Clinton On ‘Cold’ Rep: Emotional Control Is How Women Handle Everyday Sexism

The Democratic Party's presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks on stage during the last day of the Democratic National Convention on July 28, 2016 at the Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Photo by O... The Democratic Party's presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks on stage during the last day of the Democratic National Convention on July 28, 2016 at the Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Photo by Olivier Douliery/Abacapress.com MORE LESS
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Hillary Clinton attributed her “walled off” reputation to the years of sexism she experienced in male-dominated settings in an account published Thursday on the popular photography blog “Humans of New York.”

Clinton recounted to photographer Brandon Stanton how a group of men heckled her and a female friend while she waited to take an admissions test for Harvard Law School, telling the women they didn’t “need” to be there and even that the men could be drafted to the Vietnam War if women took their spots.

“I couldn’t respond,” the Democratic nominee said. “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.’”

Read the full account below:

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Notable Replies

  1. Trump’s crack team of investigators are on the hunt for Hillary’s real birth certificate, the one designating her gender at birth as “Male”.

  2. Avatar for tflick tflick says:

    I love this piece. HONY is absolutely brilliant at taking a story and showing how it’s emblematic of the interview subject. So powerful.

  3. So the woman candidate is being blasted for being “cold”, while the male candidate is a raving lunatic, but the “cold” candidate is what the media focuses on.

    Gotcha…

  4. What she describes is absolutely correct about how women handle sexism in the workplace, in academia and in social settings. Be quiet, be accommodating, smile when you don’t feel it or you’ll be called out for being cold, and disguise your braininess whenever possible. Oh, and when you do become prominent, be prepared to defend your husband’s wayward behavior.

  5. Avatar for tflick tflick says:

    Really great story in The Atlantic today about the misogyny directed at HRC. They talk about the concept of “precarious manhood.” Good read if you have a few minutes.

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