On the morning of the 2016 election, I slipped on some of the only pants that accommodated my pregnant belly and a “Hillary” T-shirt. Climbing up the steps after I checked off a box for my namesake, I stopped for a moment and put my hand on my stomach, right near the kicking foot of my unborn daughter. I had just voted for a highly qualified, highly intelligent, highly suitable woman for President of the United States of America, and she was going to win. Her inauguration would come just days before my daughter was due to arrive in the world.

Instead, I cried for most of the next week. And my story is no different than that of millions of other women across America who felt like they too had personally had a rug ripped out from under them on November 9.

On that post-election morning, as Hillary delivered her concession, I sputtered out loud, “How the hell is she doing this?” Imagine losing the presidency to an admitted sexual predator with the personality of a petulant Big Mouth Billy Bass.

What the hell happened?

In Hillary Clinton’s new book, aptly titled What Happened, she digs into the question, even if she doesn’t offer any comforting explanations. She discusses how she spent the day after her concession (“I don’t remember much about the the rest of that day. I put on yoga pants and a fleece almost immediately”), throws barbs at some of her critics (claiming that Bernie Sanders “impugned” her character), and puzzles over why exactly so much scorn has been fired at her over the decades (“What makes me such a lightning rod for fury? I’m really asking. I’m at a loss.”)

The book itself has already become a lightning rod (it just came out Tuesday), especially for Democrats who want to tuck Clinton into a special lined and scented drawer for failed candidates and never let her out again. Who think that her book distracts us from the future of the Democratic party because it’s wrapped up in the past. Who offered up such opinions as the former Clinton surrogate who proclaimed, “I wish she’d just shut the fuck up and go away.”

We don’t typically ask losing candidates to imprison themselves in their homes for all eternity—Al Gore recently completed the talk show circuit for his new film, John McCain is still mavericking through the Senate, and Mitt Romney is sitting on a beautifully appointed sofa somewhere. But Hillary? She should gracefully bow out of public life, her critics proclaim. Apparently everyone in this country gets to dissect the 2016 election—except the woman who lost.

A woman’s role in the world is exactly what a large portion of What Happened delves into. In three chapters—the least discussed bits of the book so far, of course—Clinton outlines her own history as a woman in politics and the contours of the still raging fight for gender equality. It’s clear Clinton is relieved to get this off her chest, to rant about the young man at the law school admissions test who told her “If you take my spot at law school, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.” About the bizarre spectacle that surrounded the “tearful moment” (she says, “I didn’t even cry, not really”) she had on stage at the 2008 New Hampshire primary. About the impossibility of pleasing people as a woman in politics: “If we’re too tough,we’re unlikable. If we’re too soft, we’re not cut out for the big leagues. If we work too hard we’re neglecting our families. If we put family first, we’re not serious about the work.”

There is nothing new or exciting in what Hillary Clinton offers from her own biography—but that’s precisely the problem. These issues aren’t new, but they aren’t going away. One of the most accomplished women in the world still doubts whether she did the right thing when she was literally stalked onstage by her opponent during a nationally televised debate! The exchange has been widely reported (“Donald Trump was looming behind me … My skin crawled”) but the followup hasn’t. Clinton did not, as she considered, turn to him and say, “Back up, you creep, get away from me.” But she wonders to herself now, “Maybe I have overlearned the lesson on staying calm—biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while, determined to present a composed face to the world.”

He stalked her and she’s still left doubting if her reaction cost her crucial votes. That’s the state of gender relations in our country today.

And Clinton doesn’t just hash out the details of her own issues. “Something I wish every man across America understood,” she explains, “is how much fear accompanies women throughout our lives. So many of us have been threatened or harmed.” And interrupted, and castigated, and told our voices are too shrill and our opinions too forceful. Clinton traces all that. “It’s maddening,” she writes, “that the basic fact that sexism is alive and well should be up for debate.” And yet it is—and it is specifically up for debate when you question the role sexism played in the 2016 election. It seems the country doesn’t want to re-litigate that question—just try telling a man that you think misogyny was a large factor in Trump’s rise and Clinton’s defeat.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss the election without being offered an explanation of Hillary’s failures as a candidate (Those pantsuits! That cold demeanor! Those celeb endorsements!) as if her opponent were Franklin Delano Roosevelt and not a real estate tycoon who was caught on camera boasting about committing sexual assault. We’re still free to hate on Trump—but not to love on Hillary.

I can feel myself rehashing the election right now. You’ve done it, too. How could this happen? How could democracy fail us on such a fundamental level? Clinton deserves her chance to work through that question, too—publicly if she chooses. She campaigned publicly. She battled publicly. She can certainly now wonder publicly about the day she lost the presidential election. Think about it: If it happened to you, wouldn’t you want your say?

The book, then, is an act of women’s liberation. A woman who failed in public wants to work towards course correction. And yet here comes the parade of people prepared to tell her that her voice—the one for whom all this has mattered the most—should go for a literal hike in the woods of Chappaqua and keep her feelings to herself. She should keep to the Netflix binges she writes so fondly about in this book, apparently, and ignore that the failed election was only one smaller portion of a decades-long career in public service.

But that makes Clinton just another woman in a long string of suppressed voices. Yes, she lost. But that doesn’t mean she’s less equipped to tell the country where we all went wrong. In fact, it may make her better informed.

It’s not going too far to say that a lot of women have been traumatized over the past year. If a former Secretary of State, Senator, First Lady, accomplished attorney and Yale Law graduate is repeatedly dismissed as a “flawed candidate” because she boasts policy over reality TV theatrics, then what does that say about our country’s attitudes towards women? That’s not the kind of wound that heals in 10 months–for the populace or Clinton herself. Why shouldn’t she tell her side in gritty detail? And why shouldn’t we take that particular narrative as a welcome reminder of how important the fight for women’s equality has become?

Related Stories:

Let’s Keep “I’m With Her” and Make It a Rallying Cry for All Women

Source link