Hillary Clinton

Have you been following the US presidential election? I've tried not to. But it's a bit like car-crash-TV. I can't look away.

A few months ago, a Facebook friend put up a photo showing Hillary and Bill Clinton walking up the steps of a plane when he was president. Hillary has a reddish stain on the skirt of her suit. She was menopause age when Bill was president: 45 when he was first elected, so 53 when he left office. I'm guessing the photo is of a 'leak' she experienced at that time.

I've been there, as have most women. Almost 20 years ago, snatching a coffee at Stirling University before I spoke at a conference, I was taken aside by a woman I didn't know who told me there was a stain on my skirt. I didn't have another skirt to change into, so I swished the stain round to the side, hoping at least it wouldn't be seen when I walked up to the podium. I don't think the loss of blood affected my performance as a speaker.

I couldn't understand why the photo of Hillary's 'stain' appeared on the internet. Are there still men so freaked out by women menstruating they would refuse to vote for her? Are menopausal women such a threat? Is the grand grouping of middle-aged white men who control so much of life in the USA (and other western countries) that afraid of the middle-aged woman?

As I've commented elsewhere on tinternet today, I thought it would be hard to get an African-American president elected, but I never imagined for one minute it would be this hard to elect a woman. A clever, politically-experienced woman. One who has stood up to every kind of insult thrown at her by people who seem to think she's not a person in her own right but a cypher of her husband. Every possible weapon has been wielded against her: her loyalty to her straying husband and her loyalty to the president who gave her her orders when she was secretary of state. Her health has been cited as a reason for her not to stand. But the biggest problem with Hillary Clinton appears to be that for the media she isn't warm and cuddly. Not like Michelle Obama, although I wonder how warm and cuddly Michelle would be after ten minutes of legal negotiations.

Now, disgracefully, the FBI has stepped in to destroy Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. There can be no justification for the intervention. It's designed purely to dissuade people from voting for Hillary Clinton and if the man in charge has any decency at all, he'll resign.

Does misogyny run that deep? Friends assure me I have no idea how much some men hate women. I admit I've worked in places where there's - I almost wrote tolerance of women there and that gives away a lot about my attitude and that of others. But I have worked mostly in places where there was equality and fairness on the surface. How depressing would it be to discover that the battle for equality has only just started?