In his new book ‘The Social Animal’, David Brooks stresses that our unconscious mind is the driver in human behavior. Mine has been operating on steroids this week.

Last evening, I sent a message to a friend explaining that I can’t continue our discussion of Hillary Clinton right now. We fell into a heated discussion of Hillary’s effectiveness as Secretary of State, based on my Monday post. His comment about Hillary not helping the women of the Congo caused me to erupt into a passionate defense of her commitment to women worldwide. I couldn’t bear to have her ripped apart on my own private Facebook wall. 

My friend believes that Hillary is too masculine, whereas I am feminine and still powerful. This man is an ‘enlightened’ male and so the ferocity of our debate caught me off guard.

Forty years after women marched for our rights in America, we are not only losing them but still fighting the same sexual political arguments about sexuality, sensuality and the idealized visions of what women must be in order to leverage appeal and effectiveness. How depressing!

My friend was married to a very dominating woman for years, and he says that Hillary reminds him of himself in ways that he doesn’t like. Call me confused!

My week has gone downhill since our argument, except for hearing David Brooks speak at the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia Monday evening.  My woes are nothing compared to the poor women of the Congo, Afghanistan, Peru and Zambia, of course. We are not in the same league, although certain universal truths tie us together.

Women As Incubators

I can’t believe I have to get on the Planned Parenthood bus and start marching all over again Thursday for the right to be more than an ‘incubator’, which was Stupak’s term for women in the health care debate. Women can die because we are only ‘incubators’. The focus of the social conservatives is protecting the unborn, unconceived, unimagined.

American women are selfish for not wanting to die in the emergency room because our doctors refuse to induce the medical procedure needed to save our lives — a right the Supreme Court of America has given us. Congress portrays this woman as a self-absorbed alpha woman, when in reality she can easily be a mother of three in a deadly, life-threatening pregnancy.