A big part of the gender discussion is identifying and decrying double standards. This is a story about someone doing just that.
This time it’s feminist icon Hillary Clinton telling women to stop whining about their own life choices. Suck on that, all you Hillary-haters.
Secretary Clinton made her remarks perhaps in reply to but certainly in the context of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent article in the Atlantic “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”.
That article was all about double standards, as in moaning that there wasn’t one in this case. The base assumption was that men can go out and work 80 weeks and center their lives around career ambitions and then come home and have a family life, but poor, oppressed women don’t get to do that. When they go out and have careers, they get “penalized.” And it’s just sooooo unfair!!!
The truth is that men who work 80 – or 90/100/120 – weeks and center their lives around their careers do not have any kind of family life and what little they have they have at the sufferance of the wives they are supporting, and they can be dismissed from these lives at a moment’s notice by their wives completely unilateral decision. The wife they have been supporting will be deemed the “primary caregiver” (even though she couldn’t even caregive herself well enough to be self-supporting) and that will be dispositive in awarding child custody – and there goes his right to raise his children, there goes his family life. So no.
That article was attacked for its privilege blindness in complaining about the trade-offs women have to make, as if men haven’t been making the same trade-offs for centuries, generally without anything like the same degree of choice.
Quoted from the Marie Claire article:
“I can’t stand whining,” Clinton told Marie Claire. “I can’t stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they’re not happy with the choices they’ve made. You live in a time when there are endless choices. … Money certainly helps, and having that kind of financial privilege goes a long way, but you don’t even have to have money for it. But you have to work on yourself. … Do something!”
She goes on to say that different people can handle different levels of stress and complexity and that’s about that – something she should know quite a bit about.
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by 
FTA (from the article):
I really wish she’d said, “to be more flexible in enabling people to continue to do high-stress jobs while caring . . .” It’s important for women to be able to do so, of course, but, at this point, I’m not sure why the focus in that regard continues to be women when men are very clearly at the bottom of the work-life balance heap.
First, a small technical point – Gingko, did you mean “hours per week” instead of “weeks”? (This appears at least twice.)
Secondly, although Hillary is often grouped with feminists (and her rhetoric often supports this), she is no victim. I saw her in person 16 years ago and in real life she has a radiant personal magnetism that is completely contrary to the cult of victimhood that is the bread and butthead of feminism. Nothing I can quantify objectively, and it is lost on camera, but it is there, and astonishing.
She is a no bullshit kind of gal, and her rejection of whining is no surprise to me.
YESSSSSSSSSSSS
And until this mentality changes, we won’t have equal rights or responsibilities to our children. I find this to be one of the most important issues facing the MRM today.
Yeah, Clinton still sucks. More rights and privileges for women, more circumcision for men. The bottom line is that when it gets personal, woman to woman, she can easily cut through the crap and call out the entitled prissy behavior for what it is. But as a policy issue, she is still all about appeals to femininity. She could have been a great politician but sadly, women like her have done for liberalism what Atheism+ is trying to do for atheism.
Bibo,
“First, a small technical point – Gingko, did you mean “hours per week” instead of “weeks”? (This appears at least twice.)’
Uh, yeah. Really, I do speak English. Fixed that now.
“Yeah, Clinton still sucks.”
Basically. My “suck on that” comment was tongue in cheek.She belongs to that pioneering generation of Boomer women, and inflicts some blind spots, you see this a lot in that generation. I think it’s crippling disability myself.
“I can’t stand whining,” Clinton told Marie Claire. “I can’t stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they’re not happy with the choices they’ve made. You live in a time when there are endless choices. … Money certainly helps, and having that kind of financial privilege goes a long way, but you don’t even have to have money for it. But you have to work on yourself. … Do something!”
She said that to a Marie-Claire journo. Pillars of the patriarchy never read Marie-Claire. Would she say it to the NYT, Washington Post or Time magazine??
Hillary’s father was an entrepreneur. He made and sold customized curtains and blinds for offices in greater Chicago. He made a good living as office work moved from downtown Chicago to suburban office parks. He worked with designers and decorators. He worked with women when selling and designing, and probably hired a number of women employees. His choice of career certainly was not a testosterone-drunk one. I suspect she liked and respected her father (he died around the time Clinton took office). On some gut level, I bet Hillary never really swallowed the woman as victim narrative. I am not surprised that Hillary has moved to the political centre as she aged. She will very soon step down as Secretary of State, giving her the freedom to say things that may surprise us.
“She will very soon step down as Secretary of State, giving her the freedom to say things that may surprise us.”
Oh, I am bracing for it. Hell even in office she became the master of the high explosive stage whisper, as when she pointed out that if Chinese did fear the Arab Spring they had good reason. She said something equally blunt about Pakistan and our so-called alliance with them and gave them fits. I guess they are used to that level of candor from Westerners.