Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Summary: Speculation about the peculiar gaps in application of sexualized slander against highly-visible women. With a quick allusion in a note at the end about the soft underbelly of privilege.

Quote of the day (ok, from sometime last week) from Echidne of the Snakes:

It’s nearly impossible to separate Sarah-Palin-hating from Sarah-Palin-as-female-hating, and that offers a nice opening for any closeted misogynist to exercise his or her inner demons without getting caught doing it. Ultimately the whole topic turns into free-for-all about tits and power and shit, and the only valid conclusion is that we are far from an equal world when it comes to getting and using political power.

She said it here.

She says the no-win-edness of the situation makes it not worth blogging about.

I’ll just say it’s worth pointing out that you could pretty much replace “Sarah Palin” in the line above and replace it with, oh, many but not all highly-visible and/or controversial women politicians and pundits (Hillary Clinton anyone? Ann Coulter? Carrie Prejean? Janet Reno? Even Anita Bryant back in the 1970s.)

Funny thing, by the way, that gets me as I look at the list is it’s not so much the person’s looks (for instance Condoleezza Rice is conventionally attractive but rarely targeted) or their degree of partisanship (For instance “Dr. Laura” and Rachel Maddow tend to be more partisan than average but rarely targeted.)

Instead I think it’s most likely to happen when women step into new domains: homophobia in Prejean or Bryant’s case, law enforcement in Reno’s case. Activist First-Lady in Clinton’s case. Conservative firebrand in Coulter’s case. And, annoyingly, technology in the case of… pretty much every woman who’s ventured into technology. Indicative example: I seem to remember that Ariana Huffington caught quite a lot of sex-baiting when in the Clinton-activist-first-lady role with hapless former husband Michael’s arch-conservative Senatorial bid in California, but since returning to her “proper-role-for-a-woman” location in progressive politics I just haven’t seen that much sex-baiting. Even though she’s conventionally attractive, politically powerful, and reliably highly partisan. And even though her Huffington Post has a huge on-line presence I think she escapes the fate of women in technology by appearing as a media personality rather than appearing to grapple directly with technology.

All of which is poorly-informed speculation offered to support a third alternative to Echidne’s dilemma: it’s not that women are hated per-se, it’s that they’re particularly hated, in highly gendered ways, when they encroach on traditionally male turf.

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Note to self: If I have time I’ll try and post about why this rabid, sexualized reaction by (mostly) men to women’s encroachment demonstrates the freakish self-loathing and insecurity that is the flip side of (intrinsically un-earnable and thus always unearned) male privilege. And if I have time I’ll compare it to the “tough guy” conservative tendency to absolutely wet their pants at the prospect of 9/11 terrorists being tried in New York City or imprisoned on on U.S. soil even in SuperMax-security prisons. I might not have time, though, but I want to note the possibility.