Gender-Bashing: What Hillary-Hating Meant

By Kelly Jean Cogswell

Every day when I walk into the street, I take myself with me -- a personality shaped by so many years of living, clothes tired from the wash, this body with hips and thighs and breasts I didn't think about much until this electoral campaign.

Growing older as a woman, I've gradually faded from public view. No more construction workers waggling their tongues at me and grabbing their dicks. No more gropes on the subway. Or those long undressing sneers. Until I happen to disagree with some man and all of a sudden I'm nothing but, "This Lady, here" or a "She..." drawn out to emphasize that at the heart of my obvious wrongness is my sex.

That's part of why Obama gives me the creeps. It says something about a man when underpinning the blogs and op-eds and comments of his most ardent partisans was the simple fact that they didn't hate his female opponent as a politician; they hated her as a woman. Like they must hate me.

The bias began in the hard news coverage of her campaign, though I suppose you could find some other explanation for just why, when Clinton won a major state, it would still be Obama's photo eating up the space above the fold of the New York Times. Or why the writers trotted out so many adjectives and adverbs. Such a forceful, definitive and hopeful, unifying, transcendent man has never before been seen.

In contrast to that elevating blather, Clinton got months and months of op-ed pages and blogs describing her voice as that of a shrieking harpy, or nagging wife. Her hips were fat and childbearing and repulsive. Her style was schoolmarmish, whiny, overbearing, or castrating. What she needed was a good screwing by a real man.

Even now, the illustrious New York Times only raises it as a question, was there sexism in the media's coverage? What else explains the bias, the overt physical hatred? What else explains why nobody was assigned to analyze why South Park writers hid nuclear weapons in Clinton's cartoon vagina, and some profiteer in tune with the national mood started selling the Hillary nut-cracker online, showing her loaded with shark-like teeth between her legs? Funny, the inventor himself said he'd never do a version of Obama, it might cause comment.

He's getting at the ugly truth. How venues that would never, ever, under any circumstances tolerate sneering comments about somebody's Jewish nose, or somebody else's black dick imagine that in the 21st century female hips and voices and cunts are still fair game. Reduce Clinton to her parts. She'll go away. Which is what everyone wanted. The loudest mouths, anyway.

Not me. She could be my cousin, my sister, my mother, my aunt. Which is why she got such support, way beyond white women of a certain age that the biased media kept talking about. Didn't you notice the photos? There were girls in a rainbow of shades. Plenty of African American, and Latina, and Asian women weeping when Clinton finally threw in the towel. I guess they don't count either.

Ironically, many of the most vociferous Hillary-haters were women, including dykes. It breaks my heart. Criticize her politics, fine. Why not? She's far from perfect. But it's pure self-loathing to sneer at her flesh which is like ours even if we stick it into jeans and tee shirts instead of admittedly horrendous pantsuits. I wonder sometimes if misogyny explains why so many young dykes prefer to come out as boyz, or anything but lesbians, a word which echoes so horribly of women, of the female, and reminds us we're on the losing team.

So much for post-feminism. So much for the level playing field. We have a long way to go yet. Clinton put a couple million cracks in the glass ceiling, but didn't break through. Women barely exist in top jobs in business. In the military, almost every one of us is harassed by her male peers, and a full third raped or assaulted by the time we leave or get killed. Don't blame it just on the war. It's our culture. Step out of line they'll step on you. No wonder that in the heartland of America, girls are pledging their virginity, not just to Jesus, but to their almighty daddies.

Hell, I wish Hillary had a nuclear bomb in her cunt. And that she'd take it to Washington, and bear down with her child-bearing hips on the nation's face. If she did. If she landed on it with all her atomic force, maybe she could destroy the temples of dickness that have taught us women to sneer at ourselves, to hate high-pitched sounds. To see our soft bodies as hateful and ridiculous. Maybe then we'd stand a chance.