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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18591 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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No, it was sexism. "Binders" was used to imply that he wants to "bind" women.

It wasn't even that. It was a weird phrase that feminists seized as a Schelling point for hating Romney; the rationalizations for why the phrase was offensive came later.

From "Why I defend scoundrels, part 2" by Scott Alexander:

My complaint about feminism - and all the other isms - isn't any kind of object-level complaint like that at all. On the object-level I think they're pretty okay. It's that they have a tendency to really love their group hate-fests, and they make sure to hold them with a halo over their heads.

The last time I mentioned this, people criticized me for making vague claims. So today I'll be more specific. Mitt Romney. Binders full of women. My facebook feed. Twelve posts about it (and I don't have all that many Facebook friends). Five of those twelve included the word "misogynist". One included the phrase "giant d-bag". Then I go on Reddit, where the phrases are more like "condescending prick", "ego so twisted he starts believing his own bullshit", and "I can't see how any self-respecting woman could ever think of voting for him." Plus a link to http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/, because someone was enjoying the hatefest so much they though it would benefit from an entire website.

And what was interesting was that one of these comments ended up spawning a thread where someone defended Romney. It went something like this: "Isn't 'binders full of X' a relatively common phrase?" "Oh, it wasn't the binders that offended me, per se. It was his statement that women only care about flexible working hours." "Well, he didn't say women only cared about, just that it was a special care of women. And surveys show this to be totally true." "But it was that he was getting into this at all, when the question was about pay equity." "But Obama arguably departed even further from the question, talking about free contraception, and no one criticized him." "Well, maybe you're right, but it was incredibly stupid of Romney to phrase his comments in a way that could be interpreted as offensive, and I'm still not convinced there aren't some offensive feelings lurking under the surface."

Notice how incredibly scary this thought pattern is. You express this burning intense hatred for a guy you don't really know based on one remark. When someone demonstrates that this is irrational, you say "Well, okay, but I was still right to hate him because of this totally different thing he did." And then when someone demonstrates there's no basis for hating him, "Well, I can still hate him, because it's still his fault for being so stupid as to say something I misinterpreted."

And from "Why I specifically defend the scoundrel Mitt Romney", idem:

As promised in the previous post, here are the reasons why I think the firestorm over Romney's "binders full of women" remark is an example of people having way too much fun calling "misogyny!" as an excuse to pursue a group hatefest rather than of actual misogyny:

(disclaimer: I got an absentee ballot and have already voted for Obama. I dislike Mitt Romney, just not for this specific reason.)

1. It was offensive for Romney to use the phrase "binders full of women".

I can't Google "binders full of women" or even "binders full of people" directly because it's all references to Romney.

But "folders full of people" gets 9 Google hits of people using it in totally reasonable contexts, like "I had a few file folders full of people who signed up to help this year". One Outlook user says "Up until now i have grouped them in folders of up to 100 people and now have 22 folders full of people."

"Lists full of people" gives 9040 results, including wait lists full of people, email lists full of people, and targeted leads lists full of people.

"Files full of people" gives 5510 results, including "files full of people who are glad they bought travel insurance", "files full of people whose save lists were corrupted", and "files full of people affected by the problem".

Even more specific forms get results, for example a police station that has "files full of suspects", and four different marketing groups that have "files full of customers" plus three that have "folders full" of them.

Ignoring the "full", "folders of customers" has 3560 results; "folders of men" has 220, "folders of people" has a whopping 13300 (and yes, I checked the first few pages, most of them are folders containing people, not folders belonging to people.)

But of course as soon as Mitt Romney says it, it's because he thinks women are inhuman objects who are worthy of being stored in binders. Or something. I want to be charitable, but the only person who explained their objection to the phrase used the phrasing in the last sentence. So I don't know.

If you're on the phone with a sales representative, and she offers you a catalog of her store's products, and you say "You ignorant piece of crap! It's not a catalog of the store's products! It's a catalog containing information about the store's products! You're such a worthless idiot!" then congratulations, you can self-consistently get upset with Romney for using the same synecdoche. If you would be utterly appalled by the thought of acting that way to the sales representative, but you posted something snarky on your Facebook about how Romney was a misogynist, you have deeper problems.

Double checking my memory, and not really seeing much of that. More that the perception created of him was that he was only cared about women in order to check a box.

“Here’s a situation where, you know, it should have been readily apparent to anyone that there were plenty of qualified women but they had to make this special effort.”

Instead, he managed to conjure an image confirming every feminist's worst fears about a Romney presidency; that he views women's rights in the workplace as so much business admin, to be punched and filed and popped on a shelf.

One got the sense of Mitt Romney coming from a place where women were generally in the other room, waiting to be invited in only when the moment—or the visibility of the job—called for it.

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