OK, political moment, go about your life if you don't care:
I noticed that recently, Donald Trump has frequently and
pointedly attacked Hillary Clinton because of her "low energy." Other
candidates have noticed too, as Gary Johnson regularly reminds his base that he
is the "fittest" of all of the candidates because of his track record
as an athlete (he is an avid mountain climber, etc).
There's been a lot of talk about how Trump's campaign is sexist,
and after the video released recently, there's very little debate about his own
view of women, which, I'm sorry, if it is the "most respectful"
possible view of women, is a sorry state for our country indeed. Even if he did
have a high opinion of women, or was respectful to them (I am being very
charitable), it’s ridiculous to think you are the “most” respectful to them if
there’s a recording of you saying what you said in the world.
Campaigns run lines and phrases in cycles, and they re-emphasize them in time windows, so that lots of people hear them from different media outlets. The one that I actually stopped short on recently is from the Trump campaign, where Trump calls Clinton, "low-energy." I've heard it multiple times this week. I'm sure it's just meant to highlight something Trump sees as an incontestable strength for him in the race, a relatively noncontroversial thing, given her pneumonia cover-up disaster a few weeks ago. Sorry, The Donald, you are actually not the first to argue that a woman should do something historically unprecedented because of "low energy."
What nobody knows, except me, probably, because I'm a nerd and
Victorian scholar, is that Trump's argument about Clinton being "low
energy" has a well-established sexist historical precedent from the late
1800s. In that time, the dominant theory about physical development was called
"the fixed funds of energy" theory. Hillarly Marland writes extensively
about the theory in her work, Health and
Girlhood in Britain, 1874-1920, which I read recently for my qualification
exams.
The theory goes like this: The human body has a “fixed” amount
of energy within it for vital processes at any given time. The body uses that
energy by doling it out according to where pressure is applied, and everything
counts, including physical and mental exertion, as well as biological
processes.
A contingent of doctors in this period argued that boys regularly
replenished their “fund” of energy because they were “naturally robust,” and
inherently resilient.
Girls on the other hand, did not, specifically because one of
the processes that “tapped” the fund was menstruation. The argument ran thusly:
If young women spend their energy on things like running around
outside with their brothers, or worse yet, in school exerting their minds, they
would use up all the vital energy needed for health, meaning their cycles would
be irregular and they would become infertile.
What resulted was a period of time in which at the onset of
puberty, girls who had previously been allowed to play outside like their
brothers, and attend grammar school without noticeable difference from their
male peers, were locked away in rooms and told to stay as still as possible, in
preparation for their lives as mothers and women.
Of course, it’s relatively easy for us to say now how
preposterous this theory was, but at the time, it was a legitimate threat to
the right of girls to attend school, particularly if their family doctor was
politically sympathetic to keeping girls away from classrooms. It’s one of the
things I’m most interested in in my research: how the voices of the powerful
and respectful, like doctors, used their influence and public ethos for
political gain.
The unfortunate stigma would not change until later in the 19th
century when it became obvious that girls who got plenty of fresh air and ran
outside on the English heaths were actually healthier than their imprisoned counterparts.
Furthermore, the change was supported by capitalist desires to sell sporting
gear to new markets, like girls.
It's fascinating to me that these are the terms Trump chose to describe Clinton, because they are remarkably similar to those old sexist arguments. I can't say that I am particularly surprised, because sexist and racist arguments historically have a very marked habit of recycling themselves with slight edits. For example, when you look at racist arguments in the 1800s, some are pointedly plagiarized from arguments from 100 years earlier.
Now I’m not saying that Trump is saying Clinton is low energy
because she’s a woman at all, and I don’t think that even he thinks that there’s
a correlation there (I also don't pretend to know what he thinks). I just wanted to point out this interesting thing I know,
and to let the voter beware of arguments that center around trying to define
individuals by physicality. We’ve had presidents who were young and
robust who served very short terms, like Kennedy (I know this was a tragedy and unusual), and those with
serious illness who served long terms, like FDR. With the human body and the variables of modern medicine, really, anything could happen. While physical capacity
certainly plays a role in basic qualification to campaign to become the POTUS, it is low on the list in
terms of things worth considering when you step in that booth.
Full disclosure, I am a registered independent, and identify as such.
Full disclosure, I am a registered independent, and identify as such.
