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

Tue Nov 13 01:28:25 CST 2018

I am just about to read the Moira Dunegan article. Thanks Mark. Plus, fortuitously have read a whole lot about women (very literally) loving fascists, the last few days- in very strange and superficial sources (apologies). Just chiming in now, before time (more apologies) to say how disturbing that photo at the top of the article is. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Only just getting my brain in gear. It’s very dark.

JB
Sent from my iPhone

> On 12 Nov 2018, at 20:37, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Sorry, I missed the attribution. My response, then, is to Moira.
> 
>> On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 12:32 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Here's the whole article by Moira Dunegan. (last time I send only a
>> section---in quotes---and give directions
>> AT THE BOTTOM on how to access the whole thing. You see, I say, had I sent
>> this, no one would have
>> read it. No one would have become engaged in a dialogue. I say.  (Some
>> other friends on the 'racism' narrowness, my my)
>> 
>> Thanks Laura.
>> 
>> 
>> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/09/white-women-vote-republican-why
>> 
>> 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
>>>> 
>>> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l