The sexist way we pile on Hillary Clinton and stifle women in democracy [View all]

It is #ComeyHearing day. So probably will get lost in the weeds.


http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/336892-the-sexist-way-we-pile-on-hillary-clinton-and-stifle-women-in



The sexist way we pile on Hillary Clinton and stifle women in democracy
By Maya Rockeymoore, opinion contributor - 06/08/17 09:20 AM EDT


The sexist way we pile on Hillary Clinton and stifle women in democracy
© Getty Images

Early in the run up to the 2008 U.S. presidential election, I was a guest on a Jamaican morning radio show when one of its hosts asked me to make a prediction: Would the U.S. be more likely to elect its first African American president or its first female president?

After a brief pause (after all the data and jury was still out at that point), I argued that the country was likely to elect a black man before a white woman because it would mirror the historical sequence at which these groups got the franchise (black men received the Constitutional right to vote, on paper at least, 50 years before women were granted that right).

Although my forecasting method was crude given all of the variables involved in modern elections, Barack Obama did go on to win the presidency, suggesting that — like the sequencing of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments — male privilege untethered from race is a stronger sociocultural political force in the U.S. than is white privilege untethered from gender.

Or, put more simply: men have more social status and power in the U.S. than women regardless of race.

It is sad to say that this seems to be is as true today as it was almost 150 years ago.

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Given the current state of our national politics, it is important to parse this observation in the context of journalistic coverage of the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath, especially now that Hillary Clinton seeks to reestablish her public presence on the national stage.



The level of vitriol she has received from mostly male commentators as she has shared her thoughts about the election’s results — with one journalist telling her to “shut up and go home” — has been on par with that she was subject to during the campaign itself.