The political memoir is a literary genre that consists mostly of carefully coded humblebrags; here, though, was an insight about bragging itself. Reading it, I felt a pang. American culture is fluent by now in the easy language of female empowerment. One of the 50,485,942 or so pieces of evidence that the rhetoric has outpaced the reality is the idea that women who achieve things aren’t supposed to say so. The sanction goes beyond general-purpose puritanism (self-confidence good! self-importance bad!). It has to do with the fact that, regardless of our own gender, we still tend to view women as self- sacrificial and self-effacing, first and foremost—mothers, basically, whether they have children or not. That’s how you get a situation where Target sells T-shirts that read SHE CAN/SHE WILL— and where you can also pretty safely assume that, if you compliment a woman about the thing she did, she’ll reply, “Oh, it was nothing.”
Denne historien er fra November 2020-utgaven av The Atlantic.
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Denne historien er fra November 2020-utgaven av The Atlantic.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Boat Fish Don't Count
The wild, obsessive, dangerous pursuit of Montauk's biggest striped bass
The Anti-Rock Star
Leonard Cohen's battle against shameless male egoism
A Brief History of Yuval Noah Harari
How the scholar became Silicon Valley's favorite guru
Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve
She and her narrators have always relied on swagger-but not this time.
Men on Trips Eating Food
Why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants
You Think You're So Heterodox
Joe Rogan has turned Austin into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other \"free thinkers\" who happen to all think alike.
What Abortion Bans Do to Doctors
In Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk.
THE LOYALIST KASH PATEL WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP WANTS.
A 40-year-old lawyer with little government experience, he joined the administration in 2019 and rose rapidly. Each new title set off new alarms.
THE RADICAL CONVERSION OF MIKE LEE
IN 2016, HE TRIED TO STOP TRUMP FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT. BY 2020, HE WAS TRYING TO HELP TRUMP OVERTURN THE ELECTION. NOW HE COULD BECOME TRUMP'S ATTORNEY GENERAL.
HYPOCRISY, SPINELESSNESS, AND THE TRIUMPH OF DONALD TRUMP
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.