Dems will swallow their sexism for party loyalty. Indeed, if 100% of Republicans were sexists, she could still win the general. I think Boudreaux knows better than this. Does something about writing for WSJ turn the thoughtful into hacks?

Even if you set the racism issue aside, the conclusion does not imply that Republicans are less sexist.

Exactly. I am not even discussing the merits of the particular claim "Republicans are more racist." Boudreaux conclusion does not follow logically from his own premises.

I think Boudreaux knows better than this. Does something about writing for WSJ turn the thoughtful into hacks?

I wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt like you do.

That's been the backbone of Republican strategy in the South for decades. Fortunately, it may not work as well this year as in the past.

the fact that democrats overwhelmingly support racial preferences iow institutionalized forced racism, and republicans support equal opportunity (no racial preferences) also overwhelmingly shows the lie that republicans, at least as a matter of policy, are more racist than democrats.

...the conclusion does not imply that Republicans are less sexist.

IANAR, but that comment does generate an interesting thought.

Conservatives would have no problem at all voting for a Golda Meir or a Margaret Thatcher. The sex of a candidate doesn't matter, and a Thatcher or a Meir would be head and shoulders above any current candidate as far as conservative voters are concerned.

The Democrats are currently in the process of rejecting a strong female candidate in favor of a weak Kenyan-American man. So, what national female leader is the hero of the Democrat Party, in this or any other country? Are there any? Or do Democrats prefer men?

If you have to generalize about which party is more sexist it's the Republicans by a large margin.


It wasn't that hard of a question BTW. Johnathan you should have been able to figure it out on your own.

Anon21:

Interesting analysis, and I can't say I disagree with it.

But it didn't address the question at all, which was: what national female leader is the hero of the Democrat Party, in this or any other country? Are there any? Or do Democrats prefer men?

Based on the empirical evidence [despite the usual propaganda], it's obvious that Democrats prefer men.

Refute it with specific examples, if you can.

Hillary's problem is not that she's female, it's that she's Hillary.

She's a well-known proven serial liar, vicious to her enemies ( real or perceived ), power-mad, spoiled, egotistical to the extreme, 'superior' in her own mind, and just plain two-faced and nasty.

She lies about having experience ( being married to a politician is not experience ), she lies about coming under sniper fire ( from little girls reading poems and handing out flowers ), she hides her WH phone records by court ruling, she claims not to be ablt to find financial records ( until it's about to cause her bigger problems, at which point she 'finds them' lying on the table in the library ), she turns $ 1,000 into $ 100,000 in a week in cattle futures and pretends it was 'just good investing', the list goes on and on and on.

She signs on to certain DNC rules, votes for them, and then when she thinks changing them would be in her favor, she compares them to everything from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement to Women's Voting RIghts to Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

People don't hate her because she's female - they hate for because she's Hillary, and everything it means.

Smokey, I think the point I was trying to make there is that while it's possible that Democrats prefer men, the issue is broader than that. Americans, it seems to me, prefer men. I think this will likely change in the future, in terms of candidates elected. In fact, I think it would have changed this year, had Clinton voted against the war in Iraq and opposed it from the beginning, or had she run a better campaign.

As to comparisons with other countries, I think they have limited utility. National political dynamics are really very different, even within conventional cultural groupings, such as "the West." Nevertheless, the main center-left party in France, the Socialists ran Ségolène Royal, a woman, in the 2007 presidential election. She ran a competitive race but lost, and remains a prominent leader within the Party.

The Barack Obama gaffe-a-day marathon continued in Sunrise, Florida, which he referred to as "Sunshine." If he were white, he'd be a laughingstock at worst, John Edwards at best. The Democratic party's affirmative action fetish has finally reached its logical conclusion.

The Clintons have been on a downward slope, in my view, starting about the time of Bill's sleazy "midnight pardons" and continuing on to the present. In the course of this election I've come to see all their past questionable actions and associations in a new light. There really is no prejudice they will not exploit, no bald-faced lie they will not tell, to get to what they want. Accusing the cruel world of sexism now that she's behind is the least of it.

Americans, it seems to me, prefer men.

What choice have we had? Every time I've voted for President it has been man vs. man. There haven't even been any credible women in the Presidential primaries.

Personally, I couldn't care less about genital configuration, I care about the candidate's policies.

His will be the thinnest resume of anyone elected president in at least 100 years, with George W. Bush a close second.

Lotta Presidents in the past 100 years were state governors, and of even less significant states than Texas.

I dont think the Clinton campaign is really serious about the sexism charge. I think its payback to the Obama campaign for playing the racism card against Hillary and Bill, and to the media for calling Hillarys supporters racists.

ithaqua,

A smart liberal woman plays the victim whenever she can, because the feminized, unChristian men that dominate the Democrat Party roll over and play dead when a woman lays the guilt trip on.

... and when a smart conservative woman does it? Like, say, for example, the chair of John McCain's campaign committee?

Pity the poor Democratic primary voter; he or she can vote for Senator Clinton and be a racist, or for Senator Obama and be a misogynist. No other choices seem available. (Or course, earlier in the season he or she could have voted for Edwards and been both.) This is what comes from taking identity politics to the extreme; the individual characteristics of the candidates get lost.

Since when was Golda Meir, of Mapai and Alignment, a conservative leader?

How about the racism of all of those who voted for Obama instead of Hillary, just because of Hillary's race?

After reading a few hundred comments on this campaign on the political websites like Politico, HuffingtonPost, and the comments on the Washington Post's webpage, it's very clear that misogyny is rampant among those who like to spout off on politics. It's routine for Hillary to be called the "B" word. The "n" word is never, ever used against Obama.

The "B" word is usually a compliment. A dangerous compliment, but a compliment nonetheless. It's also a sign of the speaker's powerlessness. It means that the woman has done something beyond the speaker's control, and all the speaker has left to do is use the "B" word. In this case, it's a sign that there's nothing anyone can do to stop Hillary from continuing her now-delusional race for the Whitehouse.

I heard a business woman say that she loves to be called "bitch" because it means that she's won and there's nothing the speaker can do about it.

Plus, Obama was never bold enough to market himself only to blacks. Hillary, on the other hand, expressly used her support among "white" voters as a reason why she should be the nominee.

Hillary lost this race because her campaign assumed she would win. The campaign was disorganized and reeked of entitlement from the beginning (remember the Judas comment?) She didn't shift messages until it was too late to actually win. She lost fair and square, on the merits.

Public Defender: Ask any woman if they want to be called a "B". You found one. That leaves about 150 million who are very offended.

The fact that posters on these websites feel free to use that word, the fact that Hillary nutcrackers are being sold, (have we seen any Obama lawn jockeys?), speaks volumes.

"I think that Hillary is power-hungry in an unhealthy way."

If you find a politician who isn't, please inform the rest of us.

Incidentally, I think that if Hillary were a man, she would be admired instead of criticized for crushing her enemies.

Hillary is both admired and criticized for crushing her enemies, generally by different people. If she were a man, it would be no different, she'd be criticized by some, admired by others. See, for example, Giuliani, who was both admired for his toughness by some and criticized by others. Maybe the balance would be different were Hillary a woman, but only by degree.

Then a vast right-wing conspiracy;now misogyny. Clinton's history of seeing ghosts when cornered is pretty much proof enough that she would be a poor Commander-in-Chief.

The n word is an all but illegal--maybe illegal--officially sanctioned word for "black". It has nothing but pejorative baggage, or at least, that's what's been assigned to it.
The B word does not apply to all women as the n word might to all blacks.
The b word applies to women who act in a certain way.
So there is no equivalence. Plenty of reason to call Hillary a bitch, if you dislike how she conducts her political life.

100% agreed that there have been a vast number of sexist comments made about Clinton in the media and in all manner of less formal fora.

Oh, an notice how you referred to Clinton by her first name and Obama by his last name? Are you some kind of closet sexist? Just kidding. Hillary wants to be called "Hillary" and Obama wants to be called "Obama." But if you look hard enough, you can always find reason to take offense.

Because, of course, Clinton's expressed desire to be called "Hillary" couldn't possibly be a response to sexism, whether in whole or in part.

Also, I think sexism was probably a but-for cause of Clinton's defeat. It was a very close race, so virtually every factor that favored Obama was probably a but-for cause of her loss, whether her poor campaigning, lack of media attention to her Florida win because it "didn't count," the February calendar consisting almost entirely of states with Obama-favorable demographics, the number of caucus states, or her vote in favor of the Iraq war.

Because, of course, Clinton's expressed desire to be called "Hillary" couldn't possibly be a response to sexism, whether in whole or in part.

I assumed it was because she made a poll-driven decision to distance herself from another Clinton whose reputation is not as shiny among Democrats as it once was.

And what do you mean that her "desire to be called 'Hillary'" might "be a response to sexism"?

A society that sees nothing wrong with calling a woman they don't like a female dog is a misogynistic one.

Sees "nothing wrong"? Give me a break. Outside the comment section of blogs, how many times has she been called a "bitch" in any media? If society thought it were acceptable, you'd hear it from her opponents, in print, and from commentators on TV.

But I go back to my main point. A woman who is called a "bitch" has a number of choices. One choice is that she can stew in her own victimhood. Another choice is that she can realize that she has just won. The speaker has no real criticism and no way to stop her from doing what she wanted to do. A woman can only be a victim if she chooses to be.

I would not use the word in anger for just that reason. By calling a woman a "bitch," I would admit that I am powerless to stop her from doing what she wanted to do. All I would do is underline the fact that I had just lost and that all I could do is name-call.

On the other side, I have several female colleagues who revel in the word. If they just won a case and got a client out of prison after a tough fight against an obstinate judge and/or prosecutor, they sometimes refer to themselves as "bitches," and they would take the word as a compliment from their colleagues. I admit that at work, you really have to know your audience.

In the end, when you are called a "bitch," you can be a victim or you can empower yourself. Your choice.

"After reading a few hundred comments on this campaign on the political websites like Politico, HuffingtonPost, and the comments on the Washington Post's webpage, it's very clear that misogyny is rampant among those who like to spout off on politics. It's routine for Hillary to be called the "B" word. The "n" word is never, ever used against Obama."

In the hierarchy of favored groups among Democrats, race, particularly African-Americans, get the top spot. Females do not. It would have been interesting to see what Democrats would have done with an African-American female candidate running against Obama in their primary. That would have put them in a pickle, no?

calmom,

Public Defender: Ask any woman if they want to be called a "B". You found one. That leaves about 150 million who are very offended.

It's not that black and white.

Is N-word vs B-word the correct comparison? Please justify your answer.

>>>As to the word "bitch," the women I know do take it as a compliment most of the time. Of course, I mainly deal with criminal defense attorneys and prosecutors, who often wear the epitaph as a badge of honor.

<<<

C'mon, Mister Public Defender...

...the word is "EPITHET".

(There's a thread about it).

Dang it. I missed the perfect response to my mistake in this thread:

"Son of a . . . ."

So you justify it, not on the grounds that it's an actual compliment (along the lines of "Wonderful job!"), nor that it is entirely benign; rather, you lump it in with all insults and presume that there is nothing more demeaning in the term than there would be, in, say, "dooty-head."

Although, I admit that calling someone a "dooty-head" would make the speaker sound silly, "bitch" is different. Nearly unique among insults, calling a woman a "bitch" implies that she has the power to be, well, a bitch, and that the speaker doesn't have the power to do anything about it.

Do women "have to" take the comment as a compliment instead when it's clearly meant as an insult? No. And I wouldn't recommend to anyone to use the term (except for well-known colleagues who have clearly embraced the term on their own, and even then, in moderation).

But sometimes you have to take a step back and think. Did that insult really sting? When I argue a case, I often find that my strongest arguments are in my opponent's briefs and oral arguments. Sometimes they make arguments that hurt the point they are trying to make. And I love to show how I win using their words.

Calling someone a "bitch" is making an argument that you think helps, but that actually undermines your message. As I said before, the word often means that the woman has won, and that the man can't do a damn thing about it. If you can't understand how that can be empowering to the woman, then there's really nothing left for the two of us to discuss.

Have a nice evening.

This kind of argument inevitably conflates whether a word (e.g., the "b" word, the "n" word) has multiple meanings, with when a particular meaning can be reasonably inferred. It's indisputable that those words have multiple meanings, some more pejorative than others. But you can't answer the latter question without knowing the actual intention of the speaker. And trying to impose a broad brush answer just ends up insulting some people, smearing others and inciting arguments like this one.

Because of this ambiguity, it's impolite to use such words in a potentially pejorative context around anyone who might not be sure about our intentions. Conversely, when, as the audience, we're uncertain what's meant by a word we don't like, the fair response, other than objecting to the word itself, is to withhold judgment about the intention of the user.

In the hierarchy of favored groups among Democrats, race, particularly African-Americans, get the top spot. Females do not.

To put the relative positions in the hierarchy into perspective: Since Reconstruction, there have been three black Senators. Since women got the right to vote, there have been 35 female Senators. Carol Moseley-Braun was 1/3 of the black Senators, but only 1/35 of the female Senators.

It would have been interesting to see what Democrats would have done with an African-American female candidate running against Obama in their primary.

How far did Carol Moseley-Braun get in her campaign? Barbara Jordan? Shirley Chisholm? Only Geraldine Ferraro made it on a national ticket -- what was different about her?

No. It implies that she lacks the power (socially) to do what she has done.

Yeah, it leaves the implication that she lacks the power to do what she did. But that implication is laughably wrong because she just did it.

We seem to agree that calling a woman a "bitch" is generally wrong. (I say "generally" because of those limited times in which a woman has expressly embraced the term, and you may disagree with that exception). The difference between our approaches is that you leave the woman no choice but to remain a victim. I give her the choice to be the victor.

But here's another revelation. If Mrs. Clinton is correct that she is more likely than Barack Obama to defeat John McCain in November, that implies Republicans and independents are less sexist than Democrats.

I would suggest that this has little to do with sexism or racism, despite the bleats of those running, but rather that Hillary! is more credible on national defense.

For the most part, the way to win the national election is to pick up swing and cross-over voters. Obama is likely to lose national security liberals and not pick up very many from the middle who value security through strength. Most oef those who value security through talking a lot with everyone are likely to vote for whichever candidate the Democrats end up running.

In the end I think, there are a lot of people who thought that they would never vote for another Clinton, but then found that they would vote for such over another Carter or Bush. The cost of another Clinton presidency would be to check the silver when they leave, and figure that they would graft another couple of million along the way. The cost of an Obama presidency would likely be similar to that of Carter - ineffective and weak in the world and stagflation at home.

Overall, I think that Hillary! has impressed a lot of people with her willingness to fight. For the most part, she comes across as tough, and indeed, for a long time I have felt her the stronger and tougher of the two Clintons.

Indeed, this is one of the big things I took away from Dick Morris' biography of Hillary. Apparently, one of the lessons that she took away from growing up was how to hit back. When picked on at school, her father had her take boxing lessons. So, no surprise that it was she who would be the one coming out fighting when her mommy's boy husband was under attack.

So, if the sh** hits the fan during the next administration, the public probably has little worry about what the son of an Admiral who ordered the bombing of Hanoi when his son was a POW there would do (even though he has two sons in uniform). And we have seen that Hillary hits back when attacked. But what would Obama do? Would he cry racism? Would he have an encounter group? At what point would he use force? Would he make Carter look strong and determined in the face of such a challenge?

The reality is that anyone who purports to know that Obama would react strongly to an attack on the U.S. is most likely engaging in wishful thinking. He just has given the American people no evidence of that, or that he understands the first thing about international diplomacy.

Oh, gag me.

I'm victimizing women? Oh, sorry, she should EMBRACE it when she's dehumanised, instead of calling it out for what it is.

Social power =/= physical power. Sorry.

I can't believe people are even debating that strangers calling a woman a "bitch" is sexist or offensive behavior. This should be pretty self-evident, IMO.

If I want to wear a t-shirt proclaiming myself a bitch, then yes, that can be empowering. Some women have tried to reclaim words like bitch and cunt. But if a stranger or coworker calls me a bitch, they are *not* complementing me - and the comparison to a female dog is inherently sex based.

No one calls a man a bitch. No one even insults men for the many of the things that provoke women being called bitches.

Last I looked, Hillary wasn't winning the nomination, and yet she is routinely called a bitch - even by supporters of the man that is beating her. How is this supposed to be a complement again?

The notion that every woman that gets called bitch has just won something, and it's a form of recognition of her superiority and the powerlessness of the speaker is laughably false. Women get called bitches by people in a position to adversely affect them all the time. In fact, many of the people calling Hillary a bitch are actively working to defeat her, and demonizing her is a step along the way.

Last I looked, Hillary wasn't winning the nomination, and yet she is routinely called a bitch - even by supporters of the man that is beating her. How is this supposed to be a complement again?

Because the can't force her out. People say she is through, that she doesn't have a chance, and that she should quit for the good of the causes she claims to support. But they are powerless to force her out. She wants to stay in the race, so she stays in the race.

And yes, calling a stranger a "bitch" or using it as an attack is offensive and sexist, but it's still dumb because, as I've said before, it usually shows that the speaker has just lost. It's possible for a statement to be offensive, sexist, and (unintentionally) empowering at the same time.

In Hillary's case, the people in the blog comments who use the term are energizing her support and underlining their powerlessness to force her out. Sounds empowering to me.

LM,

His argument may be politically incorrect, but that's not evidence of animus.

Oh, please. Like throwing the "politically incorrect" label on it means that it's all sweet and lovely and I just need to get my panties out of a twist, because I'm a hyper-emotional P.C. modern victimised woman.

No, it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm just pointing out that which is obvious to any moderately-functioning human: insults are not compliments. They are antonyms, not synonyms.

What evidence is there that Public_Defender hates women?

Well, the fact that he thinks we should be complimented when our highest achievements bring us comparisons to female dogs is, IMHO, woman-hating.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
Well-known misogynist Eleanor Roosevelt, 'This Is My Story,' 1937 (Source)

Would anyone here ever call a woman an ass hole? I wouldn't, and I can't say I recall ever hearing anyone else use it to describe a woman?

An ass hole is a male bitch. Or a bitch is a female ass hole. I don't know whether I'd rather be a solid-waste-excreting aperture or a female dog, but I don't see how either one is sexist. The guy who cuts me off in traffic is an ass hole. The woman is a bitch.

I don't see how using the word bitch makes one a sexist, or how it implies anything about the way in which one thinks about females generally.

Excellent posts LM!

I think Bruce has just demonstrated my point that Clinton's greater popularity on the right doesn't demostrate that the left is any more sexist than the right, but simply that she is closer to/better at pandering to the right on defense than is Obama.

theobromophile,

Maybe he should take my "bullying" as a compliment, and, if so, he hardly needs you to stand up for him.

He hardly needs me to stand up for him, regardless. Anyway, he's the public defender, not me. The first question for determining whether I'm standing up for someone is, "Have they signed my fee agreement?"

At this point, there's two options: animus or stupidity.

There are plenty of other options, but for now let's just take one. You might misunderstand what he's saying.

If I were to say that men ought to find it empowering to be kicked in the balls, because that means that the woman doing it has lost the fight, and men said otherwise, I would back off.

Bad example (getting kicked in the balls usually means you lost the fight), but consider this one instead:

Mike Tyson once bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear during a fight. Holyfield could have insisted there's no positive spin you can put on losing a body part, but the conventional wisdom shared by Holyfield was that Tyson acted out of frustration and desperation. In other words, biting off Holyfield's ear was an inadvertent compliment.

Now let's imagine Holyfield had refused to read anything complimentary into Tyson's behavior. Would that have meant all the reporters and commentators suggesting otherwise harbored some sort of pathological hostility toward Holyfield or toward clean boxers generally?

By the way, there is no animus requirement in "woman-hating crap." It's the content of the crap in question (here, "bitch" = "empowering"), not the intent, that is woman-hating. :)

How about in "I will say that you are a prime example of how modern men seem to hate women" and "Well, the fact that he thinks we should be complimented when our highest achievements bring us comparisons to female dogs is, IMHO, woman-hating"? But if your purpose was to back away from impugning his intentions, that's to be encouraged and complimented. And if I were a better person I wouldn't have brought up the other examples. :)

Hugs and cupcakes are always optional but, speaking for myself, welcome.

My daughter's education was almost sidetracked by a bunch of incompetent, dishonest, and possiby corrupt 'crats, along with some others.
All were women.
Had one or more been men, the feminists would have required my daughter to cease her--ultimately successful--effort to prevail and sit among her angst mourning the oppression by the patriarchy.
I have referred to those women as bitches because they were dishonest, incompetent, and probably corrupt and they put my daughter in a serious spot in her life. At one point, there seemed little that could be done, so I suppose you could say they "won".
So a triumph by a bitch isn't necessarily a good thing.
Now that my daughter has prevailed, I suppose they're referring to her as a bitch.

How about the equivalent of "bitch" being "bastard"?