I have known Philosopher and Cultural Critic Susan Bordo since I was in the crib! As siblings we’ve fought and laughed and hugged and cried. I’m so proud we’ve grown up (finally!) to be able to collaborate on this radio interview about her profoundly important book, The Destruction of Hillary Clinton.
What’s this item about? What makes it interesting? Write a catchy description to grab your audience’s attention…I get why Laura Bradley of Vanity Fair might opine that a “Murphy Brown” reboot “might actually be perfect for 2018.” With broadcast news coming at us 24/7, jam-packed with political outrages, “fake news” and looming constitutional crises, a newsroom-based sitcom would never lack topical material.
During the last month, there has been a great deal of intense conversation on my Facebook page. The threads have included hundreds of comments, and I haven’t been able to respond to all who asked me to clarify a position of mine or asked a particular question. I thought it might be useful, therefore, to put together some of my more substantive comments and posts from over the past month. They are not systematic, by any means, and shouldn’t be taken as such, but (with the exception of the 1998 Chronicle piece) are spontaneous, unrevised responses to evolving events.
November 22:
NEVER FORGET:
“I did try & fuck her. She was married. I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. I just start kissing them. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything—grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” Donald Trump
November 23:
This piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education was published in 1998, and it NOT about all sexual misconduct, just about harassment. It obviously doesn’t address a fraction of what’s going on today, but it does show–I believe–what I mean when I say the current conversation is ignoring context, nuance, and the complexities of power:
We have made a great mistake in equating sexual harassment with sexual gestures and overtures.
It’s difficult for me to write about Hillary Clinton’s What Happened without revisiting my anger over the continuing injustice of her treatment by much of the press. Yes, there have been appreciative reviews of the book, reviews that recognize that Clinton, as Megan Garber puts it, “is doing the thing so many women politicians and citizens have done, recently, in a world that refuses to make space for them: It reclaims.” In doing so, it inaugurates “a newly emotional style of political engagement”—but without sacrificing the factual, as some other politicians have done. Yes, it’s a candid, warm, and sometimes angry account of Clinton’s experience; it’s also an astute, multifaceted analysis of the “perfect storm” that resulted in the disaster of 2016.[1]
The unvarnished malice of the negative reviews, however, makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that many responses to the book are an extension of the same desire to castigate Hillary that pundits brought to their reporting of the campaign. The book is “useless” (Sam Kriss) and “essentially wrong-headed” (Sarah Leonard); it’s like “Hillary cornering you in a coffee shop, replaying the game tape.” And of course, there’s the “blames everyone but herself” theme, with which we’ve been bludgeoned since the night of the election.
It’s difficult for me to write about Hillary Clinton’s What Happened without revisiting my anger over the continuing injustice of her treatment by much of the press.
The biggest obstacle any woman has faced and will continue to face in aspiring to the highest office in any country, at any time in history is that she is not a man. I know—duh. But the reality is that we haven’t yet begun to comprehend, let alone address, everything that flows from that seemingly simple fact. French philosopher Simone deBeauvoir remains the expert on it. In every era, in every culture, she pointed out, Man is the norm, and Woman is defined in terms of her difference from that norm. She may be reviled, she may be revered, but she is always judged by standards that are “special” to her sex, while the fact that men have a sex, too, goes unnoticed.
Here’s a banal but telling example: the suit was as much a uniform for the male politicians that Hillary Clinton competed against as it was for her. But for Clinton, the “pantsuit” was mocked (or cherished by some pro-Clinton feminists) as a special signature item. And here’s a non-banal one: while we accept it as “normal” when male politicians shout, interrupt, hog the stage, or aggressively interrogate, when Hillary raised her voice it was described as “screeching” and both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris were told to shut up when they claimed too much time on the Senate floor.
Most people who follow politics spent 2016 imagining an America where Mr. President became Madam President. But the reality today looks very different. The highest glass ceiling remains firmly in place, and President Donald Trump’s theatrically alpha-male leadership style has made a crack seem even more remote.
Hillary Clinton speaks about Susan Bordo's analysis of sexism and misogyny in the 2016 presidential campaign during a podcast. Hillary Clinton's discussion of Professor Bordo's new book, "The Destruction of Hillary Clinton," begins around point 13.35. The book is also the subject of discussion by scholars in Signs, a major feminist academic journal.
Something very strange is going on in post-mortems about the 2016 election. On the one hand, the hard evidence is piling up that a combination of factors largely outside of Hillary Clinton’s control were responsible for her loss to Donald Trump. On the other hand, many apparently don’t want Hillary Clinton to talk about any of that.
Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism, an open-access feature of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, offers brief comments from prominent feminists about a book that has shaped popular conversations about feminist issues. Short Takes is part of the Feminist Public Intellectuals Project.