Today in Being a Woman

ABC News: Hillary Clinton Wins High Popularity, Majority Support for a 2016 Bid.

Setting aside the comprehensive absurdity that we have not even reached Inauguration Day 2013 yet but are already talking about Election Day 2016, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said she has no plans to run for president again. So I find it sort of irritating that there is (already!) mounting pressure for her to run in 2016.

(As to the argument such polling is useful in giving her an "out" by justifying changing her mind if she decides to run after all, I find that a pretty objectionable argument on the basis that fuck off she doesn't need to justify changing her mind. It is a woman's human's prerogative.)

Not only is the public fascination with her running happening in direct contravention of her stated desires, it's also happening in the very particular context of her having been resoundingly excoriated for what was deemed a presumptuous run in 2008. What did she do to deserve the presidency? and Who does she think she is? and all that.

Never mind that what she had done as "merely" a First Lady was stuff like stand in front of the world and deliver resonating lines like: "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all."

You know. The sort of thing she's been doing as Secretary of State for which she has garnered lavish (and well-deserved) praise.

Yes, she has served as a Secretary of State in the intervening four years, but it wasn't like she hadn't been an effective advocate and diplomat as First Lady and Senator.

It seems like the most important thing she's done in the intervening four years is serve under the man to whom she lost, which I daresay a lot of her former critics regard as a necessary bit of humility becoming an uppity woman, even though they dress it up in pretty words like "she has proven her willingness to be a team player" or some such reprehensible dreck.

Now that she's been sufficiently chastened, they want her to run for president, even though she doesn't want to.

No—because she doesn't want to. A lack of presidential ambition has made her more attractive, too, it seems.

These, then, appear to be the qualifications to be a woman deserving of the presidency in the US: A willingness to swallow shit, and no desire to lead the nation.

Perfect.

If Hillary Clinton doesn't want to be the president of a nation who has done this to her, I can't say I fucking blame her.