Shortly before Trump took the stage for his solo teleprompter recital this week (a performance watched by “the highest number in history,” he assures us this morning via Twitter, lying as usual), Hillary Clinton posted thoughts on Facebook about the way she handled a sexual harassment incident among staffers during her 2008 campaign. It’s worth a read.
To sum up, Clinton says if she had it to do over again, she’d fire the harasser. She describes the measures she took at the time and the thought processes behind them. She expresses support for the woman who came forward then and all the women who are standing up against sexual harassment today. She notes that the actions she took 10 years ago are similar to those taken by The Times in the Glenn Thrush case (i.e., consequences, not termination).
I found Clinton’s musings on the topic interesting because they were genuinely thoughtful, and also because of her long and complicated history and significance to millions of women in the US and around the world. Her post could serve as an excellent starting point for a debate about what we owe women who are harassed in the workplace, how to deal with offenders, what our goals should be as new social norms emerge, etc.
Because of who Hillary Clinton is, critiquing her actions then and now is fair game. Thoughtful analysis of these topics is welcome in comments and would be a service to readers of a major daily like The Post. This piece, published in yesterday’s Post about Clinton’s statement, ain’t that:
[Clinton] released a tepid response via Twitter the day the story broke and a more thorough one via Facebook days later. But it’s not clear whether either said enough. Does Clinton’s handling of this latest story exemplify a fatal flaw?Opinion writers Christine Emba, Ruth Marcus, and Alyssa Rosenberg discuss.
It’s a 9th grade slam book that merits display in the Heathers Hall of Shame. Some excerpts below the fold, annotated in bold font:
Christine Emba: Was it really a statement, or more of a rambling letter to herself? It came across my screen this morning, and my first instinct was to roll my eyes at the self-indulgence of it all. [Emba would be a smoking ember if there were a God of Irony with smiting powers.]
Alyssa Rosenberg: Yes, there is SO MUCH going on there.
Christine Emba: When I read it, the first thing I noticed was that so much of it was about her — excusing herself, talking about how hard the decision was for her, bringing us into her personal debates about forgiveness and second chances. There was that hoary first line: “The most important work of my life has been to support and empower women,” but very little was about the woman in question. In the entire statement, “I” appears 37 times, and “Sorry” not even once… [The lazy-ass word search “I” trope again — shades of hack reviews of President Obama’s speeches. And FTR, Clinton’s Facebook post makes it clear there was “very little about the woman in question” because that woman wishes to remain in the background and not become the center of a media circus.]
Alyssa Rosenberg: And parts of it felt so inevitable, most notably the turn to blame the media. [Note: Clinton did NOT “blame the media,” but rather cited a contemporary case as an example of how sexual harassment issues are handled today. If she got some satisfaction from bringing up a recent scandal The Times would rather we all forget, well, for fuck’s sake, can anyone blame her?]
Christine Emba: The media has long been her scapegoat, and not without reason. [Understatement of the goddamned millennium!] But in this case, it was frustrating to see. because ultimately, this wasn’t about whether the media did something wrong — which they didn’t! — it was about what Hillary did (or, as it were, didn’t). And for all her discussion of her feelings and thought processes, she never fully owned up to it. Still!
Ruth Marcus: More important, reading the statement, I felt like: Haven’t I watched this movie before? The delay in responding — why oh why can’t she ever get it right the first time. The “in retrospect, I would have handled it differently” — definitely having some PTSD flashbacks to e-mails there.
Christine Emba: Completely true.
Alyssa Rosenberg: Right, Ruth! I’m burned out, and I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere. [? actual size]
Ruth Marcus: For the record: Trump is terrible. He has done some terrible things where women are involved. I try to call him out all the time although, confession, some stuff slips through the cracks — e.g., the porn star thing I haven’t gotten around to writing about. But I write about Hillary and my frustrations with her — going back to the campaign — not because I hate her but because — like Alyssa before the Big Breakup — I like her so much and I am so disappointed by her seeming inability to change some drawbacks in the way she approaches things.
Alyssa Rosenberg: I hate that you even have to issue that disclaimer about Trump, Ruth! [? again, actual size]
Christine Emba: Yes. We can all agree on Trump’s manifold flaws, to the point that they become less worth discussing. Because there’s nothing to argue! Truly nothing new there. [This right here is why Trump is president, you criminally irresponsible fucking numpties!]
Christine Emba: But with Hillary, there is a sense of some sort of promise being thwarted. Although I personally wonder if that promise was ever truly there.
Alyssa Rosenberg: Well, and that’s kind of the big question, isn’t it?
Ruth Marcus: Everything now is seen through the lens of whether it’s good or bad for the Resistance. That’s not the way I think about things, and if I started to I would quit. I think it’s really important for writers, even opinion writers, to call out the people they agree with, maybe even especially.
Christine Emba: Holding those people accountable could make them better. ::cough:: HILLARY ::cough:: [How’d that work out in 2016, you worthless fucking hacks? Choke, don’t cough!]
If you suspect I’m cherry-picking to make The Posties’ conversation look like vapid, self-referential drivel from privileged, conceited twits, I invite you to read the whole thing. It’s all like that. And this trio of carping nitwits are among the least offensive crafters of our Beltway media narrative — much more often, it’s created by predatory, dickhead men. It’s infuriating.
At various times, I’ve found something to admire in things written by each of these women. But put all three in a room and drop the name “Hillary Clinton,” and they display all the judgment and insight of a pack of meth-addled spider monkeys. If this phenomenon were localized to Clinton, okay, maybe we can just take one fascist buffoon in the White House for the team and hope that all will be well in the future.
Sadly, I don’t think we’ll find it works that way.
Amir Khalid
When I first saw this question, I wondered, “Fatal to what?”
Bobby Thomson
I’m old enough to remember when RNC finance chair Steve Wynn was exposed as a serial rapist.
KickBoxBanana
Some of you people amaze me. Rome is burning and you people still find time to muse about whether Hillary did enough. Whether she is pure and perfect enough.
Bobby Thomson
@Amir Khalid: fatal flaw is a horrible cliche. Lazy writing from a lazy writer.
bluefish
Rome is most definitely burning.
schrodingers_cat
Mainstream media otherwise known as R enablers needs to die, especially opinion columnists of the centrist persuasion.
low-tech cyclist
@Amir Khalid:
It’s good news for Zombie John McCain, who will rise from the grave to use this scandal to defeat Hillary in 2020.
cosima
Why do women in power so often choose to shit all over other women?! I’m not talking about HIllary there, I’m talking about those women who were given the opportunity to effect positive change through meaningful discussion about an issue that resonates with nearly every grown woman EVER. How many women have made it to adulthood (or even f*cking adolescence) without being harassed, marginalised, abused, etc?
We are fighting a monstrous power structure, in the government, workplace, EVERYWHERE, that marginalises women at best, and abuses them at worst, including killing them, and these witches are picking apart Hillary Clinton, who has done so much to elevate women.
Please let these women be rightfully shat upon by millions upon millions of twitter users & letter-writers.
JMG
There really is a class of women journalists who have reached the top of their profession who seem to need to desperately reassure themselves they are better people than Hillary Clinton. If it wasn’t so infuriating, it’d be very very sad. Ruth Marcus is a terrible columnist BTW.
Barbara
@cosima: Misogyny often shows up as a form of self-loathing in the propensity to judge other women far more harshly than men. The number of journalists who do not have any apparent insight into this phenomenon is staggering. At this point, the question is: how is what Hillary Clinton did 10 years ago in any way relevant to the extent that it is now receiving a lot more press than some much more recent incidents by people who have ongoing engagement in their organization? The disproportionality of the reaction is another way of saying that they fully embody society’s double standard when it comes to judging women, as in, women are presumed to be incompetent unless they are perfect, and men have to fail over and over again before anybody finally decides that they have failed. I saw these WaPo stories and I ignored them, just as I am ignoring every news story about Hillary Clinton.
Rommie
Washington insiders, so desperate to prove their CDS was correct all along, and not about them, cling to any evidence shown like a floaty ring in a hurricane. YOU SEE, YOU SEE!
Shaking my damn head…
japa21
@KickBoxBanana: With all due respect. STFU.
ETA: This post is not about Clinton, nor does anybody here think she is perfect. It is about the media, which, BTW, is helping to make sure Rome keeps on burning.
Juice Box
@cosima: It’s such a big problem, but it’s also nuanced and complex and instead of being treated as that complex problem, it’s being used as a blunt club to hammer anyone who can be perceived as failing to hew exactly to one specific set of views.
I would like to see some people go after a certain independent senator’s rape fantasy porn, though…..
Ridnik Chrome
@JMG:
Isn’t she the same one who wrote that even-the-liberal-New-Republic hit piece about the Clintons’ proposed health care plan back in 1994?
McMullen
Women who don’t support other women are the reason women have trouble climbing the ladder. If she’s being dragged down by her fellows, the chances for success are slim.
I am SO over criticism of Hillary in general. Has she been the most maligned woman in history?
schrodingers_cat
@Ridnik Chrome: No, I think it was Betsy something starting with an M.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@cosima:
Do you really think the 1% mentality is linked to the male chromosome?
Mnemosyne
It was so obvious that Hillary was taking steps to protect the former staffer’s identity that I saw red when they whined that the staffer didn’t come forward.
And we see yet another example of why the Hillary-hating left are not our friends. The finance chair of the RNC was exposed as an actual fucking rapist but they want to ignore that so they can whine that Hillary is not perfect.
WaterGirl
From my post on last night’s thread:
Oh my god, it reads like a bunch of snotty mean girls gossiping in high school. I have pasted the whole thing (sue me!) because I don’t want to give them anymore clicks in case someone wants to read this crap. These 3 give women a bad name.
MomSense
I’m old enough to remember when the trump campaign hired Roger Ailes after he was forced out of Fox after hundreds of sexual harassment incidents.
NorthLeft12
I can see the bar for Sec. Clinton is set high enough that their expectations were that she had to get it absolutely perfect the first time. Hilary gets absolutely no opportunity to reflect on and consider an action or decision.
And the whole critique about the post being about herself is kind of confusing to me. I can’t read the post here at work, but I thought Sec. Clinton was using the post to describe her thought process as to why she took the action that she did, right? Not necessarily to defend herself [from what I am reading on BJ] but to reflect and eventually agree that she could have and should have done better. By not focusing on the victim, that means [to me at least] that she is not disputing or minimizing the victim’s story or pain.
Lastly, this…..
from Ms. Emba just about covers the entire media performance regarding Deadbeat Donald since forever. Thanks MSM.
tobie
@Ridnik Chrome: Ruth Marcus sums up the underlying current of all her work when she says,
I don’t know if she wrote about healthcare in 1994. I do know she loves to be the contrarian who, just when you expect a Dem to support a person or policy, says the exact opposite. She was ruthless in attacking Obama for pitching a “hissy fit” (her words) when his administration complained about Fox News coverage. And she literally outed a 16-year-old girl in Kansas who tweeted something about Sam Brownback and made the girl the poster child for incivility in political discourse. A friggin high school girl! Not Mitch McConnell! Not Newt Gingrich! Then and there I knew something wasn’t right in the head with Marcus.
Bobby Thomson
@JMG: Marcus has a terrible hit-miss ratio.
Brachiator
This is weak sauce. I guess I will have to read all this stuff.
I don’t think that Hillary Clinton is an angel or a devil. But I am tired to my fucking bones of this bullshit that says let’s look at every bad thing that was done in the last 50 years and see if we can find a situation in which,using perfect triple hindsight, we can blame Hillary Clinton for something.
There is something deeply repugnant about this insistence that Clinton must be forced to apologize for everything she has ever done while others, typically men, are never held responsible for the shit they have done, or the crimes they are currently committing.
cosima
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Not at all. This is a post about women shitting on women, though. Personally, my work & life experience is that women are WORSE than men when they get to positions of power in regard to supporting and mentoring the women below them, or supporting their female peers. Its as though they feel that their position (rare as hen’s teeth to make it to a certain level) is threatened more by their female peers than their male peers.
I worked for a long time in a large corporation, male-dominated, and have two daughters. I have a LOT of experience, first- and second-hand, in how horrible women can be to other women.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@McMullen:
Ya’, Hillary wasn’t the best politician in the world, but Christ on a pogo the micro examination of her is really over the top. The press wasn’t obsessing over Kerry, Romney and Gore a year after they lost their elections like this. Something else is going on to drive this Hillary obsession, maybe all these reporters have the hots for her or something equally stupid.
NorthLeft12
@Bobby Thomson: I am also cynical enough to know that Mr. Wynn will not be charged for any of those “alleged” rapes.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne: The media is addicted to Both sides do it.
Ridnik Chrome
@schrodingers_cat: It was Betsy McCaughey. My bad.
Nicole
Thanks so much for this, Betty. The Slot (Jezebel) did a hit piece on it, too, and reading not just the article, but also the comments made me want to break things. Their take was Clinton tried to “bury” it during Trump’s SOTU.
I fucking can’t even with these people. And it influences all of us, including people who should know better. A very smart, very feminist friend of mine (a woman) jumped on the, #metoo goes too far, look at Garrison Keillor bullshit, and no matter how many times I patiently said, “No one gets immediately fired for accidentally touching a woman’s back. There’s more to the story,” she kept arguing back with points I think she took directly from that dumb NYTimes op-ed on the end of flirting in the workplace. She has perfectly good critical thinking skills; the media is just that pervasive with the endless misogyny.
I remember being a young whippersnapper in my 20s and listening to the media whine about how INAPPROPRIATE it was for Clinton to have made the speech she did at the UN (How dare she screw up her husband’s job by calling out China for human rights’ abuses!) and not one of the pearl-clutchers I read or heard discussed the merits of what she actually said. Probably because it’s hard to argue against “women’s rights are human rights” openly, because then people recognize what the person is trying to keep secret, namely that that person is a mean and bigoted asshole. Much like Molly Ivins talking about the water fountain, I had my Road to Damascus moment of “If they’ll lie to me about that, what else are they lying to me about?” And here I am, settling into middle age, and nothing has changed where the media and Clinton are concerned. UGH. I hate everything today. Except Hillary. I’m still with her.
Roger Moore
@cosima:
Women wind up trashing each other because that’s what they’ve been taught to do. A huge part of the way the Patriarchy has succeeded as long as it has is by making solidarity as hard as possible. Men in position of power trash women, and to the extent they promote any women, they choose ones who follow their lead. Inculcating those values is how an unjust system perpetuates itself.
SiubhanDuinne
Among your finest-ever descriptive lines, Betty (although we have a wealth of them to choose from!)
cosima
@Barbara: Yes, this x1000. Are there only so many seats at the table available to women — as dictated by men — so they have to protect their seats via being vile to other women and keeping them down? Have they fully assimilated the position — espoused by men — that to praise another woman is to be a dirty horrible feminist? There’s nothing that can be done to fix the catty writers in this piece, but perhaps some will have daughters and suddenly find they’ve gotten it all wrong all this time. It’s my job to raise daughters who don’t buy into that shite, it will have to be a generational shift.
OzarkHillbilly
@cosima:
My wife could write a book about it.
Ridnik Chrome
@McMullen:
Definitely the most in US politics in the past fifty years. But she’s also been the most successful (yes, even taking 2016 into account). The first thing is related to the second.
JMG
I think there’s institutional selection at work here. These women would not have risen in their male-dominated places of employment if they weren’t like this.
cosima
@Roger Moore: Yes. And will require a generational shift. There’s a lot brewing right now that is attempting to right those wrongs, but it’s hard work undoing the damage wrought over thousands of years of patriarchy.
sherparick1
@Bobby Thomson: News Flash Ruth, Alyssa, and Christine! Hillary Clinton is a human being with a fair share of the flaws to which that species is prone. It should be noted that in this particular case the following happen.
1. The woman who reported the incident was believed.
2. The complainant was voluntarily reassigned so she did not have to work with the jerk.
3. The man who committed the misconduct was considered for removal, and she made the decision to suspend him without pay and send him to counseling. For a first offense, this is pretty usual. This was a political campaign, so perhaps she should have just fired him, but its not as if she tolerated it and did nothing (compare this to the freaking state of Michigan and U.S. Gymnastics and close to 20 years of complaints about Larry Nasser for committing criminal sexual assault or Hollywood’s celebration of Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Harvey Weinstein as they openly preyed on young women and girls.
OzarkHillbilly
Doug Mataconis on Outside the Beltway’s 15th birthday:
germy
I thought the Derangement reached its fever pitch when Jeanine Pirro roamed the woods near Hillary’s house.
I’m really confused what would have happened if Pirro had caught Clinton out on a hike. What exactly was the plan?
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Betsy McCaughey, probably.
trollhattan
It’s working, it’s fvcking working–Trump has worn us (in this case “us” being those trained and paid to keep watch and report to the rest of us) out with his shenanigans and there’s no reason to report on them anymore because “everybody knows” he’s awful, amirite?
Well played, Mr president and Republicans, you’ve done it!
Baud
Thanks for highlighting this, Betty. It’s disgusting.
And my Hillary Clinton litmus test continues to be infallible.
cosima
@OzarkHillbilly: And I’d read it if someone wrote about it. Maybe if women understood the driver(s) behind their behaviour they’d stop, or at least give some consideration to stopping.
The amazing thing is that it starts so young. Raising two girls I’ve been amazed at how soon they begin to try to tear other girls down. That, at least, has had many books written about it (and movies made about it).
Our Little Cosima is in secondary now, and she is in a band with a girl who is the ‘leader’ of the drummers (pipe band drumming). This girl regularly ‘forgets’ to tell Little C about practices, gives her the wrong music to practice, and then tells her that she’s not good enough to perform. That girl is 14, Little C is 12. And that sort of thing has been going on for years already…………….. The change has got to start at home — I’ve raised one girl to be an amazing supporter of women and women’s rights, and working on raising another. Change starts here.
low-tech cyclist
When David Broder died, Ruth Marcus inherited his mantle as the leading Bothsidesist at the WaPo, without relinquishing her previous role as #1 Civility Scold. IOW, one could count on Marcus to be both stupid and boring at the same time. So I haven’t read her stuff very much in recent years.
But this crap is just awful. She needs to be kicked off of the WaPo op-ed page, and off of any other media perches she happens to occupy.
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
No. This is something else.
It’s a special game of “let’s prove that Hillary is bad, bad, bad, worst person ever.”
J R in WV
Betty:
When you say “It’s a 9th grade slam book that merits display in the Heathers Hall of Shame” – don’t you mean to say Hater’s Hall of Shame???
Easy typo.
msdc
Oh, for Christ’s sake. Ruth Marcus:
Hillary Clinton no longer holds public office and never will again. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Maybe Ruth Marcus could get around to writing about his lies, scandals, and crimes if she weren’t so busy stomping on Hillary Clinton.
trollhattan
@cosima:
With a newly minted 16YO I can attest it gets worse before it gets better. There may be some hard-wiring preventing them from “liking” person A and person B simultaneously due to everybody knowing A and B don’t get along, i.e., choose or be banished. This becomes orders of magnitude more complex as the headcount reaches, say, R.
Anxiously awaiting matriculation at some university more than three hours’ drive distant.
aimai
@cosima: well–that’s it right there. Because the only reason they were permitted to write the piece is that as women they are forced to cover women’s issues. So they detest HRC and the women behind #MeToo at the same time that they owe their own prominence and ability to have any kind of platform to other women who took this shit and took it and took it and didn’t know what to do, or couldn’t be heard, or were heard and still left the field. In psychological terms these women simply can’t handle the cognitive dissonance of being forced to take on the topic of sexual abuse and failures of power within the context of covering HRC and because they are women. They are humiliated and empowered in the same moment and competing to please their bosses with the hottest take that will shift blame from bosses generally to HRC since their (male) bosses already hate her. In australia its called ‘tall poppy” syndrome, the tendency of people to cut the heads off the tallest poppy in competition with it. And in social work it is sometimes called “crab bucket politics” in which the crab which is trying to crawl out (HRC) to freedom is grabbed and pulled back by the others. ITs negative solidarity.
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
You need to add this to your playlist. Makes a hellova double bill with “Mean Girls.”
caroline
@cosima:
There can only be one.
Seriously, though, there are a lot of contributors to the toxic culture you’re describing. Women are held to higher standards of dress, behavior and technical skill than their male colleagues. Women who are managers are also held more accountable for the behavior of their direct reports than men. Even in fairly progressive work places, women in charge often get treated more like the department mom than a manager. And because this is a work culture thing, both men and women buy into the idea that this is how things work at the office. So, in addition to the competition aspect of it, women expect more from their female subordinates than their male ones and they know that they will be judged more harshly than their male colleagues if their female subordinates don’t pass muster. It’s a vicious and intricate cycle.
cosima
@J R in WV: Heathers are girls who are awful to each other. From a movie named ‘Heathers’ about teenage girls who are awful.’ There are numerous movies & books about teenage girls being awful to each other, and then, crickets… As though those awful teenage girls who are horrible to other girls magically turn 18 and begin to treat other girls/women well. Ha! nope.
sherparick1
Meanwhile, in real world involving real people, there is this sad story.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/man-dies-lottery-win-1-million-age-52-three-weeks-after-donald-savastano-a8185566.html
I don’t know what Mr. Savastano’s politics were or what he watched, but he fell into the demographic (white, male, over 40, non-college graduate, blue collar trade) that fell under the spell of talk radio and Fox News and still had no health insurance, meaning that the was not signing up on the exchanges. Was it because of the intense anti-ACA propaganda from the right wing media and politicians influenced him? Well, he won a million dollars so decided he could afford to pay for doctor and found out he he had Stage IV cancer. Lucky man. At least able to leave something behind to his family.
SiubhanDuinne
@J R in WV:
Not a typo. Betty was referring to the Winona Ryder movie Heathers from the 1980s, about a high school clique of mean girls. In the decades since, “Heathers” has become a generic term for females shitting on other females. Perfect reference.
Jeffro
Meanwhile…it all seems to be breaking through to some people (even the usually obnoxious Bret Stephens):
What If Clinton Had Done All This?
I know, right? It’s almost like people are realizing this is not only NOT. NORMAL., it’s NOT EVEN CLOSE.
Here’s wrap-up:
(yes of course he can go fuck himself for the ‘prequel’ comment…BUT STILL!)
Every time some RWNJ, independent, “libertarian”, or low-info friend or relative of yours wants to talk about Hillary…be sure to ‘flip the script’ on them. Not to point out things Trumpov is doing, but to ask them how they’d feel if Hillz was doing all of this.
bemused
@cosima:
True but up to parents to put kibosh on mean girl shit when they’re young. We’ve all worked with mean women who seem to spend more time trying to pit people against each other, causing trouble, backbiting than they spend at doing their jobs. Pretty pathetic when supposedly adult women even into their 60’s still haven’t grown out of that. One mean woman in your workplace is bad enough but get two or more who partner up to play games is really crappy. I’ve noticed that eventually it usually doesn’t end well for them if their bosses are on to them and get fed up.
Roger Moore
@sherparick1:
I think this is the key takeaway. Demanding perfection is unreasonable and ultimately unnecessary. Serial harassers don’t survive for decades because they got let off easy the first time they were caught. They survive for decades because their offenses are ignored, covered up, or excused. As long as accusations of harassment are taken seriously, investigated seriously, and recorded so a harasser doesn’t get let off with an indefinite number of “first” offenses, serial harassers will get found out quickly, even if they aren’t destroyed for their first offense.
scav
@cosima: Knocking other women (or X) is an easy ploy for demonstrating that you’re not one of them, those stereotyped, threatening, charicatured others. You’re one of the safe ones, playing for ”the” team, on the inside, standing out as an individual against the amorphous blob (those others), worthy of being remembered and advanced. Consciously or subconsciously adopted, it works for personal advancement and with peers as well as superiors (also useful in for positioning for getting dates).
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator: I think it is Both Sides Do It because on one hand we have trump, a man who is found to be deeply embedded in criminal conspiracies every time anyone scratches at the surface of anything he has ever involved himself in, on the other hand we have the greatest evilest most geniusest monster in the history of womankind.
trump has been credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults, ogled half naked teenage girls, engaged in multiple extramarital affairs, and bragged on tape of sexually assaulting women. Hillary once had an aide accused of inappropriate behavior, suspended him without pay, ordered counseling for him, but didn’t fire the guy. Oh, and her husband once got a blow job in the oval office from an intern. See? Both sides.
Actually, it’s a habit. People have been bashing Hillary for over 25 years and they just.can’t.stop. Even if she is politically irrelevant, they just.can’t.stop. They’re addicted to it.
cosima
@aimai: That’s a fascinating analysis. And also depressing……….. I’ll have to discuss the tall poppy/crab theories with Little C. She’d find it fascinating as well (she thinks with a scientific brain — no time for illogical emotional stuff).
@trollhattan: Yes, made it through our oldest daughter’s teen years by the skin of our teeth — she went to a private school, so it was epically horrible. We were overseas, so attending an local school wasn’t an option for her. Little C handles it better than our oldest did. So do I. But we are definitely not at a point, generationally, where girls are being raised to empower other girls — Little C is still the exception, not the rule, in her support of her fellow females.
trollhattan
Speaking of mean girls, this one seems to have an advanced degree.
rikyrah
The thing about this story that irks me to no end …
They could have done, what, 100 fewer email stories in 2016 and did some on this.
That they waited until AFTER the election to do this story?
PHUCK THEM and the horse they rode in on.
laura
@OzarkHillbilly: I call it “Queen of the High School Girl’s Bathroom.”
And have been experiencing same all my damn life. So. Done. With. It.
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
Ah! OK, then. Not a movie buff, surely not a teen sociopath movie buff. Thanks for the update.
The Moar You Know
@cosima: I work for a woman-owned business, one that operates in an overwhelming male-dominated industry. It’s a great place to work – unless you’re a woman. Then it’s like fucking Game of Thrones in here. Fortunately we don’t have a lot of female employees. I feel bad for the few we have.
cosima
@The Moar You Know: That made me laugh — thanks, I need that, this issue is close for me, and depressing.
Betty Cracker
@aimai: We have a “Crab Bucket Politics” tag here on the blog. I should have used it because, as you pointed out, it applies.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
It really is quite handy, and a genuine time-saver when it comes to reading about politics. Nothing says “not serious” to me like gratuitous Hillary-bashing.
J R in WV
@cosima:
@SiubhanDuinne:
@trollhattan:
Thanks to all~! Seriously! Educamated well on Heather…
Wild Cat
@KickBoxBanana: My anus is burning. Can you lend me the Preparation H you’re freebasing now?
tobie
If this Post dialogue gets your goat, send them a letter at [email protected]. I sent them the following not because I think they’ll print it but because I think papers need to get an avalanche of letters when they print a story or dialogue as irresponsible as this one.
Here’s my letter:
Dear Editors,
Rarely have I read a dialogue more self-indulgent, more insipid, and more superficial than the one between Christine Emba, Ruth Marcus, and Alyssa Rosenberg printed in the Washington Post on January 31st. The three opinion writers seems to be utterly oblivious to their extraordinary privilege—a privilege that enables them to evaluate politics based on style points rather than substance. Ms. Emba’s comment, “We can all agree on Trump’s manifold flaws, to the point that they become less worth discussing. Because there’s nothing to argue! Truly nothing new there,” is telling in this regard, as is Ms. Marcus’ quip about “having some PTSD flashbacks.” Anyone who has suffered PTSD or had to deal with the consequences of the policies of this administration would not, indeed could not, be so glib.
I, like many feminists, believe Hillary Clinton handled the Burns Strider case with the consummate professionalism she has demonstrated throughout her career. She took immediate steps to protect the accuser and punish the accused while respecting due process. In 2008, to believe a woman who reported an incident was already very forward looking. To dock a man’s pay and require that he seek counseling for a first-time offense was unheard of.
It is a pity that the three opinion writers did not use the occasion of a public dialogue to discuss how sexual harassment accusations can be handled in the workplace. To do this, however, they would have had to have a serious interest in policy. Their dialogue shows they would rather use the occasion to discuss their disappointment that a female politician was not impeccable in her thoughts and conduct. If this is their standard, they should turn to theology. Human actions are always subject to the question, “Could things have been done otherwise?”
Citizen Alan
@cosima:
Ruth Marcus has a daughter. She mentioned it in that editorial referred to above in which she publicly flamed a teenage girl for tweeting something mean about Sam Brownback, saying that she raised her own daughter better than that and her daughter would never act that way. I assume she means that she trained her daughter to act the way she would around a republican man, groveling at his feet like a cringing beaten dog. Vile disgusting woman and a disgrace to the Washington Post.
Mnemosyne
@cosima:
I think I may be able to see a spot where you could use your Mom Powers to thwart the brat. You may be able to start calling Brat’s mom and say, I just wanted to double-check the rehearsal time with you because I need to pick LC up afterwards (or whatever). Put the Brat in the position of either lying to her mom, too, or giving you the correct time.
And you might be able to do a similar thing with the music. LC doesn’t remember what Brat asked her to practice — can you let me know?
Basically, make it clear to Brat that you will double-check everything she tells LC until she knocks it off. But I don’t know if this is practical.
Citizen Alan
@msdc:
I don’t believe for one second that Ruth Marcus voted for Hillary Clinton. I literally don’t believe it. I think she finds sexual pleasure in the fact that Hillary came so close to being the first woman president and lost out to a garbage person like Trump. She is a Democrat only to the extent she needs to be in order to constantly demand that Democrats surrender to Republicans on every issue.
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is not remotely “both sides.” There is much more to unpack here.
Obviously, a lot of people who bring this stuff up reflexively want to defend Trump or deny that what he did was even important or relevant, while going on to bash Hillary. And some Hillary defenders want to bring this stuff up, or wallow in it, to somehow defend Clinton or to paint her as the forever aggrieved victim.
But the greatest single difference between the examples you cite is that Trump is an active agent, who does bad things to people, while Clinton is an insufficiently pure enabler. Big difference. And one of the biggest reasons that her opponents bring stuff like this up is to try to prove that she is a hypocrite who does not actually support other women.
It’s like someone saying, “Bob Jenkins raped five women and three boys. But over across town, Mary Willis didn’t shoot her cousin Andy when he asked Norma for a kiss. Damn, that Mary is just wicked.” This kind of shit is not “both sides.”
Again, more is at work. It used to be that people hated Bill Clinton. Thought he was “slick” (and he probably was). Then it became hating Bill and Hillary. And part of this was because she was not simply a supportive political wife, but one of the first notable political wives who had political ambitions independent of her husband. This was, and is, intolerable to many people.
And because she had the audacity to exercise those ambitions, and to run for president, her opponents have a deep need to try to keep attacking her, for as long as she lives. And of course, she is an easy focus of hatred for those who want to keep kicking the Democratic Party.
But also note that people attack Hillary even more than they attack Obama who was, you know, actually president. And the attacks on Hillary always have a personal edge, they always seek to demonstrate her unworthiness and to prove that she failed to do something, she failed women, she failed America
Meanwhile, whatever Trump’s faults were or whatever the man in the Hillary camp actually did, is dropped, forgotten about, not worth mentioning. The only thing left is Hillary, standing alone, having once again been shown to be somehow wrong, bad, unworthy.
It ain’t both sides. But it is bullshit.
James E. Powell
@cosima:
I don’t know about shitting on other women, generally, but I do know that if you are a professional pundit, shitting on Hillary Clinton will get you applause from the right-wingers (who will still hate you), cheers from the perpetually indignant leftists, and knowing nods from most of the supposed liberals.
Among Beltway Courtiers and Villagers in good standing hating on Hillary is required from membership, all the best people do it.
efgoldman
My kid knows Allyssa fairly well (I’ve never met her); they’ve become casual friends. Frankly, we wouldn’t have expected her to spend an hour in a room with Marcus, without running away screaming. Altho the kid says she was always a bit of a contrarian
TenguPhule
I look forward to the upcoming evisceration of Gillibrand in every election going forward for being worse then Ted Bundy under the media’s *Clinton Rules* of imposing 2018 standards on any and all prior behavior. Because guilt is presumed upon accusation for all Democrats in office. //
tobie
@James E. Powell: The other person the Beltway media loves to hate is Nancy Pelosi. Democratic women are intolerable for them. Nikki Haley on the other hand is just peachy-keen. I don’t get this.
gvg
Personally I think the Hillary bashing Hillary has endured over the last 30+ years of my life amount to the most intense sexual harassment I can imagine. It reminds me of the army of trolls that go after women who speak out about anything online. And that reminds me, in a lot of ways Hillary has been the whistleblower. Weren’t there some fairly recent stories that some women Congresswomen admitted they had been harassed by colleagues? I’ll be Hillary could tell some metoo stories that would shock everyone.
I recall realizing that the 90’s attacks on her irritated me because they could have attacked my mom with those words. I also noticed how petty and ingrained some of the Hillary hate was even from supposedly liberal men, it was important for them to dis her “cankles” looks as if that was relevant to if she was right.
I actually haven’t had many encounters with mean girls since Jr. High myself. Lucky I guess. I can see when some people haven’t got a clue though.
Barbara
@cosima: There are women who feel intensely threatened by the success of other women because they either honestly believe there is a zero sum game at work that allows only so many women to be promoted or because their own position depends on them being the first or only woman in a position, and not, for instance, intrinsic merit. The latter is what I call impostor syndrome — that you have doubts about whether you actually deserve a promotion based on your merit. I ran into such a woman early in my career and it changed me forever in how I interact with other women. I am a lot more aware of this very pernicious phenomenon, and fortunately, have worked with and for other women who are too.
gene108
This is the quote that most annoys me in the whole piece. Yes, Trump is terrible, but why do I need to focus on him all the time, with my powerful media platform?
I mean Hillary Clinton did a thing 10 years ago, which was not perfect, but was not terrible either, so let me correct her, in hindsight about what she should have done, and make it the news of the day.
Her priorities are way, way out of whack.
Someone needs to smack her with a clue-by-four.
Edit: She prioritizes her critiques of Hillary and Trump, as if she was President and Trump’s just a failed real estate guy, with a reality T.V. show.
matt
@gene108: The clue by four is to cancel your subscription
Tenar Arha
@efgoldman: This makes me sad and nostalgic for the Horde. Nothing stands still….
I expect nothing at all but agita from Marcus, I’m not familiar with Emba, but I’ve seriously lost respect for Rosenberg with her participation in this conversation. She did herself a major disservice because with all there is to for me to read, with this one moment she managed to damage her byline for me. (The news is infuriating enough, I’m really trying not to hate-read anyone for my daily doses of opinion or criticism anymore; it makes throwing my phones all too plausible).
Barbara
@Roger Moore: In addition, there is research on the effect of publicly announcing that henceforth, people will be held to a higher standard for conduct as actually, you know, having that effect. So knowing that harassing behavior will not be tolerated when it is found to have occurred will, surprise surprise, actually deter a lot of people from engaging in it. Not everyone, of course, but many. What is so pernicious about some work cultures is that harassing behavior is not only overlooked or ignored, but in some cases, actually rewarded (not overtly, mind you, but in an informal way). If it not only is not rewarded but punished, people will find that most men won’t risk getting fired because harassment is not about the heart wanting what the heart wants. It’s about power and how to get it. If it doesn’t make someone powerful, they won’t do it.
kindness
While I subscribe to the digital WaPo (they beat the NYT like a pinata), there are those over there that still have substantial Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Ruth is a prime culprit. People say she is a moderate but I don’t see that where Democratic candidates/policies are being discussed. She is a Republican apologist on the mold of Susan Collins.
cosima
@tobie: That is an excellent letter. I’d add that they had/have a responsibility (!) to use their platforms to educate & effect positive change, and they did neither. Ten years from now someone will look back on that particular piece and note that those women were clearly part of the problem, not the solution — something for them to think about, putting themselves in HC’s shoes.
Cheryl Rofer
Barbara
@kindness: I have no qualms with Marcus about one out of every 100 articles she writes. The percentage is low enough that I don’t usually read her. She had a recent one focused purely on Trump that was spot on.
BruceFromOhio
@Nicole:
THIS x 16 jillion.
cosima
@Mnemosyne: If only… the best that I could do was tell LC that if she wants to quit (she does) that she has to tell the teacher that oversees the pipe band what her reasons are. Because — to go along with the theme of this thread — LC may leave, but the problem remains, and it will be other girls who are bullied &/or marginalised by this girl. I’d hoped that LC talking to the teacher would bring about some change, that the teacher would put some rules in place, standards of behaviour, but that hasn’t happened. So, LC is looking at other bands. Unsurprisingly, one of those bands has horrible catty girls, but perfect drumming instructors/style/etc., and the other has wonderful girls, but difficult drumming instructor/style/etc. One might think (as the second instructor does) that drumming is drumming, but no, styles vary. So, I’m hoping LC will decide to go with the difficult drumming + nice peers.
Sab
@sherparick1: Thanks for this.
In my distant youth I had my own career and then I married a guy who had a couple of retail stores. He fell into a paralyzing depression, and to keep him from bankruptcy I jumped out of my career and in to manage his stores, which I had no experience. A big part of it was managing twentyish salesclerks.
Interestingly they were pretty much team players, and not the backstabbing women I had met in my professional life. We occassionally hired young men. One guy my husband hired became a problem. He absolutely sucked at sales, and one of my best salesgirls said he had said such inappropriate things to her that she felt uncomfortable with working with him.
I wimped out completely. I absolutely believed her. I changed his hours so they didn’t overlap.My other salespeople didn’t have a problem with him. I always felt he didn’t get due process, but she was really uncomfortable working with him. On the other hand, he really sucked at his job.
Tiny companies don’t have the resources to deal with such issues in any way that improves the situation. He might have benefited from a sensible talking to, but my impression was he had rocks in his head, and I didn’t want them to be forced to confront each other.
Story from an incompetent small business owner. I feel better that Hillary, much more competent than me, made a similar decision, and sort of has regrets.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
I suspect that a lot of women feel threatened by the success of other women for the same reasons that many men feel threatened by the success of other men. But some women seem to worry about it more.
Shit, I know a lot of people, a lot of men, some women, whose promotions had nothing to do with merit. A lot of it was “White Person Syndrome,” promoting someone because they were the right race. Others worked family or social connections. They belonged to the right club, the right lodge, the right union, etc.
Some people made the most of the opportunity and tried to work hard in the position. Others simply saw it as an opportunity to jump to the next level. I worked with one particularly slimy guy who worked his USC fraternity connections hard and got a special fellowship within my company. He also pressured a co-worker into doing a lot of the work that he was supposed to do himself. His biggest problem was that he not only was an imposter, he was incompetent, and when everything came crashing down, a lot of managers who had previously supported him were made to look like fools and had their own careers damaged.
stinger
I don’t understand the source or nature or purpose of this article. The individuals involved claim to be “writers”, but it reads like a transcription of a real-time conversation. The point of writing is that the writer can be deliberative, can pause and rethink and perhaps rephrase. This article seems like three teenagers gossiping about a fourth one. Was it edited after it was created? Did someone actually think that the mutual back-patting and cough-Hillary-cough business comes across as the considered output of professional writers, or even of mature adults?
I came of age during Vietnam and Watergate reporting, and the state of journalism nowadays is shameful in comparison. Every time a front pager or a valued commenter promotes the Post or the FYNYT, and I think perhaps I should subscribe, this kind of story comes along and I know I’m better off without them.
Nicole
@tobie: Thanks. I sent an email. Not as eloquent as yours, but I have trouble writing eloquently when I’m spitting nails.
AnotherBruce
@WaterGirl: If women could ever be accused of a circle jerk, this is it.
MisterForkbeard
@Wild Cat: I almost feel like the “you” in that comment must have been directed at the press. Because it doesn’t make any sense at all to apply it to this blog.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: How about that? Evidence of obstruction of justice, right there in the Congressional record.
Please proceed, Rep Nunes…
martian
@sherparick1: This is what’s bizzare and yet totally predictable and maddening about the latest 2 minute hate on Hillary Clinton. In every way, her actions ten years ago were manifestly better than what’s been revealed *this year* to have been going on seemingly everywhere. The victim was believed and protected, the perpetrator was disciplined – how many media operations alone have been shown to have failed completely in this regard?
Having reflected, Hillary thinks she could have done better ten years ago, and maybe that’s true. But tell me who the hell entangled with the rapists’ row revealed this year did better? In a fair world, Clinton would be held up as an example of at least trying to get it right.
cosima
A thing of beauty: https://twitter.com/Maggie_Klaus/status/959085534193725440
I could not help myself — had to click over to make sure these witches were getting scolded.
tobie
@cosima: @Nicole: You folks are too kind. I’m still trying to figure out what I can do as a citizen activist and writing letters to the editor seems to one of many task. Good for you, Nicole, for sending in a letter! It is important for papers to know just how much they sometimes piss off their readers.
SiubhanDuinne
Deleted because I totally misread/misinterpreted. Sorry!!
HeleninEire
Hillary is asked to explain her own behavior and then they bitch about the number of fucking “I’s” in the fucking answer.
Fuck them.
martian
@tobie: Your letter is fantastic.
Brachiator
@tobie:
Great letter, and this part gets to the heart of things.
It is almost as though the three cease being journalists or pundits, and instead become instead stereotypically gossiping “mean girls,” commenting on trivial nonsense and dumping on Hillary Clinton personally instead of offering intelligent commentary about the issue of harassment.
ruemara
@cosima: You are preaching the truth. I will avoid largely female work sites because I’ve had such bad experiences with them. Like, I have fought with men at work & I consider women more insidious.
Sab
@Sab: If Steve in Atl was here he’d quote War and Peace against long posts. I thought War and Peace was a great and always entertaining novel. Long , but always worth it.
NorthLeft12
@martian: Agree with your comments 100%. I guess I forgot that this was in reference to the Pres. primary in 2008…..for some reason I was thinking it was 2016.
Sec. Clinton’s response was pretty outstanding for that time. Much better than pretty much any other organization then. I guess her only mistake is not going full Republican by admitting that in retrospect she might have done better. Never.Admit.Any.Mistakes.
Barbara
@Brachiator: These are pretty well-documented phenomenon among female professionals. I remember being stunned when I read an interview with Madeline Allbright candidly talking about “impostor syndrome.” Not that I am discounting everything you say, but I wonder why you deem it so important to marginalize this observation specifically as it relates to women’s experience in the workplace.
Sab
@ruemara: When I was a baby lawyer I was assigned a secretary who refused to work with women. I was hurt and furious at the time, but after 5 years on the job I decided she was entirely correct.
Miss Bianca
@tobie: I like it! That’s certainly better than what I would come up with, which would be profoundly profanity-laced.
Miss Bianca
@TenguPhule: That would be predictable, ironic, and infuriating all at the same time.
@gvg: I think you’re on to something with the “sexual harrassment” angle, and I plan to use that line whenever I see someone indulging in gratuitous Hillary-bashing, if only to enjoy the pulpy sound of heads exploding.
VeniceRiley
@Sab:
Eleven “I” Wow. What the Mean Girls at WaPo would do to you, were you named Hillary!
Sab
@ruemara: Men think fighting is normal, so they do it with gusto and no harm no foul. Women think fighting is unnatural, and destructive of everything they believe in. So guys are good at office politics and women are not so much.
World visions are so different that I don’t know who is right. Guys seem nuts to me but I love my guy dearly.
Sab
@VeniceRiley: But I ain’t named Hillary. Just been there, done that, and totally respect her decision. Mine would have been same as hers then. Not sure now. But I thought a lot and that’s what I came to. Might not have been my decision now. Older, wiser more political . But that’s what it was.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Honestly, I blame contrarians for a lot of the trouble we’re in now. We don’t need people to be frickin’ contrarians about white supremacy or misogyny. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is actually right.
Mnemosyne
I’ve had good experiences and bad experiences having a woman boss, and have to say that the bad experiences were usually at places where she was one of the few women in management. If more than half of the managers are women and/or POC, it’s usually been a pretty comfortable place to work. My best boss at UCLA Medical Center was an Asian-American woman, and her two subordinates were a Hispanic man and a Filipino woman (Filipina? It felt weird to use the word by itself).
Juice Box
@Sab: I was an engineer and I noticed the same thing. Women seem to be better team players, but not so great at resolving things when conflict arises; conflicts are quieter, but simmer along for years. Men let their egos get in the way of the team more frequently, but are better at shaking off conflict and moving on afterwards; their conflicts are louder, but quickly forgotten. We’re still socializing our children differently by gender. You really need to develop both skills.
martian
@NorthLeft12: Since the lead in on this opinion piece talked about the continuing post-mortem of the 2016 campaign, I think it would be easy to be confused! And they followed by saying Hillary chose not to fire someone who then went on to harass other women, leaving out that Clinton actually disciplined the guy at all. The set up was bad faith all over, in my opinion. They began as they meant to go on. Honestly, though, if Hillary had gone full Republican, refused any blame, and claimed that, in fact, her response to the situation was the best of all possible worlds, they just would have torn her down from another direction.
Apologizing shows weakness and spurs attacks. Not apologizing shows arrogance and spurs attacks. Dems aren’t allowed a path to victory – it’s Kobayashi Maru all day long if you’re a Democrat.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@tobie: Being a woman is OK with the villagers IF you sport an (R) after your name.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
A lot of stuff is documented that later turns out to be just part of a larger story.
Oddly enough, I think that the “observation” that women are sometimes especially vicious to other women is somewhat sexist and stereotypical.
But to be clear. I do not, could not deny the reality of an particular woman’s experience. But if I am playing junior social scientist, I would try to observe all the social dynamics at play.
And in my personal experience I have to laugh a bit at the notion of “Imposter Syndrome” in the light of so many men and women who happily except promotions despite their lack of accomplishment simply because of their race or social connection. And hell, as far as I can tell, our current president of the United States and every freaking member of his cabinet and 99% of his staff is a freaking imposter, and just don’t care. Men and women both.
Ruviana
@MisterForkbeard: it’s an old old thread but WildCat was responding to the latest iteration of Shomi (KickboxBanana).
Barbara
@Brachiator: I think you have totally missed the point, which is the fact that highly qualified women feel that they are not sufficiently qualified, even when by objective standards, they are clearly qualified, especially when you consider the number of people who are actually promoted because of non-merit based selection criteria. Studies among job applicants show that men consider themselves qualified to apply for a job if they meet even a few of the posted criteria related to skills and experience, whereas women tend to think that if they don’t meet most of the criteria they should not apply. This phenomenon goes beyond actual skill sets or favoritism in the work place. It pertains to how men and women are socialized to value themselves and their abilities and to take chances in the workplace. Feel free to marginalize it if you wish but I think women should understand this because it permeates their experience in the work place and it might help them adopt more rewarding strategies for advancement.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
Thanks for outlining the issue very well here.
I disagree with some of your points, and agree with others. This is not the same thing as marginalizing women.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
That’s Dunning-Kruger, though. The manifestly unqualified assume that they’re qualified while the people who have the credentials second-guess themselves.
Barbara
@Brachiator: Not marginalizing women, per se, but saying “yeah but everybody faces xyz” is a way of discounting the way women in particular might experience work related issues that is different from men’s experience.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
No. A lot of women and nonwhite people know that they are being fucked over.
I looked at the Wikipedia site on Imposter Syndrome and found this, for example.
This is big bullshit. In the history of the US, jobs and scholarships used to regularly set aside for white boys and white men. And white folks (men and women) use every trick in the book to get jobs without regard to their actual accomplishments, and then turn around and whine about a person of color not being qualified and not deserving a break.
Again, as I say, there is more to the social dynamics of this phenomenon, and the class and racial dynamics are being overlooked. In a country such as the UK, for example, class dynamics as well as ethnic issues, have got to weigh heavily in this as well.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
And one of the tricks our society uses is to convince women and POC themselves that it’s true and they don’t deserve the positions they achieve.
You are discounting the effect that society’s messages have on people’s own internal messages. People with imposter syndrome feel that way because they’re constantly being bombarded with messages telling them that they must be imposters if they got to the position they have.
I’m not sure why you think that imposter syndrome is something outside of the messages that our society sends rather than being an integral part of it, but you’ve basically got it 180 degrees backwards. Imposter syndrome exists because of what our society tells women and POC, not in spite of it.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
That is not quite what I said, or what I was trying to say. I do not think that trying to place this into a different context is the same thing as discounting women’s experience, but I think that I understand your concerns and cautions. I appreciate your taking the time to explicate the issues so clearly.
Raoul
Something is FUBAR with F*book – if I click on ‘show more’ to try to read her full post, it opens a duplicate of her page, but without expanding the thing she wrote. So I can’t read it. Fuck you, F*book.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t believe this is the case with the vast majority of black people and affirmative action. But I do think that a lot of white people think this about black people and affirmative action.
Black folk know when white people are trying to fuck them over. And they know that white people’s messages are bullshit.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Consciously? Sure. But current psychology is showing that stereotype threat can affect people on a subconscious level. A Black woman can know consciously that she worked hard to get into a managerial position, but stereotype threat and imposter syndrome will whisper in her ear that she’s wrong. Constantly.