PM Trudeau and Marc Miller train at Ali Nestor's gym in Montreal. October 2, 2019. (Photo: Adam Scotti/LPC)
The sight of Catherine McKenna’s 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 word “cunt” spray-painted across McKenna’s face as if to obscure and silence her. When it was discussed on CBC’s Cross Country Checkup last week, the host didn’t repeat the word but referred to it as “vulgar.” And yes, the word is vulgar; Maclean’s typically won’t publish it. But I’m 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 years—from being dubbed “climate Barbie” to threats so serious she needed a security detail. She’s not alone. Pernicious attacks on female politicians of all political stripes—in Canada, in Australia, and the U.S. —are now so common that it’s debated whether Western politics, a bedrock of democracy, is “toxic”for women. Recent reports indicate female politicians are “standing down” in Britain in response to “horrific abuse.”
It’s positive news, of a sort, that Ottawa police just announced they’re 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 fields—medicine, law, teaching. After a terrorist act, no one says that a population should stop flying or going into the streets. Yet the standard response to news of the attack against McKenna even by those sickened by it was a resigned: “And that’s why women don’t enter politics.”
Yet this federal election began with a record number of women choosing to run for office—up 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, we’ll surpass one-third female representation after the 2027 election—and reach 50-50 representation decades after that.
We’ve 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 don’t); they don’t have access to the same funding; they’re not positioned by parties in winnable ridings. There’s 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” motifs—sports, warriors, shows of strength—prevailed. Obviously women excel at sports, but framing on the campaign trail tends to be as a testosterone-soaked masculinity contest. It’s imagery that excludes many who’d make excellent representatives—not 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 book Man 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. It’s changing, seen with the election of a new squad of younger women, lead by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, yet it’s still one where the tough guy with certitude prevails, and the nuanced or indecisive is “emasculated.”
When you're in beautiful Saint-Hyacinthe at a Poutine Fest with @bsansoucynpd – you don't pass up on the offer to throw down the hammer #elxn43 pic.twitter.com/G2wcOps2E9
— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) September 15, 2019
Using sports as a go-to political metaphor is problematic for many reasons—it’s 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 Now enthused: “He’s flexing his campaign muscles.” The NDP leader also introduced a strenuous “Jagmeet Jump” before rallies. Conservative leader Andrew 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.
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Then there’s Justin Trudeau, whose political credibility and rise hinged on him winning a 2012 charity boxing match against Senator Patrick Brazeau. Trudeau’s fitness and physical derring-do—yoga poses, balancing babies, jogging shirtless—define his political identity. During the federal campaign, Trudeau ran up Vancouver’s 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 protégé Adam van Koeverden took a page from the PM’s playbook on his first bid for political office in Milton, Ont. The four-time Olympic medalist posted a photo on Instagram 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.
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