We are hearing plenty of lines about anti-woman prejudice from the media-- now that Hillary has lost, and it doesn't make a difference whether anyone concedes that there was anti-woman prejudice or not. Sure, many of the criticisms of Hillary during the primaries were mysognistic, but were they made because of misogyny? I'm not so sure.
One line I didn't like from Hillary's concession speech was the one about the 18 million cracks in the highest glass ceiling. It sounds great until you think about it-- and then you realize it sounds like she's saying Obama beat her because of anti-woman prejudice.
I think Hillary ran into a glass ceiling of sorts but I think it's arrogant to suggest that's the only reason Obama won. He's very popular and it's cetainly conceivable that Hillary might have only got a little closer, but still not won, if the media wasn't so dead-set against her.
Anyway, I know people have been characterizing it that way, but if the system is rigged against her, I think it has to do with a lot more than her sex-- it has to do with policies. Her sex is just not important enough to go after her like that for it. To just take one "for instance," her husband during his administration over-saw really big cuts in the budget of the CIA. That may have really pissed some people off who felt like Obama was less of a threat to them.
I have often complained that Hillary may have faced greater opposition from people who can pull some strings simply because they perceived Obama as being less "wise to the game" of how things are done in Washington and easier to deceive. In my opinion, just this theory about the CIA could explain the whole dynamic of the primary campaign as it related to Hillary.
UPDATE: In light of all that, I can't help but find a few of the observations in this post by Kevin Drum on Clinton's speech less than satisfactory. He thinks most of Clinton's attacks were routine and people were over-reacting to them? Well, who knew? It would have been interesting to hear points of view like this, you know, while people were busy over-reacting-- instead of everyone just cowering and bandwaggoning into piling on. And he thinks Hillary's campaing was very mediocre? But jeez, that's not exactly what happened- Hillary's operation and message were tight and disciplined early on. Later on in the campaign, it imploded. It had an ad, the 3 AM ad, that was great, but everyone mysteriously panned (except the voters, who kept turning out for her in high numbers well after the ad). The most prominent of Hillary's campaign's weaknesses were a couple of odd mistakes by Hillary (like the sniper-fire remark) and an unrelentingly unfavorable press.