Revenge of the Wimp Factor: The Ironies of Proving Manhood in the Democratic Primary

Hi, I'm Hillary Clinton. But tonight, in honor of the WWE, you can call me Hill-Rod. This election is starting to feel a lot like "King of the Ring." The only difference? The last man standing may just be a woman. -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, from her opening monologue prior to a World Wrestling Entertainment "joke" match between Clinton and Obama look-alikes.

What has become disturbingly evident in the last few months of the primary campaign is that Hillary Clinton is not merely carrying the torch of the "old politics." She is also the ironic bearer of the old masculinity, a knuckle-dragging version of manhood that is defined in terms of domination. In this view, "the man" is whoever can stick it to the other. It is the one who can eviscerate his or her enemy most savagely and with the least remorse. It is the one on top in a zero-sum world. In this curious mutation of patriarchy, anatomy is not destiny. But being a dick is.

Much is made of the penis. We talk about how to keep it hard, how to make it bigger, and who envies it. The public secret we keep from ourselves -- but at a deep level understand -- is that it is not the penis that matters most. That modest organ is, after all, vulnerable and easily deflated. The phallus is what most men and even some women in a male dominant culture covet, envy, think they possess, fear losing, or try to get back (usually, each of these at different times). In our still patriarchal world, this symbol, in blatant or subtle forms, shows up in our dreams, editorial cartoons, commercials, and political ads. It is often used to represent absolute domination, insensate hardness, omnipotence, unlimited wealth, invulnerability, untrammeled growth, or freedom from all dependency - and sometimes all of these unattainable qualities.

The problem, of course, is that this ancient archetypal monolith of manhood is an illusion. Nobody has one; it only exists if someone sees it. In spite of being an evanescent hallucination, political consultants spend much of their time trying to paint a phallus on their candidate. A line from the Tom Waits song "Step Right Up" could be read as a concise description of what a successful campaign does: "It gives you an erection. It wins the election."

In most electoral contests, the question is often "who's the man?" And the manner in which political manhood gets displayed is tiresomely predictable: macho chest beating, posing with the fetish objects of anxious masculinity (trucks, big machines, and even bigger weapons), humiliating your opponent with castrating insults, calling into question his or her ability to be tough, ruthless, and merciless with the designated enemy of the moment -- in short, phallic strutting. These are the bread and butter performances that keep the 24-hour cable infotainment channels in business, and frequently eclipse the issues of the day.

There is an astonishing irony in Senator Clinton flashing her "Hill-Rod," and striking poses that, in the admiring words of North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, make "Rocky Balboa look like a pansy." During her career as First Lady, Mrs. Clinton was widely reviled by her conservative detractors as a gender outlaw. Being smart, outspoken, a savvy investor, a policy wonk, and a woman who insisted on an egalitarian relationship with her husband, she was seen as a profound threat, a wife who did not know her proper (i.e., subordinate) place.

These sentiments got represented in numerous editorial cartoons that depicted her in male drag, using a men's urinal, and as a riding-crop-wielding dominatrix. Slick Times, a right wing humor magazine, featured jokes about her preferred method of birth control (vasectomy) and the reason she doesn't wear miniskirts ("so her balls won't show"). The cover of the October 1995 issue of Spy Magazine even retouched a photo of her to depict a discernible penile bulge under her clothing. This image accompanied an investigative article on her "dubious investments" that "performed extremely well." The headline, "Hillary's Big Secret," in equating the penis with money, revealed the phallic meaning her powerful financial dealings had for the authors, as well as for many of her conservative male critics.

During this same period images abounded of Bill Clinton as castrated, cross-dressing, feminized, and physically dominated and abused by his powerful wife. Interestingly, once the Monica Lewinsky scandal unfolded, things reversed. He was portrayed in cartoons and late night TV comedy monologues as studly, powerful, and potent. Hillary, now the wounded women standing by her man, was widely depicted in sympathic and stereotypically feminine terms. What may surprise many is that the approval ratings for both the President and the First Lady soared following the scandal. Many citizens, especially men, seemed relieved to see the gender order restored, and the phallus returned to our male leader. But if, unlike the lowly but attached penis, the phallus has a tendency to move around, this can open up opportunities for female politicians to overcome the still lingering impediments of misogynist bigotry. Gender, our cultural experiences tell us, is really only loosely associated with bodies, not tethered to them.

What could not be tolerated in Hillary the political wife turns out to be a significant advantage for Hillary the politician, or so her campaign managers seem to believe. In fact, Senator Clinton appears to have been positioning herself early on to wield the political phallus. Her vote for the Iraq war resolution seems less a mistake based on inaccurate information -- the data was readily available to her antiwar peers in the Senate, not to mention many national security scholars, as well as millions of ordinary Americans -- than a political calculation. She wanted to show her "testicular fortitude," as a supportive labor leader recently gushed at a campaign rally. It's the same reason "fight" has become her favorite verb. Last week she autographed a pair of red boxing gloves at a rally. Perhaps the most disturbing gesture of macho posturing has been her repeated threat to "obliterate" Iran if that nation's leaders attack Israel. Given that the Iranian people are unable to really make their leaders accountable, her threat is not only a genocidal one, but, were she to act on it, would constitute collective punishment.

Hillary Clinton seems not only willing to annihilate Iranians for political gain. She also appears happy to depopulate the Democratic Party in order to ensure her nomination. As I write this, news outlets are revealing her plans for what Thomas Edsall is calling the "nuclear option." In other words, she intends to use her influence on the members of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee to force the votes that were gathered in the "outlaw" primaries of Florida and Michigan to be counted.

Some may ask a very reasonable feminist question that could challenge this argument: why must toughness, Machiavellianism, combativeness, or even swaggering bellicosity be viewed as masculine? They certainly needn't. But it is, as we have seen, Hillary Clinton herself, along with her surrogates, who have explicitly gendered those traits in the campaign. As the oleaginous Clinton loyalist, James Carville, has said, if Mrs. Clinton gave Obama one of her testicles, "they'd both have two."

What is so interesting and illuminating is that Hillary Clinton is not just engaging in a performance of martial hypermasculinity as a way of shoring up both her phallic and national security credentials. She is also donning the mantel of working class hero, aping every conceivable stereotype of white blue-collar manhood -- from beer swilling to gun toting to preening pugilism -- and, where possible, doing so from the back of a pickup truck. It must be said, however, unlike the many multimillionaire Republican men in power, such as George W. Bush and John McCain, she plays the good ole boy with convincing if increasingly unhinged gusto. Perhaps this is because men in politics so often make the worst male impersonators.

But beyond that, Hillary Clinton has long revealed an intuitive talent for masquerade, an ability to lose herself in whatever role a situation required. Her instincts as a protean politician enabled her to seamlessly shift from feminist intellectual and powerhouse lawyer deriding stay-at-home cookie bakers, to the betrayed housewife still loyal to her man, and beaming with pride over her cookie recipe. She can play the verklempt victim of male critics one moment, and a macho political predator the next. On a dime Senator Clinton can morph from a well informed authority on the nuances of economic policy to a we-don't-need-no-stinkin'-economists anti-intellectualism in response to the near unanimity of expert opinion criticizing her bogus gas tax "holiday" scheme.

Her double masquerade of gender and class has been so compelling to some working class male voters because it taps into a deep vein in the American collective political unconscious that dates from the founding of our nation, and one that Republicans have understood and effectively exploited for decades. In the 1840 presidential campaign, Martin Van Buren said his opponent, William Henry Harrison, was "a man who wore corsets, put cologne on his whiskers, slept on French beds, rode in a British coach, and ate with golden spoons from silver plates." Here in this example of early negative campaigning we have a clear illustration of the link American men have always made between effeminacy and aristocratic manners and privilege. It was, after all, George H. W. Bush's patrician patois and upper class mannerisms that led Newsweek in 1988 to suggest his greatest political vulnerability was "the wimp factor," and thereby coin a term that would become a permanent part of our political lexicon. Not only did this feminine attribution haunt the public career of Bush 41, Bush 43, as many have observed, has struggled to defend against and compensate for this legacy.

More recently, we have the example of Barack Obama, the black candidate raised by a poor single mother, being called an "elitist" because of his grace, equanimity, intellect, dismal bowling performance, and reluctance to completely inhale his Philly cheese-steak. This, along with his willingness to negotiate with enemies, we are told, should lead us to question whether he's man enough to be commander in chief. The Clinton crew, along with their chief ally, John McCain, have made strenuous efforts to define Obama as a cosseted and effeminate toff, whose pretty words only confirm his deficient manhood, and thereby his unfitness to lead the nation. When you think about it, Clinton's complaint against her opponent -- "you always want to talk" -- sounds oddly like the familiar kvetch that so many emotionally constricted sexist husbands direct at their more relational spouses.

In applying the GOP approach to feminizing male opponents, and directing class resentment away from the real elites, Hillary Clinton has gone beyond her more familiar adoption of the ruthless, sociopathic say-anything, dirty tricks politics of her erstwhile Rovian right wing enemies. She is reinforcing the conservative attempt to equate manhood with belligerence and predation. In addition, she is trotting out the well worn but still effective propaganda technique employed by this country's actual ruling oligarchy of wealth -- reducing class to personal style, taste, or the specific products people consume (brie versus Velveeta). Those who actually own or wield control over our shared resources are rendered invisible in this rhetorical sleight of hand.

Barack Obama stands in stark contrast to the attitude of the Clinton campaign. His guiding political ethos has always been one of bridging but not overlooking divisions, while privileging dialogue, debate, and negotiation over conquest. This is not only a new politics. It is a new masculinity, one that is inclusive of those panhuman qualities previously disowned and projected onto women. It remains to be seen if Hillary Clinton, with her Hobbesian hard-on, will succeed in turning the Denver convention into a war of all against all. If so, the life span of the Democratic Party may be nasty, brutish, and short.

Stephen J. Ducat, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist from the San Francisco Bay Area, and has published widely on the psychology of politics. His most recent book is The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity.

Comments

[Chavez08]

Stephen,

This is another example of the divide between those behind the typewriter and those on the ground.

Like it or not, the majority of eligible voters in this country are blue-collar white males who, unfortunately, still eat-up the kind of tough-guy cowboy rhetoric. This is why Reagan and Bush were scooped into office, the high-school educated working-class are totally clueless with regard to politics and want an image masculine hero (with or without ligitimacy), regardless of gender to help maintain the illusion of U.S. moral and physical superiority as perpetrated by 1980s action-movie pop-culture.

In working-class states, she's playing the game right though it's unfortunate that the voters are so ill-informed.

[Smartey]

Enough!! Stop making fun of Hillary. I have worked on her campaign in two different states, and the lady deserves our respect, admiration and devotion. And your vote! Her opponent -- a man of color but not a colored man -- has been consistently vile and mean, ignoring her femininity and making crass remarks about her policies. Our gal Hill will stomp that boy in West Virginia and Kentucky, and you'll be sorry when she does. She's going to take every opportunity here to highlight his weaknesses, while continuing to whisper to super delegates that he can't win states with mostly white folks. All we can do is pray they come to their senses. So keep these mean stories and your equally mean reader comments to yourself -- if you know what's good for you.

Hillary '08!!!

[nycdave]

you didn't actually read the article, did you?

[SatanicPanic]

"Our gal Hill will stomp that boy"

That's just offensive, calling Obama "boy". I don't think you're even a real Hillary supporter. At least I hope not.

[Dustee]

Sorry, the numbers are just not there for her...
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/215/gallery/35856-a36361-t3.html

[astein1]

Don't you see that it is campaigning like that which is such a turn-off for voters like me to vote for Hillary? First of all, this article has nothing to do with Obama's skin color, nor should any insight as to how good a leader he can be. Stop trying to inject that kind of underhanded and distasteful remark to the political spectrum. Secondly, as someone who has been following this campaign at every turn, I have not seen Obama make a remark about Hillary personally, just her policy positions. She is the one campaigning on why HE shouldn't win instead of why SHE should. Negative campaigning doesn't fly well with the democratic electorate and we are seeing the ramifications of that strategy in the results of these elections.

You say she will "take every opportunity here to highlight his weaknesses." Is this because she cannot campaign on her own strengths? I believe that is the greatest weakness of all - not being able to say anything positive about yourself, other than "white people like me." The Clinton machine has had an inherited, fundamental problem from the onset of the primary season and the cogs are coming apart.

[Gemma08]

Substantiate the slander you have made against Mr. Obama.

Its one thing (and often true) to say that Obama supporters have villified Hillary Clinton (justified, I might add and you are free to disagree).

However, if you're going to accuse Obama of 'being consistently vile and mean, ignoring her femininity' I would like you to SUBSTANTIATE (meaning give examples and cite references of these occasions).

As for "making crass remarks about her policies"... how old are you? Her 'policies' about a gas tax holiday stink. Not a single economist supported it. If she and/or you cant handle the truth, go play somewhere else. Politics is for the big kids.

Policies, moreover dont have feelings. So its perfectly OK to criticise them. Thats wot politics is about.

And what exactly do you mean by 'a man of color but not a colored man'?

Careful...your racist slip is showing. Now THAT is vile...wake up ... the 21st century is moving and you're still standing on the platform because the driver is a black man.

[Smartey]

QUOTE:

"...the 21st century is moving and you're still standing on the platform because the driver is a black man."

Now THAT is the most racist, bigotted, vile comment I believe I have ever read here. To compare Obama to a black driver, like Morgan Freeman's role in 'Driving Miss Daisy', is utterly contemptible. Shame on you! Take your mean, race-hating ideas and get lost!

[NoSpinTruthZone]

I look forward to the day when a pro-Obama writer uses objectivity to describe the campaigns. Not the selective objectivity that includes such unseemly things as smear and mud slinging. The bias is tangible and I feel embarrassed to be a democrat.
It's amusing to read about the unsightliness of candidate 'A' while ignoring these same deficiencies in candidate 'B.' The omissions are obvious to any but the most blind.
I had hoped that for this election I wouldn't need my special Rove colored glasses. Unfortunately I can't seem to put them down. I look forward to the day when I can read a critical analysis that doesn't require me to use them.
Unfortunately today is not the day.

[suntzu]

Because he is African American Obama has had to run a campaign with one hand tied behind his back (metaphorically) in a fight with a bare-knuckled opponent who has kicked him in goodies several times in the campaign. The reason why he has had to do this is because of his color -- as an African American he is not allowed to show aggression, otherwise he would frighten too many people. Knowing this, Hillary has taken every advantage to fight dirty against Obama, knowing he cannot retaliate.

Fair enough. The true villain in this piece is not Hillary, who is just trying to become the first woman president, but Bill Clinton who has been a coward and a bully throughout the campaign beginning with South Carolina. It is like a one-handed Obama in the ring against Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield at the same time!

The results? Obama in fifteen rounds, clear decision. So much for phallic politics.

[NoSpinTruthZone]

You're incorrect. Both candidates have done their share of mud slinging. Obama passively, while the Clintons have been done so more actively.
Look how racism and bitterness are used to discount Obama losses in OH/TX/IN/KY/WV, yet nobody talks about NC .

Race has become this years gay marriage. A lightening rod issue to solidify the party. Unfortunately it's not solidifying, but rather disenfranchising large segments of moderates who refuse to buy into the spin and are disgusted by it.

[astein1]

The difference between OH/TX/IN/KY/WV and NC/SC etc. is that people have said they "will not vote for Obama because he is black" in the former which is very different than "I finally get to vote for a black man." The reason your argument does not hold water is that there is no history to back it up.

For years, people have been excluded from politics because they are a member of some minority that the majority of people does not fit as worthy of public trust/service. Candidates for years have been labeled too black, too female, too Jewish, too Muslim, non-Christian, too poor, too elite, talks too funny, etc., all of which have nothing to do with their ability to serve in the capacity for which the job entails.

You could argue that Hillary faces many of the same prejudices against her gender that Obama has with respect to his race. But look over the campaign speeches and press releases and you will not find a single example of Obama or his surrogates saying she can't win because she is a woman. That would be classless, and is below the moral level his campaign has run. Hillary and her supporters are the ones playing these gender and race cards.

[MyAudacity]

It is not the candidate's fault when a group of people choose to vote for them because of their race. However, it is a candidate's fault when they pander to the racism that lies within people, and use scare tactics, lies, and manipulations to have a select group of people vote for them....then loudly proclaim the difference.

That is the difference between a candidate of integrity, and a candidate who lacks integrity.

Obama has been held to standards according to what someone else said he said, or think; whereas with Hillary, it is something that can be recorded back to her directly.

[OriginalScreenName]

The BIG difference here is it's Obama's supporters that talk about race. Hillary herself openly talks about it, and calls it a problem that Obama can't win the "white" vote.

It's kind of hard to call Obama mudslinging when Hillary is out there touting the very thing you claim Obama is throwing at her.

Calling out Hillary on flaws in her policy or her leadership style (which has proven time and time again to be SEVERELY flawed) is not mudslinging. Hillary sending out a mailer in NH in which she knowingly sent out lies about Obama's record on reproductive rights is most certainly mudslinging, and highly unethical. To my recollection, this is where it all started and she continued to do this type of tactic all the way to South Carolina before Obama started to retaliate.

[austinobserver]

Obama's race is part of the reason for his reluctance to retaliate, but I believe it is also because he is trying not to alienate Hillary's supporters as he has an eye towards November. Hillary is living one day at a time, and ignoring November, thinking that November is irrelevant if she does not win now. Usually the party leaders will punish a candidate like Hillary who weakens the party's chances in such a self-interested manner, but Hillary has a large number of committed feminist women who will not take kindly to any retaliation by the party and Obama and the party leaders have to just hope they can ride out the storm.

[BlackJAC]

You actually mixed up the social standings of Martin van Buren and William Henry Harrison. Van Buren tried to paint Harrison as a low-class schmuck who merely wanted a log cabin to live in and a barrel of hard cider to get drunk on (his exact words), going so far as to make a little pull-tab thing that would switch "an ugly mug of log cabin cider" with Harrison's initials on it and "a beautiful goblet of White House champagne" with van Buren's initials on it. It all backfired when Harrison wore the claims as a badge of honor.

[robbor]

Quote - "Some may ask a very reasonable feminist question that could challenge this argument: why must toughness, Machiavellianism, combativeness, or even swaggering bellicosity be viewed as masculine?"

in fact this is not the definition of masculinity. what's been mistakenly called masculinity is really the ego, the ego gone amuck. the true definition of the masculine energy is ones ability to define and value while the feminine energy is comprised of intuition and the desire to nuture. these qualities should be held, in balance, in both men and women alike.

of the candidates Barack comes closest to being in balance.

and finally, Mr. Carville, go away, pull stakes and disappear

[tedbear]

James Carville and his wife are both old school politicians. They will say anything no matter how abusive or stupid. The fact that he, a Democrat and she, a Republican are married, speaks volumes about the game of old politics being completely fake and disingenuous. He gets attention by being obnoxious and classless. I feel dirty even addressing the Carvilles albeit in a negative vein.

[obamagirl1968]

Excellent analysis!

[InformedMisery]

This is why liberals lose.

[strifeknot]

Sorry, it's you and like-minded thugs that have lost this time. Come to terms with it.

[jpcline004]

articles like this just propagate the kind of politics Obama is running against...

Lets stop dissecting the Clinton campaign and start preparing for McCain this fall.

United we stand, divided we fall...

[mamacat]

My ideal candidate would embody the best attributes of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, but I would be happy if it were a woman as well.

Worst president in history? I''ll give you three guesses, the first two don't count, and his initials are George Bush.

[pilotinfla]

Ever heard of Jimmy Carter and his malaise?

[InformedMisery]

Yeah, that candidate would get things done. I wish I lived in your fantasy world.

[ipitombi]

Simply the best article ever about America's contemporary political drama. Bravo !! Academy Award !!!

[lisasolodwarren]

Yes I agree and said so in my post. WHY then do so many people talk about everything BUT the article they are supposedly responding to. WHY do they use this forum as a way to trash everyone and support their own candidate? To perpetuate bigotry and confusion? I don't get it. The point of the HuffPo writers is to write things that begin a dialogue not a series of diatribes. Sigh.

[mm29464]

thank you for your excellent, thought-provoking post. it helps me make some sense of everything i have been wondering about hillary's strange campaign. "the political phallus" what a useful concept! You should right a book on it or perhaps some phd student will. also i think your observation of the conflation of the effete with taste and style is very illuminating. i only hope that the public is in a state this year to see through all of the political shellgame.

[elingles]

Brilliant. Magnificent post.

[Manx]

I found your eloquent article insightful. Hillary has revealed her true character in this election, which must be a great disappointment to many women - and men. A person with so much to prove can be dangerous. ("Totally obliterate Iran.) By projecting herself as masculine caricatures, she has called attention to her weaknesses. In her desperation, she has done everything except have a sex-change operation.

[GOREvolutionNOW]

First the bad news. I am a man. For this, I am forever deeply sorry. Sorry for my genders endless cruelty and utter uselessness.
The great news , however, that should give us all solace in these trying times, which have been brought on almost exclusively by that Gaia-damned M- word, is that our beautiful world will soon be rid of f***ing masculinity forever, thanks to genetic advances.
It has been the in-thing for far too long to chalk up all wars and misfortune to religion alone. Yes, religion is almost half the blame. The greater part of the blame, however, for the living hell-on-earth all of nature and gentle-kind has endured for the last 60,000 years is due to MEN and their pathetic f***ing BRAVADO.
Al Gore and Barack Obama embody the blissful future that we can see just over the horizon They will protect our Mother and aid her in embracing each and every one of us equally. She loves us all the same, unlike our human mothers, who play favorites and wish we were all tough and rowdy like our older brothers. Forcing us to date when we were'nt ready - judging us and humiliating us for being US!
Dont worry. We are turning the corner now and the closets will be reserved for the "strong" ones that were born just a little too soon to have the Hell-forged M-word struck from their putrid little souls.