Trump, Clinton's "Low Energy," and the Cyclical Nature of Sexism

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 19^th 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.