100%. When the right is railing against the left, and doing so based on issues of looks, gender, clothing, they look sexist, lookist, and stupid.

There are some basic immutable rules, and one of them is “we don’t attack women because of their looks”. It’s never ok. There is no action a woman can take that exempts her from protection under that rule. You can attack Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, KAC, anyone for the things they say and do, but it’s never ok to…

Misogynistic public discourse around Conway doesn’t harm Conway. It seriously benefits her because it makes her look to many like a scrappy victim and her liberal critics look like hypocrites. It harms women and girls as a class, though. Either women’s value is in our appearance and youth or it isn’t. Either our…

But also I think it’s important that we remain consistent if we want to see real change.

Don’t judge a person by their gender, judge them by their character. Conway is a terrible person.

Thanks, this isn’t hard. And it’s not about about protecting Kellyanne. It’s about signaling to other women how you feel about them. If a man who calls himself an ally says she spends a lot of time on her knees, I will wonder how much of an ally he really is. Does he think this way about women on the left? Are all…

Anything that causes him stress helps. Anything that forces him to froth at the mouth and spout lies for all the world to see helps. Anything that makes him look foolish helps. It won’t convince the die hards but it puts even more pressure on the Republicans and keeps our resistance reminded why we have to fight.…

I don’t think its true that we mock male politicians about their appearance nearly as much as female ones though even if it does happen a bit. Trump gets quite a bit more than the typical but in general male politicians get off easy. Bernie wears windbreakers around everywhere, does not brush/cut his hair regularly…

You’re not helping.

The only thing I’ve objected to is calling her a witch, because that’s a classic anti-woman insult that was leveled at Hillary constantly, and at hundreds of powerful women before her. That’s just plain old sexist invective and we should be better than that.

I suppose I feel similarly about this as I felt about Sarah Palin back in 2008: criticize Kellyanne’s terrible rhetoric, her abhorrent support of Trump and the role she’s played in advancing his policies, and the racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/Islamophobic shit she’s said and done. But her appearance? Why? What…

I’m not convinced that we owe Conway anything at all, but that’s not the primary reason not to criticize her appearance. Attacks against her appearance don’t just affect Conway, they contribute to an environment in which other women will be judged unfairly. It’s the harm that will be done to other women that should…

I agree. I think there’s a difference between saying, “She looks like she’s cosplaying as one of the Hamilton ensemble members,” and “She looks like a corpse,” or “She looks like a hooker.” One is a comment on a person’s clothes, which - while tied to patriarchal standards for what women should look like - isn’t as…

I want to agree with you wholeheartedly about being able to critique people’s sartorial choices, but feel that the proviso you include (having sufficient money) coupled with available options is taken into consideration. For example, fat women (esp. over a size 18) have very few options readily available, even fewer…

There are women who have given human beings a bad name over the last years -Kellyanne, Kim Davis, Megyn Kelly amoung others - whom I am happy to write disparaging things. But it makes me uncomfortable to write or read things about their looks. Perhaps it is part of the ‘when they go low we go high’ thing. Right now…

I think we owe it to *ourselves* to not criticize her appearance. When we reduce any woman to her appearance, it hurts all women.

I don’t like the “small hands” stuff either, to be honest. In the same vein as above, there is plenty to criticize about Trump without resorting to things he cannot help. To be fair, though, he himself made that into far more of an issue than it had to be, instead of just shrugging it off.

We don’t owe Conway a defense of her politics or her person, but we do owe ourselves not reinforcing sexism by going to appearance* to critique her. As you document, there are plenty of actual issues, statements, and actions to criticize Conway for.

* Although I make an exception for the critiques of Conway and Spicer…

I think we “owe” it to her not to criticize her based on her physical looks. She is a morally repellent sycophant who is trying to put a veneer of normalcy on a madman; that is enough to comment on without resorting to using patriarchal beauty standards against her.