Chelsea Clinton said she was not aware of the extent of sexism in the United States until her mother's campaign.
Speaking at the Young Democrats convention in the Research Triangle Park today, the former first daughter said she has been surprised by the things people have told her on the campaign trail about her candidacy.
"I really didn't get how much sexism there was in this country until I was at a rally in New Hampshire and someone came up to me and said 'I just can't see a woman being commander in chief,'" she said.
She said another woman told her that Hillary Clinton was "a little too smart."
"It makes me uncomfortable," she said the woman told her.
At another rally that she did not attend, she noted that two young men said, "with all seriousness, 'Iron my shirt.'" (Read more here about the incident.)
She said she was also disturbed that some people think it's funny that there is a nutcracker of her mother in a "not respectful posture."
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Re: Chelsea: There is still sexism in U.S.
There is almost as much hostility directed toward men who believe in women's equality as there is toward women who believe in women's equality.
One sure way to run afoul of some of the leading "liberal" political forces in the Duke and UNC communities, located in the two counties--Durham and Orange--which consistently bring in the largest vote margins for Democratic Party candidates in general elections--is to let on that you believe that gender equality is a two-way street in North Carolina.
At least women's advocates of equality for women can usually see the political turbulence coming their way right away, whereas for men who also believe in women's equaltiy, it may take a while to realize you're being ambused on your life and career journey.
The New York Times wouldn't even cover Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign stops in Wake County, Fayetteville and Winston-Salem Thursday even though the publisher of The Times spent a couple of years as a young journalist at The Raleigh Times in the early 1970s. Fayetteville was a center of great activity in behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment in North Carolina in the mid and late 1970s and in behalf of state and local public education reform in the earlier decades of the 20th Century, and thus Hillary Clinton's campaign stop in Cape Fear Country connected with many of the trails of yesteryear in the quest for equality across lines of gender, ethnicity, religion and political philosophy.
Even The News & Observer and other leading North Carolina newspapers seem to have abandoned all efforts to report on intellectual, spiritual and cultural developments, preferring safe "commercial politics" coverage of television advertising budgets and campaign finance totals to the examination of ideas, trends and civic understanding.
But in spite of all of this, Sen. Clinton, in a personal, plain-spoken and practical manner and style, demonstrated a natural ability to address important economic, education and environmental issues of concern to working North Carolinians on her campaign swing through the state on Thursday, thus bringing more relevance to the current debate over the fundamental choices facing Americans today. The responsive chords struck by Sen. Clinton, combined with Sen. Barack Obama's impressive speech in Greensboro last week, promise to give the people of North Carolina plenty of important reasons to pay considerable attention to the Democratic presidential primary campaign in the Old North State in the coming weeks regardless of whether certain political interest groups or for that matter the editorial press wish to saddle up for this adventurous ride or not.
David McKnight
[Former Fayetteville resident]