Now that Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is on its deathbed, the eulogies are starting to appear.  Marie Cocco in the Post catalogs the series of sexist name-calling and belittlement Clinton faced throughout her campaign.  Though it causes little public uproar when media figures pelt misogynist epithets at Clinton, Cocco wonders what would happen had similar but racist insults been hurled at Sen. Barack Obama.

Would the silence prevail if Obama’s likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they’d compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama’s sex organs play?

Certainly such behavior would be scandalous, but in America race as an identity is much more sensitive than sex, and thus we are socially afforded different levels of disrespect for different identities.  Perhaps this is the result of race-consciousness, which, wishing to compensate for past transgressions (slavery, Jim Crow, etc.), places particular meaning on race.  The race-aggrieved will note that women were not enslaved for hundreds of years.  Feminists will retort that women have been enslaved since the beginning of time.  In the case of more-aggrieved-than-thou arguments, I choose not to take sides.

Clearly, though, Sen. Clinton has faced a mean, protracted, and costly campaign.  She may not be as offended as we think as she has openly admitted her excited anticipation of the mess of politics that would come.  Clinton is no shrinking violet, and therein lies the problem.

Unfortunate as it may be, the reality is that women who are assertive are frequently called “bitches” whereas equally assertive men receive social admiration.  Steadfast conviction!  Standing tough!  Staying the course!  All these have little negative connotation when applied to men, but when a woman refuses to back down (refuses to accept electoral defeat, even), she’s called a bitch.

We can avoid the issue completely if we afforded everyone the equal respect we all deserve.  However, if men were angels, as James Madison wrote, we would need no government.  Then there would be no nasty campaigns.

Nicolas Kristof has a good post in the New York Times about the difference between the two. He avers that sexism is merely prejudice on account of sex and that sexism’s intention is occasionally the protection of women. Misogyny, however, is an attitude that is not only contemptuous of women, but denies their very humanity subjecting them to brutality or death.

Kristof then relates some interesting, yet apocryphal, “just so” stories of evolutionary psychology’s possible influence on the origins of sexism. Though it may be interesting to distinguish between misogyny and sexism, I think the distinction is moot in most human rights discussions. Both sexists and misogynists withhold goodwill from women, but to different degrees. Sexists believe women are like children, misogynists believe women are things. Both attitudes are contrary to the equal respect all people deserve.