Hell Hath No Fury Like an Accomplished Woman Facing Down a Man-Boy

(interesting take on nikki, although I have a real problem with the conflation of ramasmarmy and Sect. Pete)


Hell Hath No Fury Like an Accomplished Woman Facing Down a Man-Boy
9/28/2023 by Jill Filipovic
While women have to prove themselves by their past performance, men are judged by their potential—a big advantage for young men in a hurry. No wonder women like Nikki Haley are mad.



Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy participate in the Republican primary debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Sept. 27, 2023, in Simi Valley, Calif. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

This story originally appeared on Jill.substack.com, a newsletter from journalist, lawyer and author Jill Filipovic.

The second Republican debate was a chaotic disaster. The candidates all interrupted each other and talked over each other; they lied and misled the audience; they largely ignored the issues that impact women’s lives; they hit new lows when Chris Christie said Joe Biden is “sleeping with a member of the teacher’s union” (his wife) and Mike Pence jumped in to assure viewers that he definitely sleeps with his wife. But one candidate stood out: Nikki Haley. Don’t get me wrong—she’s exactly as terrible as the rest of them. But the best moment in the debate was when Haley turned to the smarmy Ramaswamy and said, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.” It was a movie-worthy insult, the culmination of Haley’s obvious and growing loathing of the young and entirely unqualified man on stage.

. . . . .




Of course no one is entitled to the presidency (or the vice presidency), no matter how hard they’ve worked. But for many American women, it’s easy to understand Haley and Klobuchar’s irritation at the young, under-experienced men in their respective races. Women have been outnumbering men on college campuses for generations now, and have been a majority of college graduates for about as long. Women like Haley and Klobuchar, though 12 years apart in age, were both part of cohorts of women who outperformed men academically and who took the “right” path to success—do well in high school, go to college, graduate, maybe go to graduate school, get a job, move up the chain—only to see men surpass them again and again. There have been fewer male college graduates than female ones since women now in their 60s were in college. And yet the halls of power are still overflowing with men.

. . . .

To put a finer point on it: Across industries, men are paid better and promoted more readily just on the basis of being men. This means that a lot of women have seen their work undervalued. A lot of them have been leapfrogged by men—often by younger men. Researchers have long noted that while women have to prove themselves and are professionally evaluated on their past performance, men are judged by their potential—a big advantage for young men in a hurry. It’s hard to imagine the 30-something female mayor of a small American city deciding she’s ready to run the country; there likewise aren’t a lot of 30-something women who spent a few years running companies only to decide that their idiosyncratic and extreme political ideas mean they should be in the White House.

I don’t think Nikki Haley should be president. But there’s no real comparison between her bona fides and Ramaswamy’s. She has spent the last 20 years working her way up the political chain. She’s held legislative roles and executive ones. She has terrible ideas, but she’s done what so many women have: Gone through the process, collected accomplishments, waited her turn. And now she’s experiencing what so many women have: A young man, buoyed by his own enormous ego, skipping the hard parts and the learning-how-to-do-it parts and feeling entitled to power, simply on the basis of his potential greatness and self-assuredness.

No wonder she’s livid.

https://msmagazine.com/2023/09/28/nikki-haley-republican-debate-ramaswamy/