Who is playing the gender card?

First, isn’t anyone else getting sick of the “card” term? When President Bush whines about “class warfare,” do you ever hear the media chew on whether he’s playing the “poor little rich boy card”?

The first I ever remember hearing the term was about, ad nauseam, Johnny Cochran in the OJ trial “playing the race card.” The only ones I’ve ever heard are “the female card,” “the race card,” and “the class card.” It’s always used by insiders against female, minority or lower-income barbarians banging at the gate. In other words, it’s inherently a right-wing Republican usage. The media, of course, channel it just as they do with most right wing memes.

Second, any candidate who challenges Clinton’s “toughness” or insinuates she is weak on national security is playing the gender card: hoping to remind voters that she is woman, and calling up all the atavistic stereotypes about “the weaker sex.” That’s playing the male card, obviously. Indeed, any attempt to fabricate a claim that she is playing the female card out ambiguous terminology is playing the male card: trying to generate negative feelings based on the expectation that people will believe the unclear terminology means what they want it to mean because she is, in fact, female.

What Clinton's campaign was doing, in fact, was recognizing that male candidates will always play, nowadays usually subtly, the male card against a female candidate. The number one line of attack will always be what a scary world out there, and can we rely on a woman to protect us? Having five or six males including the moderators go on the attck, as they unquestionably did in the debate this week, was intended to put her on the defensive. Because we have absorbed the cliche that the best defense is a strong offense, being on the defensive would inherently make her look weak. How can that not be playing the male card?