Will We Ever Be Able to Trust 'Ambitious' Political Women?

[niyad]

Will We Ever Be Able to Trust 'Ambitious' Political Women?

. . . . . .

Ambitious. It's the word professional and accomplished women dread because it's no secret that we are a society that values ambition in men, but that finds ambitious women to be scary, threatening or abrasive. It's quite the sexist double standard in just about any word used to describe men and women.

The accusation, repeated to Hillary Clinton in a CNN interview, brought out her famous belly laugh, but Clinton surely knows when men start accusing women of being "ambitious", it's generally not meant to be a compliment and is more likely intended to be sexist shorthand for raising the question of whether one can ever trust an ambitious woman. But apparently Sanders's ambitions are much different than Clinton's and have no potential destructive forces.

In our culture, women's ambition has long been portrayed as something bad or evil while an ambitious man is lauded and seen as well qualified for whatever position. If a woman knows her place and isn't "too ambitious" -- all is good and the male status quo goes undisrupted. But have a woman step out and dare to channel her ambition toward a position no woman has ever held? Well, one can count the seconds until the "A" word rains down on her like an early spring thunderstorm. Because who knows if you can trust a woman with the kind of ambition it takes to be elected to the White House?

Few criticize the level of ambition needed in a man to announce a run for president when he's only held national elective office for two years like Barack Obama, but a woman who has been elected twice as a U.S. Senator, served four years as secretary of state and who was the first woman ever to win a national primary contest has "destructive" ambition?


. . . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-bamberger/will-we-ever-be-able-to-trust-ambitious-political-women_b_9636016.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics

[rachacha]

1. Warren? Absolutely. Clinton? Hell to the no.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. yep. has nothing to do with her being a woman

I never did trust the snobby mean girls, not gonna start this late in life.

[dsc]

56. you clearly have no problem with women not at all

[Viva_La_Revolution]

85. nope. i am one

I got a vicious streak toward triangulators tho. Those who always change what they say depending on who they are talking to.
Nope, i don't tolerate liars of any gender.

[Dem2]

68. oooooo-k then

[Viva_La_Revolution]

86. don't tolerate those mean girls who comment on others to make them fight either

[artislife]

10. Really!

She is not very likable. She isn't.

[Squinch]

82. Neither is Sanders.

[retrowire]

40. This. bam. nt

[athena]

66. Warren is not running.

If she were running, there would be plenty of attacks against her.

I've lived through this. Sexist men are very nice to women they don't consider competition. The moment they're working with a woman, however, they will turn nasty. And a lot of women will agree with them, believing their attacks, and not seeing their sexism.

Excuse me for not being sympathetic to the claim that a Bernie supporter would be happy to support Warren but can't support Hillary. All my life's experience tells me that the only thing that makes Bernie supporters love Warren so much is that she's not running.

ETA: Remember how popular Hillary was as secretary of state. The moment she started running, her favorability started dropping like a rock.

[rachacha]

79. I am not saying Warren would not encounter sexism and other despicable attacks.

I'm saying that Hillary is a completely different person, and in my opinion, Warren's integrity is on a completely separate level.

It's ok if you like Hillary as a candidate. I don't. And my dislike for her says nothing about my sexism or lack thereof. I'm sorry if you don't believe that based on your experience. I can't change that. If I were jewish, and I had experiences of antisemitism, I would naturally more skeptical of people's criticism of others who are jewish.

But I hope you can appreciate that when my, and other Bernie supporters' distaste for Hillary is reduced to a charge of sexism, it drives us away. What is there to discuss at that point? A baseless charge has been leveled against each individual person by generalizing about "Berners" as a whole. We could dispute it, but wouldn't that be a waste of time if you've already made up your mind about the group as a whole?

[athena]

84. Did I say anything about you?

I pointed out that the "I would vote for Warren" argument is incredibly weak. It's not convincing because it is hypothetical and therefore completely meaningless.

It is a fact that there is a lot of sexism out there. If pointing this out drives people away, that says something about the depth of the sexism in our society. It's sad that these days, the moment we mention sexism, we are accused of "pulling the sexism card", as if sexism did not exist any more. In other words, we are not allowed to even talk about sexism, unless we're using the word "sexism" to refer to feminists' supposed discrimination against men! There is a huge amount of sexism in the Bernie campaign, which turns off a lot of women and men. If you are not bothered by that, that's your problem, not mine.

I can't imagine any other group being accused of driving people away when they try to explain the double standard they observe. But when you're a woman, you're supposed to pretend sexism does not exist, lest you drive people away!

[joshcryer]

73. Warren ambitious?

Really?

[rachacha]

81. I'm not sure if you're joking, or have a different definition of ambitious.

Warren is a force of nature, and she is doing an amazing job getting things done. I don't define getting things done as holding specific high-level political positions, though I would have supported her wholeheartedly if she had decided to run during this cycle. I think many progressive democrats would have.

[joshcryer]

93. Who tapped Warren for bankruptcy reform?

Who tapped Warren for TARP oversight and CFPB?

Until she ran for the Senate she seemed rather keen to stay on academic boards and politically be non-involved unless specifically asked.

Read her book. This is how she, in her own words, sums up her Senatorial desires, "I decided to dip my toe in the water, just to find out whether I could do even the simplest sort of campaigning. If I couldn’t, then there really wasn’t anything to decide."

[840high]

87. yep - my thought exactly.

[restorefreedom]

2. obama was criticized heavily for his presidential run.

ambition is gender neutral...its what one wants to do with the ambitious energy that makes them either a good or poor candidate.

my many concerns about hillary have everything to do with her policies and nothing to do with her gender.

my almost indescribable contempt for cheney has nothing to do with his gender either.

[niyad]

7. and yet, I hear the same misogynistic crap coming out of the mouths of dems in

this oh-so-red county where I live as come out of the mouths of the most misogynistic pukes. this is true even in some of the so-called liberal groups I attend, where I have to fight to get any attention paid to women's issues. and they get furious when they are called on it.


it does make one wonder.

[restorefreedom]

17. i have no doubt that sexism , like racism, still exists

i don't know if your red county is in a particularly religious area, but sadly i have seen overt and what i believe is unconcious sexism in some deeply religious (primarily christian) communities. it is disappointing to hear it from libs though.

[niyad]

34. this is an incredibly conservatively religiously fundamentalist area--home to new life,

focus on the family (aka fungus on the family, focus on fascism), and the religious whack jobs at the air force academy, amoung many others. (oh, and lest we forget, the home of amendment 2)

[restorefreedom]

38. oh man, that kind of explains it

although i am always intrigued by "liberal" fundamentalists...seems like a contradiction in terms.

[WhiteTara]

53. his was a special circumstance...he's a black man

and should have known his "place", but we decided that was in the WH and it has been hell on wheels for the past 7 years.

[restorefreedom]

57. no doubt. but his resume was light on governmental experience

it was played more heavily because of his race but i am hearing similar criticism of cruz, another junior senator. not as much though.

[WhiteTara]

58. Cruz is a white evangelical which is its own special circumstance

his favor. Of course his problem is that he is such a horrible person and he looks like Joe McCarthy.

[restorefreedom]

59. and he ate his own booger on national tv! nt

[WhiteTara]

60. You had to remind me!

I just finally finished my lunch too!

[restorefreedom]

61. ooops ...sorry :( it is a hard image to shake. nt

[WhiteTara]

65. You are so right! It came back in a flash

and it was disgusting

[restorefreedom]

74. yup. then again, he makes it easy to be disgusted lol. nt

[WhiteTara]

76. I think he should be given "disgusting" things

like used blood which comes from no wound wrapped in cloth.

[restorefreedom]

80. i am waiting for his band aid to fall off in the next debate lol. ewwwww nt

[djean111]

3. I admire the ambition, but I loathe the proclivity for war and fracking and the TPP,

amongst other things.

When can we (and I am a woman) be able to dislike a candidate based on just the issues, and not be pointlessly psychoanalyzed?
I would loathe and refuse to support a man who was a (PROUD) Third Way Neocon Hawk. Why should I feel differently about a woman with the same credentials? Does not make any sense.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. No more than I trust Ambitious Political Men.

“History has tried hard to teach us that we can’t have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn’t be wise.” Mark Twain

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. I don't "trust" ANY politicians.

I implicitly trust one person - my wife. Trust is earned over time. I can and will never actually know enough about any politician to absolutely trust them.

[niyad]

8. you make a most excellent point.

[NRaleighLiberal]

9. thank you. just my own personal POV.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. I cover city hall

I am even more cynical than that. Some pols, regardless of gender, require you to look up at the sky if they tell you that it is blue.



I also expect no politician to fulfill any campaign promise. And I mean not a one.

[MuseRider]

11. Ambition is not the problem.

I will be happy to vote for any woman if she is honest. My qualifications are the same for women as they are for men.

Be a real liberal, not a neo liberal. An honest to goodness, for the least among us real liberal.

Be able to get into office without depending on big corporations for your funding.

Follow the rules our government has in place, you don't get to think you are better than the rules.

Do not call people out on something you have done yourself in worse ways than who you are calling out. IOW, if you want to take guns on then you do not get to kill other people or screw with their governments and pretend to be better than anyone else. Many thousands dead are not something to run on or shove under the carpet when it suits you. Despicable behavior, makes me honestly I'll to think she might have the power of the office.

Do not be a fucking liar. I HATE liars, especially elitist liars.

[basselope]

12. Nothing wrong with ambition... lying is a different problem.

[Bonobo]

13. Are are all women inoculated against criticism because of this? nt

[RazBerryBeret]

26. THAT is my problem

with this whole discussion.... (and I'm a woman) it is harder to criticize a female, because she's a female...

[niyad]

36. oh, please, there appears, even on this board, to be absolutely NO problem

criticizing women.

[2banon]

14. Elizabeth Warren is a Woman I would get behind in a heart beat

Of course, Many of us Bernie supporters were actually Warren Supporters first. personally, I wanted to see a Warren/Sanders ticket.


Her integrity is beyond question, and she's got what it takes to stand up to TPTB and the corrupt idiots who carry their water.

[nichomachus]

15. What a nonsensical question

There are plenty of women in politics -- in the House, the Senate, governors' offices -- many of them in "red states." Just because people reject a corrupt woman with a shady background doesn't mean it's due to misogyny.

[niyad]

21. the very fact that a person could actually use that word as some sort of dog whistle

shows that the question is not nonsense. what IS nonsense is the fact that, two decades into the 21st century, in the supposedly greatest, bestest country in the whole world, that this would even come up.

please don't miss the fact that I wasn't the one who brought this up. I am simply pointing this bs out.

[Avalux]

16. Give it a rest. A woman can be every bit as corrupt as a man.

Quit playing the sex card, it's stupid and it doesn't work.

[niyad]

19. I love it. when we point out sexism, we are playing the sex card. it is sickening

when this crap comes from the pukes and reichwing fundies. it is absolutely beyond disgusting when it comes from supposedly more progressive types.

[athena]

91. Don't you know, sexism is obsolete.

Oh, I almost forgot. Sexism is still wrong when it's a woman being "sexist" against a man. But no one is allowed to talk of old-fashioned sexism any more. Otherwise we're using the "sexism card". Because it doesn't exist. We're all imagining it.

[uponit7771]

20. But not as "ambitious" that's the point, we both know that will be ignored

[Ash_F]

18. She has been largely pro war for years

Ambition can be good or bad.

[seattleite]

22. Trust corrupt political women? Hell no.

[niyad]

23. do try reading the whole article.

[jmg257]

24. Sure - as long as they are trustworthy. I treat men the same way re: trust. nt

[LadyHawkAZ]

27. Like everything else, it depends on the person. Sarah Palin is an ambitious woman

So is Carly Fiorina. I wouldn't vote for either of them.

[PowerToThePeople]

35. Palin was in favour of Iraq too.

Hmmm.

Strange, but it looks as though Fiorina was against it.

[LadyHawkAZ]

48. Broken clocks, etc.

[Hiraeth]

28. I don't trust ambition regardless gender. Depends on motivation. Evolve, People.

[Zorra]

29. The best leaders are often those who reluctantly become leaders

because they know that they are the right person in the right place and the right time to most effectively serve their people.

In my experience, most ambitious people I've had to personally deal with are egotistical narcissists solely interested in pursuing wealth, power, and fame in service of their insatiable egos, and will do most anything, often unethical things, to satisfy their ego.

And this a primary reason why our planet is so totally fucked right now.

[pinebox]

32. Who gives a shit about gender? It's about the damn issues!

Period! Full stop! I don't give a crap if you're a man, a woman, a squirrel or an alien flying Elvis.
It's about THE ISSUES.

[niyad]

42. one would think so, would one not? and yet, even amoung progressives, liberals,

etc., and on so-called progressive sites, and amoung progressive groups, we continue to hear comments about hair styles, whether one has had a face lift or botox, and what one is wearing.

yes, it should be about issues.

[highprincipleswork]

33. I'm sorry, this is defensive. First of all, that is no belly laugh. it appears contrive and far from

belly deep, for what that's worth.

More importantly, Hillary may be criticized for "ambition" by some because it's so clear that her need for this comes first. No matter what it does to others.

Even when she is being investigated by the FBI, with the State Department stepping back just so they can have second licks, that is not considered sufficiently scary to even warrant a mild reflection that maybe her nomination wouldn't be so good for the Democratic Party.

There are many other indicators that point to a kind of selfish ambition that is not considered admirable in anybody.

Please. Even though there is clear sexism in the world and it often seems completely unfair, defensiveness is not the answer.

It's not because she is a woman that many people feel the way they do about Hillary. They would feel the same if she were a man. I believe it takes a kind of growth and maturity to admit that. Blaming things like this on sexism are just a lie that tries to make up for the frustration that a different kind of woman simply isn't running for the job.

[B Calm]

37. Bernie/Warren 2016!

[jillan]

39. Oh Please!! As a feminist I beg of you to stop trying to make women sound like they should be pitied

[niyad]

43. nice try. as a feminist, I find the sexist attacks on HRC disgusting, even more so

when they come from so-called progressives who deny that they are sexist or misogynistic.

[jillan]

46. What part about gender EQUALITY do you not understand. Women are NOT weak!

[niyad]

49. what part of this article did YOU not understand? nobody said anything about

women being weak. reading comprehension is your friend.

[jwirr]

41. There is a wide difference between ambition which is the

strong desire to achieve a goal and the desire to win any way that you can.

I admire her desire to run for president. She has achieve a great deal to be proud of in her life.

What I have trouble with is that in her campaign anything goes. Ethical or not. True or not. This kind of "ambition" is not attractive regardless of gender.

[niyad]

44. one of these centuries, we might comment on the ambitious men running for office.

[jwirr]

45. There are few Rs who are pretty visible right now.

[H2O Man]

47. Interesting.

Yesterday, in a DU:GDP discussion of NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo, I stated that in all the years I have know of him, I have been uncomfortable with him, because he impresses me as "ambitious."

[niyad]

50. so, one person makes one comment on one man, and that negates the point

of this article?

[H2O Man]

71. Of course not.

[Warren DeMontague]

51. Some people want the thing TOO badly, and combined with reflexive impulses toward secrecy

They can end up sabotaging themselves.

See: Nixon, Richard Milhous

[niyad]

52. it would be helpful if people understood that this article was not solely about one

person, but about a problem that all women face, and address it accordingly.

[cherokeeprogressive]

54. Yes. In fact, we do already.

What a stupid question.

[niyad]

63. really? if that were true, the situation that precipitated this article would not

have occurred.

[cherokeeprogressive]

69. Tammy Duckworth, Kamala Harris, Loretta Sanchez... I guess you've never heard of those women.

They are but three out of what is probably thousands who don't have the name recognition Hillary Clinton does, but toil away in service to their communities, states, and country.

The fact very few people trust Hillary Clinton doesn't make any of THEM less trustworthy.

The woman who wrote the op-ed in Huffpo writes nothing but pro-Hillary stuff. Her opinion of how people feel about Hillary Clinton carries zero weight with me.

[guillaumeb]

55. Recommended, and unfortunately all too true.

Especially bad is the "knowing one's place" meme that is generally used by racists.

[niyad]

64. exactly

[Cobalt Violet]

62. I don't trust anyone who triangulates. Man or woman. Gender has nothing to do with it.

[athena]

67. So it will really be Bill in charge?

That's a very sexist argument.

It's Bill who is the triangulator. Hillary is a different person. By your logic, we shouldn't allow women to vote, since they will vote and do as their husbands do.

[hobbit709]

70. I don't trust "ambitious political" anyone.

I certainly don't trust anyone that wants it so bad they can taste it and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it.

[Vinca]

72. When will people get it re the trust issue? Gender has nothing to do with it.

I totally trust Elizabeth Warren and a whole host of other women in politics, but I don't believe Hillary is terribly trustworthy. Besides her flipfloppery, she's told stories like being under fire when she wasn't. Her untrustworthy numbers are all her own doing and has zero to do with "sexism."

[Skwmom]

75. Of course we can trust ambitious women with integrity. n/t

[WhiteTara]

77. not until

we grow penises. Or until we vote to our advantage and find parity that way.

[niyad]

78. exactly

[Bread and Circus]

83. Do you trust 'ambitious' political men? I don't.

[niyad]

88. did you read the article? about the fact that ambitious men do not arouse our

angst the way ambitious women do, in general? the word "ambitious" is almost never used as a pejorative against men in ANY field, but it certainly is against women.

[Bread and Circus]

89. Could you please directly answer my question?

[niyad]

90. why? apparently, you didn't bother reading the article.

[Bread and Circus]

92. If you don't want to, that's ok.