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Home » Testosterone » Inside The Testosterone-soaked Masculinity Contest That Was The 2019 Election – Chatelaine

The sight of Catherine McKennas Ottawa Centre campaign office defiled by a misogynistic attack days after the Liberal MP was voted into office offered a vile, yet telling, capper to a campaign that was unkind to women in overt and more insidious ways. The slur was sexist: the wordcunt spray-painted across McKennas face as if to obscure and silence her. When it was discussed on CBCsCrossCountry Checkuplast week, the host didnt repeat the word but referred to it as vulgar. And yes, the word is vulgar;Macleanstypically wontpublish it. But Im repeating it without slashes or asterisks because the attack on McKenna needs to be called out as gendered; cunt is used to sexualize and demean a woman; it is not a word used to attack a male politician.

McKenna, minister of the environment, has faced sexist garbage for yearsfrom being dubbed climate Barbie to threats so serious she needed a security detail. Shes not alone. Pernicious attacks on female politicians of all political stripesinCanada, inAustralia, and theU.S.are now so common that its debated whether Western politics, a bedrock of democracy, istoxicfor women.Recentreportsindicate female politicians are standing down in Britain in response to horrific abuse.

Its positive news, of a sort, that Ottawa police justannouncedtheyre investigating the vandalism against McKenna as a hate crime; this recognizes the gravity of the attack. Less positive is the lack of collective bi-partisan political or public outrage. Nor has there been a call for zero tolerance, or a needed crackdown on abuse rife on social media platforms. No one would expect women to endure constant threats of rape, physical assault, or murder as a norm in other fieldsmedicine, law, teaching. After a terrorist act, no one says that a population should stop flying or going into the streets. Yet thestandard response to news of the attack against McKenna even by those sickened by it was a resigned: Andthats whywomen dont enter politics.

Yet this federal election began with a record number of women choosing to run for officeup some nine per cent from 2015. The NDP ran 49 per cent women (up from 43 in 2015), the Greens, (lead by Elizabeth May, the only female party leader), ran 47 per cent women/non-binary/trans candidates (up from 40 per cent), the Liberals ran 39 per cent women (up from 31 per cent), and the Conservatives ran 32 percent (up from 19 per cent).After votes were counted, we had 10 more women in Parliament, bringing female representation in the House of Commons to 29 per cent, a three per cent increase. At this rate, well surpass one-third female representation after the 2027 electionand reach 50-50 representation decades after that.

Weve heard the same theories floated for years of why unequal representation persists: Women are socialized not to see themselves as eligible candidates as readily as men; they have to balance career and family (in a way men dont); they dont have access to the same funding; theyre not positioned by parties in winnable ridings. Theres truth there. But the biases can be more subtle than that, as seen in the imagery and messaging of the 2019 federal election. Traditional masculine motifssports, warriors, shows of strengthprevailed.Obviously women excel at sports, but framing on the campaign trail tends to be as a testosterone-soaked masculinity contest. Its imagery that excludes many whod make excellent representativesnot only women, but some men, and anyone who is older or who lives with a disability.

National elections as masculinity contests have long existed in the U.S., as astutely outlined by Jackson Katz in his 2017 bookMan Enough?: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity. Since Ronald Reagan vs. Jimmy Carter onward, Katz writes, U.S. elections have been debates about American manhood waged exclusively by white men until Barack Obama, who was often photographed playing basketball. Its changing, seen with the election of a new squad of younger women, lead by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, yet its still one where the tough guy with certitude prevails, and the nuanced or indecisive is emasculated.

Using sports as a go-to political metaphor is problematic for many reasonsits intrinsically polarizing and sets a narrow perception what a politician looks like. We saw a breakthrough in Canada with the presence of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, the first racialized leader of a major national party. That said, on the strong, macho front, Singh fulfilled the mandate: in August, gearing up for the election, he shared an image of himself after a mixed martial arts class with former ultimate fighting champion Georges St-Pierre.

During the campaign, when Singh slammed a big hammer to ring a bell at a Poutine Fest in B.C.,Burnaby Nowenthused: Hes flexing his campaign muscles. The NDP leader also introduced a strenuousJagmeet Jumpbefore rallies. Conservative leaderAndrew Scheer was less successful in the format: he appeared in party ads swinging a baseball bat, and was mocked; he was also criticized post-election by former Conservative cabinet minister Peter MacKay who evoked another sports metaphor when he likened Scheer losing to a hockey player missing a goal on an empty net.

Choose Forward Grouse Grind

The Grouse Grind is tough, but to get to the top you need to keep moving forward. And we need to do the same to keep growing our economy, fighting climate change & protecting beautiful places like this across Canada. In October, you get to choose which way we go. #ChooseForward//Le Grouse Grind est difficile, mais on doit continuer davancer pour arriver au sommet. Et on doit faire la mme chose pour faire crotre notre conomie, lutter contre les changements climatiques et protger notre environnement. En octobre, cest votre choix. #ChoisirDAvancer

Posted by Justin Trudeau on Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Then theres Justin Trudeau, whose political credibility and rise hinged on him winning a 2012 charity boxing match against Senator Patrick Brazeau. Trudeaus fitness and physical derring-doyoga poses, balancing babies,jogging shirtlessdefine his political identity. During the federal campaign, Trudeau ran up Vancouvers Grouse Mountain, and his team summoned media to cover him training in a boxing ring the morning of the TVA debate. Star Liberal candidate and Trudeau protg Adam van Koeverden took a page from the PMs playbook on his first bid for political office in Milton, Ont. The four-time Olympic medalist posted a photo onInstagram showing him prepare for a local debate with a killer workout. Like Trudeau, van Koeverden pitched himself as a frontman for gender equality: one of his campaign boasts was his involvement at the federal government level to ensure gender inclusion in sports. He won the riding,ejecting veteran Conservative incumbent Lisa Raitt.

During the campaign,Raitt lamented in aniPoliticsinterview about how virility and stamina have become conflated with political competence and ability: What am I going to do? Im a fat woman over 50. I cant compete in that, she said.

Even before the campaign, we saw a focus onimagery over doing actual work. On June 17, 2019, for instance, May was the only leader in the House of Commons to vote to pass a motion declaring a national climate emergency. Trudeau, Singh, and Scheer were all in Toronto gaining political currency being photographed at the Raptors parade.May told me she experienced sexism when I covered the Greens on the election trailfrom being referred to as quirky, a word not often used to describe a man, to being criticized in one media account for learning about World War II history from the movies, (which is not the case). Thats not something theyd likely say about Andrew Scheer, May said.

We also saw May, the only woman at the leaders debates (she was excluded from TVA debate) drowned out as her rivals fought to defend womens reproductive rights. A man has no position on a womans right to choose, Singh said during the official English-language leaders debate, to which May interjected: How about a womans right to speak in a debate? Its been really interesting for most of this campaign to hear a lot of men arguing about what a womans rights should be.

Ironically, abortion became a cudgel used against May, who supports a womans right to choose, by the NDP, even as67 Conservative candidatesreceived endorsements by anti-abortion groups. Meanwhile, discussion about critical issues that affect women disproportionatelytheepidemic of violence against women and girls, the need for universal childcarewas absent.

Post-election, its time to rethink and address inequities in the political realm, asMelanee Thomas, an associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary, writes inPolicy Options. Thomas, who researches gender and electoral politics,argues that the problem is entrenched biases at the party level, and not voters discriminating against women. Political scientists have looked for butfound no evidenceto support the idea that voters discriminate against female candidates, Thomas writes. Rather, political parties areless likely to nominate women as candidates than men, they are also more likely to disproportionately nominate women in seats their party cannot win.

Despite Trudeaus 50-50 male-female cabinet, for instance, his party didnt support the Gender EquityAct, a 2016 private members billintroduced by then NDP MP Kennedy Stewart to ensure greater parity. The bill, which proposed to financially penalize parties with a 10 per cent or more split between male and female candidates, didnt pass.

Its a bias that extends to party leadership, Thomas writes: federal parties, particularly those that stand a chance to form government, simply do not select women as leaders. There are exceptions, she notes: when a party isin crisis or decline,but more often women become party leaders when their party is uncompetitive.

History backs this up.Canada has had a female prime minister, fleetingly, in 1993, but never has come close to electing one. Kim Campbell became Conservative Party leader after the premature exit of then unpopular prime minister Brian Mulroney. Campbell never sat in Parliament as PM; the Conservatives were trounced in the 1993 election.(With speculation swirling that the Conservatives are planning to replace Scheer, its telling that one name being floated is Ben Mulroney, the son of Brian Mulroney, a TV presenter with no political experience, and not that of his sister Caroline, a cabinet minister in the Ontario Conservative government.)

The NDP has had one female leaderAlexa McDonoughfrom 1995 to 2003. When May was elected leader of the federal Greens in 2006, the party had never held a seat in the House of Commons; it now has three, nine short of official party status. (On Monday, May announced she would be stepping down as party leader.) Women have run for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, but none has come close to winning.

The expectation that women leading provincial governments would offer training ground for the federal stage hasnt happened, Thomas writes, noting provincial politics also reflectsharsher standardsapplied to women leaders. For several months this year, Canadahad no women premiers;Caroline Cochrane was elected premier of the Northwest Territories last month, the first woman in the job since 1995.

As Thomas sees it, its time to ask different questions: Instead of asking why women should be more included in politics, we should ask why men merit being so overrepresented, she writes.

While we ponder that, its also good to remember that, for all of the regressive imagery, election 43 brought us new, young female politicians, among them Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, an NDP MP in Nunavut and Jenica Atwin, a Green MP elected in Fredericton. We also saw the return of former Liberal Jody-Wilson Raybould as an Independent representing Vancouver-Granville and, of course, Catherine McKenna,who has refused to be silenced or obscured, and whose treatment should be seen as a slur across Canadas face.

Continued here:
Inside The Testosterone-soaked Masculinity Contest That Was The 2019 Election - Chatelaine

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Home » Testosterone » Inside The Testosterone-soaked Masculinity Contest That Was The 2019 Election – Chatelaine