Last month New York Times syndicated columnist Frank Bruni, an openly gay man, asked his readers a question. Which of these three groups will be first to have one of its members elected president:
A JEW, A GAY, OR A WOMAN
The question would be which is more deeply ingrained in the American psyche—homophobia, sexism, or anti-Semitism?
I found it to be an intriguing question and extended it to ranking the groups in order from most likely to least likely. I conducted a small survey among my friends and family members.
My prediction was 1. Jew 2. woman 3. gay
My friends Mick, Pasquale, and James said 1. woman 2. Jew 3. gay
My cousin Luigi surprised by saying 1. gay 2. Jewish 3. woman
But two highly educated women (Master’s degree and doctorate), said 1.Jew 2. gay 3. woman
Granted this was a very small sampling, but a large poll wouldn’t prove anything more than a small one. As with all polls, it depends on who you’re polling and what type of mindset they have. What’s important is the reasoning behind these opinions.
Speaking for myself, I put gays last because even though gays and lesbians have made magnificent strides in the last quarter century, culminating in the nation-wide legalization of same-sex marriage, there is still a huge amount of homophobia in this country that would preclude someone not straight winning a national election.
My wife and I spent four winters in the great state of Mississippi, and it’s pretty clear that gays in the Deep South are where blacks were in 1950. In the Bible Belt, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
While there’s also a lot of anti-Semitism in America that would definitely obstruct a Jewish male from winning the presidency, it doesn’t seem to rise to the level of bigotry against gays and women.
Personally I don’t believe a woman can be elected president. Hillary Clinton was the last best hope. Women simply don’t vote for women in large enough numbers to carry a national election. Many women have internalized the message that they’re inferior and that leadership is the role of a man.
In 2016 there were 53% of white Republican women who voted for Donald Trump. There were some Democratic women who hated Mrs. Clinton. They stayed home or voted for a third-party candidate who couldn’t win, and they declared they weren’t going to vote for someone “just because she had a vagina.”
Women always say, “I don’t mind voting for a woman—but not THAT woman!” There’s always something wrong with THAT woman. Here in Massachusetts we’ve never elected a female governor and took until 2012 to elect our first female senator. Was there something wrong with Shannon O’Brien, the gubernatorial candidate in 2002? Wasn’t she better than the smarmy, flip-flopping Willard Romney? And senate candidate Martha Coakley didn’t get enough women to support her over the pickup truck driving, barn jacket wearing, intellectually-challenged Scott Brown. Why?
Former Worcester Mayor Joe O’Brien worked as a political consultant for years and said that when he did focus groups women were always much harder on female candidates than on males.
There’s a psychological reason for this. One of the two women mentioned above is highly trained in psychology. She’s a millennial, about the same age as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is the most profound analysis you will ever read.
“Here’s why I am so certain a woman is least likely, regardless of who they are, to ever be president. It is all about power and who is more apt to be tolerated in a position of power. A man may be Jewish or gay, but he still has a penis. In the deepest layer of their unconscious, people still associate the penis with power. It is unnatural for a woman to have a penis; hence the idea of women in power is repulsive to both genders and particularly threatening to men. Asking people to vote a woman into the highest position of power is asking them to choose an option they unconsciously (or perhaps consciously) find unnatural, repugnant, and dangerous. Every time I begin to believe we are making genuine social strides in gender/sex equality, I am startlingly reminded that misogyny is the most universal and deeply rooted hatred of all.”
The woman with the doctorate chimed in and said, “Women don’t realize how hated they are.”
The advice here for Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and any other female presidential candidate is to FUGEDABOUDIT. Perhaps someone will take a chance on you as VP.
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