The Zoe Baird spectacle: Silences, sins, and status

Tronto's (1993) theory of moral boundaries provides a framework for analyzing the rhetoric of a patriarchal ideology that privileges men and marginalizes women. These moral boundaries, as enacted rhetorically, privilege reason over emotion, universal rules over situational ones, and public issues over private concerns. Specifically, the rhetoric of moral boundaries defines care‐giving as peripheral to political decision‐making. A case study of Zoe Baird, President William Jefferson Clinton's initial, unsuccessful nominee for U.S. Attorney General, illustrates how women lose a public voice when the moral boundaries are invoked rhetorically. Baird's case, viewed through the critical lens of Tronto's moral boundaries, has implications for women who enter political life and for rhetorical critics who study their discourse.