Battered Nation Syndrome?
There’s a photo sent out by Donald Trump, across the internet, of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Someone, a dude, wrote underneath: Funny how blow jobs impacted their lives differently. The former president felt this was worthy of being seen.
It went viral across platforms.
The media’s reaction to this was, well, lame. We are so used to being assaulted, we aren’t even surprised or taken aback anymore. Remember back in August when Trump reposted a parody of Harris set to the Alanis Morisette song Ironic, which showcased the line: She spent her whole damn life down on her knees?
Barely a blip on our radars.
Are we, as David Rothkopf suggests in his politics and policy newsletter, Need to Know, experiencing Battered Nation Syndrome?
These are old school tactics, sexualizing women to demean them and hold power over them. They brought me right back to 1989.
Queenie
I had one year of college under my belt and I felt like I could change the world through politics. That we could actually improve peoples lives with legislation and policy. That this was as close to God’s work as you could get. That this meant something.
So as a sophmore, I cajoled my advisor into letting me intern in the New York State Assembly. Normally internships happened senior year. But I was eager. And it went well - I had a great semester interning and then landed a position in another assemblyman’s office for the following semester.
But that part-time job pushed me out from under the umbrella of protection that comes with being a student intern. I was going to social and business events on behalf of the assemblyman’s office I worked for now.
I was out in the wilds of politics.
I was pretty, smart and inexperienced. Hopelessly naive. I wasn’t afraid to work. But I hadn’t been up close to powerful people and I was unprepared. So when the aid to a visiting US Representative talked me into a waiting car to have dinner with his boss, even though it felt all kinds of off, and I said no thank you politiely multiple times, they continued to cajole and push me, and then after some words and some frustration on their part, took me by the arm and physically put me in the backseat of a car with their boss.
The US Representative was old enough to be my grandfather. He talked about my body over appetizers. I picked at my salad with tears in my eyes. I had never had an older man speak to me in sexual terms. Not really. I had grown up in a small small rural town, where everyone pretty much knew everyone, and secrets weren’t terribly secret at all, and all of the older men in my life were like my dad, like Tim Walz, dad-men who told pretty bad, dry jokes to mixed receptions from their kids, but were generally just who they were - pipe smoking, newspaper reading, barkalounger-loving men who grunted more than they talked to us.
I was immaculately unprepared to be hit on by a man who could’ve been sitting in our living room sipping a highball with my parents.
Instead of telling off the US House representative and leaving - it never ocurred to me to tell him to fuck off - I stayed as if I had no other choice. As if I had been in chains. I had never raised my voice to an adult really and had it end well, so feminism was more a construct I studied in school and not something I knew how to manifest in my own life. I answered his attempts at conversation, kept wiping the tears out of my eyes, until he finally realized I probably would just cry through the sex, and he called a car just after the entree.
Until then, the fanciest restaurant I’d ever been in was Red Lobster.
I shook it off, told no one. I was convinced I had been too open, too social, maybe I smiled too much. I was at fault for whatever this was. Too talkative? Too friendly? Too open? Too much? Why at that reception had I found myself surrounded by a group of extremely powerful men, all raptly listening to me, forming a circle around me, as I tried to impress them with my political ambition, only to have them have some seceret converation out of my earshot, about which of them would get to have me in the car with them later?
Did I like the attention from this circle of men? Yes, I did. It was exhilarating to think I was being listened to, that my ideas mattered, that these powerful men felt whatever I had to say meant something was worth listening to? I fell for it.
Let’s talk about the shame of being duped for a minute, of thinking you matter when you are being played. I remember a girl in highschool who was probably, looking back, developmentally disabled. She was overweight, had a bad case of acne. Her body was mature, full-chested and so it called out for commentary from the boys. She struggled. She liked Donnie and Marie, while we listened to AC/DC. She took special ed classes. She was always happy though, in public, not phased, smiling, laughing as if the world was on her side, even as it wasn’t. The boys who stood along the wall and watched the girls walk by, and made comments to each other about their bodies, would flirt with her and tell her her how gorgeous she was, and she would believe them, and blush and twist her hair in her fingers and look at them, coyly, from under her bangs. They called her Queenie. And she thought she was in on the joke.
Queenie and I, were the same.
A Man’s World
Kim, it’s a man’s world, she told me.
I finally talked to my mother about what happened. I realized I was not so stupid afterall. None of this surprised her. There wasn’t even outrage.
Endure it. Women have to endure it. Hang in there and these people will see your talent.
I kept going.
And when I did, men kept happening: A well-known US senator who was always on TV wolf-whistled me from across the park at a county picnic and loudly commented on my body parts and their levels of attractiveness to his male staff, and then they all laughed and kept on walking.
Funny how blow jobs impacted their lives differently.
Then, I got a job working for the highest ranking politician in the party in the State Senate. He had an exciting project for me.
Hang in there and these people will see your talent.
But I had to meet him in his office after the staff went home. He paid me in cash. He atrempted to tell me what to wear. Tighter skirts, lower cut blouses. When I wouldn’t sleep with him, or model lingerie for him, when it was so fucking crystal clear, there never was any job anyway, and I felt like Queenie all over again for being duped again. The job went away.
It was a relief.
For months after, he showed up at my off campus apartment night after night. He called me incessantly. He knocked on my door. Talked to my roomates. When I applied for another job with another senator, he tanked it.
Funny how blow jobs impacted their lives differently.
I gave up on American politics. I gave up on the idea that politics could change the world for the better. Or that the people who did this work sat closer to Godliness. I decided it was hindering my life to be “attractive”, that I was the problem. I stopped dying my hair, bought clothes that hid my body, started reading about socialism, wore round John Lennon wire-rimmed glasses, and a long Black leather trench coat, listened to Joy Division, started writing an underground zine and made friends that were not cool with the patriarchy. I stopped voting or even caring about what happened in government. Fuck them.
By the time Anita Hill came along (1991), then Monica Lewinsky (1998), I already knew there was an invisible war that men fought against women, that shame always danced around the edges of it, and could be weaponized at any time, that this was a bit about sex and a whole lot more about dominating and controlling, and that these particular men would lie and deceive and work together to keep it going.
Anita and Monica never had a chance.
Heal the Boys
When I think about women in politics, like Nancy Pelosi, Condoleeza Rice, Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Geraldine Ferraro, Elizabeth Warren. RBG, Gretchen Whitmer, Dianne Feinstein, Ann Richardson, Liz Cheney, there are so many, I think of how actually tough these women have to be to do their jobs and make it this far, this long.
In ways I never was or could be. I so admire them, across parties and ideologies.
And how they have to balance and minimze the outward appearance of their strengths to be more palatable for both men and women, who are put off by women who can do things, show their power, make change.
The constant picking at VP Harris is an example - Believe me when I tell you I am all for challenging her on her policies and governance, particularly around US policies in Gaza - but the need to bring her down with sexual imagery, to make her exclusively sexual and marked this way, so the men can line the walls and mock her, refuse to take her seriously, and use her as a way to build themselves up to each other, to turn her into Queenie, powerless and susceptible to the whims and mockery of men.
This is something deserving of our most aggressive and passionate pushback.
Otherwise we will have made little progress since 1989.
Thank you, as always, for reading. Kim xo
I had friends who dealt with politicians, because of their dad's work. One told me about being at a convention, a becoming well known, young - but married - politician hitting on her pretty hard. She managed to get away but could tell he was ticked off. Then he showed up at a meet and greet her father was giving, and her dad was no nobody. As the politician went to shake her dad's hand, her dad introduced her and the guy blanched. Satisfying.
I had to deal with the jerks in my dad's industry. Once a year he'd host a party during market week. I didn't tell my dad about what they said to me, tried to do. I know how ashamed and guilty he would feel having me exposed to that, maybe to the point of quitting. I would quickly walk the room, say hello, then rush to my room. I learned to lock the door because some would try catching me there. Years after my dad died, I was on lunch break at a diner. Two guys, probably father and son, began hitting on me. I studied them a minute, then asked if they were in my dad's particular industry. They were surprised, said yes, asked how I knew. It turned out they'd known my dad. I said I knew their type: sleazy jerks who hit on their host's children. Then I left. How are such still around, and doing well, in society, in government?!
Moments after Joe Biden announced his retirement and Kamala was the presumptive candidate, I posted on all my social media that I would not accept seeing any memes in my feed that were misogynistic or racist. I reminded everyone that they were supposed to be my family or friend and since I was a woman who had moved up the ladder of success experiencing comments about my dress, figure, face, personal relationships etc.. AND my SIL and grandson were both Asian. I would take these memes personally and would cut them out of my life. period. One male friend of little time who I never actually met, unfriended me right away. Another male who I have been friends with for 35 years unfriended me and un followed me. Finally, another male -- one of my own cousins -- who I have known since the day I was born, posted a meme about how Kamala was obviously a DEI hire and she got there by an affair with someone. I commented and asked him PLEASE to not disparage her (and by extension me) since I had gone through much of that , my daughter had also experienced it as she climbed the ladder and reminded him that my grandson WAS Asian. Some random mad grabbed on to what I said and began berating me for my thoughts (I live in Oklahoma, THE reddest state). I responded, respectfully. Then, my cousin, who I spent all summers and holidays with for decades, told me not to question him or the man who had been arguing with me as "he was a veteran" and should be respected. That's when my daughter ripped both of them-- challenging the "all veterans are heros trope" and telling my cousin that he had a daughter, grand daughter, nieces (like her) AND her husband was ASIAN!! Told him to grow up and DO BETTER. I was very proud of her and was about to say so when he unfriended us both. I'm good with all three people who left my life but wow -- I'm surprised it was all men and it happened so quickly. Generally speaking, there are going to be many men who are too small to change.