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Have you seen stories such as April Ryan's petty questions suggesting White House Social Secretary Desiree Roger seeks to upstage Michelle Obama? How about the persistent gossip rag rumors that the First Lady and Oprah are feuding? Do you remember the campaign commentary that blamed women's distrust of women for why Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin couldn't win?
I've seen the stories and remember the the chill flowing from Why Women Undermine Hillary Clinton, a BlogHer.com post examining feminist Gloria Feldt's take on how women resisted supporting Hillary as she ran for the presidency. I recall being so infuriated by one of Feldt's questions -- "Shouldn't women support Hillary in the same way support from African-Americans is beginning to sway toward Barack Obama?" -- that I ended up writing a four-piece blog post at an old personal blog addressing that issue alone. That four-part piece is now offline.
Looking back, I see that in my fit of annoyance with Feldt on the African-American question, (in particular, that she seemed to ignore that the group "African-Americans" also includes women), I didn't look more closely at the rest of what she asserted about women. As Morra Aarons Mele summed up in the beginning of her piece on the topic, what Feldt said was akin to the old Groucho Marx saying, "I wouldn't join any club that would accept me as a member."
Ironically, Belinda Luscombe gave similar arguments for why women didn't support Sarah Palin; however, she put an uglier spin on it:
Women are weapons-grade haters. Hillary Clinton knows it. Palin knows it too. When women get their hate on, they don't just dislike, or find disfavor with, or sort of not really appreciate. They loathe —- deeply, richly, sustainingly. I do not say this to disparage my gender; women also love in more or less the same way. (Luscombe)
You think that's bad? She also suggested women didn't like Palin because Palin is pretty. Queen of Spain wasn't having any of that. Neither was I.
Statements such as, women don't like other women, or how folks go so far as to manufacture rivalries, pitting women against women even when the women's behaviors indicate they like each other, say one thing to me: Women really are an oppressed class.
For all our strides, we still exhibit the same strange psychological pathology in discussing how we relate to one another that oppressed ethnic minorities exhibit. We accuse each other of holding each other back, of having "crab mentality" or something like it. A willingness to pull down/tear down the others in the group so that no one escapes the bucket. And, we present this moral failing as unique to us rather than part of human nature in general.
Black people claim they have a monopoly on this mindset. However, if you read up on the topic, you'll see Native Americans like Julia Good Fox referencing crabs. And, a quick Google of "crab mentality" shows you other people of color claim to have it as well. For some reason, Filipinos mention it often.
When people of color talk about the affliction of crab mentality, eventually someone suggests those brown, red, or yellow folk should act more like white folk, who it seems few believe have this crab mentality. When women talk about it, usually in terms of women not helping women, someone pipes up to say women should act more like men. Apparently this involves being more boastful and more willing to lie to get ahead -- behaviors that should make everyone crabby.
In the area of friendship, as Luscombe implies in her Palin piece, we perpetuate the notion that women let anger and resentments linger and fester. Men don't do that, implies Luscombe. Men slug it out and let it go. However, I don't think she's suggesting women punch each other in the face. Nevertheless, she infers that men resolve matters of personal dislike more simply and quickly than women do and perpetuates the stereotype that women are vengeful and vindictive.
These kinds of assertions about what's wrong with women, as well as scuttlebutt that suggests women can't be close or have genuine love for one another unless they are gay, have caused me to contemplate women and friendships. As a result, when reviewing my recorded interview with writing partners, DeBerry and Grant, from earlier this summer, I found myself focusing on how they described their work, in particular their discussion of the
