There’s a subtle sexism in asking excessive “questions” about Hillary Clinton’s health

The news that Hillary Clinton has pneumonia has set off a media and social media frenzy that could best be described as, well, breathless.

After video of Clinton stumbling while leaving a 9/11 memorial service went viral, Politico declared that the incident was “shak[ing] up the race” and “underscoring the sense that summer’s sure-thing candidate is flagging at a pivotal moment.”

MSNBC published an article, with the bylines of five different reporters, listing “9 unanswered questions” about Clinton’s “health scare.” Why hide the pneumonia diagnosis? Does Clinton accept the obligation to inform the public about her health? How will the voters respond?

The hubbub feels more than a little hyperbolic — it’s walking pneumonia, not cancer, and Clinton should be just fine with some antibiotics and rest. Plus, as Vox’s Julia Belluz points out, we know about as much about Clinton’s health as we can hope to know about the health of any presidential candidate, which is never really that much.

But all the hyperbole starts to feel more sinister when you consider the outlandish conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health that, as Vox’s Tara Golshan explains, Donald Trump and his supporters have been eagerly spreading lately. The rumormongers “ask” whether Hillary is having secret heart problems, or secret seizures, or secret dementia — take your pick, really — each secret potential malady as unsubstantiated as the last. No possible answer can capture people’s imaginations as feverishly as the question does.

Raising questions is a basic, essential part of journalism. But when it comes to Clinton, sometimes those questions seem more like concern-trolling — using questions as a tool of shame rather than to seek genuine enlightenment. It can even play into toxic conspiracy narratives. And that, in turn, raises questions about the gender dynamics at play.

The maddening thing about conspiracy theories is that they thrive on endlessly “raising questions,” no matter how many times the answer comes back a resounding “no.” September 11, 2001, always “raises the question” of whether jet fuel can’t melt steel beams; autism always “raises the question” of whether vaccines are to blame for the diagnosis.

And the maddening thing about some media coverage of Clinton is that it does almost the same thing, as political reporter Jonathan Allen explained for Vox. The unwritten rules of covering both Clintons, but especially Hillary, seem to involve treating every allegation like a scandal, no matter how outlandish — unless and until that allegation is definitively proven false. “Raise questions” first, answer later, and maybe never. From endless Benghazi hearings and reports, to nothingburger stories about alleged conflicts of interest at the Clinton Foundation, the act of “raising questions” has often become a stand-in for scandal when it comes to Hillary Clinton.

It’s especially strange to see the press hand-wring over Hillary’s health when Trump’s “disclosures” about his health so far have been a total joke. Trump released a doctor’s letter late last year that was so bombastic and silly it sounded like Trump wrote it himself; apparently, the doctor in question dashed it off in about five minutes while Trump’s limo waited.

Conspiracy theories are everywhere and can target everyone — but they often reach a particular fever pitch when it comes to women, Erin O’Brien, the chair of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, told me in August. For decades, O’Brien said, there’s always been “a major, pretty awful conspiracy” surrounding Hillary Clinton, most of which have been totally baseless — from Vince Foster to Benghazi.

“I think the willingness to go for such consistent, not empirically informed, crazy theories has to do, in part, with her gender,” O’Brien said. And vocally feminist women like Clinton in particular have long brought out the worst and the most unhinged in people, she added. Just look at the propaganda cartoons from the early 20th century of suffragettes depicted as ugly, sexless man haters who would cheerfully abandon a crying infant just to go to the polls — and how depressingly similar the imagery of modern sexist stereotypes can be.

Women in particular know what it’s like to be concern-trolled and bullied with questions that don’t have good answers, or questions that are asked in bad faith where good answers are ignored. What were you wearing when he catcalled you? Why don’t you put down the donut and hit the gym? Why don’t you just keep your legs closed if you don’t want to get pregnant?

Concern-trolling questions are meant to bestow shame, not to be answered. They make demands that can’t really be met, and that’s the whole point. And they’re the kinds of demands that we make of women all the time.

“Clinton Heroically Braves Pneumonia to Attend 9/11 Ceremony” is the alternate-universe framing Heather Henderson offers at Culturess. Henderson positions Clinton’s health issues not as a secrecy scandal or a red flag signaling some dark, hidden health problem, but as a testament to Clinton’s strength and determination — and to the invisible pressures most working women deal with every day.

Women often have to work even harder to prove that they measure up to men, Henderson writes — “and this means powering through times of illness and stress, or working through a pregnancy until the second the baby is ready to come out, then returning to work shortly thereafter. You don’t complain, because someone has to get the job done.”

But even as we make these superhuman demands of women’s everyday health and well-being, Scarleteen founder Heather Corinna pointed out that women are often more harshly criticized for their physical or mental health:

Of course, gender isn’t the only dynamic at work here. Trump is such an abnormal candidate that we’ve become numb to his shocking antics. Republican presidential candidate John McCain also faced some hyperbolic questions about his health when he ran in 2008.

But Hillary Clinton in particular seems to face nothing but questions when it comes to most of her major and minor “scandals,” even when it comes to her health — and it never seems to matter what the answers are.