Originally Posted by Mysterytrain

Smart, independent women who don't seem to 'need' a man intimidate many men.

I remember back in 2004, when John Kerry was running for president in the United States. My parents, Democrats, supported him, and, by extension, his wife, the outspoken, foreign, worldly (former Republican), Teresa Heinz Kerry.

My dad told me he went to a non-political meeting with some of his neighbors, and all of the men were making derogatory jokes about Teresa Heinz Kerry, saying they "didn't like her", but they could never really say why (and this wasn't just about differing politics).

My dad, always a mellow person who never raises his voice, finally spoke after all of the potshots were taken, simply saying, "I like her; she's smart."

The other men looked at him like he was an alien from another planet. He told me later, "No matter what their political affiliation, these guys were terrified of women who seemed smarter than they were."

Hillary Clinton evokes much the same response among some men, imo. Our culture 'trains' both women and men, through our media, and through the examples in our own families, that men are supposed to act 'a certain way' and women are more often than not trained to be the 'helpers' of men.

Even my own sister, an otherwise-intelligent woman who works full-time in a demanding job and is raising two young boys, belongs to a church where women are not allowed to speak at meetings or teach adult men (they take the Bible literally when it comes to what women are 'allowed' to do). Men must speak for them. This kind of behavior perpetuates itself: Women actively work to diminish their own worth by ignoring the historical and cultural limitations of the Bible and view this decree as eternal, simply because they happened to be born a particular gender.

The cognitive dissonance of an otherwise fearless, outspoken woman demurring in this way shows how we often let sexism stand, simply because if women were thought of as not worthy of having something to say back in Biblical times, it must be "good enough" for the women of today.