If you’ve been following the US Presidential Debates or, you know, seen the news recently, you’ll know that the Republican Donald Trump came up with a new name for Democrat Hillary Clinton last week: ‘such a nasty woman’. It’s comical really. Something a child might say.
It reminded me of that incident back in July when our own Prime Minister Theresa May was labeled something similarly insulting – a ‘bloody difficult woman’ – by fellow Conservative, Kenneth Clarke.
What’s interesting about both these incidents – and by ‘interesting’, I mean irksome – is that both insults have one word in common: ‘woman’. Why is this ‘interesting’? Well, using the word ‘woman’ in such a context automatically makes it part of the insult. It’s a tactic often employed when women are criticised and it’s important to establish why that is…
If Donald Tump were to have called Hillary Clinton just ‘nasty’, what would that have implied? That to him, they were on the same level – equals, so to speak. This is because, if you considered being a woman no different to being a man, you wouldn’t feel the need to point out the difference. You would, however, point it out if you felt there was a difference. And more specifically, if you felt highlighting the difference would benefit your argument. So... it’s possible to surmise that when a man adds ‘woman’ onto the end of a derisory comment, he is doing it to highlight that the state of being a woman is a) different and b) not in a good way, to being a man. Unconsciously done, perhaps, but ultimately it gives the insult a far greater sting. That’s point one.
Point two calls into play questions about womanhood. Calling Hillary a ‘nasty woman’ not only implies that Hillary is not nice, but that she’s not a nice woman – which is a far worse insult because it insinuates that on some level it’s the duty of women to be nice. It implies that by being ‘nasty’, Hillary is somehow going against the characteristics of her sex. So she’s being DOUBLY nasty - unpleasant AND not acting as a woman should.
It’s the same situation with the ‘bloody difficult woman’ Theresa May. If Kenneth Clarke had been talking about David Cameron, chances are he would have probably said the former PM was merely ‘bloody difficult’. He wouldn’t have bothered to highlight Cameron’s gender because, as a man himself, it would have made no difference to his argument. But by drawing attention to Theresa’s womanness, not only was he highlighting the difference between them (again, to better his argument) but in teaming it with ‘bloody difficult’, he was also suggesting that Theresa was not being womanly. Because women are not supposed to be difficult. ARE THEY?
In summary, what both these incidents convey is that being called a woman can actually be considered an insult. If you take away the words ‘nasty’ and ‘bloody difficult’ what you actually have are men insulting women for being… women. ‘Such a woman’ – that’s what Donald Trump’s comment would have sounded like without the ‘nasty’ bit in it. It still comes across as a putdown and would probably have still made the news. ‘Donald Trump insults Hillary Clinton calling her “such a woman”’. I can see it…
Unnerving, isn’t it?
What provides a small amount of comfort over all this, however, is the response that these comments received from society at large. Thanks to social media, women have taken on these insults and owned them. #BloodyDifficultWoman started trending on Twitter – showing that many women are only too happy to assume the mantle of being both bloody and difficult – whilst ‘Nasty women get shit done’ has become an unofficial tagline for Hillary’s campaign.
Nonetheless, this only goes a small way towards bettering the fact that a woman’s womanness – in this day and age – is still considered a disadvantage; one to be used against her, whether she’s the Prime Minister of one country, or a Presidential candidate for another. It’s hard not to be disheartened by this… Although, there appears to be a solution, a response to those sorts of remarks… carry on being bloody difficult and getting shit done so as to rise above your opponents (and their sexist mutterings) to become one of the most powerful people on the planet.
Now that’s what we call a comeback.