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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The rule of Margaret Thatcher in the UK should put paid to any idea that women leaders can't be just as horrible as men. "Thatcher" is still a cuss-word in our circle, to be hissed through the teeth with vehement loathing.
A representative democracy, pretty much by definition I would have thought, should contain a representative selection of all sectors of society amongst it's elected leaders. I know of few self-proclaimed demacracies that are even close. Our political systems encourage pointless game playing over substantive ,forward-thinking policy, and I still think boys, of all ages, are more inclined to pointless game-playing. How many female wargamers do you know?
No one seems to remember Janis Karpinski, a woman, was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison while atrocities were being committeed right under her nose. Oh right, she was a victim, and has no real responsibility for what happened under her watch.
And aside from Thatcher, women along the lines of Biljana Plavsic were not too uncommon to find during the Bosnian war. She succeeded Karadzic as president after the 1995 Dayton peace accord, and was charged with every crime in its statute: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Plavsic joined Karadzic in rejecting the idea of a multiethnic Bosnia, fueling the 1992-1995 conflict. Throughout the war, Plavsic backed Serb purges of other ethnic groups, was seen visiting troops at the front, and became know as the Mother of Ethnic Cleansing.
Anthropologists observed decades ago that the more men and women are separated from each other, the more collectively aggressive -- warlike -- the culture is: think of Victorian England, the Zulus, and of course many Islamic cultures. Melvin Konner suggested over twenty years ago that the simplest way to reduce war is to mix men and women. Assuming that warfare is the only way to compete on the global stage is naive at best, considering that the US's dominance of the world is not through effective warfare (witness Vietnam, Korea, Iraq) but economics and cultural infiltration. Fukuyama has defined competition too narrowly -- and falsely.
While Chimps are much closer to humans biologically, dogs make a pretty good metaphors for humans.
For example, the male dog goes around protecting territory, pissing all over the place and obsessing about rank.
Female dogs can be very, well, "bitchy". A fascinating fact is that two female dogs, when fighting, are more likely to inflict fatal wounds than two male dogs.
While I tend to think (hope) that female politicians will tend to humanize politics, the jury is out. What we have seen so far has proven they are capable and competant, but has not given much evidence for this theory.
Lets hope it is so!
To bad "Commander in Chief" is off the air as it was fun to explore this stuff.
(writer is male)
There's much older evidence than Thatcher than female leaders can be just as aggressive as male ones. Steve Kelner brings up Victorian England -- well, the Victorian age is, after all, named for Victoria, who was, last I checked, a woman. She was also the last British monarch to have any significant say in how the country was run, and her reputation was not exactly warm and cuddly. "Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor ..."
Going back a few more centuries, we have Elizabeth I. Please, someone try to argue that she brought a civilizing effect to the throne. Good luck with that one.
Now, it could be argued that women in traditionally male positions of power feel the need to act more aggressive in order to prove themselves to skeptical men; that may be so, but it's also irrelevant. Whatever the reason, women who either rise to power or are born to it have proven themselves every bit as capable of ruthelessness as men are. Here in the US, we may not have any queens or female presidents to point at, but female corporate executives are certainly just as ready to axe thousands of loyal employees (while giving themselves fat bonuses) as are male ones.
What we need are not necessarily more "woman leaders," but simply more thoughtful, rational, humane people, of either sex, who recognize that even the greatest empire can (and, inevitably, will) overreach itself, and that there are better ways to deal with the world than "the sword an' the flame." I still have some hope that we can find such people -- yes, even among politicians! -- but I really don't give a damn about their plumbing.
We had to read one of Fukuyama's books in one of my classes in grad school. I didn't agree with most of his assertions regarding women's place in society. He makes some well thought out arguments, but generally he's pretty conservative where women are concerned. He essentially presented the argument that society works better when women remain in the home and have children.
I wouldn't go so far as to call him a quack, because he's obviously an intelligent man and some of his ideas are valid (he supports the whole "it takes a village to raise a child" mindset). But he's definitely not a feminist, or a progressive.
to suggest that men will retain any actual influence. I think some sort of collapse that will revive the old ways is unlikely, although it may be a long time before the whole world is on board.
As a matter of fact I think, given the situation, you can make a case that she did.
I really wish there actually was compelling evidence that having more women in positions of power would have a "civilizing influence" on societies. But I haven't seen any, and there's certainly plenty of at least anecdotal evidence to suggest that there's unfortunately not much difference.
My personal view on the reason for this is that the will to power, whether in women or men, is a force that requires compromising whatever values the subject may have to begin with. And the more power accumulated, the effect of all those "compromises" along the way results in a personality that will do anything, even violate previously strongly held moral values, to maintain and increase the level of power attained.
Case in point: potential future "leader of the free world", Iraq-hawk Hillary Clinton.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
