Published with permission of Nicholas Benton, owner/editor of the Fall Church News Press. Benton supports Clinton for president.

Back in the day, feminists and those like myself who supported them, called it “male chauvinism.” It remains a mighty force in our society, so pervasive that few of either gender are really attuned to detect it.

Among men seeking to bond and avoid potential conflict, endless talk of sports and women has always been the coin of the realm. In this discourse, of course, women are routinely “objectified,” as we used to say. While often restrained in the presence of the opposite sex, amongst themselves men giggle and leer over women who live up to some social standard of sex appeal, or the opposite of it.

Does anyone not remember the extent to which Hillary Clinton was the butt of cruel male chauvinist humor during her husband’s first campaign for president and first years in the White House? Somehow, taking sexist pot shots at a First Lady was considered fair game, even in generally mixed company.

In the more recent era, the two First Ladies that drew the greatest derision from the less-than-magnificent male species were Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton. There were elaborate jokes made up about Roosevelt always related to her appearance in contrast to the conventional masculine taste in female beauty.