Hillary Clinton and the Sexism of American Politics

The news is abuzz with the story that Presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton is ill, with much speculative “reporting” about her departure
from the 9/11 service that exaggerate the gravity of the situation. Some
conservative activists had already been hinting that she was unhealthy,
and they can now crowing with delight, since the public scene of her
afflicted with a poorly-treated infection resonates with the rumors they
have been purveying for weeks. Even Tom Brokaw, who doesn’t jump on
every inane bandwagon, has offered his medical advice: she needs to see a
neurologist immediately. (Really? What do her doctors say?)

The idea of Hillary as sickly perfectly fits the nineteenth-century
image of women as fainting and languid. A hundred and fifty years ago,
middle class women were consigned to the home, where they would be safe.
Stereotypes depicted them as frail, lethargic and sickly. Many women
took to their beds, treated for nervous disorders including with
opiates, leaving the rigorous work involved in running their households
to servants or slaves. The former were working class white
women—increasingly immigrants—while the latter were African American
women, neither of whom were consider frail. The illnesses of elite women
were thought to be a sign of their more civilized nature, while working
women were less civilized, more animalistic, and hardier. These sickly
women were often described as suffering from nerves, giving a weird
resonance to Tom Brokaw’s immediate arm-chair diagnosis of neurological
disorder. Medical professionals no longer diagnose the diseases that
were said to afflict these women; nor do we embrace the odd
superstitions about female reproduction systems that lay behind them.
But the idea that women are weak—not just in terms of comparative
upper-body strength but more generally—remain. Never mind that women
live longer than men and have a higher pain threshold. The idea of women
swooning still carries cultural resonance.

Any presidential candidate will of course face questions about his or
her health. Donald Trump has declined to release his own medical
records, substituting a vague statement that sounds rather like his own
exaggerated rhetoric. Presidential candidates must be easily able to
endure the demands of the office for four or even eight years without
mishap. So the question of the candidate’s general state of health is
legitimate.

What is not legitimate, however, is how the sickly Hillary narrative
has been manufactured in advance of any sign that she was ill, and as
part of a larger campaign against her.

A handful of political operatives have built their careers on bashing
Clinton: planting rumors of her supposed nefarious dealings, suggesting
what happened in Benghazi was somehow uniquely her fault, claiming that
she used a private email server because she was an evil conspirator
with something to hide. They have worked long and hard at this smear
campaign, snatching at anything and throwing it into the media frenzy,
hoping some of it would stick. As many commentators have noted, the
general belief that she is dishonest and up to no good has spread so far
and wide that even people who approve of most of what she has done in
her long political career still feel a nagging sense that she is not to
be trusted. It has been a brilliant, dishonest campaign, unchecked by
facts and uninterested in truth.

Such innuendos may well bring down her bid for the presidency. If it
does not and she is elected, the untruths spread about her will continue
to dog her into the White House. Like the wacky ideas that Obama is a
Muslim or not U.S. born, the truth of the smear matters less than the
general sense that something isn’t right, and voters ought to be
suspicious.

The recent turn toward questioning the state of Hillary’s health is
part of this larger campaign. Worrying that Hillary is sickly can sound
like concern, but of course it contributes to a larger effort to
undermine her candidacy, another rumor that can be thrown out to see if
it can gain any traction. Hillary demonizers hit the jackpot when, after
some weeks of insinuation, Hillary did indeed appear ill. She had been
diagnosed with pneumonia as an apparent complication of persistent hay
fever (no doubt exacerbated by a grueling schedule), a relatively minor
health problem and one that is easily cured. Her campaign decided not to
come clean about it right away—no doubt trying to avoid playing into
the hands of those who manufactured the sickly image in the first
place—but that proved an error. Withholding information and forgoing a
few much-needed days at home to recuperate played into the idea of her
dishonesty. The decision may be understandable but it was also supremely
idiotic.

Hillary Clinton is not a weak and frail woman suffering from a
nervous condition, despite Tom Brokaw’s leap to diagnose. She is a
generally healthy 68 year old woman who is working non-stop and needs a
few days off. Not a big deal. But because she is a woman, the idea that
she is sickly grabs headlines out of proportion to the news. If it was
the nineteenth century she might be sent to a darkened room to take
laudanum, but since this is the twenty-first century a course of
antibiotics ought to do the trick.