Watch the dynamics: conservative and liberal women

Ahh, women and politics: vis-a-vis one another.

It's been a staple of western politics that it is hard for men to run against women in political races (when indeed they do run) since there is a "code of conduct" toward women that men are expected to adhere to even as women are not expected to adhere to any such thing. For example, muck-racking and character assassination can be pursued by female candidates (even this season we have seen a certain female politician tell her opponent to "man up", while such a thing isn't even possible for him to say to her), while if a man engages in anything close to that, he will be accused of being any number of things, from sexist to abusive-- anything but doing what electoral politics is, unfortunately, largely about: whatever you can do to win the seat short of finding yourself locked up for it.

The machinery, however, seizes up when the political pundits or candidates are all female. Watch the dynamics when this is the case. Read these two articles: Dowd and Perino -- and consider the content and the various prejudices and assumptions embodied in them. What is found herein is not unrelated to the same dynamic that occurs when male and female candidates or pundits have a clash of ideas or interests. The same appeals to gender-based stereotypes occur, only here, it is within the same gender.

If this were a Feminist Hooey Machine, you could hear the gears start to grind and see smoke come out of it. This is because Feminist Hooey Machines need males as grist. When they are fed females, they seize up and start to emit smoke. The only people capable of fixing them are, of course, men-- we have to be the grist or else they have nothing to feed on.