Will We Ever Be Able to Trust 'Ambitious' Political Women?
Will We Ever Be Able to Trust 'Ambitious' Political Women?
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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?
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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
revbones
(3,660 posts)Just not liars like Hillary Clinton.
Will We Ever Be Able to Trust 'Ambitious' Political Women?
Yes!
Hillary Clinton?
No!
peacebird
(14,195 posts)Chasstev365
(5,191 posts)I just prefer ones who are actually Democrats, unlike the current front runner.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)nichomachus
(12,754 posts)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.