No matter how you define the word sex, as a gender or as the more common, literal meaning, it has been said that “sex sells.” By implication, wouldn’t that mean that sexism sells? After all, it is a gender-based argument, which consequently implies the use of some form of sex. You can use sexism to appeal to multiple audiences, just like sex, because it tends to feed off some sort of emotion. Since this type of discrimination can induce such strong feelings, political campaigns often use sexism to their advantage; it is the pathos of their argument. The campaigns that I am referring to are the recent efforts of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. The funny thing is, these two campaigns used sexism in two different ways, and remarkably both methods failed. From their experience it could be safe to say that sexism is not such a useful tool after all. While sex usually sells, sexism does not.

Let’s start with the end of Hillary Clinton’s preliminary campaign, the theme of which was victimization. In the final moments of her campaign, Clinton started to sell herself as a candidate for the women of America by talking about the adversity and pure discrimination she faced as a woman running in one of the most monumental elections in United States history. Was she looking for pity votes? Yes, she most likely was. When her campaign took on this theme, sexism was used to induce pity in the hopes that Democrats would feel sorry for Hillary as the black sheep of the race and vote for her. There are a couple of problems with this use of sexism, and they are not that hard to see. First off, this approach made her look extremely weak, because she was shown as a victim of sexism. Who wants a president who is knocked down by something like sexism when she has to be able to stand through wars and terrorism? Not many people. Also, in a certain light, Clinton was being a little hypocritical because she was denouncing sexism and saying that it was such a nasty force in the election; however, when she mentioned the sexism she had faced and ran as the women’s advocate, she brought up yet another gender-based argument. So sexism, in this case, was an ineffective tool to use when running for president.

Who wants a president who is knocked down by something like sexism when she has to be able to stand through wars and terrorism?

Next, we will look at our favorite maverick, Sarah Palin, and the way she used sexism to appeal to millions of people. The approach that the McCain-Palin campaign used is actually the direct opposite of the one that Clinton’s campaign used. Perhaps the Republican campaign learned from Clinton’s mistake, for Palin was displayed as a strong heroic woman, not a victimized woman. In a political ad, titled “Disrespectful” by McCain’s campaign, Sarah Palin is portrayed as a firm woman overcoming the harsh, sexist insults put forth by Barack Obama every day. This is obviously a better image to have when a woman is running for such a powerful office, and while this method is somewhat effective, it is still not an effective base for a major part of a campaign. This is because it inevitably brings up more arguments based on gender, which can end up doing nothing for a candidate (thank you, Hillary). Sexism just wasn’t a good selling point here either. What both of the female candidates, along with their respective attempts, really did was ask politically active Americans to vote for a candidate on the basis that she is a woman. More focus was put on the gender of the candidates rather than on their political beliefs.

Both uses of sexism were shown to be ineffective, and the proof lies within the election results. The outcome of the election alone shows that sexism does not sell. If a candidate bases her campaign on sexism, she is devoting a large part of it to gender. This is quite ironic, because sexism is a gender-based argument, and when candidates argue this type of discrimination, saying gender shouldn’t matter, they really just reiterate the importance of gender in an election. The thing is, sexism can make an effective argument for a small portion of a campaign, but to base a major portion of a campaign on sexism is outlandish. Either way, the best way to approach sexism in future elections may be to just let it be. It would show real character if a candidate was unaffected by sexist remarks in an election and just brushed them off her shoulder. While sexism is a terrible thing in our world today, it just isn’t a convincing factor in an election, because it is not a key selling point. Other aspects of sex sell, but not sexism; especially when using the gender bias works against you. So in this case, sexism is just bad sex.