Small P and Large P Politics and the F Word

The first half hour of the Current this morning (http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent) addressed the cyber abuse experienced by women politicians. The following is the long version of a paper I ended up writing after Newfoundland and Labrador Finance Minister, Cathy Bennett, went public with the abuse she was suffering online. It was originally intended as a blog, but quickly turned into a full paper that I have now revised and sent out. The following is an early draft prior to editing and focusing the argument, which includes more examples of the salacious and outrageous behavior towards women that occurs during parliament debate. What follows is a suggestion for controlling abusive language by starting with parliament taking seriously and modeling the gender-sensitive and inclusive political system that we expect in 2017. This requires a rebalancing of parliamentary privileges which could be attained by recognizing speech acts in the legislature as sexual harassment and...

Earlier this week I was invited to sit on a panel discussion regarding the 2016 Presidential Election and our Trump future. I chose to look at the role women played in the electoral outcome, particularly “white women.” Specifically, I wanted to respond to Samantha Bee’s show following the election where she made impassioned accusations that white Americans, particularly white women, had failed Hillary Clinton. This was also a response to a number of colleagues who in the week following the election would in scandalous tones exclaim that Trump had won anywhere between 50% to 70% of the vote of white women. The actual total was closer to 53%.   The astonishment was that, ’white women had for some extraordinary reason (the unsaid statement that they had allowed their race to overshadow their gender) had turned against their own best interesst and abandoned what should have been the first woman President!” I agree with the assessment of the Centre for American Women and Politics...

A few weeks ago, I re-posted an article about how this year’s American Presidential election was a referendum on male entitlement. Well we now have our answer. While Clinton ‘won’ the popular vote, the low turnout of democratic voters, the overall vote in the mid-west and industrial swing states, and the willingness of a substantial number of women (42% of women voters according to the Pew Research Center Facttank) who voted for Trump indicates a significant plurality of American voters are comfortable enough with male entitlement to support a man who has historically and consistently imposed himself on women’s bodies without their consent. This raises the question of why a substantial portion of a society is willing to accept a rapist and serial sexual abuser in the highest office over a woman career politician. Part of the explanation certainly is the prevalence of a rape culture in the United States. Wikipedia is quite clear in its definition of rape culture; “a setting in w...