Troy Jackson, Susan Collins, and Feminist Hypocrisy

One of the common themes pushed by Democrats and their media flacks, which regularly gets weaponized into bite-sized memes for Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, is the notion that male politicians have shown disrespect to all womanhood by interrupting or otherwise clashing harshly with a female politician who was speaking. We’ve seen this playbook ad infinitum. Rick Lazio, the most nonthreatening New York politician in memory, was cast as some sort of terrifying predator for crossing the debate stage to hand a prop to Hillary Clinton. “Nevertheless, she persisted” became a thing for Elizabeth Warren’s supposed courage in refusing to be silenced, even though the actual issue was that Warren was refusing to abide by Senate rules. Kamala Harris mastered this game in the Senate by persistently interrupting male witnesses, waiting for one to try to complete his sentence so she could intone “I’m speaking” with evident umbrage. (She used the same line the same way with Mike Pence in a 2020 debate and tried a variant on Donald Trump in 2024.)

The idea that there is any sort of gender principle at stake here, however, is a transparent fraud, and always has been. The outrage is always and only when it’s a female Democrat and a male Republican, or perhaps a progressive female and a more moderate liberal man. The yass-kween solidarity memes and the think-piece columns about patriarchy never show up when this goes the other way.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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One of the common themes pushed by Democrats and their media flacks, which regularly gets weaponized into bite-sized memes for Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, is the notion that male politicians have shown disrespect to all womanhood by interrupting or otherwise clashing harshly with a female politician who was speaking. We’ve seen this playbook ad infinitum. Rick Lazio, the most nonthreatening New York politician in memory, was cast as some sort of terrifying predator for crossing the debate stage to hand a prop to Hillary Clinton. “Nevertheless, she persisted” became a thing for Elizabeth Warren’s supposed courage in refusing to be silenced, even though the actual issue was that Warren was refusing to abide by Senate rules. Kamala Harris mastered this game in the Senate by persistently interrupting male witnesses, waiting for one to try to complete his sentence so she could intone “I’m speaking” with evident umbrage. (She used the same line the same way with Mike Pence in a 2020 debate and tried a variant on Donald Trump in 2024.)

The idea that there is any sort of gender principle at stake here, however, is a transparent fraud, and always has been. The outrage is always and only when it’s a female Democrat and a male Republican, or perhaps a progressive female and a more moderate liberal man. The yass-kween solidarity memes and the think-piece columns about patriarchy never show up when this goes the other way.