The Backlash Against Chelsea Clinton Is Sexist

From Cosmopolitan

With Donald Trump proposing tax cuts for the very richest, deporting immigrants who have been in the U.S. nearly their entire lives, and potentially hurling us into nuclear war with North Korea, you would think Americans have plenty of political threats to worry about. But now, according to at least vocal male pundits, there’s another menace on the horizon: Chelsea Clinton.

What exactly is Chelsea’s problem? Her last name, to start - she’s part of a “failed political dynasty,” according to a recent article in Vanity Fair, because “failure” now apparently means a family that includes one parent who is a former president and governor, and another who is a former senator, secretary of state, and presidential contender who won the popular vote by a multimillion margin. And they together run a well-respected global philanthropic organization that has saved millions of lives. Never mind: Their daughter, Chelsea, a Stanford and Oxford graduate, former consultant and TV correspondent, mother of two, and author of a book intended to inspire young people to change the world for the better, talked too much in her paid role on television, where she was employed primarily to talk, and is still expressing herself to a wide audience. Chelsea “had a tendency to talk a lot, and at length, not least about Chelsea,” writes T. A. Frank in Vanity Fair. “But you couldn’t interrupt, not even if you’re on TV at NBC, where she was earning $600,000 a year at the time.”

Imagine that: A woman who is being paid handsomely for voicing her insights, and you can’t even interrupt her? Unbelievable.

It’s not just Vanity Fair jumping on the never-Chelsea bandwagon. She’s a “political princess” who receives “undeserved, constant” adoration along with the rest of her family, according to Michael Sainato in the New York Observer. According to Kevin Williamson in the National Review, Chelsea is an “empty-headed, grasping, sanctimonious, risible, simpering, saccharine little twerp” and we’re only paying attention to her because Democrats love her father (“hasn’t Bill Clinton been fellated enough?” the article begins, and proceeds to christen Chelsea the “Little Creep”).

When CBS’s Norah O’Donnell asked Chelsea if she would be the next Clinton to run for president, Chelsea said no. To which CNN pundit Chris Cillizza responded, “Um, OK?” and then “no one - and I mean no one - was waiting with bated breath for Clinton to make a go or no-go decision about running for president.”

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Except I guess the woman who asked the question, which all Chelsea did was answer. What else was she supposed to say?

The Chelsea hate-fest isn’t new, but like a disturbing proportion of the critiques of her mother, Hillary Clinton, the case against Chelsea is conspicuously wrapped up in sexism. She was mocked mercilessly as a teenager, savaged for her looks and adolescent awkwardness on comedy shows and in right-wing media. Now, the idea that she tweets regularly, talks in public, and weighs in on political issues, like her recent advocacy for equal pay, is apparently enraging for some men - the fact that she talks about herself is outrageous enough, but what seems to really disturb the pundit class is that she does it in a way that they think signals political ambitions.

There is a great case against political dynasties (see the Bush family for an illustration), and a fair critique of the unearned advantages that being born into a powerful and well-connected family bring. But Chelsea isn’t running for anything or actively continuing the Clinton dynasty. She is instead a public figure trying to use her platform and her political pedigree for good - working at the Clinton Foundation, promoting issues she cares about, voicing her disagreements with the current administration. George W. Bush’s daughter Barbara does the same, but more quietly - she runs Global Health Corp, a truly excellent and effective organization. Her twin sister, Jenna Bush Hager, stays largely out of politics, but not out of the limelight - she’s a correspondent for the Today show, and she also wrote two feel-good books. Neither of them sees the kind of ire directed at Chelsea.

Yes, Chelsea is a child of immense privilege. For her, politics is the family business - perhaps one she shouldn’t go into (or maybe one she should; her last name shouldn’t earn her any advantage but neither should it be disqualifying). But why the preemptive smack-down?

Perhaps it’s because Chelsea won’t shut up and go away - because she has the gall to believe that she, a bright young woman with a PhD in international relations and a master’s in public health, and who was raised on a steady diet of politics and civic duty, and has had an inside look at campaigning and even the White House, might have something to say. What seems to rub mostly male pundits the wrong way is that Chelsea is perceived as bragging when she talks about herself, by saying, for example, that she wrote a letter to President Ronald Reagan when she was 5, or that “They told me that my father had learned to read when he was three. So, of course, I thought I had to too. The first thing I learned to read was the newspaper.” I read this and see a cute story; T. A. Frank, who wrote the Vanity Fair hit piece, sees this as “self-regard of an unusual intensity.”

Perhaps it’s not that unusual at all but it’s unseemly coming from a woman. Women are notoriously hesitant to speak about their accomplishments lest they be perceived as bragging; women who do talk about their accomplishments, then, break gender norms and are perceived poorly for it. It’s the same dynamic that ends up penalizing women who try to negotiate but rewards men for the same: When men act aggressively, ask for more, or toot their own horns, we see them as capable, assertive, professional, and going after what they deserve. When women do it, we’re seen as bitchy, unlikable braggarts.

When you add money to the mix, this double standard only gets more obvious. That men would seek wealth and power is a basic assumption; that women would do it is suspect. Hillary Clinton was pilloried for giving a paid speech to Goldman Sachs, but much more conspicuous displays of wealth didn’t seem to hurt her opponent, who inherited wealth and connections from his father, embraces an ostentatious gold-plated Richie Rich aesthetic, and surrounds himself with wealthy bankers and businessmen in both his cabinet and at his private club. Male television pundits also make hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars a year; Chelsea made $600,000, which is a remarkable sum, but is included in articles critiquing her primarily to encourage the reader to find her suspect.

The Clintons, of course, carry so much cultural and political baggage that it can be hard to parse where legitimate Clinton-critique ends and straight-up misogyny begins. The way pundits discuss the Clinton women, though, has impacts beyond their political salience. Women are already underrepresented not only in all levels of elected office, but in many of the other visible roles that make up our political ecosystem: anchors and guests on the Sunday morning political shows; televised and quoted experts on politics and foreign policy; op-ed writers; and regular political news commentators. Our leaders are mostly male, and the people who talk, write, and pontificate about our leaders are mostly male. When women do manage to shine in this system - to gain political popularity, to ascend the professional ranks - there are too often many people who take offense at such raw and unfeminine ambition, and want to see them dimmed and quieted.

Examples of this abound: Elizabeth Warren is strident, shrill, and relentlessly ambitious. Megyn Kelly is an aggressive interviewer because she has “blood coming out of her wherever”; a plethora of sexual harassment claims against Fox News suggests that she and her female colleagues were regularly reminded that they were sexually objectified Fox Blondes first and professionals second. And then, of course, there is Hillary, the “bitch” referred to on those “Trump That Bitch” T-shirts, she of the never-ending critiques of her voice and facial expressions, the woman who played by the rules for female politicians’ behavior and tone and strategy only to perpetually see them shift under her feet.

Chelsea may be a Clinton, but that shouldn’t force her into silence. And between listening to either a bright, ambitious young woman, or another man telling women to sit down and shut up, I’ll take the well-informed woman.

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