Proof that women don’t need to cower
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice-President. Thank you, Mr. Vice-President. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. VicePresident …” The pale monolith that is Mike Pence was repeatedly interrupting Sen. Kamala Harris and talking long past his time limits. Moderator Susan Page tried to stop him by repeatedly thanking him. Ultimately she was thanking him for refusing to listen to her.
The U.S. vice-presidential debate on Wednesday night was a display of female servility that a woman like Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, could have discarded decades ago but chose not to. Why not a loud and decisive “Your time is up” and a move back to Harris, who at one point she called “Kamala?”
Millions of women and girls were watching that debate because the Democratic candidate is a remarkable person. She has a sharp mind, hardly ever stumbles while speaking, understands facts and numbers, and uses them to great point. She is biracial. Her career has been stellar. Compared to Pence, she is an interesting energetic human with an actual personality rather than a wax figure and a landing pad for flies.
Or she is “an insufferable lying bitch,” as one Fox News commentator said post-debate. President Donald Trump has called her a “monster.”
What did women and girls see that night? Two of the many ways to be a successful woman: talk confidently like Harris demolishing Pence, or cower as Page did. Throwbacks like Pence and Page expect women to cower. Harris showed that you don’t have to. Those who disapprove of successful women are on the wrong side of history.
This is one of the most fraught times in years for women to raise their head above the parapet. Thanks to extreme right-wing TV and social media, men and women are being encouraged to attack the women who dare to be prominent. Look at the sexist and scary attacks on federal cabinet minister Catherine McKenna, the rage directed at her even in public.
Many more women in Canadian politics are now being harried because of male hate from the United States bleeding into our nation. But many Canadian men have spoken up for female politicians, evidence that feminism advances when both women and men work together for equal rights.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his cabinet genderneutral, meaning as many men as women would be appointed. A certain kind of man was triggered by that. This has not ended. As Trudeau suggests Canada prepare for U.S. election instability, one hopes the RCMP are prepared for violence in Canada too.
Back to a country boiling with hate. There was a hideous plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, a woman, a believer in the science of battling COVID-19’s spread. The FBI arrested a group of heavily armed men who they said were building homemade bombs, stalking Whitmer and planning to kidnap her and put her “on trial.” And then what, a hanging?
The mug shots of the six self-titled “Wolverine Watchmen” were remarkable, a collection of thick clods appearing to argue with their own facial hair. They were walking stereotypes of primitive male rage, aiming to start a civil war.
The radical violent right-wing hate had been burning ever since Whitmer took office. In May, there were demonstrations with dolls put in nooses. A man was charged with threatening death. Whitmer moved from house to house for her own protection — just as Christine Blasey Ford had to, post-Kavanaugh — as the FBI surveilled the kidnappers.
“I just wanna make the world glow, dude,” one of them allegedly said in a group chat. “We’re gonna topple it all, dude.” And then someone snitched on the Wolverines. They always do, dude.
Men interrupt women. A recent Star story interviewed women who explained how it unfolds and how to respond. This is essential advice. Men still mansplain women, even on the subject of women.
Many young women aren’t interested in feminism, which is understandable. They’re confident people, until they finally get a job and encounter workplace shock, discovering then just how bad it is for women who work. And now, the pandemic has ravaged women’s employment, taking it back to levels last seen in the 1980s, presumably when Page first started thanking men for abusing them.
But pandemic or not, this is a new era where both women and men are learning what women’s rights are. And that’s what people wanted their daughters to see as they watched the vice-presidential debate.
If Trump wins, American women will lose their right to have an abortion. Actually they’ll lose it even if Joe Biden wins, because the judicial system is stacked that way. Biden, 77, has promised that the right to abortion will be re-established in law.
He’s a prime example of men, whatever their generation, advancing women’s rights. In a violent and vicious era, where men like Pence sneer at a biracial woman daring to challenge them, women need male allies.
I hope Harris will be the American president someday. Unless something interrupts her and I hope it is not violence.