Whatever we might think about Xanthippe - she is imperturbable all right. She categorizes human species in such a clear manner which is alien to our time which lacks principles. Her steadfastness - which the patriarchal-chauvinist discourse originally reserves to the exploiters and violent criminals - deserves admiration.
Of course, there are also negative sides to Xanthippe's character. For example, she has some difficulty in distinguishing a controversy from an unfair provocation. This is due to the fact she has not spent much thought about self-fulfilling prophecies yet. But it should go without saying a busy person like her has no time for that. All the time she is preoccupied screaming the eternal truth into the oppressors' stout hairy faces, morally erecting the desperate victims, here encouraging a university lady teacher to be in gender studies, there wishing good luck for a research project in Feminist Linguistics which has already proven that men and women talk differently; a minute ago she threw a new light on the issue refuge for battered women, assured a female parliament delegate of her journalistic assitance and put the statistic interdependence between being male and raping in a nutshell. Women after all have been silent for a too long time. Right now it is time to follow the direction that was taken 40 years ago more consequently. Whenever Xanthippe finally brings herself to put herself in the enemy's place with her emotional, typically female, artistic, intelligent traits of character, it makes sense to her it would be asking too much to expect that from men, too. And then it occurs to her that of course the nototious female passivity has encouraged male ignorance; how illusionary to expect the XY beings to have the intellectual capacity to change things themselves. Anyway, encouragedly she inquires into the quota of wordings discriminating against women.
Xanthippe's sharp view of things could make a manager grow pale; for he struggles to get rid of everything which might impede his decisions, to work hard for the so-called absorption of uncertainty with the aid of highly-paid consultants, whereas Xanthippe is naturally endowed with it. Boys and men as victims of male or sometimes female violence at best cross her mind as statistically deviant collerateral damages in th ebattle of the sexes. Who could want to blame women for passing on what has been done to them (which is by the way only meant to be an explanation, not an excuse)?
But it is not the enemies who cause her the biggest trouble; after all she expects nothing but primitive oppression and clumsy exercion of power from them. The worst of them even cite her indirectly, harrass their secretaries and grin later when drinking beer with their peers one has to take along as much as possible as long as Xanthippe has no say yet. No, the worst are the female deviationists from her own camp; e.g. the professional celebrities with a plunging necklace who exhaust the image of the clever female fool in commercials and chat shows and score points with a bawling mixed (!) audience. This is a serious setback for more than hundred years' history of Women's Liberation and, what is more, for Xanthippe herself.
In contrast, she has grown resistent to chauvinist offense. She has fought for legalizing the termination, so she knows best that humanity is no impossibility. The circumcision of young girls, still prevalent in other cultures, will stop, too, for there are the boys left. There is no way to outdo Xanthippe with reason; when men agree with her, they prove her infallability, when she becomes the target of dirty jokes, she may feel confirmed. Moreover, since Xanthippe has diligently never decided on the question whether sexual difference is biologically or culturally founded, she can freely stroll around between sex and gender, as soon as it serves the truth.
For that reason, her husband is wise enough not to express his own views in conversations too often, but to frequently inquire and to confess to know not to know anything. Still, it is too bad Xanthippe is not married to a mean macho. That constellation would do justice to both of them.
All in all it is a little difficult to like Xanthippe without reserve - perhaps because there will be always a remaining gap between true insight and right action. But until a female head of government is a natural phenomenon in any country, we shall probably have to put up with her - and that rightly so!
Of course, there are also negative sides to Xanthippe's character. For example, she has some difficulty in distinguishing a controversy from an unfair provocation. This is due to the fact she has not spent much thought about self-fulfilling prophecies yet. But it should go without saying a busy person like her has no time for that. All the time she is preoccupied screaming the eternal truth into the oppressors' stout hairy faces, morally erecting the desperate victims, here encouraging a university lady teacher to be in gender studies, there wishing good luck for a research project in Feminist Linguistics which has already proven that men and women talk differently; a minute ago she threw a new light on the issue refuge for battered women, assured a female parliament delegate of her journalistic assitance and put the statistic interdependence between being male and raping in a nutshell. Women after all have been silent for a too long time. Right now it is time to follow the direction that was taken 40 years ago more consequently. Whenever Xanthippe finally brings herself to put herself in the enemy's place with her emotional, typically female, artistic, intelligent traits of character, it makes sense to her it would be asking too much to expect that from men, too. And then it occurs to her that of course the nototious female passivity has encouraged male ignorance; how illusionary to expect the XY beings to have the intellectual capacity to change things themselves. Anyway, encouragedly she inquires into the quota of wordings discriminating against women.
Xanthippe's sharp view of things could make a manager grow pale; for he struggles to get rid of everything which might impede his decisions, to work hard for the so-called absorption of uncertainty with the aid of highly-paid consultants, whereas Xanthippe is naturally endowed with it. Boys and men as victims of male or sometimes female violence at best cross her mind as statistically deviant collerateral damages in th ebattle of the sexes. Who could want to blame women for passing on what has been done to them (which is by the way only meant to be an explanation, not an excuse)?
But it is not the enemies who cause her the biggest trouble; after all she expects nothing but primitive oppression and clumsy exercion of power from them. The worst of them even cite her indirectly, harrass their secretaries and grin later when drinking beer with their peers one has to take along as much as possible as long as Xanthippe has no say yet. No, the worst are the female deviationists from her own camp; e.g. the professional celebrities with a plunging necklace who exhaust the image of the clever female fool in commercials and chat shows and score points with a bawling mixed (!) audience. This is a serious setback for more than hundred years' history of Women's Liberation and, what is more, for Xanthippe herself.
In contrast, she has grown resistent to chauvinist offense. She has fought for legalizing the termination, so she knows best that humanity is no impossibility. The circumcision of young girls, still prevalent in other cultures, will stop, too, for there are the boys left. There is no way to outdo Xanthippe with reason; when men agree with her, they prove her infallability, when she becomes the target of dirty jokes, she may feel confirmed. Moreover, since Xanthippe has diligently never decided on the question whether sexual difference is biologically or culturally founded, she can freely stroll around between sex and gender, as soon as it serves the truth.
For that reason, her husband is wise enough not to express his own views in conversations too often, but to frequently inquire and to confess to know not to know anything. Still, it is too bad Xanthippe is not married to a mean macho. That constellation would do justice to both of them.
All in all it is a little difficult to like Xanthippe without reserve - perhaps because there will be always a remaining gap between true insight and right action. But until a female head of government is a natural phenomenon in any country, we shall probably have to put up with her - and that rightly so!
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