Heather Mallick
CBC.ca
March 3, 2008

Hillary Clinton has been handed the impossible task of representing All Women. It's always the way. So few females are permitted to earn a place in the spotlight that when they do, they are rated as categories, not individuals. Britney Spears represents young women, although Rufus Wainwright extends her kingdom.

Miley Cyrus is the exemplar of young teen girls, and so on. Any prominent non-male becomes shorthand for a certain grouping.

So ingrained is this that I find myself doing it. If Clinton loses, it will look like a loss for all women, I think. I have no doubt that a President Barack Obama would do more good for women, simply because he isn't comfortable with the status quo.

Nevertheless, if Clinton loses, it will grind in the truth of what I always say to skeptical audiences: Never underestimate how hated women are, including by women. The day Clinton loses is going to be one hell of a bad day for women, and for men who love them.

Fair's fair. Let's see how men like it.

Brian Mulroney is the exemplar of all Canadian men.

Offstage: Howls of derisive laughter from All Canadian Men. Mulroney is cheesy! Mulroney is a wimp! Won't show up for hearings like he promised, called for public inquiry, now says never mind. Had no dealings with Schreiber, now gets fainty that his fragrant fingertips even shared hotel room door handle with nasty Teuton. Wife is caricature of fur-coat graspingness, and his son pestering celebrities at the Oscars looked like a chum salesman ingratiating himself at a shark convention … we are NOT Brian Mulroney!

I do apologize.

All right then, Conrad Black represents all Canadian men.

Offstage: Screams of outrage from All Canadian Men. He's not even Canadian! We're not fat like he is, we have swimmer's build! Plus he's a coward, won't do his time like Martha Stewart, keeps appealing, reminding us of him being strip-searched today. Ugh. Wife has head like used match, is caricature of old artery-slicing-fingernail male annihilators, had a girlfriend like that once …

No reminiscing, men. Conrad Black has nothing in common with any of you.

Pause for breath.

Um, a defeat for John McCain is a defeat for all manly men?

Offstage: Cracking noises as All Men break own heads on cement flooring. McCain not sane! Says torture's fine now that Vietcong aren't torturing him any more, weirdest incarnation of Stockholm syndrome ever. Is lying about Stage Two malignant melanoma. Blond Republican wife has flesh sucked out by vacuum, fine, but have you seen that lobbyist consort? Separated at birth, those two, twin fetish not okay.

Got it, men. No individual man represents all men.

Gender embarrassments

There are women so embarrassing that they disgrace all women, but only because they are embarrassing in a particularly all-encompassing female way.

There are men so embarrassing that they shame all men, but only in one aspect of maleness. Like:

• Gen. Rick Hillier saying that if our MPs don't stop debating the Afghanistan war, the Taliban will regard us as a "weak link." As if we give the tiniest toss, Ricky, that men who skulk at night and hide behind farmers and children in a country where dog fighting is a national pastime will think we're the lesser. Afghans could take up bear-baiting and our House of Commons could spend 18 days debating whether George Clooney has the kind of good looks that really last, and Canada would still be a stronger, finer country. Got that?
• Ezra Levant printing clearly racist cartoons of hook-nosed, bearded Arabs — depictions of Allah have nothing to do with it — and getting PEN Canada on his side. But Levant is neither a knight errant nor a guiding light of free speech: He is simply someone who takes unfair advantage of it. That quarrel is not a Canadian quarrel, it is merely a cruel and silly thing, and any adult who joins in will look foolish.

These extremes aren't accurate representatives of the gender; in fact, men and women are actually quite delicate in their faults.

Flaw show

What I see is that a woman will be pilloried for her flaws, whether they're massive or minute, painted in watercolours or sprayed in acrylic. That's because women have no power, and therefore every individual woman is diminished.

Clinton is ridiculed for her hair, clothes, voice, appearance in a bathing suit, rigid courtesy toward Republican men she despises, mothering, talents as a lawyer, wifeliness, artifice, grit, hint of cleavage, useless fat brother, aging skin, debts to lobbyists, bowing to money, and endlessly on.

But no one mentions that McCain's face is badly distorted from cancer removal. He's a man. Masculinity is the gold standard. Women are interesting only in their deviation from the norm.

And even this is a morally dubious statement, because I know that the autoworkers who are being laid off this year in Canada are mostly male and they are doomed. The advantages of masculinity will not be obvious to them as they search for new jobs in industries that no longer exist. Even if you have the male card, money always trumps gender.

'Nothing's changed'

I have enormous sympathy towards men. Erica Jong said sadly that women expect men to be "giant cocks spouting money." She wrote that 35 years ago, and it's still true.

I remember being in my 20s and feeling a chunky little man's hand running up and down my back as he told me how he would go about hiring me if I slept with him, change the evaluation letter he was holding up in front of my face, for instance. I got up and left the building.

This year, I watch an old man — a powerful old man — tell me how me having an affair with him would really perk me up. His eyes widen, his tongue hangs out. His body slumps in his seat in disappointment when I react with incredulity and then briskness. He then goes into a grim monologue about the pointlessness of his work. I'm horrified but frozen in place by feminine politeness.

A chirpy and well-fed human rights worker tells me how much he believes in honesty and journalistic freedom. And sleeping with "beautiful young African boys." I complain to his boss, saying sexual exploitation in Africa's poorest nations isn't ethical. His boss tells me lots of creative men "can't keep their pants on!" I am aghast. I react with politeness.

These three guys do not represent all men.

I don't know why but I am always polite to them. I have observed that this is what women do. In this, I do represent all women.

Nah, nothing's changed. It will change, but not yet.