Liberal 'Slate': Hillary Totally Dresses Like a Lesbian

They said it, not me.

Hillary Clinton’s sense of style has been criticized for as long as she has been on the national political scene. One of the uglier forms this mockery has taken, most often in barbed private jokes and comments but occasionally openly by anti-gay activists, has been the “rumors” of secret lesbianism, supposedly evidenced by her pantsuits and her (actually not always full-throated) support of gay rights. Suggestions that Hillary Clinton is or might be a lesbian rightly belong where I first heard them: in the hallways of a middle school, coming out the mouths of homophobic pre-teens. Still, if Clinton were a lesbian, I’d be proud to claim her fashion sense. Clinton embodies something many lesbians accomplish effortlessly: She dresses in a way that does not cater to, or even consider, the male gaze. Clinton has never sought to make herself a sexual object to please straight men, even when such men have mocked and insulted her for having the temerity not to.

What follows that is classic progressive fare that mistakes wordiness for thinking.

Having begun with the premise that Hillary dresses like a lesbian, the writer immediately explains that there is no such thing as dressing like a lesbian, then shifts gears again with examples of what dressing like a lesbian looks like:

Hillary Clinton doesn’t look like every lesbian, of course, because there’s no one lesbian style. In addition to many who “look straight,” or straight-ish, a huge variety of styles are recognizably queer but don’t look remotely like Clinton’s pantsuits. Asymmetrical haircuts, combat boots, or menswear on women are all arguably queerer than a simple women’s pantsuit and hair that falls just above the shoulder. (That Clinton’s style looks queer at all shows how small the box is for straight women who don’t want to be labeled gay.)

That game of logical pong happened in just one paragraph.

Most of this post seems to be trying to make sure that the readers weren’t offended by the headline. If you check out the comments section, it didn’t work.

Progressives and liberals have to twist themselves into knots to explain their encounters with the obvious because those encounters are so rare for them. This writer reached a critical point where she could no longer look at pictures of Hillary Clinton and not say what everyone was thinking. Once the obvious cat was out of the bag, she had to round up a dozen or so distraction cats to try to stuff back in the bag with it.

I happen to think Hillary’s “personal sense of style” is more Chairman Mao than lesbian. I have no idea if she is a lesbian but I do know she wants to be a commie dictator.

Then again, I don’t know if Mao was a lesbian or not.