Election year sexism against Hillary Clinton brought me closer to my mother [View all]

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Election year sexism against Hillary Clinton brought me closer to my mother

Laura Bogart Monday 18 April 2016 12.07 EDT

For years I thought of my mother as a pathetic figure who had turned her back on feminism – until I saw the scorn heaped upon Clinton and realized my mom was a victim of her time

But I wasn’t ready for the Republican frontrunner to crack wise about “blood coming out” of a woman reporter’s orifices, and gain in popularity. And I certainly wasn’t ready to see lefties I respected arguing that anyone who’d served as a senator for eight years, and as secretary of state for four years, could somehow be “unqualified” to be president.

Seeing journalists chide Clinton for “shouting too much” when her male opponents on both sides would give Foghorn Leghorn a run for his money makes me understand why someone like my mother might be too afraid to step out of the kitchen, and into a bolder life.

This understanding crystallized during the debates: fingers pointed, repeatedly, toward Clinton’s face; the curt way she’s called “the secretary”; the booing and the constant talking over her – and the fact that she has to stand there, calmly, and take it, lest she be “too shrill” – makes me ache with rage.

I remember the boss who told me to “be more positive” (AKA “smile more”) during a job performance review (the rest of my work “exceeded standards”) and the ex-boyfriend who said, in a not-kind way, that I “want too much in life”. I felt a sudden, inchoate longing for my mother.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/hillary-clinton-sexism-brought-me-closer-to-my-mother