LOL WHUT

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

GOP presidential candidate and corporate power-failure Carly Fiorina has been subjected to a number of misogynist attacks, especially regarding her appearance, during this campaign (often from fellow candidate Donald Trump). Which is completely shitty. There is plenty for which to criticize Fiorina on the merits; anyone who has to resort to criticizing her appearance is a lazy, uninformed, misogynistic asshole.

But, while I will defend Fiorina against misogynist attacks, just as I defend Clinton, because that's how feminism works, Fiorina, who positions herself as an Exceptional Woman in every conceivable way, won't even recognize that what happens to her happens to other women, to an absolutely incredible, laughable degree:

Fox News host John Roberts pointed out that hosts of ABC's The View had said that Fiorina looked "demented" because she forced herself to smile throughout the Republican presidential debate.

"Is there a double standard here for Republican women?" Roberts asked. "I can't imagine that they would say things like that about Hillary Clinton."

"Oh, ya think? Yeah," Fiorina replied. "I think there’s a double standard… There is nothing more threatening to the liberal media in general and to Hillary Clinton in particular than a conservative woman. So, of course there's a double standard."

"Conservative women from Sarah Palin to Michele Bachmann to Carly Fiorina are long used to this," she added.

Carly Fiorina thinks that Hillary Clinton hasn't been subjected to attacks on the basis of her appearance?! LOL FOREVERRRRRR. Either Fiorina literally hasn't even the most basic familiarity with US politics even as she is trying to run for the nation's highest office, or she is just a shameless goddamn liar.

During the '08 election, 114 (!!!) incidents of misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton, many of them about her appearance, were documented in this space alone. There are even more since I started the Hillary Sexism Watch label in 2013. Clinton has been subjected to mockery of her appearance since she was the First Lady of Arkansas.

I've got news for Carly Fiorina: If you really don't know that, then you aren't qualified to lead this country. Period. And if you do know about it, and frankly I don't know how you couldn't, unless you've been living on another planet for three decades, then it doesn't do you any fucking good to lie about it.

Individual solutions to systemic problems don't work, Ms. Fiorina. It's a truth about your garbage policies, and it's a truth about your identity. Just because you don't want to be victimized by the Patriarchy, just because you want to pretend the Patriarchy doesn't even exist, doesn't make it so. You can't exceptionalize yourself out of the realities of womanhood, lady.

Because the Patriarchy won't let you.