A new kind of sexism this campaign
“Does she look presidential, fellas? Give me a break.” — Donald Trump
No, you give me a break, Donald Trump. The question of whether or not, in the GOP candidate’s famously unfathomable mind, former senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks “presidential” has to come down to only one factor.
She doesn’t have the right set of genitalia for the job. How else could you explain why to Donald Trump, well-known objectifier of women’s appearances, including that of his own daughter Ivanka, Hillary Clinton does not look “presidential”?
In a recent television interview, Trump couldn’t adequately explain why he thought Clinton did not look presidential. Guess for some reason he didn’t want to spell out this particular bias. Maybe because he’s already doing so terribly, as my colleague Daniel Dale recently pointed out, with educated white women.
After all, he’s a 70-year-old man with unruly fantastical orange hair in a red baseball cap with a spotty business record, absolutely no governing experience, who talks about himself incessantly and spouts lies, bigotry and balderdash everywhere he goes.
As far as smart women go, what’s to love? He’s the kind of blowhard women run from in droves, at least those secure enough not to care about his vast (is it?) fortune. However in his own mind, Trump is very “presidential.” So that quality must be defined by what he’s got in his pants. Which only last March, during a Republican debate he made sure to say was entirely adequate: “I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”
During the primary campaign Trump tried out his “women don’t look presidential” attack on female Republican rival Carly Fiorina: “Look at that face,” he said, according to Rolling Stone. “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
Clearly Trump and his followers have a problem with women in high places. But because of Trump’s other isms — most notably racism — some of the outrage about sexism on the campaign trail has gone sideways, as if people are either too tired or too timid to name it.
As the 2016 presidential race tightens up, it’s time to take stock of something that I’ve been noting since 2008 — how sexism continues to play its disturbing part in presidential politics.
Here are a few snippets from my coverage of the 2008 battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination: “While grown media men and women have swooned over Mr. Obama, confessing that he is so charismatic he gives them goosebumps, Ms. Clinton has been mocked, trivialized and denigrated in a way that should give every woman pause. Her laugh is a ‘cackle.’ She is only there because of her husband. She is “inauthentic” and “manipulative.” Sound familiar? Back then, when Ms. Clinton wasn’t very occasionally showing her soft side, she was characterized as grating and aggressive.
On one 2008 campaign day, the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd weighed in with one comedian’s joke about Obama winning every recent primary: “Hillary says it’s not fair, because they’re being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there’s no White Bitch Month.”
That was then. This is now. So what’s better and what’s worse?
Except for Trump there’s no media negatively commenting on Clinton’s appearance. She has good hair days and bad, and none of us — including her — appear to give a flying fig.
And there’s been little widespread suggestion that as a woman Clinton wouldn’t be tough enough to be Commander in Chief. “Tough” is one of her lauded attributes.
Recently though, the Trump campaign has gone further — and deeply ugly — in its insinuation that Clinton lacks the “stamina and strength” to be president, floating rumours (fuelled by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani who seems to have a clinical case of rabies) that Clinton is, in fact, in desperately poor health. According to Giuliani you can read about it on “the Internet.”
What’s also changed in the sexism toward Hillary Clinton has changed in the toxic political and social media climate in general, in which my female colleagues are told “I hope you get raped” on Twitter. There’s a brazen thirst for violence and actual bodily harm against powerful women who speak their minds.
“Lock her up!” Republicans chanted of Hillary Clinton at the GOP convention in Cleveland. Even more disturbing, the New York Times last month ran a video of unfiltered voices at Trump rallies talking about Clinton and you could clearly hear: “She needs to get her ass spanked, hang that bitch, kill her.”
Even the “is Hillary likeable” debate is rife with sexism. Hillary Clinton is a strong, self-assured and very knowledgeable woman. At rallies, she tends to yell. It drives people far more crazy when she yells than when Donald Trump yells. They just want her to shut up.
Don’t get me wrong, there are legitimate reasons to dislike Hillary Clinton, as there are any political candidate. But it’s worthwhile to take each criticism as it comes up and ask yourself, if she were a man, would this be said?
If Hillary Clinton prevails — and I think she will — it will paradoxically be both because of and despite the fact that she’s a woman. It is, for many of us, one of her greatest strengths.
Yet undeniably there is still a deep ambivalence toward powerful women, and an almost primal urge to keep them in their place.
Am I right, fellas? Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson.