A Master Class In Batting Away Discrediting Attacks and Namecalling
The Things People Say
“She’s a bit of a ding-dong. . . She’s not a serious person.”
“Have you ever watched her laugh? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh… She is nuts.”
“She’s dumb as a rock.”
“. . . a mediocrity . . . She was a DEI hire.”
“She’ll be so easy for them. She’ll be like a play toy.”
The above quotes represent a smattering of comments Former President Donald Trump and some of his male Republican congressional surrogates have made to denigrate Vice President Kamala Harris since she became the Democratic party nominee frontrunner. This is just good-- or bad-- old-fashioned name calling, and nothing more. This type of ad hominem, personal, demeaning attack on a women, by a man seeking to retain his advantage, feels all too familiar to many women.
Undermining and Attacking Women Is Not New But Is Common
In a hydra-headed approach, these men have attacked Kamala Harris using mostly familiar tropes: as a woman, as a black woman who is not competent or intelligent, and as someone who has achieved what she has achieved only through affirmative action, which advantaged women and black people over men and whites. There’s a new one as well: she’s not really black. In the midst of this uncivil name-calling, many women have begun to hope these dismissive insults will turn out to be a last-gasp attempt to retain a status quo that needs to go.
Women, especially black women, have been dealing with similar undermining and attacking responses to their presence and aspirations in the workplace and in life for a long time. For example, a 2022 McKinsey study concluded that, “Compared to other women at their level, Black women leaders are more likely to have colleagues question their competence and to be subjected to demeaning behavior.” Further, a 2023 study found that 86.8% of women working worldwide reported experiencing the “tall poppy” phenomenon, in which people are “attacked, resented, disliked, criticized, or cut down because of their achievements and/or success.”
I’m Speaking: Talk To The Hand
That’s why it resonated in the 2021 Vice Presidential debate when Kamala Harris stood her ground against Vice President Mike Pence as he sought to interrupt her.
“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said, putting her hand up. “I’m speaking.”
Women related and cheered.
How often have we watched or heard about a man ignoring a woman’s idea in business only to take credit for it later (it’s called “hepeating”), with no attribution to the female originator of the idea? “Mansplaining” about a topic on which we are expert and he is not? Nodded when we read of studies showing that male Supreme Court Justices interrupt female Supreme Court Justices far more frequently than the reverse, or that men interrupt women in business settings 30% more often than they interrupt men? Too often.
That’s not to say that men are bad or hated: just proof that this phenomenon of undermining and attacking women in business, leadership, and life exists and is well documented.
There’s A New Girl/Woman In Town
They’re feeling threatened, we’ll sometimes tell ourselves, our friends, or daughters, when a man or boy attacks a woman with unnecessary glee, undermines her, or tries to talk over her, often after she’s shown competence or superiority. Of course, not everybody behaves this way, and it’s lovely and better when people don’t.
But the not-unknown male tendency to use dismissive language and ridiculing attacks on women seeking to rise or lead or merely participate is on prominent display as Republicans scramble to deal with their new, much younger and mentally-sharper opponent. They need a new playbook, and fast.
Hence the default to uncivil tropes about women, their laughs, their intelligence, their backgrounds, their affect, their incompetence, and their lack of good qualities. Having gotten where she’s gotten already, Kamala Harris surely recognizes this pattern of attacking women who threaten some men’s view of themselves or their dominance. So far, she seems to have an answer for it, and not to care.
How To Deal With Undermining Attacks and Namecalling
In speaking about Donald Trump’s accusation that she had recently reinvented herself as black, Harris said:
“. . . it was the same old show: the divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better. The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth. A leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts . . .”
Note, that the Vice President did something deft here:
she didn’t get triggered and respond in anger or descend to insults in retaliation;
she identified and called out the rhetorical tactics, of disrespect, divisiveness, hostility, and anger;
she voiced an aspiration for and a need that the US have, and deserves, better discourse;
she emphasized facts and truth instead of anger and argument.
Kamala Harris provided a master class in and an example of how to lower the temperature in political conversation and re-focus discussion on the facts and issues, while hearkening to our collective strength, goodness, and aspirations as a nation.
Change Is Gonna Come, Maybe Soon?
Take that in, women, and people of all colors, shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. A woman, a black woman at that, has a decent chance of leading the most powerful country in the world, soon.
Even the young folk have taken to Kamala, who is killing it on TikTok. This is an unexpected moment, born out of the despair of watching two old white guys lean on lecterns in dark suits and red and blue ties, insulting each other’s golf games, the country and the world sighing and asking, “is this the best they’ve got?”
People—women as well as men— will say worse than the attacks above, about and to Kamala Harris before the election ends. For political or other reasons, many will try to prevent the change to the American history of having only male presidents. And make no mistake about it, even more than Hillary Clinton’s candidacy did, Kamala Harris’ candidacy threatens previous norms and history.
Many women will watch with bated breath to see how the first American female Vice President responds to the barrage of attacks to come.
“It’s ‘the same old show,’” seems like a good place to start.
Perhaps, when morning in America comes on November 6, we will wake to headlines of “Madame President”. That would be a novel kind of name-calling in the United States, for sure.
