Sex and the Secretary of State

Maybe I'm more sensitized because I just finished reading Maureen Dowd's book, "Are Men Necessary?", but I was taken aback by a profile of Condoleezza Rice in the current Newsweek. Taken from a coming biography by Marcus Mabry, the excerpt in its fourth paragraph gave a semi-sexual reason for Rice's decision to serve in Bush's administration: She likes bad boys. The evidence given was that, of two football player boyfriends she had as a grad student, she seemed to prefer the one who was less deferential to her.

All righty! But further on, it portrayed Rice as incredibly confident and self-assured. If you were going to go for the "bad boy" explanation at all, maybe it would have made more sense to say that she was more attracted to men who were closer to her equal in strength and self-confidence, who were able to resist bending to her steely will. One could argue it's just as logical, while making Rice sound less like a batty love-struck teen.

But does the "bad boy" label even make sense? The profile also says that Rice and Bush see eye-to-eye on many things -- and that, when they met, Bush already had become a teetotaler and shared Rice's strong religious faith. That's the "bad boy" that attracted her?

The profile also includes quotes from her hairdresser speculating that Bush fills the role of a boyfriend in her life, and an explanation from friends of why Rice stayed in the administration was "she just can't say no to that man." Again we get the image of a needy woman in sexual thrall to a man.

If she were a man, what are the chances we'd see these kinds of pseudopsychological explanations for her behavior? It seems more likely the profile would talk about common goals and policy philosophies linking the two. We'd hear the secretary of state talking about how he recognized a gap in the President's foreign policy experience, and wanted to help fill that gap. The writer probably would note the person's sense of duty to country and desire to create a new role for the U.S. in the world.

But no. Condi just "can't say no" to that bad boy.

Consider if the tables were turned. Say a woman -- Hillary, for example -- became president. Would a profile of her secretary of state (assume it's a man) say that he took on the role because he always had been attracted to blondes? After all, he liked his blonde girlfriend better than his brunette girlfriend when he was in college.

And would the profile say he always had been a Mama's boy (calling her at least once a week until she died!), so he was attracted to strong, powerful women, looking for one who would give him guidance and whom he could serve. When foreign policy started to look increasingly like a wreck, he wanted to leave the administration but, pussy-whipped all his life, he caved in to her demands that he stay.

Actually, maybe we would see a profile like that. Maybe we can't stop ourselves from thinking of men and women in primarily sexual terms. Maybe the only way to keep sexual tension -- not to mention sexual stereotypes -- out of any analysis of a relationship is to have the relationship between same-gender, heterosexual individuals.

Please remind me -- what century is this?