What about working-class men? How much of their rapport with Trump can be dismissed
as sexism? Trump was seen as standing up for real men in an economy that has deprived
many working-class men of breadwinner status. Men can be winners in two different
ways: they can be “good men,” or “real men.” A good man reflects a gender-neutral
concept of decency: being considerate, moral, and honest, for example. What’s a real
man? “Take charge; be authoritative.” “Take risks.” “It means suppressing any kind of
weakness.”^187 Trump to a T.
The Clinton campaign could have countered this definition but didn’t use weapons
handed to them on a silver platter. Trump’s sharp business practices have hurt blue-collar
men when he stiffed the blue-collar guys who worked on his buildings. How about the
Philadelphia cabinet builder Edward Friel, Jr., whose business eventually had to close
after Trump refused to pay a large bill for work building the bases for slot machines at
Trump Plaza?^188 Friel or someone like him should have been at Clinton rallies across the
country.
Instead of mobilizing themes that could have appealed to working-class men and women,
the Clinton campaign stuck to two main talking points: that Clinton had the resume to be
president and Trump was unfit to lead. Straight out of the feminist playbook I, myself,
helped write. In a 2014 book I wrote with Rachel Dempsey, What Works for Women at
Work , we pointed out that women need to provide far more evidence of competence than
do white men in order to be seen as equally competent.^189 So Hillary proved her
competence over and over and tried to show Trump’s lack of credentials.
But prove-it-again bias is only one form of gender bias—and not the most common.^190
Tightrope bias stems from prescriptive stereotypes that mandate that women^191 should be
team players, helpful, modest, sympathetic, and nice. This kind of behavior, expected of
women, gets you liked—but not respected.^192 Being both respected and liked is
extremely difficult to pull off if you’re doing a masculine thing like running for president.
The most successful strategy is to try to do a masculine thing in a feminine way. Clinton
did this immaculately well in the first debate, with all the smiles and that famous shimmy.
But I suspect she got tired of playing Ms. Nicey Smiley. Since she was ahead in the polls,
she returned to what felt more comfortable, stressing her credentials and attacking
Trump. Likeability was a big problem for Clinton.
If Clinton had a likeability problem, Trump had an unlikeability epidemic—but it didn’t
matter.^193 Likeability is optional for men, but it’s mandated for women: if a woman isn’t
nice, she’s a bad person. (” Lock her up!”) A man can be unlikeable and still be seen as a
- Is the Working Class Just Sexist?