Vote for Hillary Because She’s a Woman

Vote for Hillary Because She’s a Woman September 28, 2016

Matt and I taped a little post debate podcast yesterday, which I hope you will enjoy. It’s not very long–just long enough for me to go off the deep end and start waving my arms about Florence Foster Jenkins. The whole debate made me feel exceedingly unhinged. Shortly after Matt posted ours I listened to Russell Moore who was calm and rational and articulate. So articulate I almost wanted to become Southern Baptist for like 30 seconds.

Later I read that thing on Huffpo about how if you don’t like Hillary of course you’re misogynist and sexist and evil. Spent the rest of the day wondering what it is about these two people that is so off putting. It’s not that Hillary is a woman that makes me not want to vote for her, because that would automatically fling me into the arms of Trump (eww). If she were a man, though, and said all the same things, would everyone like her more? If Trump had been the woman, and she had been the man, but all the words had been the same, would everyone have come out thinking about it differently?

I would say of not. I think the watchers of Monday’s debate were genuinely tired of hearing Hillary say the things that she said. She’s already said them. They’ve been heard. Everyone has heard them. No one believes any of them any more. Well, some people do, I guess. Trump could have said anything (which he did) and the general ennui on the country seems more interested in his hurricane of stupid words than the ones she carefully memorized.

Still, it is unfair. Obama lofted similar, though better crafted, vacuous rhetoric into America’s Hopeful Atmosphere eight years ago and everyone believed him. It didn’t matter if he meant it, or what he was going to do about it. He was beautiful, elegant, and everybody voted for him. Along comes Hillary and everyone sniffs and looks away.

In a more general way, feminism has gone a long way to ruin the feminine appeal of women in general. The aggressive, mannish posture of many women in politics–the boxy clothes and insistence on equality–rob women of their natural advantage. Disrespect has taken the place of persuasion. So then, after many decades of the shouty woman, of course we are left with Trump, whose brand of masculinity is similarly broken. He juts out his lips, like Mussolini, and mistakes aggressive belligerence for substance. They both stand up there like shams, shadows of the real thing. Is anybody taken in?

Part Two at a later moment.


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