Did you know that it is sexist to call Hillary Clinton Hillary?
Personally, I didn\’t. I thought calling her Hillary was an advertising/public relations strategy; a way of ingraining the idea that she has something of a personal ownership of that name in the public\’s collective mind, so that when people see or hear it they think of her and only her. In other words, it is a clever way of ingratiating Hillary Clinton to the public.
But if you read the quotes of several women in Anita Kumar\’s article at mclatchydc.com, titled “What’s in a name? ‘Hillary’ by any other name would still be controversial”, you might think that it this is a terrible, demeaning, anti-woman thing to do.
For example:
“I think it\’s pretty unjust,” said Monica Warek, 23, on a recent visit to Washington from New York City. “I think it shows the level of inequality that still exists in the workforce and just in general in society.”
Kathy Sullivan, a Democratic activist who co-chaired Clinton\’s 2008 presidential campaign in New Hampshire, said…”It reflects a tendency of some people, but it may be totally unconscious.”
Laura F. Edwards, a history professor at Duke University who studies gender, said calling a woman by her first name is part of a larger problem in our culture in how to acknowledge women, who have always used their fathers’ and husbands\’ names because they were never expected to have a public place in the world. “All this gets to the point that women had no public identities of their own,” she said. “And we\’re still living with the implications of that.”
In fairness to Ms. Kumar, her article also has a number of people who disagree with this attitude. In fact, my favorite area of disagreement is in the picture accompanying her article, which shows an intern at Ms. Clinton\’s headquarters. Take a look, and see if you notice anything about the poster over her desk:
That is Hillary Clinton\’s headquarters, Ms. Warek, Ms. Sullivan and Ms. Edwards.
I wonder if any of these women have something to say about that poster. If so, I\’d love to know what it is.
