Reply #10: To be frank, with how gender coded America tends to be

[eshfemme]

Seriously, in other cultures, men can act in ways that would be considered "gay" or effeminate and still be considered masculine in their native cultures. So, I think that behaviors and attributes tend to be divided in America along more definitive male or female lines (like pink for baby girls and blue for baby boys). I think that in America, arrogant is considered a masculine trait-- I see it attached to more men than to women. With women, it tends to be "bitchy" rather than arrogant. Conversely, Hillary was a weird success in that she had men saying that she had balls and that was their way of complimenting her (and thus emasculating Obama) but it was problematic because it was also a symbol of the split in feminism as it implied Hillary had to become one of the boys to succeed rather than retain her femininity and succeed.

It's harder to be nuanced in public life with criticism of individual women too because of the prevalence of extreme epithets about women in general and this inability to even safely criticize someone who happens to be female because of this ingrained prejudice is a reason for why the feminist movement has a lot of room for improvement. Chauvinism and chivalry share an uneasy border because of this and probably why it's such a headache for gender relations in America.