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Women are Key to November: What Do They Really Want?
Townhall.com ^ | March 25, 2016 | Suzanne Fields

Posted on 03/25/2016 9:52:25 AM PDT by Kaslin

Women think men are transparent and easy to figure out. Everybody knows that. But women are a puzzle to men -- ask any man. When Sigmund Freud posed his famous question, he confessed that even he had no answer.

"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not been able to answer despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul," he wrote to one of his precocious female students, "is, 'what does a woman want?'"

The man who popularized psychoanalysis couldn't come to a conclusion on this matter. It's clear to everybody, though, that what women want today is: what everybody wants. Women want everything. Some women have speculated that Freud was only being coy or playful, but his question lingers. This is the season where presidential candidates -- and every other office, large or small -- must ponder, as billions of dollars ride on the answer.

Hillary Clinton is betting everything on women's issues, and has based her campaign on pandering to the feminist vote. Donald Trump, ever the outlier, seems to be basing his campaign on insulting and aggravating women. It's not unlikely that some women will take revenge for the Donald's crudities aimed at the female persuasion. He has tapped into his well of anger; women can, too. People are full of surprises.

Clinton's polling gurus were surprised early on to find that many young women are not as enamored of the former first lady as expected. Some find her self-centered and see her as a flawed role model. The strength of Clinton's female vote is concentrated in what the French call "women of a certain age" These women are inclined to sympathize with feminism even if they don't buy all the particulars; they learned the hard way to overcome barriers erected in politics and business. But younger women who follow these pathfinders don't feel the constraints their mothers and grandmothers did. They've broken through glass ceilings in many different careers.

A recent study from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, however, finds disquieting implications for feminists who imagined that every woman would one day join them and march to the beat of the same drum. Researchers surveyed thousands of boys and girls; they found that resistance to female teenage leaders exists among teenage boys and teenage girls. There's even resistance among some mothers of daughters. "These biases," the researchers say, "could be powerful barriers to leadership for a generation of teen girls with historically high levels of education who are key to closing our nation's gender gap in leadership."

These findings suggest that "much can be done to prevent and reduce gender biases in children." Conservatives would argue that the researchers have only rediscovered something inherent to the female nature: The resentments of teenage girls are the natural jealousies that begin early in life.

The study's results reflected the answers of 20,000 boys and girls of diverse economic and ethnic backgrounds from 59 middle schools and high schools. Focus groups and individual interviews followed. One conclusion is that teenagers of both sexes hold biases against female leaders in powerful professions and occupations, such as politics.

"Our study points to insidious bias against girls as leaders that comes from many sources," says Richard Weissbourd, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "Bias can be a powerful -- and invisible -- barrier to teenage girls' leadership. Yet parents and teachers can do a great deal to stem these biases and help children manage them."

Researchers asked students whether they would give more power to student councils led by either white, black or Hispanic girls or boys. They were surprised to find that students were least likely to give more power to white female-led student councils, and more likely to give more power to councils led by white males. In fact, white girls themselves were least likely to favor white girls.

It's easy to make too much of a survey of teenagers, who usually have little interest in anything beyond their own concerns. Their opinions are often merely whims that are as fleeting as the weather. Most of the teenagers surveyed actually had no settled opinion about the place of girls in teenage leadership. But considering that women have recently been dropping out of the labor force in measurable numbers, the implications for the future are nevertheless profound. Clinton's ultimate performance may have a strong impact on how young women see themselves as prospective leaders.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2016issues; ignorantbirther; womensvote
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To: JPJones

My apologies. I posted to you in error.


61 posted on 03/25/2016 4:03:41 PM PDT by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: Kaslin

The much-ballyhooed recent poll showing 47% of republican women who won’t vote for Trump, actually shows a majority will or might vote for Trump.

Then there’s the F Chuck Todd polling showing Trump supporters are “like Reagan democrats” and they shouldn’t be angered.

Don’t have links, you can search and find.


62 posted on 03/25/2016 4:04:52 PM PDT by JPJones
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To: trisham

No worries!


63 posted on 03/25/2016 4:06:16 PM PDT by JPJones
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To: Kaslin
In my experience:


64 posted on 03/25/2016 4:24:30 PM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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To: lentulusgracchus

What’s your source, I’m not finding mention of men being sacrificed and cannibalized by Greek women.


65 posted on 03/25/2016 6:44:02 PM PDT by BlackAdderess (What would poll higher, having the GOPe as houseguests, or having black mold?)
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To: BlackAdderess
Source is: Greek Mythology, Robert Graves. Two volumes (paperback ed.).

Also try The Women's Encyclopedia of Myth and Magic (multiple authoresses). Also dead-tree, several hundred pp.

Also, metasearch on "Eleusinian Mysteries","Cybele", "Cottyto", "Maenads", "Bacchantes", "Aegis", "Great Goddess", "Midsummer's Night", "Tanist". That should start you off on the grisly realities behind the old pre-Greek "Old European" religion. Come to think of it, try googling that, too -- and "Long House Culture", see what comes up with that and see if it has a religion module.

Hotay? Let me know if your search satisfies you. Keep in mind that, beginning with the "Women's Encyclopedia", a lot of ideologically-driven damage has been done to the knowledge base in the form of revisionist overwriting on e.g. Wikipedia -- the feminazis will have been all over that and pretty much tried to plow Graves et al. six feet under.

You might also try searching under "Marija Gimbutas" .... she's a Lithuanian scholar whose dating schema has been shown to be way too high and whom her critics accused of having lost her objectivity by delving too far into the Old European (gynecocentric) religion and speculating and generally partying intellectually.

66 posted on 03/25/2016 9:08:50 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: lentulusgracchus

Ok, I’ve got Graves Greek Myths on my bookshelf. Looks like there’s a lot of violent imagery involving Maenids which actually is about hallucinogenic mushroom ingestion.

There was an annual fertility rite where one man was chosen by the most desirable woman in childbearing years in the tribe to be king for a year during which time it looks like it was his job to have a lot of sex. At the end of his reign he was sacrificed, his blood was sprinkled over the fields, and the priestesses cannibalized what was left. The Irish apparently picked two men per year, one for the Summer and Winter solstice.

Graves says that’s where kings come from. So does that mean that if nobody had been given special privileges, and if people had fertilized the fields by pooping on them instead, we wouldn’t have ended up with power hungry lunatics?!


67 posted on 03/26/2016 7:16:51 AM PDT by BlackAdderess
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To: Pearls Before Swine

One preacher I used to know said that what a woman really wants is a man to tell her what she wants! Many will scorn that statement but he had a wife who called him “Mister” and a house full of children who were very respectful toward him. I thought him a buffoon as did many others but in his own home he was treated with total respect but with no evidence that either his wife or children feared him.


68 posted on 03/26/2016 9:20:48 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Racism is racism, regardless of the race of the racist.)
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To: Lorianne

All those things are the reason I have said many times that if the women of America really wanted Hillary as president she would now be a lame duck president instead of a candidate and Barack Obama would be a failed senator instead of the worst president of all time.


69 posted on 03/26/2016 9:26:30 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Racism is racism, regardless of the race of the racist.)
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To: RipSawyer
what a woman really wants is a man to tell her what she wants!

The reason for that is if things don't go well she can blame it all on him. It's called passive-aggressive and it is not good.

70 posted on 03/26/2016 10:38:48 AM PDT by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: BlackAdderess
Warriors are guys. Now when you have some balance (the more successful Chinese dynasties, England, etc.) you have peace and prosperity.

Does the word men make you uncomfortable?

Tribal warfare is the special environmental pressure that drove humans to evolve intelligence, culture, and technology far beyond basic survival needs. Differences in IQ among populations can be traced back to the amount of organized warfare they faced and defeated. Japan had a violent tribal warfare past and it largely explains who they are.

The technologies developed for surviving tribal warfare are later put to civilian use, and that's what drives increasing prosperity. No war, or preparation for war, means little improvement in prosperity later. That's just how it works.

Due to biological differences, women's survival strategies are different than men's, however your premise that women leaders result in peace in prosperity is a fantasy. Women are just as cutthroat as men. They just hide it better.

71 posted on 03/26/2016 11:10:17 AM PDT by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: BlackAdderess

Even though we will have to kill them all, you have to admit radical muzzies had a pretty good handle on how to treat their women. /sarcasm


72 posted on 03/26/2016 11:13:59 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: Reeses

You are ignoring the point, though. You need both sexes working in harmony for a successful society. The Northmen were about as manly as it gets, yet, they had no problem utilizing the talents of women for running things in their absence. They didn’t lock them up, keep them idle, and expend a lot of resources keeping them that way like is done in the Middle East.


73 posted on 03/26/2016 11:45:06 AM PDT by BlackAdderess (A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen... -Emerson)
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To: central_va

Downright pathological!


74 posted on 03/26/2016 11:49:00 AM PDT by BlackAdderess (A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen... -Emerson)
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To: BlackAdderess
You need both sexes working in harmony for a successful society.

Agree! Nature works to cull the "men are pigs" crowd.

75 posted on 03/26/2016 12:11:22 PM PDT by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: Lorianne

Totally agree with you.


76 posted on 03/26/2016 12:27:47 PM PDT by LauraJean (sometimes I win sometimes I donate to the equine benevolent society)
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To: RipSawyer
One preacher I used to know said that what a woman really wants is a man to tell her what she wants!

I think that comes down to "some of the people all of the time." Different ladies are focused on different things, some of them difficult to discern, others less so.

77 posted on 03/26/2016 2:41:38 PM PDT by Pearls Before Swine (The would-be Empress has no clothes. My eyes!)
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To: Kaslin

They want communism with a smile.


78 posted on 03/26/2016 2:43:36 PM PDT by deadrock (I is someone else.)
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To: Kaslin

“It’s easy to make too much of a survey of teenagers, who usually have little interest in anything beyond their own concerns. Their opinions are often merely whims that are as fleeting as the weather. Most of the teenagers surveyed actually had no settled opinion about the place of girls in teenage leadership.”

Well then offhand, I would say your study so much more profoundly resembles a fart in the wind rather than something anyone might get exercised about or even take seriously as a pure intellectual exercise. If I were grading your paper, I’m thinking C+, B- if I’m in a really good mood.


79 posted on 03/26/2016 5:49:50 PM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (I apologize for not apologizing.)
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To: BlackAdderess
I'm sure that power maniacs and other diseased "red"/dominative personalities would have found a way to "manifest" their dysfunction anyway .... like dry alcoholics, they'd have found the beer cart eventually. The "corn kings" were a fundmental part of the Great Goddess religion which Graves, Gimbutas, the aforementioned "Women's Encyclopedia" and other writers reference.

One thing I haven't been able to work through is the fact that the Great Goddess is somehow identified with the Funnel-Beaker/Long House culture, and the male sky-pantheon with the arriving Yamnaya/Kurgan/"Battleaxe" Culture (which was a steppe equiculture which spoke Indo-European) which, in the older recounting, came into conflict with the Goddess Culture and diplaced it (in Greece they accreted, yielding a syncretistic dog's-breakfast religion of bits and pieces and a fusion Olympic pantheon).

So the rub is, that the Yamnaya Kurgans have yielded bodies of Indo-European steppe "witches" (complete with tall, broad-brimmed, conical "witch" hats) who were priestesses .... of what? Something is wrong with this picture. What's up with powerful, high-status "witch"-priestesses in a culture that bequeathed us male sky-gods? Sum Ting Wong must be called to consult.

80 posted on 03/26/2016 10:40:50 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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