Wednesday, November 16, 2016

It's the Sexism, Stupid!

I was involved in one of those interminable discussions of Why We Lost, wherein every pet theory is brought out. I don't buy into these. The loss was not by very large numbers; Trump didn't win by a landslide. There was a lot of luck and bad media involved.

And then I asked myself: what if Hillary Clinton had been male? What if it had been Harry Clinton rather than Hillary?
  1. Harry Clinton would not have been blamed for his wife's sexual conduct.
  2. Harry Clinton would have protected their e-mail privacy just the way W. Bush did. (Both Bush administrations used insecure servers and deleted millions of emails on the way out of office.)
  3. Harry Clinton would have probably been complemented for their stern handling of events in Libya and Syria, and encouraged to do more.
And most likely, in an electoral contest with Donald Trump, Harry Clinton would have won.

Why did I not ask myself this question before the election?

F— the patriarchy.

Hillary Clinton is a better man than Donald Trump!

…and would Donald Trump's sexual conduct — the harassment, the alleged rapes — have been excused if she were Donna Trump?
(2016-11-27 changed the masculine version of Clinton's name to "Harry" from "Hilliard" for the sake of readability.)

1 comment:

The Blog Fodder said...

HRC is proof that even if it doesn't stick, that if you throw enough shit fast enough you can still cover someone in it.