Are female candidates held to a different and higher standard? Faced with a sexist double bind?
Deborah Tannen, linguistics professor at Georgetown University, would answer with a resounding “Yes!” She points to President Obama’s recent statement about his 2008 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. “Hillary had to do everything I did, but she had to get up earlier to have her hair done.”
In a , Tannen writes, “This contrast” in time spent on personal appearance, “which applies in today’s campaign as well, is the metaphoric tip of a multifaceted iceberg of challenges facing Clinton because she is a woman.”
I concur. A female candidate who had the rumpled, bespectacled, Brooklyn-accented persona of Bernie Sanders would, in no way, have gotten as far as Sanders has. (Disclaimer: I am staunch supporter of Clinton.)
But let’s delve deeper than that tip of the iceberg. I will only touch on the obviously sexist, vulgar and demeaning comments that Republican front-runner Donald Trump spews against any woman — Clinton, former Republican contender Carly Fiorina, and, most obnoxiously, Fox News host Megyn Kelly, among many others — who gets in his way.
Trump has been rightly called out by New York Times columnist David Books as a “serial misogynist.” His recent comments about punishing women who have abortions simply magnifies this aggressively sexist streak. In addition, his comments have unified anti-choice and pro-choice women as nothing has ever done before. His “disapproval rating” among women is close to 70 percent.
Yet, what concerns me more than Trump’s loud trumpet is the average voter’s voice. Does the unaware but self-described “fair” American unconsciously judge a determined and impassioned female candidate as too masculine and therefore “inauthentic” or worse? Or one who shows a softer side as too feminine and therefore not commander-in-chief material?
Hillary Clinton downplayed her gender — though others did not — in 2008 and instead played to her experience and her leadership abilities. This year, with vastly more experience, she cites her gender as a qualification, but not the qualification. Yet opponents, and even some supporters, see that as playing too much of the gender card.
Not surprisingly, the compliments that come to a female candidate are often couched in the male vernacular. How often have you heard the expression, “She is man enough to do the job”?
Supporter Paul Gipson, president of a steelworker’s local union, praised Hillary in 2008 because she had “testicular fortitude.” Oh, yes, in a still “male-as-the- norm” culture, a female has to have just the right amount of maleness to be credible. But not too much.
Then there’s the purity bind. Former New York Times editor Jill Abramson said, “We expect total purity from a woman candidate.”
But not from a male candidate. I recall my “ho-hum” response when I first learned that Sanders had fathered a son out of wedlock in his youth. There is no evidence that this factor has affected his campaign in any way whatsoever. Nor should it.
But suppose it had just been discovered that Clinton had born a child out of wedlock in her pre-marital college days? I would have cried out in despair. What worries me just as much as the inevitable public response to such news is an analysis of my own reaction.
Would my reaction be related only to the fact that my candidate could not now possibly win? Or is it possible that even as as a self-proclaimed feminist, I too might be judging her more harshly because she is a woman?
Dottie Lamm (dolamm59@ gmail.com), former first lady of Colorado, was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1998.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
