Once Hillary Clinton announced her intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, gender was going to be a central issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

During the primaries, one story line was why is Clinton losing the women’s vote to Bernie Sanders, especially young women.

Girls pause near a bus adorned with large photos of candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump before the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., Monday, Sept. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Once the match-up with Donald Trump was set, the gender gap became even more prominent, with Trump’s history of what many call sexist and misogynistic comments he made verbally and via social media.

Shortly after the Trump “Access Hollywood” video surfaced, a FiveThirtyEight analysis of polls showed a wide gender gap: Trump wins handily if only men voted while Clinton wins a landslide victory if only women voted.

That video, in which Trump vulgarly talks about how he tries to seduce women, and the reaction by many Republicans to denounce Trump’s words but continue to back his candidacy, may be the tipping point for many Republican women.

And it has started an uncomfortable conversation between the sexes about words, behavior and perception of each other.

One GOP Woman Wonders Why the Men in her Party Won’t Defend Her

Amanda Carpenter – The Washington Post

I want to ask the men leading the GOP some questions. Why didn’t you defend women from this raging sexist especially after so many Republican women — for so many years — eagerly defended the party from charges of sexism? You must make us out for fools.

Over the course of the GOP primary, it became clear that too many Republicans felt it was too politically risky to do anything that would offend the types of voters Trump was attracting in droves — the types who showed up at rallies wearing T-shirts that said, “Trump that b—-” and “She’s a c—, vote for Trump.”

Somehow, in some amorphous but unambiguous way, it was decided that appealing to those voters was more important than appealing to women.

Still Think Hillary Clinton Is a Role Model for Your Daughter?

Dennis Prager – National Review

The notion that Hillary Clinton is a role model for young American women is yet another testimony to the moral decline of America — not to mention to the moral state of the American Left and the Democratic party.

far more conservative women think that if a woman is going to serve as a model for their daughters, that woman is at least as likely to be a woman whose primary responsibility and achievement is making a healthy and character-building home. They are therefore less likely than liberal women to think in terms of astronaut or president when they think about a female role model for their daughter.

Certainly, in terms of America’s well-being, they are right. America needs far more great mothers and wives than it needs more female astronauts and presidents.

A girl and a woman’s shoulders as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at Abraham Lincoln High School, in Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 10, 2016. (AP)

Hillary Clinton’s Emailgate Is an Attack on Women

Robin Lakoff – Time

The only reason the whole email flap has legs is because the candidate is female. Can you imagine this happening to a man?…

If the candidate were male, there would be no scolding and no “scandal.” Those very ideas would be absurd. Men have a nearly absolute right to freedom of speech. In theory, so do women, but that, as the creationists like to say, is only a theory….

Clinton has repeatedly apologized, but apparently not enough for her accusers. In fact, her apologies were her only mistake. By apologizing she acknowledged guilt. But that’s what women are supposed to do (because women are always guilty of something).

‘The Woman Is a Disaster!’: Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton

Emily Hill – The Spectator

‘In order to run for president of the United States, you have to spend two or three years of your life out on the road constantly asking for money and most women find that life too harsh, too draining,’ Paglia argues. ‘That is why we haven’t had a woman president in the United States — not because we haven’t been ready for one, for heaven’s sakes, for a very long time…’…

Hillary hasn’t suffered — Paglia continues — because she is a woman. She has shamelessly exploited the fact: ‘It’s an outrage how she’s played the gender card. She is a woman without accomplishment…

Laughing Until We Cry: Conversations About Getting Flashed, Grabbed and Groped

Liz Meriwether – New York Magazine

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speak during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Oct. 9, 2016. (AP)

Thanks to Donald Trump, my birthday dinner last week turned into my mother and me trading stories of getting groped and flashed and grabbed. My father and husband stayed relatively quiet and continued to order wine as the memories came spilling out. The first time my mother was flashed, she told me, the man was wearing a raincoat….We both laughed and continued laughing as my mom described being groped while walking through Grand Central Station when she was six months pregnant….

The breaking point came for my dad, I think, when I told him about the way a strange young man reached under my skirt on the dance floor of a Christmas party three years ago…

What was making my mom and me laugh so much? I don’t know, but it felt natural. In my experience, this is the way that women tell these stories to other women — with gallows humor, with muted anger, with a kind of world-weariness that suggests that we’ve learned to let it all roll off us….

But the moment when my dad excused himself from the table at my birthday dinner stopped me in my tracks. He didn’t want to laugh about a man touching his daughter on a dance floor. He didn’t think it was funny.

The Trump Supporters Who Are Secretly Voting for Hillary

Lyz Lenz – Marie Claire

I live in Iowa, and in my church and at my children’s parochial school, I’m an anomaly: “that crazy liberal.” As a pro-choice, same-sex-rights advocating, Christian-identified feminist, I’m used to…being asked to please not bring up politics at Bible study.

So when I went to caucus for Hillary Clinton back in February, I knew I wouldn’t be joined by any friends…But as I made my way to the Clinton section, I saw the unmistakable wide smile of my neighbor Melody*, a Christian mother I have always assumed votes Republican….

While nodding along with their husbands’ politics and passing as Trump supporters in their neighborhoods, there’s a group of women making fervent plans for what happens when they’re finally alone in the voting booth.