Story highlights Peggy Drexler: Trump strategy: Take down Clinton on basis of her gender. In security forum, interviewer Lauer helped with this

She says Lauer grilling of Clinton, soft treatment of Trump a teachable moment of what awaits women who seek power

Drexler: Trump's tweet that military rape result of letting women serve, Priebus tweet that Clinton didn't smile speak volumes

Peggy Drexler is the author of "Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family" and "Raising Boys Without Men." She is an assistant professor of psychology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a former gender scholar at Stanford University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Throughout the campaign, it has been a core strategy for Donald Trump and his surrogates to play on and heighten existing American sexism and racism. Everything about his platform has been about taking down Hillary Clinton for her gender. Is she too soft or is she too angry? Is she fit for the job or does she not smile enough?

But on Wednesday night, Trump got some help. Clinton and Donald Trump were making dueling appearances in New York in a live forum hosted by NBC's Matt Lauer to address subjects including national security, veterans' welfare, and sexual assault in the military. Here, Clinton was called upon once again to defend her emails, her hawkish foreign policy record — and ultimately answer for her femininity.

In the aftermath Lauer has been widely called out for what many saw as an unfair, sexist approach to moderating.

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For one thing, he devoted about a third of his time with Clinton to questions about her emails, while rushing her through other, weightier topics. He interrupted her, while allowing Trump to talk over him in his usual way, and he left unchallenged Trump's contradictory statement about not supporting the war in Iraq (he did), among other things. The outrage across social media was immediate. "How in the hell does Lauer not fact check Trump lying about Iraq? This is embarrassingly bad," a sked former Obama aide Tommy Vieto r, echoing many.

It was a fresh teachable moment for women everywhere about what happens when a woman dares to seek power.