Warren and the Meaning of ‘Virtue’
Warren is adjudged, even by her ‘enemies’ and rivals, as incredibly, remarkably qualified. As outstanding in terms of her intellect, past accomplishments, economic foresight, organizational planning as far as how to actually DO stuff, and skilled. That’s why I’m bewildered with the conversations around ‘personality’ and ‘electability’ and the responses to these questions — even on my own part.
I was not struck by her particular style as she seemed too schoolmarmish for me (I wanted Kamala Harris — loved her style), and in fact she is one, but I found out more and more about the tons of stuff she’s actually done as a lawmaker over the years and I deeply respect her. That reservation on my part was sheer, shallow, stylistic bias — hard to get over but really just ego.
She took down Bloomberg onstage on his sexist and misogynistic record like a warrior queen, effectively, dramatically and with marvellous stagecraft. Morally, ethically she’s exemplary, which is paramount, always of course but especially now. She apologized for her one ‘sin’ of touting her family tradition of being proud of the tiny bit of Indigenous blood she has without technically having Native America legal status to the ones who matter, those being Native Americans, and they supported her in the aftermath and objected to her being subjected to racist slurs like Trump’s mockingly and depreciatingly calling her “Pocahontas” all the fucking time.
She’s a Green, out-Feminist, intellectually brilliant Democratic Socialist, like enlightened leaders in every other developed democracy in the Western world. What’s not to love? Over time, I began to know she was the most qualified one up there. I still had style quibbles to overcome, but that was MY problem. As Rachel Maddow described, I, like thousands if not millions of other women, feel a little bereft at her seemingly inevitable defeat.
As I say, I didn’t initially warm to her, nor did I particularly respond to her, even knowing all of the above. I wanted Harris. But I’m prepared to own my own egoic reasons for my preferences, and also my own embedded, unconscious, internalized misogyny. Why? Because I know that it is ubiquitous, like the water to a fish, so normalized over millennia as to be barely visible, constantly bearing assumed or accepted value judgements that are automatic and below conscious awareness, intrinsic in every language descended from Indo-European language groups and the first warrior caste-led cultures, shaping our thoughts and responses and conceptualizations profoundly, if subtly, and that this is the nature of linguistic thought-forms to so do. This is why revolutionary concepts like feminist, Green or ecological thinking, right outside the box, represent such phenomenal cognitive triumphs.
Case in point regarding the sexism embedded in the language: Female art historical ‘virtuosas’ (which literally means ‘man-like’ with regards to their talent, intellect and innate ‘virtue,’ which, itself, means ‘man quality,’ the Latin root being ‘vir,’ which means ‘man’) are today called ‘Female Masters.’ This is so as to avoid the cultural, moral and ideological inferences involved in calling a woman a ‘mistress’ — especially an aging one.
