--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > I've always suspected that their focus on the > "victim mentality" is what causes radical fem- > inists of RD's ilk to support -- and obsess > on -- *losers* among the female political > figures. > > As long as the women they fixate on lose, they > are happy in their misery, because they can > cast the loser of the political race into the > same victim mentality that they wear on their > sleeves. But if they actually picked a strong > woman to back who *won*, they wouldn't know > what to do. > > Their whole persona is wrapped up in bitching > about women as victims. They have more diffi- > culty imagining women who aren't than the > men they call male chauvinist pigs.
Actually, even if any of this were true, which it isn't, we'd be in bad shape if we tried to portray Hillary and Sarah Palin as victims, because they so obviously don't behave or think of themselves that way--any more than Obama behaves or thinks of himself as a victim of the various bigoted slurs that have been directed at him. What bothers us about the sexist and misogynistic attacks on Hillary and Palin is not that the attacks did them any damage--because they didn't, either politically or personally--but rather that the mindset that makes such attacks possible exists in the first place. And it has nothing to do with "losers" and "winners." That's how Barry likes to categorize people, and his criteria are very black-and-white. Hillary may have (barely) lost the nomination, but that doesn't make her a "loser" except in that very narrow sense. What makes a person a winner--or a loser--is their character, not how they fare in any specific contest.
