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Feminist Cheering for Kamala the Opposite of Empowering
Across my personal social media yesterday, I saw friends cheering the swearing of Kamala Harris as Vice President with their daughters, explaining that their daughters finally felt that they could achieve one of the highest offices in the land. Here’s my question about this narrative:
Why did they think that in the first place?
When we read books about the achievements of women, I make a concerted effort to make clear that while there were once limits on what women could achieve in the past but women overcame those limitations as best they could (i.e. a girl in a book we were reading about the 1800s could not become a veterinarian, but she still became a world-famous entomologist). Reading about the present day, we absolutely do not read children’s literature that reinforces a false victimhood narrative about what women can accomplish today. That is, unfortunately, a theme across children’s literature featuring girls and young women.
Four years ago, a woman ran for President. She lost not because she was a woman, but because she was a uniquely inferior candidate. Telling girls that they are unsuccessful because of their reproductive organs instead of the truth only handicaps them. This time around, a woman ran as Vice President and benefited greatly from being a woman: she was invited to join Joe Biden because she was a woman, not despite. Being a woman was an asset to Kamala Harris’s political career. Biden and Harris won not because Harris was a woman or despite that fact, but on their merits. Just like Donald Trump and Mike Pence did four years ago.
If we want our girls to grow up thinking they can do anything in the future, we need to stop telling them that they were ever handicapped in the first place.
Published in General
In more ways than one.
If Kamala Harris had merit, shouldn’t she have received at least ONE delegate in the primaries?
Actually the only qualifications Biden demanded in his Vice-Presidential pick was that she be a Black Woman. He never mentioned anything about skills or accomplishments. And remember, he didn’t even know the correct pronunciation of her name.
Also true. Infinitely more than George W Bush, Harris was “selected, not elected.”
Hopefully, mothers don’t want their daughters to follow Harris’s ACTUAL path to where she is now.
Like Bethany, I was a bit surprised to see female friends having emotional reactions to the inauguration because Harris supposedly smashed that glass ceiling for them! And now they can all achieve everything they ever dreamed! I refrained from explaining how Harris achieved her status.
But yeah, why do we tell girls that before they can achieve their dreams they need to recognize their victim status?
I speak as a father of two daughters who will soon be graduating from high school. I have never told them that there are career paths that are off-limits. In fact, I have been encouraging them to pursue high-paying careers, like being plumbers, electricians, or home-builders.
As to the narrative, there is such a barrier between U.S. Secretary of State (black female appointee in 2005) and U.S. Vice President (partially black female electee 2020) that the difference matters to “empower” girls to seek “high office”?
Granted, they both gave up their uniquely female attribute of reproducing the human race to achieve “high office,” but they proved the narrative.
Reminding me of this comment I found on Ricochet, almost a year ago:
First, while the VP may be close to the highest office of the land, the presidency is only attainable over the president’s dead body.
Secondly, her entrée into politics was as Willie Brown’s mistress.
What an example to young girls everywhere.
I prefer something like “thanks to Willie Brown, and his brown willy.”
Does anybody?
One helluvan example. Sleep with the right guy, and the sky’s the limit . . .
If they didn’t already learn that from Hillary, now they have a fresh new example.
Are you really sure she slept with Bill?
Partly black woman.
The left claims Black status or Native American Indian status when the DNA is a minimum of 1/256th Black or Indian. I think this covers about 80% of the country.
When it serves their purpose. Anyone dark who votes Republican or Libertarian doesn’t count.
Good point! Blacks who vote Republican are no longer considered Black by them. It’s really hard to keep track of this race thing. It was much easier in the good old days when you could tell a person’s race either by looking at them or examining their DNA. Obama then threw a monkey wrench into the whole thing by declaring that “race is just a social construct.” I guess that statement just about nullifies the entire arguments the left has been touting about racism and White Privilege.
As with everything else about the left, it’s what they want it to be when they want it to be that, and it’s something else when they don’t.
At least once, unless you consider artificial insemination . . .
Wasn’t there some other government that used to determine race by % blood? Hmmmm . . .
The U.S. government still uses blood percentages to determine who qualifies as a Native American or not a Native American for some tribes. Given the Federal Government’s treatment of Native American tribes, it makes me more hesitant to use government to determine race and not less.
It doesn’t matter; like many other politicians, Harris fits a predetermined narrative. And, that narrative is foisted upon us, time and time again; “flooding the zone” as one editor at the New York Times coined it.
And the “sheeple” lap it up as if it were the gospel, sent down from heaven…
Even if it wasn’t artificial insemination, I think the question remains.
We’re losing sight of two key aspects of the Kamala Harris selection and what it means.
1) The Shadow Chief Executive (in his Kalorama manse) originally was the one who did the selecting, he did it going into the primaries, and he did it because in his assessment Harris took top honors as Most Aligned with My Fundamental-Transformation-of-the-US Agenda — that Harris proved unlovable as an actual candidate was a temporary source of turbulence and forced some Plan/Candidate B course-corrections, but evidently not by much;
2) If you ditch the victimhood narrative, you vitiate the Intersectionality core dogma maintaining that everything is about power relations between identity groups and the need to rectify/reverse imbalances in same — so be prepared for a nuking by everyone and xer non-binary older relative who are thoroughly invested in the narrative and everything producing it.
(And obtaining voting blocs therefrom.)
Well, I believe it was the New York Times that had no problem identifying George Zimmerman a “white Hispanic”. I guess we’re now allowed to define our own race if we can define our own sex . . .
There is less of a biological difference between races than there is between sexes, so you have science on your side.
So true. I think it is easily seen in the differences between men and women in sports.
There are very few sports where men and women can compete equally. I used to fence, and that was one sport where the sexes competed equally, at least at the lower levels. I fenced sabre, and there were women better than I was and women not as good as I was.
There’s something about a woman whipping you with a sword . . . (sigh) . . . I miss it . . .
Usually you have to pay extra for that.
They lower the fee if you provide your own sword though.