Here We Go Again

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

Over the weekend, Kevin Drum published a piece at Mother Jones titled "Hillary Clinton Has a Shouting Problem." It's just as bad as you'd expect, and possibly even worse, given that his issue is not merely that Clinton "shouts" but that she is also boring:

The shouting is one part of it, but the other part (in victory speeches and ordinary stump speeches) is that she never has anything even remotely interesting to say. I know that these kinds of speeches are usually pretty canned affairs, but there's no reason Hillary can't mix things up a little bit.

Hillary Clinton has successfully normalized speaking explicitly about the rights of women, people of color, LGBT folks, and disabled people in every speech. BO-RING! She's only completely revolutionized (and significantly raised the bar on) what we can expect from Democratic presidential candidates, but WHAT ELSE YA GOT, LADY?

A bunch of people have asked me if I'm going to write something in response to this piece, but I've been writing about this issue for more than eight years (and that is just a sample). There isn't any new way for me to say "this shit is misogynist garbage" under the sun.

I did do a little tweeting about it over the weekend, and I've Storified those tweets.

You know, maybe I just like Hillary's voice because it was the first one I ever heard say "women's rights are human rights."

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 30, 2016

Jamil Smith (who is terrific and if you are not following him on Twitter, you should be!) said: "Okay, so you're a man bothered by @HillaryClinton's voice. It's interesting that you feel we should listen to you complain about it."

Yes. Especially since a man publicly complaining about the sound of Hillary Clinton's voice doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in a culture where lots of women, and I am among them, have been told that there's something wrong with our voices. Too shouty. Too shrill. Too strident. Too loud. Laugh like a murderous cackle. Voice like a buzzsaw. You sound like a nagging wife.

When I see/hear some dude musing about how he doesn't like Clinton's voice, I hear all the men who have told me that they don't like my voice, or some other woman's voice.

Men don't have to actually say these words for them to communicate all the same: She bugs me...and you'd bug me, too.