My childhood political memories are defined by Republicans spending two years extremely concerned about Bill Clinton’s blowjob after spending the previous ten years extremely concerned about every other woman he slept with. Hillary, who they’d hated going back to the 70s when she didn’t want to take her husband’s last name, couldn’t run for President because her husband getting a blowjob from an intern was somehow her fault. He cheated, so something must be wrong with her. Newt Gingrich was in the process of having an affair with an intern while his wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but his party didn’t care about that.
My first adult political memories of being really active and paying attention to the news are defined by Republicans trying to convince everyone that Barack Obama was a Muslim from Kenya. That didn’t stick, he was elected President, and then they became incensed that his wife showed her arms in her official photo. They said Michelle emasculated him because she talked about his annoying habits on late night television. They said she was arrogant because she had an education and gave her opinion. They said Michelle was a man because she was tall and Black. They went on to throw their full support behind a man who pays off porn stars, brags about assaulting women, and is married to someone who posed nude for years.
So here’s how I grew up in the United States:
Liberal women have to be beyond reproach. Liberal men can get away with impropriety, especially if there’s a woman nearby to take the blame, but liberal women have to be spotless. Republicans can ignore the dumpster on their front yard, but if there’s litter on your porch, they will call the police. If you are not June Cleaver born again, Republicans will rip you to shreds. And because the United States is obviously the center of the universe, I assumed Conservative parties across the globe were just as viciously hypocritical.
Jacinda Ardern has become an iconic leader for modern times because she’s a woman, she’s young, she’s shepherded her people through the coronavirus pandemic better than any other leader, and she helped her party win the biggest proportion of parliament seats in the history of New Zealand. And she’s not married!
When Jacinda Ardern was elected in 2017, I just assumed she had a husband, because I could not picture a 37 year old unmarried woman being elected President of the United States. The GOP would have called her a lesbian or a slut, and they would’ve manufactured enough “evidence” to make it stick in the minds of most Republicans and a large enough chunk of Christian Democrats to make her unviable.
Then she had a baby.
So of course she must be married, because that’s how you get a baby! Through marriage! Single women don’t have sex because that would be immoral. When she became the second head of state to give birth in office (after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in the 90s), I assumed she had a husband. When she got reelected last year, I just knew she had a husband because, reminder in case you forgot, I grew up in the United States where it would be inconceivable for her not to.
But she’s not. Jacinda wasn’t even engaged at the time. She had a baby with her boyfriend and just kept it pushing. How about that.
American Friends, please picture a young, unmarried, liberal woman running for reelection with a baby out of wedlock on her hip. Take what they wrote about Hillary, add some Michelle, multiply it by AOC, run it through the Fox News Hyperbole Generator and we have a media storm of unprecedented scale!
Props to New Zealand for being a country of grown ups. I don’t really know much about y’all aside from a terrible season of Real Housewives and now my own sickening jealousy that y’all can go to the mall, but sounds like y’all are really doing something right over there.
Also: Jacinda grew up Mormon but now identifies as agnostic. Imagine the Christian Right in this country if the President didn’t quote Bible verses at least once a month!!!!!!!!!!!
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