The XX Factor: What women really think.

Hillary's Moment, and the Problem of "Seeming" Sexism

I thought Gloria Steinem's op-ed in the New York Times today performed an important service: It aptly—but gently—reminded us that it’s really hard to talk about sexism in this country. Partly that's because most of us, as Steinem points out, don’t like to hear about it. After all, so much has changed for women since the 1960s—Hillary Clinton was at one point the Democrat’s front-running nominee!— that it can seem monomaniacal to keep track of the myriad ways that women don’t have equal stature. But this reluctance to acknowledge sexism as real can be carried to absurd extremes. And yesterday provided an all-too apt example of Steinem's point: After Hillary was heckled by guys who crudely cried out “Iron my shirt” at one of her campaign stops, USA Today published a piece whose headline read, “Clinton responds to seemingly sexist remarks.”  (The body of the piece continued to refer to "seemingly" sexist remarks.) If these comments were only “seemingly” sexist, I wonder what, exactly, indubitably sexist remarks would sound like? 

This ginger approach to talking about sexism—this uncertainty about whether sexism is even real—is hardly unique to USA Today (as Steinem reminds us). And I think that’s partly because so much of the sexism we deal with now is latent and almost unconscious, leaving many of us, even women, with a mish-mash mush of confused attitudes, like the ones you describe, Emily. So I think Hillary’s emotional speech at the diner yesterday is going to speak to a lot of women voters, who will find in its clarity a relief from the exhaustion of trying to sort out what they really think or feel about this female presidential candidate.