Sex & Politics

June 15, 2004

The night of 9/11, I went to a local bar here in Boston to watch the news, eager for some kind of solidarity. At both ends of the room, TVs were tuned to the disaster, replayed fetishistically—the tower collapsing like a winded accordion, followed by its twin. But only a few of us were actually watching.

In front of me, a group of garrulous young men played darts. They spoke in the stagy, amplified tones of the near deaf, assuring themselves an audience. In between high fives and back slaps, they shouted for more beer, as if this were a night like any other. When a young German couple standing behind me, unable to hear the news over the din, expressed polite puzzlement at their antics, I was embarrassed for them, for us. I could not explain their indifference.

But now, two and a half years later, maybe it’s starting to make sense. Maybe those boys were not insensitive louts, whose worlds extended no further than the nearest watering hole, but instead were in some kind of shock, their pride wounded, desperate for cover. Maybe they were in suspension, waiting for reassurance that everything was going to be all right, that the tape could be reversed, and normal life would resume just after the commercial break.

Maybe these are the people who need the bluster of President Bush. They need his straightforward assessment of the situation, the “with us or against us” bravado that so stereotypifies the action-hero masculine model. Bush has filled the void of September 11th with gun smoke and garbled rhetoric, and as we’ve learned by now, those who oppose such tactics are appeasers. They are weak, feminine. They “look French.” And, of course, John Kerry, who speaks French and has a French first cousin, embodies all these vices. Quel horreur. Monsieur Kerry, as the Bushmen dub him, is the ultimate villain, because he is a man of nuance, an “old” European.

As the country re-divides between red and blue states, this time around another division may be re-emerging. Subtly, the U.S. is split along the lines of sex. On one side, Venus, on the other, Mars. Generally, women tend to vote for Democrats, while men tend to ... you got it. In 2000, women favored Gore by 11 percentage points, while by the same number of points men preferred Bush. Now, with the after-effects of 9/11 rendering the presidential election season more poisonous and important, these gender differences may prove to be decisive.

And guess what: there are more women than men in the United States. According to Gallup polls taken so far this year, the gap between male and female approval of Bush is more than seven percent. Is Condi nervous? I sure hope so. But then she’s already decided to abstain from a second Bush term (unless, or course, she gets to be secretary of defense.) Perhaps she’s fed up with playing the brain to Bush’s brawn. Or with fending off Rumsfeld.

But then again, Condi is no ordinary woman. It is often said, and was recently reiterated in the conventional wisdom of The New York Times’ Science section, that women, as a general rule, are more ruminative than men. Hence our greater tendency for depression. While we nurse our grievances, and replay all those great comeback lines we didn’t think to use at the time, but oh so wish we could sling now, men are out there trashing their neighbor’s sandbox.

It’s a fair question, I think, to wonder which characteristic might be most useful in our country’s current predicament. Would a woman, habituated to inhabit the virtues of patience and commitment, preside effectively over the occupation of Iraq? Or would she prove indecisive, a navel gazer who is tortured by complexity and doubt? Would a wishy-washy Frenchman like Kerry manage to demonstrate steely resolve in public, while behind the scenes he displays the diplomacy of a ventriloquist, nipping here, tucking there, on the way to a true peace? Perhaps a man with Venus tendencies is the best we can hope for—a metrosexual for a new era. Let us hope that those dart-throwers agree.

Jenny Attiyeh will cover the Democratic Convention this fall from Boston for Horse Fly.