https://twitter.com/i/status/1168893782584115201
She says that women are only in the LPC caucus because of identity politics and Trudeau playing the feminist card. She said the female cabinet members are only there because of their genitalia.
HOLY SHIT.
When Trudeau announced his gender balanced cabinet there was all kinds of outrage because people felt a gender-balanced cabinet meant that the women there were not there because of merit, only genitalia.
Andrew Coyne took issue with it. Women worried that any failure on the part of any female cabinet member would be a sign that women weren't up to high level jobs. Kevin O'Leary said the Trudeau cabinet was mediocre because it had so many women in it, so obviously it wasn't based on merit.
Seriously, how many women have been passed over for promotion because they were women? How many senior jobs have been given to men with lesser credentials, simply because they were men? What does having dangly bits between your legs have to do with doing a good job?
Yes, women are not perfect. Neither are men. Yes, at least one cabinet appointment was perhaps too politically weighted. I am speaking of Jody Wilson-Raybould, who lacked the professionalism to recuse herself from dealing with the SNC file, even knowing she had a long-standing and personal grievance against the company. That is ego, not gender. And men are at least as likely to succumb to fits of ego that cloud their judgement and cause them to make asses of themselves.
Folk-festivals around the country are finally posting gender-parity line-ups of performers. Is that because until now, male musicians have been better? No. It's because female musicians, female-led bands, have been passed over because organisers believed that audiences wanted to see men.
You can call it reverse discrimination if you want. You can say it isn't based on merit. You would be wrong, but you have the freedom to make stupid statements like that.
Women earn 75 cents for every dollar a man in the same field earns. Is that because women don't work as hard? Is that because women aren't as qualified? No. To both. It's because we have a systemic misogynist bias in our hiring and compensation systems. The notion that women are working to "help out" the real breadwinner, the idea that women are earning "pin money" is so out of date, and yet it persists in our hiring, promotion, and compensation.
Trudeau made a bold statement in choosing his cabinet. He selected, based on a ton of merit all around, a cabinet that did not pass over women for top roles simply because they were women. This is leading by example. Modelling good behaviour.
Men are often said to think with their "other head". This seems to get them into trouble more often than not. Think of Tony Clement. Think of Maxime Bernier. Having two "heads" when one of them gets you into trouble because it is the boss isn't really a recommendation for a high level job.
I am horrified that Rachael Harder suggested that women are not as competent and were only picked for cabinet positions because Trudeau was making some kind of political optics statement. We NEED to appoint women with merit to powerful roles. Goodness knows, the men have been fucking things up forever. And Harder was Scheer's pick for leading the Status of Women committee. Says a lot about Scheer's attitudes towards women. A woman who opposes women's right to choose if they incubate another life and give birth and dedicate their own lives to caring for it.
And then we have this:
https://twitter.com/gtlem/status/1130119702112612354?s=20
Incidentally, the Harper government, in Harper's big legacy move to help mothers and children in developing countries, would not fund abortion or birth control even though the experts said that having control of fertility would vastly improve the lives of women and their families and communities. They don't care.
The CPC just don't care. They don't care about children and youth. They sure as hell don't care about women. They don't even care about men, at least those who are unable to give them some advantage.
For the CPC, and CPC supporters, women are inconsequential. Handmaids to the important people, men.
And more than that, men with money and power. Certainly not all men.
Why are more people not furious about this? Why are people who will be impoverished by conservative governments so quick to vote for them? Why vote for someone who will make your life worse?
Why are some people so afraid of women having power? Because that seems to be the buttons the CPC and CPC media types like Andrew Coyne are pushing. Be afraid! Trudeau has appointed (gasp!) women to half his cabinet! Not just in soft portfolios like Harper did, so he could have his blond bookends in every shot in the House of Commons, framing him as he got up to speak. Bolstering somehow the subconscious idea that he was The Man and look, blond women on both sides of him, usually gazing adoringly at him, because he choose women who were completely and utterly under the CPC thrall. Not because they had credentials or merit, but because they would say what they were told and gush about him in interviews.
Are we not done with those days? Are we not done with women being pushed down, passed over, underpaid for their work? Having fragile and easily injured dangling flesh seems like a piss-poor reason for choosing one candidate over another who lacks that attribute (disadvantage?).
I don't hate men. Before you @ me. I don't hate men. I had a father and grandfather I loved dearly. I have a husband and a son. I don't hate men. But I also have daughters and I will fight to see them live in a world where they are not disadvantaged simply because they do not have a Y chromosome. It's ridiculous.
The "Me Too" movement gave women a voice to express their trauma at the hands of men with more power. It's time for a "Not Me" movement. To let women express how they were passed over for promotion in favour of a male colleague. How women are paid less for doing the same job as men. We need to speak up. This has gone on far too long.
Preach and teach, Cailleach! 🙋 🙌 👏
ReplyDeleteI would add too that the Peterson blue-lobster party doesn't seem to understand either that, what's between your legs or how your chromosomal makeup is comprised isn't even necessarily what makes you a woman either. Scheer voted against C-16 because he's a religious bigot who invalidates the existence of trans and nonbinary people. (Remember the kerfuffle over "people-kind"?) There's a lot to be unpacked about his awful "dog's tail" speech that easily transfers to his repugnant views on not just LGB but T/NB/2S as well.
It's a long-shot, but the Liberals have put forth an Indigenous candidate in Scheer's riding who identifies as Two-Spirit and gay. If Scheer had to address an LGB/T/NB/2S person in Parliament, his rubber head would explode. He just doesn't get quantum computing, if you catch my drift.
All that being said, your physical characteristics aren't what make you a competent professional either, and the bad-faith takes from the CPC (Canadian Patriarchal Conservatives) and their handmaids that PMJT is a "fake feminist" over the JWR fiasco are complete BS. Coyne implied that PMJT was a cult leader, borrowing a line from The Manchurian Candidate and thus glomming onto simultaneous headlines about the Keith Rainere cult and feeding the conspiracy theorists. Rachel Curran went even lower, stripping Liberal women of agency when she "speculated" in a tweet that they were only standing by Trudeau because he "probably slept with the whole cabinet." Harperite with apparent projection issues, so I'm not surprised. The whole thing amounted to an inter-office spat that the garbage media -- jealous of events in the U.S. -- used to paint PMJT as Kavanaugh, Nixon, Trump, Rainere, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson all rolled into one. Scandal envy. Not a good look.
The supposedly "strong women" the Cons love to trot out as tokens, like Curran, Raitt, and Rempel, are foot soldiers for the old boys' club. They are the Susan Collins and Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Canadian politics. I'm tired of Cons accusing Liberals of "fake feminism" for criticizing JWR and hoping that Raitt loses to Adam in October. They wail about "identity politics" all the live long day, then turn around and use it as a cudgel to discredit the need for diverse representation. Shame on them.
Current polling indicates that Calamity Jane is toast, but Van-Gran remains a close race with the Liberal candidate marginally ahead. Personally, I hope JWR loses her seat to Taleeb too, and is forgotten about as a regrettable footnote in history. Women lose when other women stab their colleagues front and back.
Absolutely! Gender identity has nothing to do with how well you can do your job. And we all need to stand together to protect Canada and do what must be done to ensure the future of Canada's children and the world's.
ReplyDeleteIf you have not read it, you might enjoy another post on a related topic: https://thecailleach.blogspot.com/2019/03/feminism-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt.html This one deals more with the JWR issue through the lens of feminism.