~a column by Colleen O’Brien
In an interview with Hillary at “Humans of New York,” she said this:
“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.”
There were many posted comments from women who are not on her side politically but read this statement and agreed with her. One of them said: “Remove her from the picture and every woman would admit to feeling this way and living similar experiences. Large or small scale, it’s the truth.”
It is a misogynist world out there, and if a mean rich guy like Donald Trump can get this far, we women better believe that the majority of people in the world prefer men of any stripe to strong smart women who speak up.
The media is stuck on “reporting” that Hillary is standoffish or cold. The big deal about that is what? That she isn’t an emotional train wreck like Donald Trump? It’s okay for him to stamp and steam and shout and incite physical attack but it’s not okay for Hillary to be calm and cool? We who love her do wish she’d just fess up at the moment — Got pneumonia? Just tell us. Got a mess-up with your emails? Admit it.
Not that Donald has ever fessed up to his taxes, his bankruptcies, his health.
But Hillary’s early training says to her, Protect myself by being circumspect and careful. Trump’s early training says, Protect myself by being the angriest voice in the room. These behaviors are neither ideal nor completely awful. They are human, they are actions two people have learned.
Our decision isn’t to vote for who is more likeable or promises more; our decision is to choose the one who knows the most and has a logical thought process. Our decision is to pick the one who will make the best leader . . . not the best haranguer/accuser/bombaster/hater, but the best leader.
I’m 72 years old, just a little older than Hillary, and not too long ago I was castigated for speaking up about our need to champion African American equality. A friend at the dinner party told me in so many words that I should have gauged my audience a little better, asked if I was drunk and then said I was naïve about blacks because I didn’t own a television.
I’ve been in about 9,000 situations where men do not think to — or care to — “gauge” the audience. I’ve been in about 10,000 situations where the guy was drunk and never shut up. And “naïve” because I don’t have a TV? Quite the telling comment — not about me but about my accuser.
I have been dumbfounded for some time how women would want to vote for a misogynist, triple-married, sexist, yelling, pounding, angry, not too well-versed in just about anything fourth grader. This is a man who has never “kept steady,” never learned to control his emotions, as Hillary has, as most all of us women have had to do over the years of our lives. You would think there are way too many women who can say, “Oh, I was married to a Trump! Why would I want one in the Oval Office?”
I’ve been part of the talking-head media myself for 35 years, and I still don’t get why it is so hard on Hillary Clinton. I try to imagine Hillary in the guise of a candidate who swears, hits, insults, backtracks, repeats “I promiseIpromiseIpromise” a dozen time in a speech, toadies up to African Americans, talks trash behind the backs of Hispanics and hates crying babies.
I can’t imagine ANY woman getting away with the things he has.
Who wants a President like that? Everyone from mothers to war heroes has been hurt by his intentional crassness. If misogyny — the distrust and dislike of women — gets him elected, what’s a female to do?
Last fall and into January of this year, friends said, “If he gets elected, I’m moving to Canada.” I thought they were nuts. This man is playing a joke, I said to them.
I’ve had to rethink. I heard that the Canadians may be building a wall themselves to keep us out if he gets elected, so I’m considering Reykjavik, a place Trump may not know exists.
Last Friday, a friend told me she has nightmares about his being elected President. I have my own dream, a daytime dream: Angry loser skulks off to Russia to live with Putin, leaving a slightly less misogynist world behind.
