“This is not exactly the speech at the Capitol I hoped to be giving after the election, but after a few weeks of taking selfies in the woods, I thought it would be a good idea to come out.“ — Hillary
As a presidential candidate, Clinton was vanquished. But as a feminist icon, she lives on. She’s the women who withstand the painful misogyny of American society. She’s telling your daughter to raise her hand in class, even if the boys make fun of her. She’s pantsuits and she’s the more than 3 million members of the Facebook group Pantsuit Nation. She’s every qualified woman who had an unqualified man beat her out for a job. She’s the “I Voted” stickers on Susan B. Anthony’s grave. She’s the cracks in the glass ceiling that didn’t break. She’s what could’ve been. She’s the promise of what someday will be.
“I was taking a law school admissions test in a big classroom at Harvard. My friend and I were some of the only women in the room. I was feeling nervous. I was a senior in college. I wasn’t sure how well I’d do. And while we’re waiting for the exam to start, a group of men began to yell things like: ‘You don’t need to be here.’ And ‘There’s plenty else you can do.’ It turned into a real ‘pile on.’ One of them even said: ‘If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.’ And they weren’t kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal. But I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t afford to get distracted because I didn’t want to mess up the test. So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room. I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’ And sometimes I think I come across more in the ‘walled off’ arena. And if I create that perception, then I take responsibility. I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that.”
In the study individual men and women were asked to give a speech in front of a panel of six strangers. For some there was a picture of Bill Clinton on the back wall and for others there was a picture of Hillary. Overall the men spoke longer and were judged as better speakers than the women, except for the group of ladies who spoke while looking into Hillary’s baby blues. That group blew the men out of the water as far as the length of their speeches and overall confidence and success in conveying their ideas publicly.
The conclusion researchers drew from this study was that when women are exposed to powerful female role models in leadership positions they gained instant boosts in confidence and the ability to achieve at high levels. ”Female political role models can inspire women and help them cope with stressful situations that they encounter in their careers, such as public speaking,” the authors of the study wrote. ”A lack of female powerful role models leads to a vicious circle, because if women fail to take leadership positions, they also fail to provide role models for junior women to follow.”
Everybody knows Hillary’s a liar. Everybody knows Hillary’s corrupt. Everybody knows Hillary’s a criminal. Everybody hates Hillary, and no one enthusiastically supports her; her voters are just afraid of Trump.
I’ve heard these things stated over and over throughout the primaries, without any sources to back them up. Who needs sources? We all know Hillary Clinton’s the worst, don’t we? She wouldn’t have decades of scandals and all these hearings and investigations if she weren’t. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
There’s always Benghazi, though. Sure, the eighth investigation ended the way the first seven did, with no evidence of wrongdoing, but maybe another investigation will find the truth!
Still, she won’t release the transcripts of those speeches she was paid for! How dare she not give up her intellectual property created while she was a private citizen, never mind that one of the speeches is already freely available for viewing online. Why can’t she be like Trump and Sanders and just refuse to release her tax returns instead?
All right, so she’s never been convicted of any crime, and all the investigations into her alleged scandals keep coming up with nothing, and she won the Democratic primaries after consistently polling ahead of Sanders, but that’s only proof of her corruption. She’s rigged the system so that she can get away with anything! She just somehow hasn’t rigged it well enough to keep all this stuff out of the press.
Because that’s definitely more rational than concluding that, just maybe, she’s an imperfect but well-qualified candidate with a bad reputation formed by decades of smears and conspiracy theories.