another reason women are bitches

Apparently some women won't vote for a male candidate if they don't like his wife. The fact that women WHO AREN'T EVEN RUNNING FOR THE OFFICE IN QUESTION have to endure such scrutiny and measure up to unrealistic standards and hyprocrisy is just vile. A new series in Slate covers the "state of the unions" of presidential candidates.

This may be the most vomit inducing thing I have read this week:

Do presidential unions matter? Voters think they do. A recent survey found that fully one-third of women voters not only take the happiness of a presidential candidate's marriage into account, but cite it as a significant factor in their decision. In 2004, I argued against the notion that Teresa Heinz Kerry had hurt her husband's chances, but I was wrong. In interviews across the country for my book about what women really want in a president, I heard her perceived snootiness cited more often than I would ever have believed possible as the deciding factor against John Kerry. What these women didn't like about his wife reflected and intensified their reservations about the candidate himself. Just a few weeks after the election, a public health nurse in Illinois put it like this: "I'm a registered Democrat and I'm not for being in Iraq, but I'll tell you what, I voted for Bush. I don't know that Bush is totally truthful, and he's not the smartest person in the world. But Kerry, I really didn't like his wife, and that influenced me. She has a smart mouth and doesn't control it.''

Way to uphold the patriarchy, ya cunt.