Harris Trump Debate - a Balancing act for smart women

Last night I watched the Sept. 10, 2024 debate and once again, not for the first time, I saw an intelligent, composed woman attempting to debate a belicose, distressed and rattled man. There is an old saying, when asked what men are most afraid of in regard to women, the rply was that they would be laughted at. Women, asked the same question replied they were afraid they would be murdered." That observation is a sedimentary layer under all relations between men and women. The overwhelming percentage of shooters are men. The overwhelming number of victims of domestic violence are women. Men have used economic power to control and force women into submission for most of our history. And one of the ways that has has endured is because until the birth control revolution, women were disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing and child rearing. We couldn't do all that and hold survival wage paying jobs at the same time. But things have changed in the past hundred yeats and everyone is still adjusting to it.

It is true in my own personal life that I have had to face up to male violence both in my family and my marriage. This implied threat is apparent to most of us women and we saw it in the Hilary Clinton debate with Trump when he stalked around her, and used loud, bullying tones of voice. And Hillaries response was so typical of the majority of women, she was polite and restrained.

Last night, I saw the emergence of the NEW woman, the professional woman, the woman who has had the tough job, prosecutor and who can be both self-controlled and focused and assertive. It is a balancing act. Intelligent women who are assertive are often called 'aggressive' and it has happened to me. Once in a group project, when the group was floundering and I had prepared a flow chart with a time and task component, I put it on the white board to help us settle down and get organized so we could finish in the time allotted to us and one of the male techers said "I didn't know you were so aggresssive!" It happened that just at that moment our first female Superintendent of Schools was coming in to check on our progress and she said, "If you show control and you are a man it is competent and assertive, but if you are a woman it is bossy anc aggressive." So true. Yet we have seen the evidence in the 20th and 21st century of women leaders who have done exceptional work. First let me begin with one of my all time favorite women leaders, Golda Meir! She led the nation of Israel in a time of desperation and conflict to rival what is going on at the present and led them skillfully and safely into the future. Second let me honor Angela Merkel who not only led Germany for 20 years as Chancellor, first woman to hold that position, but she was known as the "de facto Leader of the Europen Union." When Trump traveled to Germany he refused to shake her outstretched hand.

Even other women can get nervous when women ask for too much power in the world, as shown when Phyllis Schlafly organized middle American housewives to help her defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. She felt and convinced other women to feel that they would lose the shelter and protection of men if they got too equal and that we are not, in fact, equal. She convinced women they were safer under the protection of men than independence. She was afraid we would be drafted into the military (there is no more draft but we join and serve). She was afraid we would share bathrooms (we do have to share some unisex bathrooms but I have yet to see a crime wave resulting).

Fear! Fear of strong women has been with us through the ages. One of the arguments that has been used to support the exalted state of men in the patriarchy is that men die for us. That ignores the fact that through our entire species history women have died in childbirth at alarming rates for the whole human race. We die too.

What Kamala did in the debate was that she found the fine line of being intelligent and assertive without alarming men with her control. She faced the intimidating bluster of the orange faced bully with composure, and she hit back when he lobbed bad balls. That analogy works for me because it brings tomind the Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs tennis match which I saw again recently oon a pbs passport special called Gods of Tennis. I watched that match in a bar with my then husband. I was silent and watchful and worried because I knew there would be mockery and humiliation from the men drinking in that bar if Billy Jean lost. She hadn't wanted to play Bbby riggs but he goaded her into it. And she beat him because she was faster, stronger, more controlled and YOUNGER. That was the excuse used by several outraged male acquaintances of mine to explain this unexpected and disturbing loss on the part of Riggs. My teacher pals said, "NO wonder she won, she was younger than he was." There ha to be a reason. But what a blow that was for the rest of us women, so tired of the pinched backsides, the snide remarks, the lack of safety in dark hallways or storage rooms, or buses or speedline trains, or offices, or gymnasiums, or anywhere for that matter. It was like when the mild kid loses it finally after too much torment and socks the bully. We saw it in the Christmas movie A Christmas Story, when Ralphy beats up the yellow eyed neighborhood bully who has terrified all the children for their after-school walk home.

Kamala did it with her intelligence and composur, skills honed from her years in the courtroom, and there are more and more of us each generation, finding our places in careers and professions that were formerly denied to us: law, medicine, military service, technology, science. Our buried skills are being excavated and honed. Even in my own small town, we have our first female Mayor! She had a career as a Union Representative, another career that demands a practice of both self control and assertiveness.'

It would be the celebration of a century if we achieved our first fmale president. We have been climbing this Mount Everest for a long time, perhaps this century we will achieve the summit and the country and the world weill be better and safer because of it!

Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com