To start off today’s lesson: the difference between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, as defined by academia:
Sex = the biological signification of femalehood or malehood
Gender = a social construct that exists outside of biology and the body; has more to do with subjective terms like ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ which can be applied to a person regardless of sex
so why is Salon saying that Hillary is the male-gendered candidate while Obama is the female one?
Hillary has recently found two new thorns in her side: two books written about her that both happened to come out at roughly the same time. One is “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta J, and the other is “Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” by Carl Bernstein. Both books are critical of Hillary, and although her campaign managers are writing them off as ‘old news’, such an assesment isn’t entirely true.
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Is Hillary an insider or an outsider? And does such a status work to her advantage or disadvantage?
As usual, the frustrating answer is: both.
In what CBS news dubs “The Clinton Paradox”, Hillary’s strengths and weaknesses are as changeable as the crowd she is facing on any given day. As the article mentions, “Clinton has to conform to stereotypes and defy them, and she has to run as both the insider and the outsider,” said Marie Wilson, founder of the White House Project, which promotes women running for high office. “She has to show she’s not entrenched in a system that has not been friendly to women, but also that she really knows it and is good at it.”
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