Louis C.K., Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton, and the rise of benevolent sexism in liberal men

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2016-11-07 09:32

Article here. Excerpt:

'C.K. obviously means well. He’s trying to compliment mothers in general and Hillary in particular, and to reframe the political liability of her gender into an asset. But he’s playing into a very old and unpleasant narrative that’s become weirdly popular among liberal men this election cycle: the idea that we need women in government because they are intrinsically morally superior to men. Women should be represented in our government, this story goes, not because they are people, but because they are better than people: They are angelic; they are virtuous; they are pure.

That’s the story Michael Moore was telling when he tweeted a few days ago that women have not, historically, committed atrocities, implying that women have the kind of moral purity we need in our elected representatives.

As Jessica Ellis pointed out on Twitter, Moore’s assertion is historically inaccurate: Women worked on the Manhattan Project, were instrumental Nazi leaders, and have shot up schools. Women have committed all sorts of atrocities — it’s just that most of them have been erased from history, in the same way that most of women’s more positive accomplishments have been erased.'

Like0 Dislike0

Comments

A lot of women have tried to discuss positive female history, but few have been willing to admit to the dark side of female history. Ironically, Moore was criticized by some women for his claim women can do and have done no wrong.

I read recently a post on FB about a countess in an Eastern European country who killed hundreds of young women, apparently for the fun of it. Forgot her name, alas, but there are plenty of examples of cruel female leaders in history. Moore is just telling women what he thinks they want to hear.

Some info on the countess. She may have been the inspiration for Dracula:

"If power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton once observed, then absolute power in the hands of a psychotic, sexual sadist can unleash the hounds of hell. Such was the case of Erzsébet “Elizabeth” Báthory, a late-16th-century Hungarian countess — and the most prolific female serial killer in history, whose murderous reign historians are still trying to make sense of today.

Four hundred years ago today, in August 1614, the notorious 54-year-old royal died under house arrest in Čachtice Castle in modern-day Slovakia, having been implicated in as many as 650 deaths — mostly peasant girls and servants. Báthory’s depraved life inspired a number of stories, films and books, including possibly Bram Stoker’s Dracula; so many, in fact, that the legends and myths surrounding the “Blood Countess” have begun to obscure the shocking, and very real, ledger of her vile deeds."

Like0 Dislike0
Submitted by el cid on Tue, 2016-11-08 04:23