Althouse: "Over and over, we are told that women are not allowed to be angry. It makes us unattractive to powerful men who want us to be quiet."

February 23, 2020

"Over and over, we are told that women are not allowed to be angry. It makes us unattractive to powerful men who want us to be quiet."

"I’m angry and I own it. I’m angry on behalf of everyone who is hurt by Trump’s government, our rigged economy, and business as usual."

Wrote Elizabeth Warren in an email reacting to Joe Biden, who's written that she has an "angry, unyielding viewpoint."

Quoted in "Klobuchar and Warren are shattering the expectations of female candidates" (WaPo), a column by Karen Tumulty, which I read mainly to try to understand what expectations still existed that hadn't been shattered by Hillary Clinton.

The name Hillary Clinton does not appear in that column! Does the columnist have an "expectation" that females disappear when they are unwanted?

Okay, here's the answer, according to Tumulty. Supposedly female candidates proceed in "a cautious manner" and stick to "a narrow lane of acceptability" where they are "tough but likeable, strong but not pushy" and "[n]ever, ever angry."

209 comments:

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WalkingRaven said...: Using those two examples, Hillary and Warren, the problem isn't WOMAN, it's ANGRY. What on Earth do either of these two millionaire privileged women have to be angry about? Neither has produced anything for their fellow citizens, or country, or other women that would justify their wealth and status. They should be the happiest, most gratified women in America.; 2/24/20, 7:19 AM
Anonymous said...: Thinking back on winning presidential campaigns in my memory, none of them were angry. I don't really remember Carter, but Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama were all more positive in tone. I don't really remember the losers that well. Were they angry? The winners weren't.

I'm setting aside Trump as sui generis.; 2/24/20, 8:59 AM
stlcdr said...: Oh how I would like to see someone on the stage say "Quit your nagging, woman!"; 2/24/20, 9:19 AM
mockturtle said...: Jamie sums it up well as impotent rage.; 2/24/20, 9:42 AM
Bilwick said...: Want to make your average Democratic woman angry? Say something like "liberty is better than statism," Elizabeth Warren could have your scalp for uttering that kind of bad medicine.; 2/24/20, 1:55 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: “There are only two acceptable kinds of public anger, barring legitimate "righteous anger" of the Jesus-cleansing-the-temple type, which I think we can agree is not under discussion; Warren isn't fighting injustice or evil. In both cases I use the term "acceptable" advisedly. The first case: the most powerful person in the room gets angry; no one can do anything about it, so it's "acceptable," but it's counterproductive, wastes time, and makes everyone uncomfortable. Furthermore, it starts to get people thinking about whether this person deserves the power s/he has, if s/he is so out-of-control as to show such strong emotion in public.”

Not sure if that is always accurate. Dealt with a high level VP at one point on occasion. He was quite large (overweight) and would, on occasion, explode at meetings, inevitably intimidating everyone there into getting his way. His anger was legendary. I was only present once, thank goodness. And some of the decisions he made were suboptimal - such as killing a competing product that threatened the one he had grown, necessitating the company going out and buying it elsewhere when their biggest customer demanded it. One of the few who could stand his ground in the face of one of his anger episodes was one of my brothers, who worked for this guy’s boss, and was one of 4 controlling his half billion dollar budget. Also noteworthy was that this brother of mine was the only one in our family with an explosive temper, which took him until his 20s to control (we think that he got it from our paternal grandfather). He still has it, and if you know him well enough, can see him getting it under control.; 2/24/20, 2:44 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: “ The second: a person with *no* power, like a child, gets angry.”

Or the mentally challenged. The difference is that children have to be taught control over their temper, if they want to flourish in adulthood. Or, in the past survive until then. My partner tells of her son’s one episode. He was about 2 at the time and just had what was to her an unreasonable episode, where he was on the floor screaming as loud as he could. She picked him up, put him up against the wall, dropped her voice an octave, and told him that he would regret ever doing that again. He never did.

BTW - she uses that voice trick with the cat. It is, from my point of view fascinating. Her daughter was amazed a couple weeks ago, when the cat went into the closet to be punished for a major transgression, after she merely used that voice and pointed to the closet. That daughter has two teenaged boys who don’t mind her anymore, and obviously hadn’t learned that voice trick from her mother when it might have been successful.; 2/24/20, 2:56 PM
AMP said...: Wha happened to, "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy; 2/24/20, 5:25 PM
Lazarus said...: Warren and Klobuchar are going down kamikaze style, Liz to take out Bloomberg, Amy hoping to take down Buttigieg. Warren dealt some real blows to the Little Giant, but Klobuchar just embarrassed herself. Neither will be the ultimate beneficiary of their efforts. Male of female, angry candidates usually don't win.; 2/24/20, 7:30 PM