Typical feminist. Feminists believe the world should just hand women everything they want wrapped up in a big shiny bow instead of insisting that women earn it. Women don’t need to be the best candidates for the job; men just need to quit so women can get to the top by default,
More women are seeking the party’s presidential nomination than ever before. And yet a few white men sit at the top of the polls and rake in big fundraising hauls. As candidates such as Sens. Kamala D. Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar lean in, maybe it’s time for some of their male competitors to find ways to lean out.
Early media coverage of the campaign demonstrates why merely leaning in can’t dismantle the double standards and deep structural misogyny women face. Studies by FiveThirtyEight and my colleagues at Northeastern University found both fewer “media mentions” of female candidates and also more negative coverage than of their male counterparts. Meanwhile, Beto O’Rourke apparently merits multiple profiles, an HBO documentary about his failed Senate run and an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot in Vanity Fair — while Pete Buttigieg got a literally glowing New York magazine cover profile.
That’s funny because I seem to remember a candidate named Hillary Clinton whose entire claim to fame was marrying the right guy, being a mediocre senator and being a 4th rate Secretary of Defense. Basically, her entire argument for the presidency was, “I have a vagina and I deserve credit for things my husband did.” She had no charisma. She seemed too ill to be President. Republicans hated her more than just about anyone on earth BEFORE she ran for POTUS — and oh, yes, she had an FBI investigation hanging over her before she got the nomination. Liberals love to argue that she didn’t get favorable enough press coverage, but her coverage was orders of magnitude better than Trump’s. If anything, being a woman is a HUGE advantage in politics because there is nothing special about Hillary or for that matter, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, etc. They’re mediocrities who would be joke candidates if they weren’t female.
Now, back to the column,
First, they could do more than give the notion of privilege a cursory nod.