Identity, DIsmissiveness, and the Status Quo (with update)

Update: Michael Turton has a reaction to my reaction of his reaction to Cole's post, but I think there's been a misunderstanding of what I mean:

I'm not saying Cole and Goren are saying SQSs don't exist. I'm saying that SQSs are something of a cohesive group, even if they are not organized and as of yet have no 'name' or label. And that they are, in fact, a force for Beijing to contend with (as Cole suggests) because China has this idea that they will roll over and accept unification when, in fact, that is (mostly) not the case. They're, if anything, a bigger difficulty for China as their numbers are far greater than straight-up independence supporters.

I also disagree, but didn't say it clearly before, that I don't see a discussion or labeling of them an attempt by some Nationalist svengali to 'divide' the independence movement. This identifying as an SQS, even without a name, and differentiating oneself from independence supporters is coming from the people themselves, not by some shadowy external force. There are differences, and while deep down they generally want the same thing - Taiwanese independence - they themselves are the ones who purposely do not identify with the pro-independence groups (mostly as a reaction to the overly-nativist talk of yore, which I am happy to see both the DPP and NPP disavowing). I was quite interested to read these past few days two competing accounts of the notion of "huadu" - one from J. Michael Cole positing that it's a strong secondary force in Taiwanese politics that Beijing will have to contend with, and another by Michael Turton and Ben Goren that it's not a thing - that it's a somewhat dismissive label concocted by more strongly pro-independence sources to describe a "weak-willed" sort of person who believes in maintaining the status quo as the only form of independence feasible for Taiwan right now.

Being a non-scholar, I'm sure nobody is particularly interested in what I have to say, but I'll say it anyway: seems to me they're both right.

Where Turton and Goren are correct is in noting that "huadu" is not an organized force. It is not a self-created label by a group of people who are organized in any way. It is not a form of self-identification, but rather has recently been used to describe a diverse range of beliefs that can be a way of "being Taiwanese" but is not a predictor of how a person will vote, necessarily. They're also right in that "huadu" supporters don't necessarily tend to side with the KMT or PFP - or if they do there's no data to support it at present as polls asking about identification don't provide enough to offer such insights. I also agree that using "huadu" as a label to describe pro-status-quo supporters isn't quite appropriate, aside from the label's derisive history, many don't identify as Chinese and quite a few would be happy to live in a hypothetical Republic of Taiwan, not necessarily an independent Republic of China, were such an opportunity to become feasible.

Where, however, it seems to me - again in my totally non-scientific observation - that they are wrong is in dismissing it as existing at all simply because it is not an organized or semi-organized political force or a self-identifying label. They may not be as cohesive as the staunchly pro-independence or Chinese nationalist types, but there is an element of cohesion to them. And just because "huadu" doesn't describe them well, or isn't an appropriate term to use for them, doesn't mean they don't exist.

This group DOES exist. It's not that organized because it encompasses a very wide range of people with diverse beliefs, but it's real and it's powerful. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that a strong majority of Taiwanese fall into this group. Furthermore, while I generally identify with the more strongly pro-democracy Third Force - the Sunflowers, the New Power Party, the TSU if they'd jettison all the nativist talk etc. - one thing that turns me off to some rhetoric from that faction is the dismissiveness with which many of them treat pro-status-quo supporters. I may be strongly pro-independence, but I can't deny the pragmatism of the status-quo supporters, which I'll call SQSs simply because they don't have a name and I don't want to have to type as much.

The reason I say SQSs are real is that I hear very similar refrains so often among my friends (well, some of my friends - most tend to be more ardently pro-independence), acquaintances and students that follow this line of thinking. "Independence isn't realistic right now. Of course I'd like an independent Taiwan, but if it means war, where we are now is acceptable. Taiwan is already independent! We're not Chinese and we won't become Chinese, so we've already won! Of course I don't want to be annexed by China but I'll do anything to avoid war."

I don't see how one can deny that such a belief exists when it is just so common. And when the refrains are so similar, I don't see how I could agree that there isn't some element of cohesion, some similar thought process, binding SQSs together. Perhaps they all watch the same news broadcasts and read the same articles and thinkpieces, but even if that's where they get their talking points (and don't judge - we all do to a degree), that also constitutes a form of cohesion.

While I agree that SQSs are not necessarily KMT supporters - or at least we have no good way of knowing whether they are or not - I have to say the majority I've met (and again they are also a majority of the people I've met) do tend to have voted for the KMT until very recently. They, in my observation, tend to be light blue, identify with the local Taiwan KMT, and often are 'native Taiwanese' (I find this term problematic, but...) who vote blue because they're Hakka or aboriginal, not Hoklo, or they are Hoklo but their parents were teachers, police officers or other types of civil servant and therefore feel the KMT has treated them well and earned their support. They're aware that the KMT hasn't treated everyone well, but don't dwell on it (even if perhaps they should). Or, they just know the local KMT representative personally and therefore vote for him or her. They are often light blue because they're the children and grandchildren of the KMT diaspora, believe the DPP has been to nativist and anti-them in its rhetoric (and perhaps in the past this was true), but don't identify as Chinese no matter what Grandpa says.

The vast majority seem to have voted for Ma, perhaps even twice, but either didn't vote or switched to Tsai in the latest election. Quite a few voted for Ke Wen-zhe in Taipei, or didn't vote. They would have supported a candidate like Ding Shou-zhong in the Taipei mayoral election, but were never given the chance. A small number aren't anti-KMT per se, but voted for Chen hoping for the impossible, were disappointed, and have since switched back to the KMT. Many identify as 'non-political' or 'non-partisan' and simply choose who they feel is the best candidate.

What they do have in common, regardless of who they support, seems to be - again in my observation - that they identify as Taiwanese. Turton and Goren are right about that. Many fell away from their light-blue KMT support because of the Ma administration's attempts to Sinicize and ROC-ify (that's some smooth writin') Taiwan.

Though that is not always true - I've met exactly three who say they identify as Chinese, but can't accept unification right now, and are waiting for the Chinese government to reform. Interestingly, the international media and quite a few 'China scholars' hold the entirely false belief that this group makes up the majority of Taiwanese SQSs. They don't. They exist, but they're not terribly common anymore. One of these three thinks Taiwan and China should eventually unify and doesn't understand Taiwanese identity at all. Oddly, he's young - this is not a common opinion among Taiwanese youth. One believes in the ROC and is accepting of unification if it's good for business. One says she 'doesn't want to give up' her right to the cultural history of China. She sees herself as the cultural product of Confucius and Lao Tzu, the Chinese classics, Chinese arts and imperial history. She feels that identifying as Taiwanese means giving up what she sees as her cultural heritage. While I don't entirely agree, I can understand her sentiment and anyway, as someone who isn't Taiwanese, my opinion on that doesn't matter much.

These folks may exist - and I hope my three real-life examples reveal an undercurrent of identity in Taiwan rather than simply being three anecdotes - but for the vast majority of SQSs, scratching the surface just a bit will reveal a pro-independence supporter (Cole is right about this). And Turton and Goren are not wrong that being an SQS can be a way of being Taiwanese. It can even be a way of rationalizing voting for the KMT while identifying as Taiwanese!

They haven't organized yet, and they don't self-identify necessarily, but that doesn't mean they won't or they couldn't. I could absolutely envision a political force, called something like the Status Quo Party - or as that's not particularly inspiring, perhaps the Cross-Strait Peace Party - starting up and capturing a surprising number of votes from those who are currently disgusted with the KMT, can't quite forgive the DPP for its former Hoklo nativism, and think the student activists (New Power and the Sunflowers) go a bit too far or push a bit too hard for their tastes. It would probably include a number of Taiwanese-identifying non-Hoklo people (I could see such a party having a great deal of Hakka support), light-blue-Taiwan-KMT voters who can't bring themselves to vote for the KMT any longer, a few children-and-grandchildren-of-waishengren/KMT diaspora who perhaps started out identifying as Chinese but as new generations are born are shifting their views, a few  we voted for Chen Shui-bian because we thought he could deliver the impossible but he was a disappointment" non-partisans, quite a few businesspeople who are horrified by the KMT but think the status quo is good for business. Perhaps a few of the weaker New Power Party supporters who will show up for street protests but thought occupations of government buildings went a bit too far, too, although that group tends to be ideologically cohesive enough that I'm not confident of this.

And with this belief so prevalent and common among so many groups who otherwise identify differently - whether they're Hakka, aborigine, Chinese nationalists disgusted with the KMT, Hoklo Taiwan-KMT light blues who are even more disgusted with the KMT, A-bian "we wanted change but all we got was corruption" burnouts, nativist-rhetoric-hating grandchildren of the diaspora, businesspeople who just want the best deal, or Taiwanese-identifying pragmatists - I'd go so far as to say it's dangerous to pretend they are "not a thing". If anything, they are the thing, it's the one glue that holds together a very large majority of Taiwanese, and the group that consistently wins elections. I think it's been proven you can't win a presidential election on pro-unification or pro-independence-ASAP rhetoric alone. You have to follow the SQS crowd, at least for now (I still hold out for one-day President Freddy Lim or President Lin Fei-fan). SQSs are the kingmakers. Tsai Ying-wen grasped this, and she won. It would be wise not to ignore them.

One of the good ones

Over the past few months we've gotten on the cultural bandwagon and started watching Mad Men.

So, as we make our way through earlier seasons, we've come to the final few episodes of Season 5. (No spoilers, I promise). In one of those episodes, Don tries to convince Joan not to do something. There's a lot of meta-commentary here about ingrained misogyny and the objectification of women and how Don doesn't want to be a party to that (although in so many other ways he already is), but the point I want to get to is where Joan says to Don, "you're one of the good ones".

Christina Hendricks delivers the line perfectly - it's part sympathetic, intoning, "I know you're not going to be one of the ones who intentionally screws me over, that you will do your best to be decent to me", and part disappointment, implying, "I know you don't want to be one of those guys, but one of the reasons I made my choice is that I know, despite others' protestations, that I have no real support, no real assurance that my career is safe, no real back-up giving me the full and protected right to say no. Nobody really has my back, no matter how much they say they do, or want to. And you might not want to be one of those guys, but you're here right now because you didn't try hard enough to put a stop to it. You didn't create the situation, you spoke out against it, but you didn't throw the full weight of your support behind your dissent. I still got screwed. They let it happen through inaction, you let it happen because you didn't realize that huffing and puffing about it wasn't enough."

Basically, she was saying 'your support isn't full-throated enough to be helpful, so it doesn't matter that your heart is in the right place.'

And, although I didn't want to, after watching that scene my mind wandered back to conversations I've had not only in Taiwan but in the USA (although I will take a Taiwan perspective in this, just because this blog is about Taiwan).

Take one person I know, for example. Let's call him A.  A's a good guy. He works hard, he's highly educated and smart as hell, and has close family ties and a fundamental belief in the importance of self-sufficiency (although not to the point that he blames poor or unemployed people for their situations). His family is important to him; he loves his wife and kids. He isn't controlling; he doesn't make decisions that impact his wife without her input. Everything they have in life, she's had an equal part in choosing, more or less.

A is one of the good ones.

I'm not sure, culturally speaking, however, that it is enough.

He was recently telling me about a situation in which his mother wanted to adopt some child-rearing technique, and for his wife to follow suit, but his wife had other ideas and wanted to raise the child a different way. I'm not specifying what the two views are because it doesn't matter. A mentioned this to me, and I asked what his position was and what he was going to do about it.

"Nothing," he said. "That's for the two women to work out. I'm staying out of it."
"Who do you think is right?"
"My wife, probably."
"But you don't support her?"
"I can't argue with my mother like that."
"So you're not supporting your wife, you're letting her fend for herself in dealing with your mom, over your own son, even when you agree with her, because you can't bring yourself to tell your mother she's wrong?"
"Well..."

Which is of course exactly what he was doing. He and his wife agreed on a child-rearing strategy which his mother was pushing them to change, and he was letting his wife do all of the heavy lifting in dealing with her.

Because we are friends and I can be honest with A, I asked him how his wife felt about the lack of support she was receiving from him. He gave something of a non-answer, indicating that he didn't seem to know, or he felt deep down that his avoiding conflict with his mother was more important than how his wife felt about the whole thing.

I pointed out that while I wasn't going to tell him how to run his life or how he conducted his marriage, that he had asked me once why I thought it was so rare that foreign women and Taiwanese men seem to end up together (I had mentioned at one point before that that of the marriages I knew of, almost all had ended in divorce).

"This is why," I said. "Well not this exactly, but that attitude is why. Our cultures are different and that's all fine, I try not to judge, there're usually upsides and downsides to both. But, as an American woman, I expect my husband to have my back. I expect him to support me. You know I don't have kids, and my mother-in-law is awesome - I don't think we'd ever have such a disagreement. But if we did, I would take it as a given that my husband would support me, even if it meant standing up to his family. In fact, it would be a dealbreaker. I expect my spouse to put me first, as I put him first. Not to decide that his parents' feelings are more important than mine, or more important than supporting me. I am completely serious when I say that sort of attitude would land us in counseling."

"Oh. But what if he disagreed with you and agreed with his mother?"

"I'd still expect support - we'd have that discussion behind closed doors and then, after a resolution had been reached, approach his family as as united front. No matter what, we come first. And that's just it - I could see a Western woman finding that attitude of 'you come first unless my family disagrees, in which case their feelings come first and you come second if you rate at all' to be totally unacceptable. I know I would. I hope you don't take this as me judging you or telling you what to do - I'm giving you a clear example of where these intercultural problems arise."

"...oh."

Let me reiterate. A is one of the good ones. He works his ass off to support his family and would do anything for them. He doesn't have any crazy notions that women belong in the home or make childrearing their primary responsibility (his wife does stay home, but I believe him when he says this was her choice), should earn less than men, should be submissive or take a secondary role. He places a lot of value on women being educated and smart. He does not try to excuse sexual harassment or assault or domestic violence as many men do. He is in no way a bad person.

And yet here he is not having his wife's back - he certainly never intended consciously to let her deal with his contrarian mother, and he probably thinks he does support her - in fact, in many other ways, he surely does. He probably thinks that being a breadwinner for his family, being devoted to his kids and being generally kind to his wife while filial to his parents is enough. I doubt it had occurred to him that it is not in fact enough, and refusing to back his wife in a disagreement with his mother is one of many ways in which he is letting emotional labor fall on his wife, and in which he is reinforcing gender roles and norms that hurt both men and women.

He did nothing wrong in his actions, but his inaction has consequences I'm not sure he has seen. I have no idea if my brutally honest viewpoint made an impact on him - we didn't talk about it again, and anyway it's his life and really for his wife to speak up if she feels unsupported.

His way of being 'one of the good ones' - someone whose conduct in most ways is unimpeachable, which makes it that much harder to criticize something that shouldn't be as important as it is, but who nevertheless doesn't act or give sufficient support at critical moments - allows sexist norms in society to continue. It allows mothers-in-law in Taiwan to, even if they don't use it, retain the privilege of treating daughters-in-law badly (I certainly don't mean to imply that all Taiwanese mothers in law do this). It allows the burden of dealing with problematic family and making childrearing decisions to fall, as always, on the wife while the husband makes himself absent. It leaves women with little choice, just as Joan felt she didn't have adequate support to make a different choice.

I'd also like to tell a story about my friend, B. B, like A, does not believe women ought to earn less than men. As it should, such a viewpoint strikes B as completely absurd. He'd laugh in agreement at a joke like "mo' penis, mo' money" (a joke that, knowing me, I have probably made). B is totally supportive of women being successful financially and career-wise.

That said, B has admitted he'd feel uncomfortable if his wife earned more than him. He doesn't know why. I'm not sure he could come up with a good reason even if he had time to think about it. Some horrible inculcation of social norms when he was growing up in a Taiwan - although this could well have been the USA or almost any other country - left him with an inexplicable, subconscious expectation that while women could earn lots of money, and while it was perfectly fine for some other woman to earn more than her husband, that his own wife should not earn more than him. Sort of like the women-and-salary version of the "I think it's fine if people are gay but NOT MY SON" nonsense so many people believe.

B is one of the good ones - once again he's devoted to family, loving to his wife and kids, generous, kind, mature, smart, hardworking and honest. He in no way intends to oppress women or imply they should curtail their career goals so as to always be one rung below men. He would never think of himself as supporting, consciously or not, a system that keeps women down.

And yet, here he is expecting that he should be the primary breadwinner and his wife should earn less than he does. Because...why exactly? No reason. Makes him feel like less of a man? I don't know - I don't think he'd say that (if he did, being my friend I'd probably say 'what, you'd be afraid your wife's penis was bigger than yours?' Because I like to joke about penises. They are inherently hilarious-looking.) Since when is being a great man tied to making more money than a woman, and what does it say about any man who, consciously or not, thinks it is?

So, being me and B being my friend with whom I can be brutally honest, I point out that it may seem like a personal attitude, but there is a saying in feminism that 'the personal is the political' - an aggregate of people's personal views, all lumped together like so many drops of water in a tidal wave, turns into something greater than any one person's personal views. At least that's how I interpret it, and I'm not really the biggest Dworkin fan. That if he feels that way but he's the only one, that says something about him but doesn't really impact society. However, if a lot of men, even most men, feel the way he does, that's actually a huge problem. It does keep women down - it basically forces them to assess to what degree they want a successful career and to what degree they want to find a life partner. It forces them worry, in a way that a man doesn't, that if they reach a certain level of financial success that it will be harder to find a life partner. A  student of mine - a female doctor - has already pointed out that male doctors have no trouble getting married and often marry nurses at the hospitals where they work, but female doctors, if they are not married to another doctor or married before they begin the profession, often remain single. Basically, by feeling this way you are pushing women to consider whether to curb their ambitions if they are high-flown enough to drive away men like him...and there are a LOT of men like him.

And I asked, "how would you feel if you found out your wife had curtailed her own career because she knew that out-earning you would make you uncomfortable? How would you feel if, when you were single, you'd fallen in love with a woman who then became nervous that you'd feel 'threatened' by her earning potential? Knowing that you never have to worry in this way?"

He admitted, unlike A, that this was deeply unfair. Has he examined his own beliefs? Knowing him, probably.

I pointed out again that this would be another dealbreaker for me, though perhaps not for every Western woman - I've met plenty of Western women who still ascribe to the idea that men need to feel like 'men' by being 'providers', which of course just allows men to continue living unexamined lives and doing subtle things to keep women from gaining true equality. I don't really care if my husband earns more than me - we've both earned more at one point or another - but I DO care what his attitude is about that. I would marry a man who made more than me, but not a man who thought he had a divine right to do so. I would not stay with a man who'd make it an issue if I earned more than him.

But the point remains - B is one of the good ones, yet through inaction, unquestioned assumptions and prejudices, unexamined privilege and lack of support still did not support women's equality quite as much as he thought he did.

I see this so often in Taiwan...and globally, but I am writing from Taiwan so this is from a Taiwan perspective. And until we can properly pin down, address and eradicate this issue, until we can bring ourselves to call out the anti-equality, anti-woman sentiments of otherwise good men, as subtle and hard to root out as they may be, and push them to be more supportive and to back up their otherwise feminist rhetoric of equality and respect with action and change, even just of the self, we're not going to have the sort of progress for women that Taiwan and many other countries need.

We need to wake up a lot of people and get them to stop being 'one of the good ones' and start being straight-up GOOD.

How Tsai Ying-wen shaped my assessment of Hillary Clinton

I'm female, in my 30s, and a Bernie Sanders supporter. I'm very near the cut-off age between older women who support Clinton and younger women who gravitate to Sanders, but being child-free and generally supportive of youth movements (perhaps I'm still young at heart myself), I stood on that fence and took a willing dive to the Sanders side. After all, the youth tends to be eventually proven right.

The why isn't important to this post, but I'll tell you anyway, in a few long paragraphs: because every other developed country in the world takes its tax revenue and plows most of it back into benefits of its citizens. As such, citizens of most developed countries have a highly mature sense of the public good, and how they benefit from being part of that society, as well as the advantages of paying taxes to enjoy those benefits. Every other developed country has managed to make university-level education affordable - even Taiwan, where public universities average about USD$1000/semester. Every other developed country has managed to make health care accessible and affordable to all. Almost every other developed country has a modern and maintained system of public transportation. No other country spends what we do on defense, and no other country pours so much money down the drain for lackluster performance in key development indices.

I want what most other developed countries have figured out how to deliver. I remember being young and broke and not going to the doctor because I couldn't afford to, even though I had health insurance through my low-paid office job. I remember weeks of carrots, lentils and rice because I couldn't afford other food if I wanted bus fare to pay for my two-hour commute each way to work. I remember being mired in student debt despite going to college on a scholarship, and debt was the only way to make college, which is a necessity if you want to really succeed in a career, happen. I still have the debt but it's somewhat less now. I remember wanting to seek out a better-paid job but, in a tight job market, not finding one, ad then being told it was my "choice" to accept subpar wages.

And, well, I just don't want the next generation of Americans to inherit that sort of life - the life I left America to escape because the opportunities just weren't there. It wasn't hell, it wasn't even that bad - I was lucky in a lot of ways. But I paid very high taxes compared to what I pay in Taiwan...for what? For a war in Iraq that could have paid for affordable college tuition for all for a few generations? For unnecessary corporate subsidies and low capital gains tax for the rich? For a deeply inefficient and often broken transit system? For what? Why would I want a new generation of Americans to grow up under that system? Where college tuition has grown exponentially while wages haven't, where if you're exploited at work you're told its your own fault even though you can't afford to leave, where you're told you have a "choice" when really, you're hamstrung by just needing to afford to live? Where you're told affordable college tuition is "impossible" and yet every other developed country has successfully done it and we've paid out far more than affordable, or even free, tuition would cost on a war we emphatically did not need? No. That is the America I willingly left. I'm not going to vote for the establishment I disliked enough to wave goodbye to it.

And yet, I'm told that if I don't support the deeply establishment Hillary Clinton, that I'm letting women everywhere down.

I'm told that I am okay with women having power but don't like to see them in the act of asking for more power.

I'm told that I would support her as the frontrunner despite her flaws if she were a man.

To be fair, there is some truth to both of the articles linked above. She is treated differently by the establishment and the electorate simply because she has both a vagina and an opinion. She is criticized for asking for power that male politicians of her level of achievement are routinely, and unquestioningly, given. She is treated as 'less than' than lower-caliber male politicians simply because the patriarchy would 'rather have a beer' with other men. This all deserves consideration when deciding who to vote for.

And yet, Clinton can be a problematic candidate and that can be true regardless of her gender. She can have connections to Wall Street and the media that we don't like, but it is also true that the electorate would treat her differently if she were a man. Clinton can be someone whose previous record appalls me and others, and yet still suffer from being criticized merely for asking for more power. She can be one of the best at the political game, a true overachiever, the epitome of the saying that "women have to do twice as well to be given half as much", and yet still make me uncomfortable with her status-quo message.

Basically, she can be the victim of sexism and misogyny - and this can be worthy of discussion and acknowledgement - and still be someone I don't want to vote for based on the sum of her record and career.

I feel comfortable in my assessment of Clinton and my reasons for deciding, in the end, to support Sanders over her in part because of president-elect Tsai Ying-wen.

Very few American voters have had the chance to know enough about a non-Clinton female presidential candidate to support her, or care enough to have a somewhat detailed opinion on the matter - this usually comes from actually living in the country where said president may be elected. I have, however, and in the last election in Taiwan I backed Tsai (in spirit at least - I can't vote in Taiwan). Obviously I didn't consciously question whether she was fit to be president based on her gender, but seeing as I ultimately chose to support her, I can't say I subconsciously did so either.

You might even say I gave her a slight advantage in my brainspace because she's female and I do want to see more diversity in politics both nationally and globally. I don't think this is 'reverse sexism' - there's an element of power and representation that need to be present for something to be sexist (this is  pretty well accepted as a definition of racism by those who have a nuanced knowledge of racial issues, too). When the establishment is male, refusing to back a woman because of her gender is sexist. Deciding to back a woman because she's female, though, is a blow for pushing for a seat at the table for a group that has typically not had one. It would be the same if the power structure was entirely female and I chose to back a man because I felt we needed more diverse representation in that regard.

Anyway, I'd admit to a pro-female gender bias, but I'd also admit that if a candidate I liked more who happened to be male had come along, I would have supported him instead. How do I know? Well, I chose Sanders over Clinton despite Clinton's advantage of being female. In my heart, though I know my head would tell me it's risky, I would support a Freddy Lim-like candidate for president before a Tsai Ying-wen-like candidate. I may have a pro-female bias but in the end I will gravitate toward the best person for the job.

Sanders, although he is a man, has a better record on supporting women's rights and issues important to women (like LGBT equality and civil rights) than Clinton. Tsai...well, we'll see about how she does in office, but there is no politician, male or female, who has a better shot at doing good for women in Taiwan than her (though again I'd give my support to a Freddy Lim-like candidate).

Tsai, despite being a bit centrist for this old leftie's tastes, was the best person for the job.  I supported her mostly for that reason, and in part, yes, because I felt it would be good for Taiwan to have a female president. Taiwan may be one of the most progressive countries in Asia, with better women's equality than the rest of Asia, but that's a pretty damn low bar and there is certainly room to improve. A female president is not a cure-all, but it's a step.

Tsai is also something of the anti-Clinton. Clinton may not be "likable" (an criticism lobbed at women far more than at men) but she does exude strength and panache, and despite a few stumbles generally gives good, polished speeches. She's an extrovert and a ball-buster (from me that's a compliment) who looks like she'd be very good at steely eye contact. She's more of a power broker than a wonk, though I don't doubt her policy chops.

Tsai, on the other hand, is frightfully competent, but exudes a dorky, scholarly wonkishness that is endearing and popular in Taiwan but would be a hindrance in the US political machine. She looks and acts like a wine-drinking cat lady academic (which she admittedly is, and I like that). Her speeches are not particularly polished - it's been said she almost has an 'anti-charisma' when she speaks - and her gaze is not steely.

I like them both, but as a bit of a dork myself, who also has a bias in favor of scholar-leaders as it seems Taiwan does, I do gravitate a bit more toward the Tsai personality (though admittedly I have something of the Clinton Lion Roar within myself too). If anything I wish more male politicians fit that mold.

I also like that Tsai is a self-made woman in politics - I realize she came from money however - and I'm not a big fan of political dynasties such as the Clintons'.

So when I hear this "well maybe people are threatened by Clinton asking for power even though she is quite competent once she has it" or "you'd be more forgiving of her shortcomings and support her more strongly if she were a man, but because she's a woman she has to be twice as good to get half as much" or "with her experience and background, were she a man she'd be the clear frontrunner", I think, well, I just supported a woman for president. A woman who won the race. I was happy about that and at no point felt uncomfortable watching her ask for, and get, more power. At no point did I expect her to be twice as good as her opponent - although arguably she was. And if I can so clearly support a good female candidate in Taiwan, it's nuts to imply that I (or, more accurately, Sanders-supporting women like me) don't support Hillary because I have not examined my own internal sexism.