Recently I read the book 'Big Girls Don't Cry', written by journalist and writer Rebecca Traister about the 2008 campaign-- particularly on how the election 'change everything for American women'.
The book brought forth a basic truth that is still with us: there is a certain asymmetry in the way that women are treated in America-- in particular, women in the realm of politics. Before the 2008 election, conservative women such as Ann Coulter, Mona Charen, and Michelle Malkin had made their mark as noted commentators and writers of relatively generic partisan screeds. In 2005, Coulter even appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine as "Ms. Right" During the election, a great deal of sexism and misogyny surfaced around then-Senator Clinton's campaign, without a lot of pushback. Then during the Palin phase of the campaign, sexism was pushed back against hard by Palin's supporters-- sometimes even to the point of seeing it where it wasn't there. Since then, there have been a raft of new conservative women in politics-- Bachmann, Angle, O'Donnell, Whitman, Fiorina, Haley, and more; these are upgrades of the Coulters and Charens and Malkins: whereas the latter only wrote and talked about politics, the former run for office too.
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