How do I know? Because it’s Woman 101. It’s the first page of the instruction manual that teaches us how to navigate the world. I have never met a woman who has not heard this advice. And I doubt that in 232 years of male leadership there has ever been a sitting president or vice president who at.
I can’t stop thinking about how at one point in Kamala Harris’s life she painstakingly revised her office wardrobe knowing that the difference between “slut” and “feminazi” is a few inches from combed wool hem. At one point, she approached a stranger in a public bathroom because the Tampax machine is broken again, and she said: I’m so sorry, but did you – and then she didn’t have to finish the question because women in bathrooms know there is only one end to this question.
At one point in Kamala Harris’s life, a friend of mine said, “someone probably told her she said too much, ‘I’m so sorry’.
At one point, “she must have thought a lot about motherhood,” another friend told me.
If her birth control would be completed on time. Whether the children cut back his career, officially or sneakily. What unpaid maternity leave and paid child care would do for her financial stability in a country where black women are paid an average of 63% of what white men are paid. What pregnancy would do to her body in a country where the maternal mortality rate for black women is more than three times that of white women.
At many times in her life she was called a slut.
There is something deeply moving about the fact that Kamala Harris has traveled the world as a woman. That she thought, spoke, bought, exercised, sought medical attention, sought justice, laughed and bit her tongue as a woman.
That she thought about the laws that would have made her feel safer and the policies that would have made her life easier.
It’s not because men can’t be compassionate and sympathetic to women’s issues. Of course they can. But in all of U.S. history, we have only had presidents and vice-presidents for whom women’s experiences are known and understood secondhand, if at all. And there is a difference between being sympathetic to women’s issues and knowing that if a condom breaks you are the one going to walk into a medical clinic through a gauntlet of protesters shouting that you are a murderer.
Over the summer, New Zealand launched a program to make free sanitation supplies available in schools – a way to treat the some 95,000 girls who missed out on school due to “recurring poverty,” according to the report. the Prime Minister. It’s a little discussed problem that now has a practical solution, and I can’t help but think that the fact that the Prime Minister’s name is Jacinda Ardern, and not Jacob Ardern, at least has something to do with it. ..
In Finland, the Prime Minister has worked to narrow the gender pay gap in the country and to support legislation to give new parents – fathers and mothers alike – equal and abundant paid parental leave. The Prime Minister is Sanna Marin, a 34-year-old new mother who has Instagramed photos of herself breastfeeding.
At some point in the lives of these two women, they realized that they didn’t want to live in a world where mothers are seen as parents and fathers are seen as occasional babysitters. They didn’t want the cost of an $ 8 box of tampons, multiplied by 12 or 13 times a year, multiplied by 30 or 40 years of menstruation, added to the difference in whether a girl can go to her. ‘school. How many men in power know what a box of tampons costs?
When Sally Ride went to space, male NASA engineers suggested she would need 100 tampons for a seven-day trip. If you’ve ever had a period, you know why it’s hilarious. If you haven’t, maybe you can see why having women in positions of power can help.
We are informed of our experiences. Our experiences sometimes allow us to fill in the gaps that others have missed.
At some point in Kamala Harris’s life, in January, she can stand on a stage outside the Capitol, and she can take an oath.
But I can’t help but think of all the other moments in her life that she will take with her.
How someone had to tell him once to use his keys as a weapon in a parking lot. How something like this shapes you. How that makes you, hopefully, a person who won’t let anyone walk alone in the dark.
Monica Hesse is a columnist who writes about gender and its impact on society. For more information, visit wapo.st/hesse.
