Its Kind Of the Accent, Stupid

Ralston started it, but Nevada UpNorth’s post on the subject sealed the deal so to speak. There are American voters who just simply will not vote for a woman. And although I’m not really surprised by this fact, its always discouraging to realize that, yes, we are still here in the United States.

In the case of Dina Titus, it was the accent–sort of. But the reason voters could blame the accent is because it came from a woman’s mouth. Titus’ accent provided many state voters with a convenient and acceptable reason (in Nevada anyway) not to vote for her. It’s impossible to deny the elements of sexism that surfaced during the Gibbons/Titus gubernatorial race. No, I’m not saying Titus ran a stellar campaign, and no, I’m not saying that Titus’ personality and accent should have been appealing to all voters. I’m not even saying that she’s always easy to like. What I am saying, and read this carefully people because I really hate having to repeat myself, is that some voters find some of the qualities Titus possesses less palatable in a WOMAN than they would in a MAN, and therefore found themselves unable to vote for her. Titus didn’t lose because of her accent, she lost because she is an “uppity,” intelligent, assertive and liberal woman who isn’t afraid to play tough politics. Let’s be honest–Titus’ accent, her decidedly unlady-like confrontational campaign style and her sex are inextricably linked. And in a state that hasn’t quite lost the vestiges of the frontier, a confrontational and aggressive woman leading the state is just too much to take for some voters. Titus’ accent is the beard some voters needed to disguise their sexism. Her southern colloquialisms would be seen as rakish and charming coming from the mouth of a male politician like Bob Beers or even Bob Cashell (who sounds like Boss Hogg to me). Her wicked come backs would be admired for what they are–a sign of her intelligence and wit.

Sadly, you can see intelligent and tough women politicians all over the United States consulting with image makers in order to try and mitigate charges of shrillness and elude the sexism of U.S. voters. Hillary Clinton (who has become a shadow of her former self as she strives to soften her image) and Nancy Pelosi have suffered the same sorts of response from the media and voters. It’s become common place in or political discourse to refer to strong women like Clinton, Pelosi, and Titus as “shrews” or “witches,” who “gratingly” or “shrilly” chastise the men around them who are often portrayed as victims of their womens’ instability.

In particular, shrill, meaning a high-pitched and piercing in sound quality is a word that has been used to pejoratively describe feminists for the last thirty or forty years. There’s a reason “shrill,” as it relates to the sound of someone’s voice, is a term most often used to put feminist politicians like Titus, Pelosi and Clinton in their place. It’s a way for men and women to dismiss what they have to say before they even have a chance to say it. By labeling them shrill, their arguments are immediately gendered before you even know what they are and their thoughts, thoughts that just happen to come of a woman’s body, are pronounced as unimportant. Their voices and what they are trying to communicate are irritating, annoying, or even hysterical. It is in fact common for the voices of women politicians to be used against them as all of these incidents confirm. Gendered insults like those noted above in the main stream media are purely and simply sexism. End of story. Our nation’s evident sexism is particularly ironic as our uncomfortable allies, the French, appear to be on the verge of electing a woman president and several other less “developed” and arguably more sexist nations have elected women heads of state including Liberia and Chile.

In his editorial on the downfall of Titus, John Ralston states:

“Titus lost because she ran a woeful general election campaign and because too many people don’t like her. They don’t like her because Gibbons told them not to (remember Dina Taxes?) and because she told them not to. The ad nauseam references to her accent are patently inane until you realize that the voice was seen as a window to her personality, her temperament, her fitness to serve. Sad but true.”

What’s missing from Ralston’s editorial is an acknowledgment that perhaps a good many people don’t like Titus precisely because she is the kind of woman she is–intelligent, assertive and liberal–always a tough combination in this country for some men and women who prefer their women to be easier to digest. Ralston himself acknowledges the power of Titus’s accent as a metaphor for her “personality, her temperament, her fitness to serve.” But how much of that can really be separated from the fact that Titus is the kind of woman she is?

Pundits and voters alike wondered aloud why Titus didn’t hire a speech coach to lose her Georgian twang, but Titus probably realized that a speech coach would’ve been a waste of time and money. Sad but true.

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