Bitchifying Hillary: Trump Supporters’ Vilification of Clinton during the 2016 Presidential Election

Abstract

Based on fieldwork and interviews during the run-up to the 2016 election, we examine how Trump supporters vilified Hillary Clinton as a bitch. We first analyze how Trump rally attendees collaborated to bitchify Clinton (e.g., through displays, chants, speaker–audience exchanges) in ways that fostered emotional bonding, a politically incorrect situational definition, and shared identities as Trump supporters. We then examine how interviewees constructed narratives that more subtly rooted her alleged posturing for power, profiteering, and evading justice in her bitch-like personality. To distinguish between explicit bitchifying—which was common at the rallies—and implicit characterization—which was common during the formal interviews—we develop the concept of “bitch-whistling,” which frames but not names women as bitches. We conclude by exploring how this study contributes to understanding Trump’s 2016 victory, research on gender and politics, and political narratives more generally.

Valorizing Trump’s Masculine Self: Constructing Political Allegiance during the 2016 Presidential Election

“…Sheeler and Anderson (2013, 134) situate such bitchifying within the increasing “pornification” of political culture, an anti-feminist backlash that is “increasingly misogynistic as women close in on the office of US president.” During the 2016 campaign, mainstream news, conservative social media, and Internet outlets derided Clinton as either weak and feminine or masculine and deceitful (Bordo 2017). At Trump rallies, she was framed as a bitch through chants and merchandising, and our interviewees characterized her as using her alleged bitch-like personality to engage in profiteering, power plays, and the evasion of legal accountability (Erichsen et al, N.d.). In his study of nine working class white men who voted for Trump, Francis (2018) suggests aversion to Clinton was key.…”

Signifying Aggrieved White Selves: Trump Supporters’ Racial Identity Work

“…Although some studies reveal how Trump's words and campaign messaging stereotypically framed Blacks and immigrants, they typically subsume race into class-based processes (e.g., Lamont et al 2017) and/or neglect examining Trump supporters themselves (e.g., Bailey and Nawara 2019). Most research on Trump supporters employs survey methods to correlate alleged internalized attitudes with Trump support (e.g., Levchak and Levchak 2020) or interview methods to examine gender construction (e.g., Dignam et al 2019;Erichsen et al 2020) or class-centered "deep stories" (Hochschild 2016). In contrast, we use an identity work perspective to analyze how Trump supporters signified white selfhood by denigrating racialized Others as freeloaders, criminals, and discreditable dissenters.…”

Episodic master narratives through time: Exploring the temporal dynamism of 2016 election night stories

“…Whereas many Clinton voters viewed Trump's election as a rejection of progressive values, Trump voters often framed his win as a stand and statement against big government and the corruption that (in their minds) had come to define it. For some Trump voters, Clinton was the portrait of the corrupt, elitist Washington insider (see also, Erichsen et al, 2020), and her defeat represented a win for the Americans who shower after work rather than before.…”

“…Several works have been undertaken to understand both (a) how the polls for this election could have been so wrong (most predicted Hillary R. Clinton would win the presidency; Silver, 2016), and (b) how best to understand the psychology of those who voted for Clinton and those who voted for Trump (e.g., Dunlop et al, 2018;Erichsen et al, 2020;Pettigrew, 2017). Attempting to identify the nature of the master narratives of these two cultural groups, Dunlop and colleagues (2018) are not beyond revision or modification (Hammack, 2008;McLean, 2016; for a parallel with respect to narrative identity, see Josselson, 2009).…”