House of Eratosthenes

Okay so we have to talk about what Elizabeth Warren did yesterday. Oh no, that’s not right is it? It’s about what we did to poor, poor, perpetual-victim Elizabeth Warren. It’s sexism, right? There’s stuff on the Internet that says so, so it must be true. Male chauvinist pig conservative Republicans, somehow, stopped enlightened egalitarian progressive liberal democrats from voting for Fauxahontas.

Actually, yes it is sexism of a sort. Just not quite like that. Something else.

Someone, somewhere I know not who — could be a man, maybe? — has made the call that women have to be unpleasant and angry all the time, like Senator Warren, in order to be in charge. They didn’t ask me. It’s true in our politics, in our movies, our teevee shows, and anyplace else we come together and experience any form of art that is assembled in a central location and then distributed hither & yon. Somewhere there is a script: Women have to be mousey little types that stay in the kitchen and bake cookies, or else they have to give you a migraine. There can be no in-between.

Scolding The movies flop, just like the political campaigns fail. Rather predictably, because whatever remains of our national sanity, does remain. Mentally well-balanced people don’t like to be scolded, just because. We don’t like to be gaslit along the lines that there’s something wrong with us if we appreciate the sight of a beautiful woman with a smile on her face, and we deserve to have our hands broken and our motorcycles stolen because of it. Now if you surround us with said gaslighting then maybe, since we’re flawed humans with limited strength, you can get some kind of “There Are Five Lights” concession out of us. Maybe people who pay attention only casually can be lulled into thinking a lot of unpleasant female nagging is what they want…temporarily. But you’re just screwing things up for the aspiring politicians like Senator Warren.

This isn’t what strong women who make good leaders, are like. This is wrong, and it’s been going on for awhile. Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro, brought scolding to the ticket and very little else. Oh, the haranguing, I remember it like it was yesterday, all throughout that year she nasally-resonated at us. It didn’t work out well.

The scolding-nag woman keeps flopping. Someone somewhere keeps lunging for it, manufacturing it yet again, like a sadistic relative with a Christmas fruitcake recipe who can’t be told no. They keep cramming it down our throats. We’ve tried every other way to get the message across that we don’t want this but it keeps happening. Someone, somewhere, isn’t getting the message.

We have yet to try the most direct approach. We must do all we can, to avoid wasting the time and resources of future innocents who seek to emulate Senator Elizabeth Perpetual-Victim “I’m still mad where are you going” Warren.

So say the words in the title of this post, to yourself, as practice. Loud and proud. We are told this is what men say when they are weak and fragile, but that’s just “five lights” nonsense. This is a powerful message.

Not for Decoration There are only three rebuttals. You can gaslight me some more, conveying the message of “You’re just afraid of a strong/intelligent woman,” in hopes that I’ll change my position. That’s an exercise in futility, because once I make up my mind that a pounding headache isn’t what I want, I won’t reconsider and decide anything different. So you’re going to end up arguing with me about it, and you’ll just look foolish because you’ll be trying to sell me, and anyone watching, on what’s virtuous about being given a headache by a mean, unsophisticated, unenlightened, toxic nasty unpleasant woman.

You could give me what I want, and haul the nag away so I don’t have to listen to her. Win.

Or, you can give me a very firm and assertive dressing-down about how my opinion doesn’t matter. That men like me who don’t want headaches, or women who happen to like men and don’t aspire to be unpleasant banshees, are all part of the inimical demographic that you have targeted and desire to make irrelevant. And that, as an additional trophy, you want to give us these headaches to punish us. That bugs to us are features to you. That, as a proponent of this tired worn-down scolding-harridan trope, your side is the “toxic” one. That would be honest. That would show that, far from being bogged down in some sort of toxic masculinity crisis, our problem is more like one of toxic femininity. How can any attentive observer not, at the very least, consider it? Nagging, scolding women have been cartoon caricatures for generations. Maybe there is a push now to bring them into fashion, but there’s a difference between trying for something and succeeding at it. With all the throat-cramming we’ve seen just over the last twenty years, unpleasant women are as rare as sand in the Sahara and half as precious.

So no, sexism did not destroy Sen. Warren’s campaign, at least not the way she says. She failed for the same reason Hillary Clinton failed four years earlier: She offered us something we don’t want. This leaves the democrat field rather un-diverse, which is bad for them, and it leaves the field as a whole also un-diverse which may be bad for the rest of us…dunno. I’m sure somewhere out there, there are some women with strong leadership skills who are positive. But one of the characteristics of positive people is that they fix what’s broken, and when something isn’t broken, they don’t go trying to fix it because it isn’t broken.

So maybe the positive women with genuinely strong leadership skills, just aren’t running this year.

Related 3-10-20: Redundant with what I said, although as usual he probably says it better. This idea that we’re going to choose to be lectured and annoyed has really taken hold over the last several years. It used to work, but those who are committed to furthering the cause are in a real bind now because once people get tired of something, there’s no going back. Must suck to be them.

I’m not losing a wink of sleep over it. I delight in watching the carnage. With popcorn.

“So maybe the positive women with genuinely strong leadership skills, just aren’t running this year.”
Holy CRAP!
Kinda’ long row to hoe just for the Captain Obvious money quote!
*sigh* Keep hammerin’
- CaptDMO | 03/10/2020 @ 06:43
[…] Breaking the Law This Ends We’re Not a Toxin Upon the Planet Kung Flu Hordes of Hoarders I Don’t Want to be Scolded by Any Mean, Nasty Women The Anti-Sex Party “Never Created Anything” Ignorance and the Internet Harrison Ford: […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/22/2020 @ 13:46

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I Don’t Want to be Scolded by Any Mean, Nasty WomenFriday, March 6th, 2020

I Don’t Want to be Scolded by Any Mean, Nasty Women
Friday, March 6th, 2020