There’s always a woman to blame

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Susan Young is the Bangor Daily News opinion editor.

Blame a woman. It’s one of the oldest stories in the books, literally. In one version of the story of the Bible’s Adam and Eve, all was good in the Garden of Eden until Eve ate the forbidden fruit and convinced Adam to do the same. I’m way over simplifying here, but essentially the world has been plagued with evil ever since. All because of Eve.

So, it was no surprise to me that critics on the political right blamed women for the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month. The former president was shot, this line of thinking goes, because the women in his Secret Security details were miserable failures. The situation was made much worse, these critics said, because the agency was headed by a woman. Kimberly Cheatle very appropriately resigned on Tuesday amid growing evidence that the Secret Service made numerous, terrible errors in securing the fairground where Trump’s rally was held in Butler, Pennsylvania.

None of this would have happened, some on the right charged , if women hadn’t been involved. Cheatle was a DEI hire, they postulated. Nevermind that she was a 24-year veteran of the Secret Service, hired decades before diversity, equity and inclusion became valuable aspirations or words of mockery, depending on your political persuasion.

There have been more than a dozen attempts to kill American presidents, four of them successful. Were women to blame for those events? The Secret Service failed to protect President John F. Kennedy and didn’t stop President Ronald Reagan from getting shot, without any women being involved.

The latest misogynistic take about a woman came from Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, who called Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic nominee for president, a “DEI vice president.” I expect to hear a lot more of these barbs, and worse, from Republicans from now until the November election.

The underlying rationale, of course, is offensive. It suggests women aren’t qualified or capable of doing any seemingly hard or complex job. They get those positions only because of some diversity quota.

A second, related line of thinking that has gained traction in Republican circles is that women who don’t fit a narrow definition of what it means to be a woman are somehow deficient, wrong, or even wicked. Yeah, we haven’t progressed far since the witch trial days.

Now that he is Trump’s vice presidential pick, comments by Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance are getting closer scrutiny. Vance has lots of ideas about the role of women — abortion should be illegal in every state, women should prioritize being mothers even if that means staying in abusive relationships — that I find offensive.

But here’s a thought: If you want more women to get married and to be mothers, maybe you should respect them, instead of demeaning and trying to control them.

In a 2021 interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Vance lumped Harris, who is a stepmother to two children, into a group he called “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.” To extend the fact-challenged insult to the LGBTQ+ community, he included Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is gay and now has two children, in this group.

I have children and I don’t have cats. However, I know several “cat ladies” who are very happy. I have many friends, women and men, without children who are living fulfilled lives. And I know childless women with cats who are far from miserable.

Vance further said that these people didn’t have a “direct stake” in America. This is as ludicrous as it is offensive. You don’t have to have children to have a stake in this country. You don’t have to be straight or white to have a stake in this country. Every American is invested in our nation’s future.

Instead of fantasizing that women who don’t match your narrow, idealized vision are miserable and that women are to blame for every perceived evil or tragedy in the world, how about we simply acknowledge that women, like men, are capable of doing great things. They are also capable of colossal screw ups, just like their male peers.

Demeaning and trying to control women has a long and sordid history in America, and the world. Still, I wish that the foolish and mean-spirited caricatures of women could be retired. We aren’t defined by our marriage status or whether we have children or own cats. And we aren’t in positions of power because of false notions of DEI quotas.

It is past time that we understand that a diverse, equitable and inclusive society is a better place than an imagined, outdated, misogynistic vision of America.