Why so serious?

After Hillary Clinton’s speech on Tuesday night (she had won 4 of 5 contests that night, and apparently has also narrowly won Missouri, completing her sweep), a few pundit fellas took to the Twitters and told her that she won, she should smile. And that she was shouting. And that she seemed angry.

::sigh::

It dismays me that women are still held to some weird standard that dictates that we can’t get angry, or if we do, we should put on a happy face and not project our anger.

Well, fuck that.

Plenty of us are angry at the erosion of our hard-earned rights to reproductive freedom and we are angry about STILL not getting equal pay for equal work, and we are angry about sometimes being treated as less than competent as workers and as leaders. In Clinton’s speech, she was talking about many of these things, as well as things like gun violence and Governor Rick Snyder’s incompetence and complicity in the Flint water crisis (who cares if the browns get a little brain damage from lead poisoning, right Rick?).

But come on, Hillary. Give us a smile!

This is so offensive to me as a woman. What is it about having a uterus that makes men think they can tell us how to comport ourselves? That we aren’t agreeable enough, or that our passion and outrage is somehow unseemly or unfeminine? Look pretty and smile a little! That’s a good girl.

It is incredibly condescending and it pisses me off. Next time you get into an argument with a woman who is fired up about something, tell her to calm down or tell her to smile. Let me know how that works out for you.

It resulted in a discussion between me and Ken, but because we are both rational people, we managed to understand where each other was coming from. He maintained that sometimes she does sound like she is shouting, and I said, “What wrong with that at a rally?” He said sure, that’s fair. I said that I think she did get the message about toning it down a bit in debates and she has handled herself well lately. If it ends up being her vs Trump in a debate, that ability will serve her well. If she can keep her cool when subjected to the personal attacks that he is bound to bring, she will only prove that she can handle anything thrown at her.

Women can and do get angry about things, and we get passionate about things. I object to the ridiculous standard that we shouldn’t show our anger or our passion. I am honestly more committed to rational discussion and reasonable discourse, but if I get pissed off about something, you’ll know it.

[smiling]