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The Trump era has produced a surplus of provocative and irresistible questions about American life for the chattering class to clamor over. The latest came in the form of an NYU experiment that used actors to recreate presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton exactly as they happened, with one adjustment - their genders were swapped.

The intention, as explained by one NYU professor, was to confirm the "liberal assumption" that "no one would have accepted Trump's behavior from a woman, and that the male Clinton would seem like the much stronger candidate."

For most of the presidential campaign, liberals, including Barack Obama, tossed around that assumption as though it were an unimpeachable fact. When the Left-leaning experimenters at NYU put it to the test, however, their results contradicted it completely.

According to NYU professor Joe Salvatore, "People across the board were surprised that their expectations about what they were going to experience were upended." A New York Times reporter explained, "Most of the people there had watched the debates assuming that Ms. Clinton couldn't lose. This time they watched trying to figure out how Mr. Trump could have won."

To many performance-goers, the female Trump was likable, while the male Clinton was not.

For spectators of American politics, these results provide much material for digestion. At first blush, disentangling reactions to the experiment feels almost overwhelmingly complicated. But does it have to be that way?

Maybe it's simple. When you analyze everything through the prism of identity politics, your vision is clouded.

Because of the dominant perception that Clinton was unlikable, liberal supporters saw her as a victim of persistent sexism. When they experienced a man using her same words and embodying her same mannerisms, they saw the unlikability. If you remove the lens of presumed sexism, you see what everyone else sees.

Similarly, the Left complained that Trump's masculinity allowed him to get away with bluster and pomposity. But the female Trump in NYU's experiment got away with that same behavior just fine.

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Because liberals' standard package of presumptions about gender colored their perceptions of both candidates, they were left incapable of making accurate evaluations.

Truthfully, this experiment seems more like a lesson in how assumptions about gender impede our ability to understand reality, rather than inform it.

In an email to the Washington Examiner, American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers mused, "I'm not so sure this NYU play is a lesson about gender but about authenticity."

Sommers, an expert in gender and feminism who did not support Trump, assessed the results by explaining, "Mr. Trump whatever his failings spoke his mind. He was spontaneous, uncensored and funny. Tom Wolfe called him a 'lovable megalomaniac.' Ms. Clinton came off as scripted, focus-grouped, and supercilious."

"That's hard to love in either sex," Sommers concluded.

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Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

Original post:
Liberals discover the limits of Clinton's likability - Washington Examiner