marsh_of_mists wrote:First of all, anyone looking at this with a critical eye can see it's blatantly partisan. The interviewer fawns over the interviewee like nothing I've ever seen this side of James Lipton. His questions are mostly agreeable re-statements of Ducat's arguements: "I see! So what you're saying is 'Republicans subconciously hate women'?". "Yes, exactly"...It's a total puff piece. And yet it tries to disguise itself as a reasoned psychological discussion. Since the interviewee is a professor and states his opinions in a professorial language, using lots of big ivory-tower words, we're supposed to be impressed.
I think it is quite evident that Ducat has a partisan axe to grind. Yet one should not dismiss his argument simply because he is partisan. After all, even close-minded, irrational partisans can be right. To say otherwise would be to fall into an
ad hominem fallacy.
marsh_of_mists wrote:This is actually an attempt to stigmatize conservative views by linking them to a made-up mental problem. What evidence does Ducat give for this terrible "femiphobia"? That conservatives nicknamed Edwards the "breck girl"? That Schwartzenegger, borrowing a line from his own parodies on SNL, used the term "girly men"? Scandalous!
I don't think there can be any question that those are examples of speech intended to "feminize" the speakers' targets (although I'd say that Schwarzenegger's "girlie men" remark was more in the nature of fag-bashing than woman-bashing, but the end result is largely the same). There is, for instance, no reason to call Edwards the "Breck girl" unless it was to cast some aspersion on his sexuality. Granted, the speaker may have meant it in a light-hearted or even comical sense, but the same result could have been achieved without the sexual connotations. Likewise, the implicit message behind Dick Cheney's sneering references to Kerry's purported "sensitive" foreign policy were difficult to miss: Kerry's foreign policy wasn't "masculine" enough, it was too "feminine."
The problem with Ducat's argument isn't that he identifies these sexualized references, for they are quite real and readily apparent. The problem, rather, is that he uncritically takes them as evidence for some underlying hostility toward women. Furthermore, he seemingly posits that
all of politics, or at least all conservative politics, is driven by this "femiphobia." That, I believe, is an interesting, but ultimately unsupported (and probably unsupportable) hypothesis.
marsh_of_mists wrote:In fact, the major evidence (in Ducat's eye) is the fact that conservatives tend to take more hardline, forthright, uncompromising positions (particularly in regards to terrorism) and liberals tend to take a more tentative and diplomatic route. So a frequent conservative criticism of liberals is that they are politically weak and wishy-washy. Ducat, who naturally agrees with the liberal view, leaps from this to the idea that the conservatives are neurotically trying to feminize the liberals.
No. Ducat, quite correctly, focuses on the
manner in which conservatives characterize liberals. He's right that Republicans tend to use the kind of sexualized references that he identifies (even if he takes that evidence to reach some extremely tenuous conclusions). One can, after all, accuse an opponent of being "wishy-washy" without making any sort of sexualized remark. That many Republicans make those kinds of remarks is, I think, worth closer examination.
marsh_of_mists wrote:I guess when liberals criticize conservatives for being too brash and aggressive towards terrorism, they're neurotically trying to masculanize conservatives. It seems that Ducat can't imagine that conservatives take a more aggressive stance because they actually believe it to be, objectively, the correct stance.
In a society which still routinely devalues women, there is no point in tracking "masculinized" insults: they simply don't exist. About the closest thing we have to such masculinized insults are criticisms of women who are "mannish." That, however, is not implicitly demeaning of men in the same way that calling a man a "sissy" is implicitly demeaning of women; rather, it is a way of reinforcing traditional sexual boundaries (which are, in themselves, implicitly demeaning of women).
marsh_of_mists wrote:What's truly incredible is the way that Ducat and Buzzflash brush away the fact that there are powerful conservative women as well as men. This fact naturally jeopardizes Ducat's theory, particulary because part of his theory is that conservative "femiphobes" naturally fear powerful women (like Hillary). Powerful conservative women like Condi are a wrench in the works of the Ducat philosophy. So he comes up with the notion that powerful conservative women must actually be a mask for conservatives while actually remaining subserviant in the conservative pecking order. Furtherly, while Hillary's strength and power is commendable because it derives from her escaping the conservative patriarchy, Condi's strength and power is detestable because it derives from her embracing that same patriarchy to further her ambition. Ducat's twisted mindset on this is similar to the mindset that sees powerful black liberals as "pioneers" and powerful black conservatives as "the house Negro".
The existence of powerful women in the Republican camp does nothing to undercut Ducat's theory. If anything, it strengthens it.
marsh_of_mists wrote:Finally, Ducat's entire philosophy is only defendable if one assume that stereotypical "feminine" virtues such as community, nuture, and discretion are basically good, while stereotypical "masculine" virtues such as strength, might, and independence as basically bad (I stress the word "stereotypical" here--it's Ducat whose equating those virtues to genders, not me). Otherwise, why are all this macho conservatives so perfidious?
No, you're quite wrong. It's the speakers themselves who implicitly equate the feminine with the bad or undesirable. It is immaterial to Ducat's thesis whether the stereotypical feminine virtues are more or less desirable than the stereotypical masculine virtues. What is important is that the people who make the sexualized remarks embrace that view.
marsh_of_mists wrote:Of course, I thought the idea that some virtues are feminine and some are masculine went against everything that liberals believe, but I guess I was wrong. In any case, Ducat--in designing this theory at least--assumes that stereotypical femininity is self-evidently superior to stereotypical masculinity.
I don't see him making that claim.
