Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple
It’s always the same thing with these guys, isn’t it? The ones who complain about women being golddiggers or sleeping their way to the top are the very ones who got their money and power through connections – marrying the boss’ daughter, playing tennis with the nephew of the guy who owns the company, inheriting from a slumlord father.
(Or they are just bitter and angry because they have not reached those levels and don’t understand why their white penises have not given them the power they think they rightly deserve.)
Every accusation is a confession.
It’s a story as old as time.
Many Europeans crossed the sea, including large numbers of poor women who came to seek their fortunes. Mothers were frequently disappointed. Since these immigrant women brought no resources, many of the young men who came to the colony to get rich preferred to marry girls of colour, whose dowries included land and slaves they could use profitably. Such preferences began to inspire jealousy in white women.
Source: Julien Raymond, Observations on the Origin and Progression of the White Colonists’ Prejudice against Men of Colour (1791), quoted in Empire’s Crossroads, by Carrie Gibson
(True, women have long had to marry financial security because marriage has long been one of the only ways for women to sleep safely. But despite the way Julien Raymond, an indigo grower on Haiti – who inherited his plantation but who later became an abolitionist, so that’s awesome, Julien! – wait he sold his slaves to become a full-time abolitionist? Couldn’t he have freed them? – phrases it, I would suggest that women were seeking survival, not a fortune, via the only route available to them.)
(Also, although I question the interpretation of women’s sentiment by an 18th century man, abolitionist or not, I must comment on the apparent misplaced jealousy. My sisters in Christ! Other women are not the enemy – the patriarchy is the enemy. )
(Whoa the Julien Raymond/Raimond plot thickens! I found this on wikipedia. Racism has entered the chat! Like – his dad married his mom despite her color because she had money? Julien is sounding more and more like Arthur Schopenhauer, a bitter old German philosopher who thought women were inferior and, as it turns out, was outshone by his mother, who wrote books that sold better than his did.)
He (Julien Raimond) was born a free man of color; the son of a French colonist and a colored mother born to a planter in the isolated Sud province of the colony. His mother, Marie Bagasse, was significantly wealthier and more educated than his father, Pierre Raimond, providing an economic incentive for their interracial marriage.
(Also, I saw that Julien was an activist for voting rights for free people of color – the author uses the word “people” but I bet she meant “men,” – on the basis that they were taxpayers. As in, if you had money, you should be able to vote. Which I guess was the prevailing philosophy at the time looking at you United States but still, people are awful.)
Sleeping your way to the top started way before 1791. You probably were taught that Christopher Columbus was a plucky explorer who happened to convince the king and queen of Spain to finance his expedition just because he was so cool.
Ha.
No.
He married the daughter of a man with connections to the Portuguese court – the very court that had kings and princes related to Queen Isabella – and those connections played a part in Isabella’s support.
Many of the crown’s advisors, however, were reluctant to believe this unknown Genoese sailor. Although he had made some important connections in Portugal and had married well, his relative obscurity did not inspire confidence….Still the queen was intrigued. Perhaps it was the promise of wealth, or the crown’s own spirit of adventure, or a simple post-Reconquista confidence. Perhaps, as some historians have argued, Columbus won over the queen for more sentimental reasons – Isabella’s great-grandfather was King John I of Portugal, her grandfather was Prince John, and her great-uncle was Prince Henry. Although Columbus was Genoese, his Portuguese connections did him no harm.
Source: Empire’s Crossroads, by Carrie Gibson
But how could such a humble man marry someone with such connections? Historian Samuel Eliot Morison had theories about it decades ago. The wife was an ancient 25 years old and didn’t have a dowry, which I guess means she was desperate. (Speaking of women needing marriage for survival.)
Discussing the question of how Christopher Columbus, the son of a Genoese wool weaver, could marry the daughter of a Portuguese Knight of Santiago, a member of the household of Prince John, Lord of Reguengos de Monsaraz (Master of Santiago,) and of Prince Henry the Navigator’s household, Samuel Eliot Morison[4] wrote that this is “no great mystery.” Filipa was “already about 25 years old,” her mother was a widow “with slender means,” and “her mother was glad enough to have no more convent bills to pay, and a son-in-law […] who asked for no dowry.”
Christopher Columbus slept his way to the top
And this practice has carried on. Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, of course, is one of the most egregious examples. Bless his sweet heart he’s kind of dumb, but he married the boss’ daughter and then went into business with the boss’ son and then the boss, who happened to be an F500 CEO, threw a ton of business at Johnson’s/son’s company, which definitely violates ethical practices and is probably illegal and I’m surprised the auditors never said anything.
Point is, Johnson would never have amassed the fortune he did had he not married into a very good situation.
Wisconsin representative Jim Sensenbrenner also had the sense to be born to riches, but at least he was smart enough to graduate from Stanford.
You would think that someone who came from this background would have fought more for women’s rights, but I guess no.
Sensenbrenner was born in Chicago, Illinois. His great-grandfather, Frank J. Sensenbrenner, was involved in the early marketing of Kotex sanitary napkin and served as the second president of Kimberly-Clark.
Inheriting your fortune. Sleeping your way to the top. Making the right friends. It’s what white men do. They connect to power and money and then they think they got there on their merits.
Howard Lutnick? The current secretary of the treasury and one of the regime’s useless idiots?
He came from a middle-class family. But yet got a Wall Street job where soon, he was making a ton of money. How did he get such a job, you ask? Aren’t those Wall Street jobs widely coveted?
Why yes they are but when you make friends with a partner at the firm who also happens to the the boss’ nephew? It sure makes it a lot easier to get that interview.
After graduating, Lutnick worked at Noonan, Astley & Pierce as a broker for the United States dollar–Japanese yen exchange, where he met B. Gerald Cantor.[13] In 1983, Cantor took Lutnick as his protégé and hired him at his eponymous firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, encouraged by Rod Fisher, a partner at the firm and Cantor’s nephew.
Source: Wikipedia
Men. Marry. Money. And. Power.
But assume women don’t accomplish anything on our own.
Texan in Exile 