The idiocy of this is pretending that you can learn anything by "just swapping the genders". Or rather, that you learn more about the underlying facts/performances, rather than learning that gender transforms our understanding of social discourse.
"So you mean that people who perceived it as cute when Rachel pounded Joey in the chest perceived it as abusive when Joey pounded Rachel? How fascinating and counterintuitive!"
Unrelated, I just finally understood why I had thought NYU was bigger (in some sense) than CUNY: I knew about CCNY (City College of NY), and didn't understand that it was just one small part of CUNY. I mean, I never really thought about it at all--I never wanted to go too college in NYC--but I had a vague impression.
Of course, CCNY alone is also bigger than NYU, but that's just my general (bad) heuristic about colleges vs. universities.
Even less related: I just checked, and CMU has gone from (about) 4500 undergrad + 1500 grad in my day to 6300 undergrad + 7100 (!) grad. That's... a very different institution.
Reading the article it was both more and less interesting than I expected. As commentary on the debates itself it seems like any reaction is going to be biased based on what excerpts they selected. For example, did they include this answer? Part of the reaction to Trump's debating was that he was okay much of the time but lost it completely with enough frequency to disturb people.
But, if you don't take it as a comment on Clinton/Trump, I think the conclusions about gender roles are interesting (and surprisingly on-topic for the other thread).
I was particularly struck by the post-performance discussions about effeminacy. People felt that the male version of Clinton was feminine, and that that was bad. As a gay man who worked really hard, especially when I was younger, to erase femininity from my body--for better or worse--I found myself feeling really upset hearing those things. Daryl [the actor playing Jonathan Gordon, the male Clinton] and I have talked about this multiple times since the performances. Never once in rehearsal did we say, "play this more feminine." So I think it was mostly the smiling piece--so many women have told me that they're taught to smile through things that are uncomfortable. It's been really powerful to hear women talk about that, and a learning experience for me. I was surprised by how critical I was seeing [Clinton] on a man's body, and also by the fact that I didn't find Trump's behavior on a woman to be off-putting. I remember turning to Maria at one point in the rehearsals and saying, "I kind of want to have a beer with her!"
Also, obligatory link to Samantha Bee talking about people telling Clinton to smile.
I was particularly annoyed that they harped on the quote about finding boy-Clinton so punchable because of the smiling. Gee, maybe the continual smile is a double-edged sword that doesn't mean the same thing coming from a man?
Gee, maybe the continual smile is a double-edged sword that doesn't mean the same thing coming from a man?
Perhaps I would have read that passage differently were it not for the discussion in the other thread about Gender. If the article was trying to claim* that women have a wider range of acceptable behavior -- in that a female Hillary Clinton and a female Donald Trump can both work; but a male Hillary Clinton doesn't work -- then it's clearly wrong.
But if you read that as saying, "public speaking as a woman is a task which can only be done by a trained professional; do not try this at home" that's a more interesting argument, and the conversation about gender leads me in that direction.
* And you could certainly argue that it is
Two other thoughts:
First, just for the record, the Samantha Bee clip is very well done (unsurprisingly) and by linking to it I was trying to signal that I was well aware just how impossibly small was the needle that Clinton was trying to thread.
Secondly, this line, "Never once in rehearsal did we say, 'play this more feminine.'" makes me surprised because it could be taken to mean that they never talked (either pro or con) about how feminine/masculine the actors should be. It is likely that, left to their own devices a woman playing a male script might do more to soften the discomfort of that mis-match than a male actor playing a female script would do, and you would think that would have been an important conversation for them to have when working on the piece.
I eagerly await when an accomplished woman decides to debate like a man, and gets dinged for being a shrilly, bossy, pushy harpy. Oh right, that's what happens every time, including to Hillary.
FFS indeed. Fricken' trolls. The lesson isn't "oh, Hillary did a bad job" but "geez, it's well-nigh impossible for a woman to win at this game, isn't it?"
8.2: Presumably that's why everyone hated the women in the Trump role? Oh, wait...