Christine A. Kray & Tamar W. Carroll 
Nasty Women and Bad Hombres 
Gender and Race in the 2016 US Presidential Election

A look at how Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and American voters invoked ideas of gender and race in the fiercely contested 2016 US presidential election


Gender and racial politics were at the center of the 2016 US presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The election was historic because Clinton was the first woman nominated by a major political party for thepresidency. Yet it was also historic in its generation of sustained reflection on the past. Clinton’s campaign linked her with suffragist struggles–represented perhaps most poignantly by the parade of visitors to Susan B. Anthony’s grave on Election Day–while Trump harnessed nostalgia through his promise to Make America Great Again. This collection of essays looks at the often vitriolic rhetoric that characterized the election: ‘nasty women’ vs. ‘deplorables’; ‘bad hombres’ and ‘Crooked Hillary’; analyzing the struggle and its result through the lenses of gender, race, and their intersections, and with particular attention to the roles of memory, performance, narrative, and social media.


Contributors examine the ways that gender and racial hierarchies intersected and reinforced one another throughout the campaign season. Trump’s association of Mexican immigrants with crime, and specifically with rape, for example, drew upon a long history of fearmongering that stereotypes Mexican men–and men of other immigrant and minority groups–as sexual aggressors against white women. At the same time, in response to both Trump’smisogynistic rhetoric and the iconic power of Clinton’s candidacy, feminist consciousness grew steadily across the nation. Analyzing these phenomena, the volume’s authors–both journalists and academics–engage with prominent debates in their diverse fields, while an epilogue by the editors considers recent ongoing developments like the #metoo movement.


CHRISTINE A. KRAY is Associate Professor of Anthropology, TAMAR W. CARROLL is Associate Professor of History, and HINDA MANDELL is Associate Professor in the School of Communication, all at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Table of Content

Introduction: The Historical Imagination and Fault Lines of the Electorate – Christine A. Kray and Tamar W. Carroll and Hinda Mandell

PART 1. AGGRESSIVE AND SUBORDINATE MASCULINITIES

From (Castrating) Bitch to (Big) Nuts: Genital Politics in 2016 Election Campaign Paraphernalia – Jane Caputi

Trump in the Land of Oz: Pathologizing Hillary Clinton and the Feminine Body – Roy Schwartzman and Jenni M. Simon

The Border, Bad Hombres, and the Billionaire: Hyper-Masculinity and Anti-Mexican Stereotypes in Trump’s 2016 Presidential Campaign – Joshua D. Martin

The Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Early Twentieth-Century Sociological Theory and Trump’s Campaign – O. Nicholas Robertson

America, Meet Your New Dad: Tim Kaine and Subordinate Masculinity – Beth L. Boser and R. Brandon Anderson

PART 2. FEMINIST PREDECESSORS

Please Put Stickers on Shirley Chisholm’s Grave: Assessing the Legacy of a Black Feminist Pioneer – Barbara Winslow

Commemoration and Contestation: Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama – Michael J. Brown

Dressing Up for a Campaign: Hillary Clinton, Suffragists, and the Politics of Fashion – Einav Rabinovitch-Fox

100 Years of Campaign Imagery: From Woman Suffrage Postcards to Hillary Clinton – Ana Stevenson

The Impossibilities of Hillary Clinton as a Self-Made Woman – Joanna Weiss

PART 3. BAKING COOKIES AND GRABBING PUSSIES: MISOGYNY AND SEXUAL POLITICS

The Woman They Love to Hate: Hillary Clinton and the Evangelicals – Mark Ward Sr.

‘Locker Room Talk’ as ‘Small Potatoes’: Media, Women of the GOP, and the 2016 Presidential Election – Jiyoung Lee

‘Locker Room Talk’ as ‘Small Potatoes’: Media, Women of the GOP, and the 2016 Presidential Election – Carol M. Liebler

‘Locker Room Talk’ as ‘Small Potatoes’: Media, Women of the GOP, and the 2016 Presidential Election – Neal J. Powless

‘I’m Not Voting for
Her’: Internalized Misogyny, Feminism, and Gender Consciousness in the 2016 Election – Pamela Aronson

Confronting ‘Bimbo Eruptions’ and the Legacy of Bill Clinton’s Scandal: Slut-Shaming and the 2016 Presidential Campaigns – Leora Tanenbaum

How to Turn a Bernie Bro into a Russian Bot – Steve Almond

PART 4. ELECTION DAY: REWRITING PAST AND FUTURE

#Women Can Stop Trump: Intimate Publics in the Twitterverse – Gina Masullo Chen and Kelsey N. Whipple

A Renaissance of Feminist Ritual: Susan B. Anthony’s Gravesite on Election Day – Christine A. Kray

Birthing Family Narrative and Baby on Election Day – Hinda Mandell

Left Behind – Rachel Parsons

This is Vienna: Parents of Transgender Children from Pride to Survival in the Aftermath of the 2016 Election – Sally Campbell Galman

Triumph of the Constitution: American Muslims and Religious Liberty – Asma Uddin

PART5. THE FUTURE IS FEMALE(?): CRITICAL REFLECTIONS AND FEMINIST FUTURES

‘When they go low, we go high’: African American Women Torchbearers for Democracy and the 2016 Democratic National Convention – De Anna J. Reese

‘When they go low, we go high’: African American Women Torchbearers for Democracy and the 2016 Democratic National Convention – Delia C. Gillis

Amnesia and Politics in the Mount Hope Cemetery: Toward a Critical History of Race and Gender – Katie Terezakis

Beware! Benevolent Patriarchy: Election 2016 and Why No One Can Save Us but Ourselves – Jamia Wilson

Epilogue: Public Memory, White Supremacy, and Reproductive Justice in the Trump Era – Tamar W. Carroll

Epilogue: Public Memory, White Supremacy, and Reproductive Justice in the Trump Era – Hinda Mandell

Epilogue: Public Memory, White Supremacy, and Reproductive Justice in the Trump Era – Christine A. Kray

Chronology