After much upheaval and resistance, Hillary Rodney Clinton has been vetted as the Presidential Candidate for being the first Female President. There was some general disappointment eight years ago when she gave up her closest margin of victory in the last Presidential nomination to Obama, but now she's more than made up for that in spades with her behind-the-scenes tough-as-nails negotiations with politicians on both sides. In reality, among the bridge-building, outright listening and relentless promotion of values, she's the most capable candidate compared to the competition.
And yet, there are still people who are heavily resistant to giving any support her direction, out of base loathing rather than reasonable decisions. It's an emotional choice, not a logical one. Her only sin, other than not appearing friendly enough to have a beer with (as if that was the only qualification a President needed) was being too competent in doing her job. If she got so many people to agree with her, then she must have gotten ahead by doing... unsavory acts with multiple members of Parliament. Failing that, she must've undergone some underhanded deals in order to get ahead. This has put her in the impossible position of being multiple things at once. If Hillary pushes too hard on an issue, she's criticized for being too hawkish. If Hillary softens her image, she's criticized for appearing inauthentic.
This isn't helped by a Media that's more interested in paying attention on whether she's wearing a pink dress, or bakes cookies, rather than her political ability. And that's not even getting into the matter of her wardrobe costs, which no male politician has to deal with, whose costs range in the $12,000 range for a suit that's interchangeable with every other tie combo.
Even playing the woman card doesn't wind up being a benefit, since as it turned out, even women are against Clinton. These Faux Feminists weren't advocating for the equality of all women - they were railing against the injustice of a woman in power who wasn't conforming to the equality of all women. These women were only content if other women were in the same power bracket as them. That is, rather than helping push them against a resistant glass ceiling, they were aspiring to drag them down to join them in the muck with the others.
Feminist reaction basically boiled down to "Women's finally gotten recognition and rights. What's more is there?" How naive they were, thinking that respect only ended after being included as a token thought. You have to constantly fight for your rights, otherwise events just revert back to a regular status quo. And there are many violent offenders who would be more than content in having things go back to normal than do outright change.
The supposed reason for this extended suffering lies upon the fallacy that the wife should bear the sins of the husband. It seems hard to believe, but when Bill started out, he was considered unlikable and unpopular to the Democrats who felt his cavalier attitude was detrimental to the Democratic party. It was only until his stint with Monica Lewinski that he gained popularity for outright lying, which rankled both sides so much that he was considered being up for impeachment. Even more damning - the majority of the committee that wanted Bill Clinton impeached have wound up being called out for infidelities of their own.
The fact that Hillary was on equal footing with Bill Clinton (a known adulterer) rankled many, because they were never entirely certain whether any words of recommendation came from his mouth or hers.
That association came to light when some Benghazi emails were improperly sent under improper procedure using her private email instead of the State Department email (that she herself asked for extra security) that turned into a literal witch-hunt lasting years, going nowhere. Despite the fact that the contents of the emails were improperly classified, they could find no concrete evidence that she'd done anything wrong. Mistakenly doing something wrong isn't a crime in itself, even if the results don't hurt anyone. Owning up to the mistake is a worthy character trait. But admitting these faults was all the justification needed to jump down her throat and go over her procedure in painstaking detail. And after all the hullaboo, the intensive investigation intent in breaking Hillary down revealed... absolutely nothing they could tie to her.
Even the very fact that James Comey, the FBI director who personally investigated the Clinton emails (and served under George Bush Jr.), was unable to find any concrete evidence that Clinton did anything illegal along the likes of other data security leaks along the likes of David Petraeus and John M. Deutch. The Republican's constant returning to this "scandal" has been a costly non-issue that's gone literally nowhere, and their constant harping caused the FBI director to move away from the political party he most identified with. And yet, the Republicans keep going back to this well in the flimsy hope that maybe, just maybe they'll be able to go GOTCHA! this time around. Despite the fact that the Clintons thrive under adversary from their opponents.
Comey: "She did not have public relations with her phone."
Republicans: "That just proves he's moved over to Clinton's side! TRAITAR!!!"
Currently, there's been more media coverage about the "outrage" over her supposed email scandal compared to Donald Trump's child rape charges which has been buried among all the other scandals he's built up for himself over the years. Why is one considered acceptable, while the other is considered unacceptable?
Which brings up another question - where does all this animosity come from? One possible culprit may be the funny pages, where wives' only purpose, other than aggravation seems to be stopping men from having as much fun as possible by nagging them at every opportunity.
One thing I've discovered upon binging months and years of Newspaper comics is that there's a certain sense of confirming conformity. Just as various papers will focus on specific aspects of the news in order to reassure their readers that certain values are being upheld, while outside parties are threatening to overturn said long-held values. If those comics re-enforce gender norms and 50's values, then all the better for their aging audience.
While there were token statements of support for Feminism, the majority politics of the comics page remained sexist behind the scenes. That's also not accounting for the numerous unreported accounts of elder cartoonists demonizing the competition for not being "team players" from an openly hostile comics world
who were upset at the presence of women for "violating" what was mostly a male profession, and thus, degrading their profession. As if the majority of their daily output wasn't subject to scrutiny.
Despite all the advantages men have gotten, they won't hesitate to put down their reputation, even if it means browbeating potentially worthy competitors. After all, if other "weaker" people managed to succeed in ways they weren't able to achieve, that would invalidate all their claims, and make all their effort be for nothing. To exert their fragile superiority, they will discredit women's research, no matter how much they agree with it, or openly plagiarize their groundbreaking research into previously unexplored territory. Only made possible, from seeing the data from a previously unrecognized view that only gained credence when given a male name attached to it. Go ahead, name the most famous women scientists who aren't Marie Curie (defaulted because of her husband's unintentional influence). Apparently, discovering Pulsars, Bacterial Viruses, Nuclear Fission and Chromosomes, as well as Stem-cell research, Breast Cancer treatment and the discovery of AIDS isn't considered worthy of immortalization unless you're a man.
And if any complaints come up? Women are silenced by the claim that they're making too much out of an insignificant thing, and talking too much. A study conducted about Mansplaining showed that in cases where there were men and women talking about their fields, men were more likely to interrupt women in telling them exactly where they were getting facts wrong, even if they were experts in the subject. The fallacious expectation is that women will just ramble on and on, constantly putting down the man, so the man should get their opinion out first, otherwise they won't be heard in the first place.
Even Disney Princess female leads such as Frozen had their dialogue dominated by males by 59%. And gender-neutral scripts were outright turned down by Hollywood directors who were convinced that audiences (i.e., the typical target audience of 18-39-old Males) wouldn't be interested in any scenes that had women talking about seemingly insignificant details not related to the overall plot. Even if those women had relevant scenes, they were considered less significant, simply because they were female. Because unless the topic happens to be men, audience's interests would glaze and wander off if anything uninteresting happened for a fraction of a second not filled by explosions.
The default target audience type has always been a Male for so long, that venturing out into unexplored territory feels like taking a step onto a broken glass floor. Nevermind that neglected people have been wandering around a broken glass ceiling for ages. When a certain gender is marginalized to the extent of all others, diversifying can be considered risky. Women are allowed to like guy's stuff, but guys are ostracized if they admit they like stuff aimed at... girls. And even when girls like a guy show, they're discouraged if they outnumber the boy audience because "Girls don't buy toys", even though they will buy other merchandise related to their favorite hobbies. But aiming at other markets is too difficult for these executives.
As a result of having been pandered to for so long, men instantaneously feel left out if there's any attempt at branching out to less developed minorities who haven't gotten as much screen time. Chalk this down to reptilian brain mentality. If women have something, or are part of a group that excludes men, no matter how insignificant, they instantly want to be part of it. Unless it deals with menstrual cycles and bodily functions.
There's a certain fear that men are being emasculated by the very presence of women, that if they admitted there were certain faults that needed to be improved upon, and not just say "sorry" and move on for the sake of some nookie, they would be constantly harped upon for not being good enough in the first place.
As if women's worth was reduced to being little more than arm candy or trophy wives for the male gaze. As far as they're concerned, they've already gotten their worth by latching onto the most successful men. What more validation do they need? Surely their silly little opinions wouldn't matter for much, would they? Given the gains that women had gotten, what more could they possibly want?
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