Look up the term, the Hillary Effect, and you will find it used in many different ways, from the pejorative to the complimentary. There’s even a book by that name.
Here’s my definition: That rush of indignation you feel every time you see or hear a woman being belittled, every time you see or hear a woman being held to a higher standard, every time you see or hear a woman victimized by a routinely accepted double standard when compared to men, most of whom may be far below her level of experience and accomplishments.
So inured have I become apparently to these routine ways of being in our culture, so long ago seems that wave of feminism that seemed so fruitful in my younger days, that I haven’t even realized of late just how often women are subjected to such behavior—as though it were the natural order of things.
I’ve been in a post-feminist fog.
I was, that is, until I began to see the lens through which Hillary Rodham Clinton is scrutinized every time she opens her mouth or more significantly every time, which is daily now, she seems to be nearer to becoming the Commander-in-Chief.
How did this realization occur? My husband happened to comment one day, after I snapped back at him for something benign enough (like asking when’s dinner?), that I’d become a little prickly lately.
I stopped to think. He was right. And I knew what it was, the Hillary effect. It was like a low-grade malaise, always there, under the surface, but ready to blossom into a raging fever.
I’d become sensitized to the way she is being treated, taking it personally, actually. And the treatment that was galling me was not only by BHOM (big hairy orange man), but also by the press, the pundits, by die-hard republicans, and sadly, by a lot of men who should know better.
Oh, they will vote for her, but—they will tell you—they won’t like it.
And why? Bengazi? Emails? Goldman Sachs? The Clinton Foundation? Seriously? These are all tempests in teapots, and they are the most anyone can come up with—all of which don’t stick and don’t amount to one prosecutorial hill of beans.
Oh, some say, it goes back to Rosewater; others, unbelievably, say Vince Foster. This is laughable…if it were not so troubling.
And Hillary’s charge of a vast right-wing conspiracy out to get her is not paranoid thinking. They’re out there, all right, have been for decades.
But those against Hillary include others.
It all goes back to her refusal to cower under pressure, as when early in 1992, during the presidential campaign, when Bill was accused of fooling around, she came to his defense, saying she was not “Some little woman standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette.” Some didn’t like her use of the phrase, “little woman.” It seemed harsh. Others didn’t like the reference to Tammy Wynette. (Some icons are best left out of it.)
Then later that same year she came under fire for not giving up her career. She steadfastly refused and said, ”I suppose I could’ve stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.”
She had done it again, this time seemingly maligning women at home. She came on the scene from day one as a woman with her own ideas about things, and she threatened a lot of people, even though often in the next breath she would say she was working for women to have rights, to stay home or to have careers. She had just chosen the later. And, hard to believe as it is, in 1992 that message was still seen as undermining the very core of our country’s values.
The really disturbing thing is that she still rubs people (men mostly, but women, too) the wrong way. She is still too unrepentant and independent. So she’s not likable, they say, can’t be trusted. “Lock her up,” some even chant.
For those of us who didn’t shave our legs or underarms during the 60s or for those of us who sort of wanted to not but did, Hillary Clinton has always been a torchbearer, leading the way to something better.
I’m sure the suffragettes thought that once they got the vote, the hatred that had been heaped upon them would cease. And I know that during the 60s feminists believed that their efforts were not in vain, that their daughters would be free to choose their careers, their reproductive rights, their partners.
So it is dispiriting to see the way in which this presidential campaign is playing out. To see how Hillary Clinton is being held to a different standard than her opponent. To see the double standard applied by the press, to read the comments about her shrill voice or her demeanor. Seriously? Have these commentators not looked at or heard BHOM?
Here is a woman who can talk policy, who knows strategy, has experience and intelligence, who is more qualified to be President than any of the candidates who emerged during this election cycle.
And yet…
So yes, I’m operating under the influence of the Hillary Effect. And I’m not taking crap from anybody.