jaunthie | Gaudy Night at the CPAC

Glenn Greenwald has a really excellent post on the metastory behind the whole Coulter brouhaha over on his new blog. I found it very interesting and thought-provoking, which is always a sign of good writing. Do yourself a favor and go check it out; it really is worth wading through the Salon ad, particularly for the picture which precedes the snippet below.

I have to admit, though, I was a little distracted by the following two paragraphs:

"The second-most astonishing political fact over the last six years -- after the permanently jaw-dropping and incomparably disgraceful fact that 70% of Americans believed as late as September, 2003 (6 months after the invasion) that Saddam Hussein personally participated in the planning of the 9/11 attacks (a fact which, by itself, profoundly indicts all of our political and media instititutions at once) -- is that the 2004 presidential candidate who actually volunteered to fight, in actual combat, in the Vietnam jungle was the one depicted as the weak subversive coward, while the candidate who used every family connection possible to avoid ever fighting was depicted as the brave, masculine, fighter-warrior who had the backbone to stand down the Evil Enemies and protect us all.

That is why so many of them who have never been anywhere near the military -- and will never go near it even as their wars are endangered by a lack of volunteers -- have a monomanical obsession with military glory, with constant displays of how "resolute" and "courageous" they are, with notions of forced "submission" and "humiliation" of their opponents (just take notice of how central a role those concepts play in neoconservative "arguments"), and with depicting those who oppose the wars they cheer on as "cowards" (even when the cowards in question are decorated Marines with 30 years of service)."

Take a deep breath, Mr. Greenwald. I do think he was a little worked up when he wrote this, as each paragraph is a single sentence. And while it is possible to write grammatically-correct paragraph-long sentences, such sentences are almost always too convoluted to easily digest.

Trifling grammatical quibbles aside, though, I think Greenwald is making an important point in this post about the nature of neoconservative gender-typing, both of themselves (typifying themselves as manly men and womenly women) and of those they denigrate (typifying them as womanly men and manly women).

To some extent the kind of denigration he documents is typical of western cultures in general, where "feminine" frequently translates as "weak" and "masculine" often translates as "strong", and where being physically one and perceived as having traits of the other equates as "bad", or at the very least "dangerous". But the attack wing of the press has taken this idea and run with it to an alarming degree. ("Metrosexual" as a one-word writeoff, anyone?) Moreover, it seems to me that I'm seeing more and more of these ideas being expressed in day-to-day culture. Granted, I work in a male-dominated field, in a company with many more men than women, but I see it at least as much just out and about in the neighborhood. Women must be sexy, obsessed with their appearances, and know their place (that place being secondary/supportive); men must be domineering, confident (to the point of never rethinking an issue), and resolute. Not exactly healthy for men or women or our society at large. And don't get me started on how this ties in insiduously with the anti-intellectualism bias in this country; I'm having enough trouble getting down any coherent thoughts as it is.

It's pervasive, and I hate it, particularly for what that bunch of tropes tries to say about me and those like me. I am a working woman, the primary breadwinner in my family, and I am smart, articulate, and yes, strong, well able to take care of myself and those I care for. All of these traits are laudable, at least in my book, and should be celebrated. But they're not, at least among a significant section of the population, who still apparently believes in the old "a woman's place is in the home standing by her man" stereotype, or at least its modern equivalent of "a woman's place is to be feminine first and self-sufficient second". There is of course no reason why a woman can't be both feminine and self sufficient, as the two are not related, except in some weird corner of our culture, which insists that "strong" is not "feminine", and you have to be strong to be self-sufficient (yes, you do. Really.). And somehow we as a culture still enforce the idea that men must be stronger than women - not just physically, but mentally and spiritually - and that "feminine" still means "weak" and is therefore to be derided.

I guess it boils down to my belief that strong is neither masculine or feminine. Strong is strong; it can be good or bad, depending on degree, not the gender of the person who has that trait. Weakness, too, is neither masculine nor feminine; and "strong" posturing is too often a cover for the weak thinking and weaker reasoning it tries to conceal.