In 1985, Nancy Pelosi ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and lost. The contours of that fight are long forgotten, save for one detail that became central to Pelosi’s mythology. Amid a heated contest, Pelosi alleged that a higher-up at the AFL-CIO who supported her opponent had called her an “airhead.”

The accused denied it. There’s no proof that he said it, but if he did, Pelosi was right to denounce it as sexist; everyone knows that men are not called airheads. And besides, you couldn’t choose a less fitting disparagement of Nancy Pelosi, a shrewd political operator whose decades-long congressional career testifies to an innate political intelligence. If the labor leader really said it, he was not only sexist but a poor judge of character.

Reporters have occasionally resurfaced the airhead incident throughout Pelosi’s political career, which she announced on Thursday will come to a close with her retirement at the end of her current term. For her, the episode is emblematic of the sexism she faced on her ascent to Speaker of the House and during her decades of Democratic Party leadership.