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Trump and Clinton Genders Reversed
This piece out of NYU is absolutely fascinating. They had a female actor play Trump and a male one play Clinton in a reenactment of excerpts from the debates.
I love the honesty that these very liberal academics display. They expected to see the female Trump come off as less acceptable and the male Clinton to be more impressive. The opposite happened.
I don’t want to add too much to the piece, which is very thorough and insightful, but one thing struck me: the myth of sexism in actual daily life. The idea that it is more acceptable in 21st Century America for a man to condescend to and dismiss a woman the way Hillary did Trump as a matter of course in the debates.
These liberals saw what a lot of us saw: the eloquence of Trump’s simple message and the unlikability of Hillary Clinton. It seems like a lot of these liberals just admired Hillary for reasons of identity and liberal politics. This liberal cohort was never large enough to get an electoral college majority. Enjoy this piece and think about what it means. Comments are welcome.
Published in Culture, Politics
Fascinating. Thanks for the link.
Confirms my decision not to watch debates.
No urinal photos, please. Thank you!
Interesting. I guess the message was the problem and. It just the person?
He had a coherent message. She had identity politics and personal entitlement.
Fascinating. Explains so much.
What a great project for NYU to do.
Thank you.
I was looking for something else and stumbled upon this in Obama’s 2008 Democratic Convention nomination acceptance speech:
Sounds a lot like Donald Trump. And in his 2004 convention keynote address, which launched his political career, Obama had this to say:
It exposes the sexism of the Left. When Hillary’s message wasn’t filtered through the “first woman President” prism it fell flat. The only reason they were fans was her gender…though the couldn’t see it at the time.
This isn’t really a surprise to those who believe the presidential election was a choice between two Democrats.
And frankly, he’s the most sane Democrat who’s run for president since Bill Clinton. I just wish he’d been facing a conservative opponent in the general instead of a leftist one.
I’m not sure this is entirely fair. Based on the short clip I was also put off by the male HRC more than I was by real thing. This could have a simple explanation – women exhibiting “masculine” behaviors are more widely accepted than men exhibiting “feminine” behaviors. While this is an idea I never really considered before, (Normally we’re comparing how women are perceived relative to men when both are exhibiting male traits.) it’s what I would have expected. I’m excited to see that this experiment was undertaken seriously and that the people involved didn’t immediately dismiss the results when they didn’t fit the narrative, but I think all we can conclude is that sex isn’t the only variable in this equation. That’s no small lesson for some people.
I agree but for a different reason. Somehow the smug condescension was even more apparent when coming from a man. He came across as the guy who feels the need to correct you when you accidentally refer to Pluto as a planet.
Well then, is the VP and Cabinet that this ‘democrat’ has surrounded himself with a surprise to you?
Yes.
Really?!? He seemed kind’a ineffectual to me … Simon Milquetoast. Not nearly as smuggly ‘I know I’m smarter than you all” as HRC. I must be missing something…one of the audience members found him “punchable”. I’m curious. Were you, at the time of the debates, pro Trump?
That was fascinating and interesting to watch. I’m not entirely surprised by the results, though I have a hard time articulating why.
I’m impressed by the people who undertook this experiment and that they followed it through.
VP ….honestly now … Who cares? Benjamin Franklin, when discussing the Vice Presidency, thought the office holder should be addressed as “Your Superfluous Majesty”
Cabinet members? Not really. 1) Trump is an old school, early 1960’s Democrat. They were once pro America, strong defense, anti Communist, pro American worker, against illegal immigration. (2) Does Trump strike you as a guy who delegates well? There used to be a quip about old Yankee owner George Steinbrenner… “Nothing is more limiting than being a limited partner with Steinbrenner!” I’m speculating, but my guess is something similar will turn out to be true about Trump’s Cabinet.
Supreme Court … That was a pleasent surprise.
Me too. I find the results hilarious.
Professor Higgins once famously asked “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Perhaps this exercise answers that question.
Over the years Clinton’s general demeanor always struck me in the wrong way, she is too off putting, the smile too fake, the accent put on for the audience, I never felt I saw a “genuine” Hillary. It was always Hillary as she thought her audience wanted her to be.
With Trump what you see is what you get, no matter what the occasion is, Trump is Trump, and I think that is what many people reacted to. You may not like him, but like someone said in the article, Trump is like the “middle school principal who you don’t like, but you know is doing good things for you.”
I wish people would do more of this sort of thing. Obviously, this is part of it. But I would also love to see exercises where the same statements were made and you couldn’t tell political affiliations, or the real affiliations were switched to gauge people’s reactions.
Yes,, it would be fun to see the reactions to Obama and Hillary in 2008 saying they were against gay marriage.
Liberals like an alpha male female, but no one likes a passive aggressive man who makes excuses all the time. And smiling constantly for no reason is just creepy.
Her inappropriate maniacal smiles always reminded me of the Coneheads, trying so hard to fit in with what they perceived us to be, and missing by a mile.
Well, trump is pretty effeminate with his weird gestures and style of talking, and Hillary is anything but effeminate, so this result shouldn’t be a surprise at all.
That could have been it. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the cause, but I found him really annoying. I’ve noticed before that I’m more tolerant of scolding behavior from women than men. Mom was around more than Dad, so she she scolded more. Teachers where more often women than men too. I’m guessing that many of us are more accustomed to being scolded by women.
One of the female researchers said she’d like to have a beer with female Trump. Think about that for a minute. She only finds the hypothetical opposite gender Trump appealing. It’s kind of scary that so many otherwise very intelligent Americans are so obsessed with identity that they will accept the unacceptable from a woman and dismiss out of hand a message from a member of the wrong gender.
Not quite pro-Trump, but definitely a Trump sympathizer and definitely anti-Hillary.
BTW, I’ll concede that it could be that I’m just used to Hillary acting that way. I’ve had long-time friends that behave badly under certain circumstance, but I’ve become so used to it that I don’t even notice most of the time. Let somebody else do the same thing and I get pissed off.
I thought the same thing. It’s a shame the timing didn’t work out that Jane Curtin could play her on SNL. She would have killed it.
Fascinating. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I can’t add anything to the OP analysis.
Maybe there’s a reason that fascinating little dramatized debate actually works. Linguistic analysis of speaking style according to statistically significant markers of masculine and feminine speech characteristics such as use of different parts of speech (women use more auxilliary verbs, men more articles and prepositions), word choice, and rhetorical style finds that Trump’s style is much more feminine than Clinton’s. Of 35 recent presidents and presidential candidates, Trump is by far the most feminine of them all, outdistancing Hillary Clinton (9), Sarah Palin (18), Carly Fiorina (20), Geradine Ferraro (21), and Michele Bachmann (24). Most masculine? Jim Webb, then Martin O’ Malley, Dennis Kucinich, and Ted Cruz.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/trump-feminine-speaking-style-214391
EDIT: Could Skyler (comment 23) be the only person in America who actually had this figured out?
Fascinating to see when the outlandish claims and actions of some when a simple gaze into the mirror of their Faith can be so revealing.
Might there be video of the audiences revealing the responses of dropping jaws and face palms as the summations appear soft.