There is Plath's remark--"every woman loves a fascist"-- and some of Pynchon's deep embodied insights flatly stated , I suggest

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, basically, to the great variety of reasons you essay, in my opinion.
Yes, to racism by
all kinds of white folk, men and women. Yes, this piece uses race to
explain too much in my opinion, but when I sent
the snippet around I accented a different aspect, Pynchon's deep
Freud-inspired, N. O.Brown influence on the
psychodynamics of 'sick' human character...

As you point out, there is Oedipa, not one of Pynchon's
thematically-relevant young women, and neither are Yashmeen
and Maxine, for just two.

I think Lot 49, Oedipa's move from a Goldwater Republican to who she ends
as and Yashmeen and Cyprian show P's deep feminism.

But I would and keep saying so but it don't matter.

I still think that so many non-literary, non-wonkish, just-livng-and
getting-by women in this country are
psychodynamically like the "deep' answer depth psychology can bring---Brown
again.

Given so many turning from Trump and all hearing something from him, lots
about him, surely all know of the "pussy-grabbing"
remark; Stormy Daniels; all his lies----Republicans I know simply say yeah,
but we like him anyway. I also say
many men identify with that bully because they need to feel 'like
fascists", tough, strong, as he keeps telling all he is.

What I Believe and Why, mostly.



On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 10:48 AM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:

> Plath wasn't making a political statement about women, and Pynchon, with
> his predilection for very young women, is hardly a go-to source for
> theories about women of any race. His wonderful character Oedipa knows that
> excluded middles are bad shit. Republican=racist, Democrat = not racist.
> Nothing in between. Is that what you're saying? White women who vote
> Democratic aren't racist? I can conceive of white women voting Republican
> who are no more racist than their Democrat-voting counterparts. To say that
> white women vote Republican because they're racist and/or they adore a
> fascist seems presumptuous.
>
> Not everyone has their own, developed worldview. A significant chunk of
> Americans adopt the worldview of their places of worship, whether that
> means rabid anti-abortionism, single-minded votes for pro-Israel
> candidates, voting for Democrats so long as they're not gay, etc. Another
> very significant chunk boils everything down to what they perceive is their
> financial interest. Union workers voted for union-buster Reagan because he
> promised to lower their taxes. The super-rich will vote for Trump again
> because he did lower their taxes. Then there's us - educated, aware, who
> read and vote pretty much in lock-step with each other (barring the
> occasional Hillary dispute). The rest of the people are pretty much winging
> it, and not having been trained in logic, or even the necessity of logic,
> they come up with various voting strategies:
> "I hate black people, but Obama is awesome." "My friend said Hillary is a
> murderer." "Trump is a disgusting pig, but the Democrats will force women
> to have abortions." "I loved Trump on The Apprentice - it would be a hoot
> to see him in the White House." "My boyfriend said he'll beat the shit out
> of me if I don't vote for Trump." "What the hell, eeny meeny miney mo." "My
> union said not to vote for him, and I agree with everything they said. But
> they also say that immigrants work for low wages, and that NAFTA is bad. So
> it seems like voting for Trump makes a lot of sense."
>
> If you can speak about white women as a group then so can I, a white
> woman. So here it is: White women want Beto for President in 2020!
>
> Laura
>
> On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 7:30 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "What is wrong with white women? Why do half of them so consistently vote
>> for Republicans, even as the Republican party morphs into a monstrously
>> ugly organization that is increasingly indistinguishable from a hate
>> group?
>> The most likely answer seems to be that white women vote for Republicans
>> for the same reason that white men do: because they are racist. Trump,
>> with
>> his raucous rallies and his bloviating, combative style, has offered his
>> supporters an opportunity to savor the pleasures of being cruel. It is
>> likely that the white women who voted for him in 2016, and who will vote
>> for him again in 2020, find this racist sadism gratifying. It is fun for
>> them.
>>
>> But there is something else at play, something more complicated, in white
>> women’s relationship to white patriarchy. White women’s identity places
>> them in a curious position at the intersection of two vectors of privilege
>> and oppression: they are granted structural power by their race, but
>> excluded from it by their sex. In a political system where racism and
>> sexism are both so deeply ingrained, white women must choose to be loyal
>> to
>> either the more powerful aspect of their identity, their race, or to the
>> less powerful, their sex. Some Republican white women might lean into
>> racism not only for racism’s sake, but also as a means of avoiding or
>> denying the realities of how sexist oppression makes them vulnerable.
>>
>> In her book Right Wing Women
>> <https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/women>, the feminist Andrea
>> Dworkin wrote that conservative women often conform to the dominant
>> ideologies of the men around them as part of a subconscious survival
>> strategy, hoping that their conservatism will spare them from male hatred
>> and violence. It doesn’t work, she says. They suffer sexist oppression
>> anyway. But the strategy continues. “Most women cannot afford, either
>> materially or psychologically, to recognize that whatever burnt offerings
>> of obedience they bring to beg protection will not appease the angry
>> little
>> gods around them.” Participating in racism does not exempt white women
>> from
>> sexism, as much as they might hope that it will. It merely corrodes their
>> souls in the process.
>>
>>
>> White women’s identity places them in a curious position at the
>> intersection of two vectors of privilege and oppression."
>>
>>                                  ----put couple sentences into Google or
>> Bing exactly to get the whole larger article.
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>