…My strong suspicion is that, in any nominating race featuring a female candidate, there will always be a Bernie Sanders—a male alternative whose gender allows him to do everything his female opponent cannot.

…Early in the [2008] race, Clinton seemed to be a clear favorite. She positioned herself as practical, hard-nosed, and shrewd—qualities likely designed to dispel gross stereotypes about the ostensible weakness of her gender. Predictably, it freaked people out.

One Secret to Bernie Sanders’ Success? He’s Not a Woman.

Hmmm.

It is precisely Sanders’s au-naturel-ness that endears him to his young fans: his unkempt hair, his ill-fitting suits, his unpolished Brooklyn accent, his propensity to yell and wave his hands maniacally. Sanders, it appears, woke up like this.

These qualities are what make him seem “authentic,” “sincere” even — especially when contrasted with Clinton’s hyper-scriptedness. Sanders, unlike Clinton, doesn’t give a damn if he’s camera-ready.

This is, of course, a form of authenticity that is off-limits to any female politician, not just one with Clinton’s baggage.

Female politicians — at least if they want to be taken seriously on a national stage — cannot be unkempt and unfiltered, hair mussed and voice raised. They have to be carefully coifed and scripted at all times, because they have to hew as closely as possible to the bounds of propriety available to both their sex and their occupation. They can’t be too quiet or too loud, too emotional or too cold, too meek or too aggressive, and so on. 

The sexist double standard behind why millennials love Bernie Sanders – The Washington Post

Mmmmmhmm

Hi. My name is Zoe Quinn. Long story short, the Internet spent the last month hating me.

5 Things I Learned as the Internet’s Most Hated Person | Cracked.com

Sigh….

But in failing to present an upbeat take on her disagreement with Sanders, Clinton had sounded like a scold, the disciplinarian, the mean mommy, the pragmatic downer — all versions of a feminized role that she and many, many women have long found it incredibly difficult to escape.

Recall the days following the 2008 Iowa caucus, when the media took advantage of Clinton’s defeat to let loose with their resentment and animosity toward her. That was when conservative Marc Rudov told Fox News that Clinton lost because “When Barack Obama speaks, men hear ‘Take off for the future!’ When Hillary Clinton speaks, men hear ‘Take out the garbage!’” It was in the days after Iowa that Clinton infamously got asked about how voters believed her to be “the most experienced and the most electable” candidate but “are hesitating on the likability issue.” In late January, columnist Mike Barnicle told a laughing all-male panel on Morning Joe that Clinton’s challenge was that she looks “like everyone’s first wife standing outside of probate court.”

That hurts, and it falls into a very old, very well-worn gendered pattern, in which women — understanding that making promises they cannot back up will not get them taken seriously and that they must prove themselves extra-competent in order to be understood as basically competent — become the nose-to-the-grindstone wonks, easily compared to know-it-all bores like Tracy Flick and Hermione Granger. They’re the wet blankets, the ones all too acquainted with the limitations imposed by the world, and all too eager to explain their various ideas for working around them. Men, and especially white men, whose claims to public or political power are more easily understood, are permitted a slightly looser approach.

There’s been some talk about how a female candidate could never be as scruffy as Bernie Sanders, as uncombed and unkempt. A woman could never be as grumpy as Bernie, as left-leaning as Bernie, as uncooperative with party machinery as Bernie. And that stuff is true enough. But the bigger truth is that what Bernie does, to great acclaim, that Hillary Clinton could never do is make big promises of institutional overthrow, tug on our imaginative heartstrings by laying out a future that might not be grounded in reality, and urge a revolution.

Here is a truth about America: No one likes a woman who yells loudly about revolution.

And no, it’s not just this woman. This is a paradigm; it’s why Mom is the disciplinarian and Dad is the fun guy, why women remain the brains and organizational workhorses behind social movements while men get to be the gut-ripping orators, why so many women still manage campaigns and so many men are still candidates.

What Hillary Learned About Running While Female — The Cut

Yes, to every fucking word of this.

Wonder Woman’s Chris Pine Talks about the Importance of Female Heroes | Heroic Girls

That’s nice he’s so supportive but I think he’s way off the mark.

Just by virtue of being a woman does not make a superhero more compassion. It makes her have ovaries. Compassion is not gender specific and the faster we let trite bullshit-isms like this die, the faster we can achieve a semblance of egality.

Faith Herbert is a superhero-loving fangirl who, despite her plus-size figure, can make herself lighter than air and fly.

First plus-size female superhero soars into her own comic book, ‘Faith’ – TODAY.com

cool!

“Catching a touchdown pass is a lot easier than making a beautiful braid.”

Source: Pantene’s NFL Super Bowl Ad – Vogue

My gawd, yes!!!

This Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards have been somewhat of a talking point.

Three cheers for misogyny: why the world can’t handle Susan Sarandon and her 69-year-old cleavage | Stylist Magazine

Yup.

Today, Disney’s princesses are a sassier, pluckier bunch. But research has found a surprising trend: Even when they have the starring role, women speak only a minority of the dialogue—and far less than they did in the films of the 1930s and ’50s. Male characters with speaking roles vastly outnumber female ones in every single film.

New research has uncovered a disturbing trend about female characters in Disney movies – Quartz

<facepalm>