Heather Schwedel, Slate – October 27, 2016
Linguistic analysis reveals that Trump uses tentative language, emotion-laden words, fewer long words, and fewer prepositions and articles, all characteristics that are strongly associated with women, a category of people Trump frequently dismisses and degrades.
Charlotte Alter, TIME – September 27, 2016
Monday night’s presidential debate was always going to be a battle of the sexes — the political version of the epic 1973 tennis showdown between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. The first female presidential nominee was debating a candidate who has called women “dogs” and “slobs,” who bragged about his testosterone score on Dr. Oz and talked about his private parts at a Republican primary debate.
Susan Chira, New York Times – September 24, 2016
When you’re scared, do you feel safer with Mommy or with Daddy? That, at heart, is the visceral question voters must address as they consider whether Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump is the leader they trust to protect them in an age of terror. A key test will come in Monday’s debate.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, New York Times – September 23, 2016
When Hillary Clinton participated in a televised forum on national security and military issues this month, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, tweeted that she was “angry and defensive the entire time — no smile and uncomfortable.” Mrs. Clinton, evidently undaunted by Mr. Priebus’s opinion on when she should and shouldn’t smile, tweeted back, “Actually, that’s just what taking the office of president seriously looks like.”
Sady Doyle, Quartz – September 18, 2016
Female bodies engaged in traditionally male occupations are always suspect, from Newt Gingrich’s infamously confusing assertionabout women in the military (“females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections”) all the way back to Victorian claims that reading too much would make women insane and infertile.
Ange-Marie Hancock, The Hill – September 18, 2016
The narratives surrounding Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis and her health this week have been filtered through the routine partisan lenses. Very little has been said about how her insistence on toughing it out until a sick day was unavoidable is not simply the American way, but an American woman’s way of navigating gendered health dynamics in the United States.
Amber Jamieson and Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian – September 15, 2016
From the beginning of her career in the public eye, Clinton has been dogged by questions about her interest in homemaking – despite her own successful career. The queries gradually became more subtle, but the concern of her interviewers was often the same: is this woman “womanly” enough?
Jill Filipovic, Cosmopolitan – September 13, 2016
Donald Trump hates weaklings. “Weak” remains one of his favorite Twitter insults, and one he has lobbed repeatedly at his opponent Hillary Clinton in stump speeches. “She’s weak. She’s a weak person. I know her. She’s a weak person,” he said about Clinton at an August rally in Des Moines. And later, in Wisconsin, “In one way she’s a monster,” Trump said. “In another way she’s a weak person. She’s actually not strong enough to be president.” He has speculated wildly about her health, fueling rumors that she’s secretly ill; in the meantime, the only proof of his own health he offers is a bizarre letter from a physician who later said he dashed it off in about five minutes, and of course his own obvious, orange-tinged virility.
Meredith Conroy, Washington Post – July 27, 2016
On Tuesday, delegates at the Democratic National Convention officially made Hillary Clinton the first woman nominated by a major party for the U.S. presidency. But with or without a female candidate, the race for the presidency has always been gendered, as my research shows — often in ways that are explicitly unfriendly to women. And the language we use to talk about who is fit for the presidency is language that hurts women.
Maureen Dowd, New York Times – May 1, 2016
It seems odd, in this era of gender fluidity, that we are headed toward the most stark X versus Y battle since Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.