Elena Kagan Is Not Gay!

The latest political drama in Washington surrounds President Obama’s choice of Elena Kagan as the nominee to replace the soon-to-be-retired Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme court.  Kagan is the current Solicitor General and the former Dean of Harvard Law School.  However much of the discussion about Kagan as of late has focused on the fact that she is fifty years old, has never been married, and doesn’t appear to be in a serious relationship.  Naturally the Republican smear machine has opportunistically seized on this opening to launch a whisper campaign suggesting that Kagan is secretly gay.  This is not unlike the campaign launched during the 2008 presidential election that tried to paint Obama as a closet Muslim, and both campaigns appear to be aimed at the same racist, homophobic constituents that comprise an alarmingly large portion of the Republican base.

While the smear has very little chance of preventing Kagan from being confirmed, it will garner some traction among right wing voters for several reasons.  First, there is a small chance that Kagan might actually be gay.  While America has made strides over past few decades toward eliminating institutionalized discrimination against gays an lesbians, a lot more work needs to be done.  So it’s conceivable that this obviously ambitious scholar and public servant made the calculation that coming out as a gay woman was too much of a political liability.

Second, there is a certain degree of chauvinism that causes us to look at an extremely successful woman who happens to be single and say to ourselves, “Something’s missing.  Surely she must want a man in her life, and if not she must be gay.”

The truth is, if we look at the recent history of women who’ve occupied similarly high offices in the U.S. government, Kagan’s situation is more the norm than the exception.  In the past decade we’ve seen women like Sonia Sotomayor, Condoleeza Rice, Janet Reno and Janet Napolitano ascend to the top levels of government and all have had no relationship history to speak of.  Perhaps one or two of these women may be gay, but my hypothesis is that there is another, more likely explanation.

For decades now, women’s blogs and magazines have spoken at length about the fact that successful women are often forced to choose between family and career success.  But I would argue that more often than not, this choice is made for them.  Even though men can be very attracted to highly intelligent, highly successful alpha females, a lot of guys will opt for women who they feel will be willing to take on a more “traditional” role when it comes time to finding a wife.  In my estimation, there are three main reasons for this…

1) Pragmatism/Selfishness

Men, like women, can be very pragmatic when choosing a spouse or girlfriend.  We are well aware that achieving great professional success usually comes at the expense of being able to spend time with ones family.  Men who have their own lofty career goals may be reluctant to settle down with a woman who’s equally ambitious, opting instead for a woman who they think will be willing to sacrifice her own career success for her husband and her children.

2) The Intimidation Factor

I hear women complain about this all the time.  Men are intimidated by intelligent, successful women.  It’s true.  Not only that, but even once a relationship has started, a man can find it emasculating to date a woman he perceives to be smarter or more successful than he is.

3) Not Enough Fish in the Sea

After a while most intelligent, ambitious women tend to realize they need to be with someone who’s on their level, partly because of the reasons explained in #2 and partly because it just makes for a much more fulfilling relationship.  Unfortunately for these women, men are generally not bound by this constraint.  Partly because of how male-female relationships have historically been conceptualized, a disproportionate number of men are totally comfortable being in relationships with women who don’t challenge them intellectually or push them professionally.  While successful men compete only amongst each other for the affections of their female counterparts, successful women compete not only with each other, but also with an entirely different class of women – women who’ve had much more time to devote to their appearance and overall seduction skills.

For woman from marginalized racial groups, this problem is compounded by the fact that, among Blacks and Latinos for example, the number of university-educated women far exceeds the number of university-educated men.

So to the question of whether or not Elena Kagan is gay, I’d have to say not likely.  But things might have been a little bit easier for her if she was.