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

[joekerr]

PS...I could write a frickin book about how deeply being mixed race, (what a silly term!) can affect the way you interact with people, and how you see the world. Clinton is appealing the old ideal of race and sex, while Obama represents a newer ideal that is only in its infancy. The race factor isn't about black v white, but more race v identity. Clinton considers herself in that idealistic version of the nuclear (sp?) family. While Obama is more from a new school, where social ties and the white picket fence are no longer relevant. This is less about sex, than it is racial identity. And don't get me wrong, like I said before, it is not black versus white, but more about the need to have it still be that way.

[raskolnikov72]

ding, ding, ding ...

http://www.mavinfoundation.org/projects/resource_book.html

[ProfessorVP]

The Clintons, with their endless polling and focus grouping, is keenly aware that Obama can go only so far in his spoken language and especially body language, and not one tiny step further, without running the risk of seeming like- GASP!- an ABM. (Angry Black Man.) And oh, have they milked that.
But they go a step further. When Obama behaves like a perfect gent, they play that, too... what an elitist! How will he solve problems? Why, throw a tea party, of course. As opposed to Hillary,
who can arm wrestle with one hand, down a shot with the other.

Which candidate, I ask, ever had so much old-fashioned rolling around in the gutter fun? Okay, Nixon maybe.

[joekerr]

This is probably one the most intelligent posts I've read on Huffpo in a long while. Though I do agree in a lot of ways, I still think you let Obama off too easy. I think everyone needs to remember that despite his message and his image, Obama is still out for Obama first. Think I'm wrong? Then what about you? As a mixed race black guy myself, I know what Obama is doing. When you literally are the "reach" across the aisle, you find yourself in the peculiar situation of trying to appease both sides. Now I may be wrong, but I think the general image of a tall, masculine, athletic black man usually inspires fear in the general American populace. Not sure why, but there have been a few studies, and the courts have proved it too. Obama is treading that thin, thin line between seeming unthreatening, thus the "effeminate" label, and still seem formidable. This is not an easy line to walk. I would call less a new masculinity, than a new race of people, trying to establish their place in this world. Mixing races is not an age old thing. We are all too well aware of the divisions that separate the races how you can be ostracized for stepping outside the racial lines. What you see in Obama is truly the diplomacy and understanding that comes from being from both sides. He is truly not a “new man” but a new person. Think about it.

[BeingFrank]

Being also of mixed heritage, {race is illusion} I can see that Obama is attempting to communicate that self identity is what has been driving our politics in American since the beginning.

It's a crude view of self awareness, open to leaders who manipulate our votes for their own profit and to our demise, because in our separate boxes we lack the power it takes to lift the lid and see the sun.

What is going on in the Obama campaign is an attempt to bring into realization that our ability bring about the kinds of building enterprise we need, requires a majority of hands, and that means color of those hands is not just simply irrelevant but necessarily diverse.

This is an evolution in thinking that would have come about sooner or later, however many of us are surprised that it is happening during our lifetimes.­.

If it were not for the decades of strife that blue collar workers have been subjected to by the Gop, when they were it's most staunch support base, it would not have occurred so soon, because they have always separated themselves and voted to their own detriment.

Let us pray that this realization will not evaporate in November, when the air is full of that same old spin of fear, hate, suspicion, and false promises again of a return to the world of the 1950's, when the realities of our societies cancers were covered up by censorship and the cop on the beat..

[MariaHopeful]

There is no "effeminate" label! WTF are you talking about. Don't buy into character assassination. Obama is a handsome, sexy, charismatic MAN. And what the heck do you mean he is only out for himself? There is nobody on the political scene who can match the personal sacrifice that Obama made when he gave up making millions to go back to Chicago.

[rosal]

Feminists love her because she is though as a man. Sounds strange doesn't it? I admire women that are strong as women, not by imitating men.
One of these days, we will have a truly strong, capable, honest, proud to be a woman, president.
This one doesn't cut it.

[NoSillyName]

rosal, don't stereotype all feminists as loving HRC because that just isn't true.

[oafishcad]

Hillary is not going to be the candidate for the Democratic Party, so why do Obamabots continue to trash her? Obama will not be elected in the general election if he's seen as a wimp, he absolutely will not be. Trash Hillary all you want, she knows the GOP won against McGovern, Dukakis, Kerry and Carter's second term because the GOP was successful in painting the Democratic candidate as a wimp. She was NOT going to be painted as such. The chipping away of Obama's masculinity has begun (elitist). It will continue bit by bit until the GOP wins unless the Democrats prove the Republicans wrong. It's all well and good to be "above all that". It's also a guarantee of a Republican in the White House. Voters want the person who they think will best protect the USA from whatever they view as a threat. Senator Obama has to prove he's that man. He has to take charge of the conversation, or be an interesting footnote in history.

[Imhotep]

Alfred E. Newman could beat crazy, old warmonger McCain in a general or any other kind of an election. Anyone could. Peace

[Denni]

Terms like 'obamabots' help us understand why Hillary lost. There's so little respect from the clintons (and clinton supporters?) for the Democratic Party and the Party's values.

[Superfelo]

We talk about sexism, and the gender card, etc. But the most blatant statement against women,
and Womanhood, their person, their being, their self, is made by one of her most rabid supporters, and nobody calls him out on it. James Carville:
"As the oleaginous Clinton loyalist, James Carville, has said, if Mrs. Clinton gave Obama one of her testicles, "they'd both have two."
So women are wimps, have no characters, and can't fight for anything unless they have testicles?
This kind of talk has been bandied about by the Clinton supporters in this campaign. Go figure.
Your article is very well thought out and well written. A delight to read. Intelligent writing.
Enough said.

[kavan]

But we need a knuckle-dragger to protect us from the scary terrorists! That's why soccer-moms voted for Dubya's encore. The repubs will do their best to do make McCain seem like the better candidate for this. Anyone for elevated terrorist alerts this summer? Don't recall seeing one since the summer of 2004...

[MrHHusseinMA]

I just googled the October 1995 issue of Spy Magazine with Hillary on the cover. Boy, that was so insightful of them!! How could they see years ahead like this? Right on point! Awesome piece!

[Tasies]

Don't you know that elegance, intelligence, and eating a balanced diet is elitist and un-American?

[lafrance]

I would have thought the idea of the grunt type male as the ideal for a president would have gone away with the last 8 years of Bush. Hyper macho really got this country into alot of problems. And the faux swaggering and belching male type would have been proven a liability. That we would have learned that real men don't need to show off their maleness to impress. And that more statesman would be a desirable trait for a president.
Afterall, swagger is not of much use in the oval office but, intellect is.
And, those men who are secure and real men, don't like to show how tough they are and use it only if really needed.
You would have thought we would have learned the lessons of the bullyboy tough guy is usually all talk and not much else. And the guy who doesn't beat the table and pretend is usually the tougher.

[rbloom]

I believe that Sen. Clinton's pseudo-macho posturing has been more Carville-ian than Freudian -- that is, a political calculation -- sprung from a reading of recent history. In the past century the first female elected as leader of a democracy has had to show that she is as ruthless as men, if not more so. Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir were all seen as not just tough, but as don't-mess-with-me tough. They had to be, as the idea that world affairs are "no place for a lady" is pretty ingrained in the electorate, and the only way to overcome that is to leave no doubt whatsoever about a female candidate's tripartite cojones. I agree that the vote for the war authorization bill was part of this calculation -- so was her stubborn refusal to back down from it.
The only real surprise in the Clinton campaign is that it didn't work. I suspect that's because of something of a historical fluke. The Democratic Party became the antiwar party in 2006, and the war was an albatross for Clinton that lead to early setbacks in Iowa and Super Tuesday. Coupled with that, Democrats after 2000 and 2004 have been pretty much innoculated against the tough-talking and mean-spirited campaigning that Clinton the reverted to. No so the Republicans; had Sen. Clinton been competing on the other side against Sen. McCain, Gov. Romney, et al., I believe she could have blown them out of the water.

[Nezua]

Brilliant. "A new masculinit­y."

How ironic that Obama may be doing much for women by showing men they can relax the fakery and aggression, which only hurts women down the line...and Clinton sets them back by reinforcing the idea that violent and unfeeling machismo = power.

[Superfelo]

A very brilliant statement; but Senator Obama is not only doing much for women, he doing a great deal for the world-he is changing the world. Racists, women, men, America, will never be the same. He is smashing stereotypes and old erroneous ideas people have of each other.
My African-American friends still do not recognize his greatness-they tell me "he is not great yet";
I say: "he already is." Enough said.

[txbyrd]

Dont forget Carville's tacky 'cojones' comment.
For a long time I thought much of the antipathy toward Clinton was a general discomfort with a smart, strong, powerful woman.
Boy did this campaign prove me wrong. Since when does a progressive feminist go around trying to act like the most sexist stereotype of a man?

Bring on the new masculinity. Yum.

[useyourbrain]

It's ironic that Hillary is branded as the vessel of "old politics" and Obama of the "new". Politics is the oldest profession so it never will be pure. Obama is called a "pragmatist". Nice word for panderer and politician. The locus of ethics and morality changes when in the sphere of politics. It's all relative and on that basis, there is no difference them.

Obama's team is made up of ad men and advisors to Bill Clinton's administration -- so much for Obama not being part of the "old politics". Why is Obama surrounding himself with so many old time establishment pols and lobbyists? Kennedy, Kerry, Dodd, and others. Kennedy is about as establishment as one can get. Most of these Senators voted for the dreaded Iraq resolution that Obama feels disqualifies her for office -- ignoring the fact the Obama, once in the Senate voted for every Iraq bill Hillary did -- with one BIG exception. The bill calling for the removal of troops with a schedule deadline.

I guess Obama was being "pragmatic" and not a politician who feared a vote against Iraq funding would label him anti-soldier in his run-up to his campaign for the Presidency -- a run which began the day he took office as Senator. Once in the Senate who became his guru, guide, mentor to all things Senatorial? Tom Daschle, Mr. New Washington. Obama took Daschle's Chief of Staff as his Chief of Staff.

Nothing truly is never new.

[KillTheMessenger]

If I have two pieces of pottery... one is made of thick clay, heavy and uneven and one is made from fine porcelain with elaborate patterns on its glaze... which one, do you think, should I put on the dinner table when I have guests over?

Both pieces will shatter when dropped on the floor, but one piece will tell my guests that I have refined taste, the other will tell them that I am a brutish boor.

Please keep in mind that when the president of the United States has guests over at the White House, he or she are the indicators of your taste.

[wmfor]

And if you have seen any videos of Bush with foreign leaders, you much cringe as much as I with what they think of as our "taste".

[Gma11]

Excellent assessment!!

You've aptly articulated some of the unconscious issues that so trouble me about Hillary Clinton.