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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Women are too emotional to be President? WTF?

Okay ladies and gentlemen. My amazing boyfriend gets a gold star this week for being a progressive feminist! A couple of days ago, S came home in a huff. He and some coworkers were discussing Hilary's surprising win over Obama in the New Hampshire primary when one of the female coworkers said that she didn't want a woman to be President because women are too emotional. Yes you read correctly, a woman said that someone of her own gender cannot be President because women are too emotional. S reports that he and another MALE coworker were outraged and gave these women a tongue lashing. He countered their "emotional" argument with an argument against men who do not have any emotions at all - just look at the current administration! We talked that evening at length about it. He could not believe that they would say something like that much less really believe that is true. I told him that women are conditioned to believe these types of things about themselves and other women and that men are entitled to positions of power and revered for their strength, aggressiveness, etc. True leaders want to reach out and help others help themselves instead of using so called "might" for right. The most successful leaders exhibit what most consider not so manly or arguably feminine traits - desire to help others, thirst for education (look at the numbers of men v. women in colleges), and an ability to empathize and seek compromise. I was so proud of S for 1) really believing that a woman is perfectly capable of being in such a powerful position and 2) for feeling strongly enough about it to advocate to others. I just hope that the citizens of this country will not discount Hilary or Barack's ideas because of the color of their skin or their gender. It's time to move beyond all that folks. We are not the country we were in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc. Although that's bad in some regards, it's good in many others. I also hope that my fellow female citizens will not be so hard on our gender. It's not the men who seem to espousing this ridiculous diatribe but instead it seems to be women. That's horrible. And it shows that we as women don't believe in our own abilities. In the words of Rosie the Riveter in an age where women RAN THIS COUNTRY, we CAN DO IT!