On Clinton:
“Rage Over Cleavage!” was the headline that turned me into a Clinton booster. Other than that typically understated summation from the Times of India, last month's spat over the state of Clinton's décolletage saw wave after peristaltic wave of pious vapidity, followed by the occasional spasm of outright misogyny.
Smart, too:
Lacking a Y chromosome almost certainly puts half the population at a disadvantage in the quest to signal competence and authority. Women are repeatedly judged as having performed better in blind assessments of their abilities, from thesis papers to orchestra tryouts, than they are judged when their gender is revealed. They respond by flocking to careers where competence is most directly signaled, like those in medicine and law. Implicit bias studies, though controversial, indicate that even the most progressive among us harbor stereotyped associations (pdf) about gender, family, and work.
