Given that I’ve been writing this column for almost seven years and have taken a fair number of strong stances, I get fewer mean emails than you might expect. But fewer doesn’t mean none. I have one abhorrent admirer who sends me an email every month or so. He usually just says weird conspiratorial stuff about Muslims; despite his dire warnings, Maine has not yet adopted sharia law.

This past week, however, I received from him the following missive: “All in for Kamala? What’s up, buttercup? Maybe you should take a look at this short [clip] on ‘Heels Up Harris’ before you wet your panties swooning over her? Your friend.”

My “friend,” here, offers just a preview of the raw, unfiltered, military-grade sexism we have to look forward to in the next few months as Vice President Kamala Harris makes her semi-surprise sprint for the presidency.

This sexism will come from the mouths of friends, strangers, family members and household names. These days, most men try to hide their sexism, or at least phrase it in more polite terms. See, for example, the “just asking questions ” set, or the guys who swear they would vote for a woman but coincidentally have objections to every specific woman running for a position of power.

For the past several decades, since women started entering the workforce in large numbers (and probably long before that), the framing of a man sleeping with a woman who his subordinate in the workplace has been “she’s sleeping her way to the top,” not “he is withholding a promotion until he receives sexual favors.”

This places blame on the woman rather than the man. For every woman who has managed to use her sexuality to get ahead, there are 10 more who were driven out of a workplace by sexual harassment. I mean, come on. We have two men accused of sexual harassment sitting on the Supreme Court. America’s last president was found liable for sexual abuse by a literal legal jury and has been accused of various degrees of sexual assault by 26 women. And I’m supposed to care what consenting adults are doing in their private time? I’m supposed to get upset that Harris dated a talk show host for a while? Get out of here with those horse apples.

Personally, I don’t care if a woman uses her sexuality for personal gain. All relationships come with benefits, exchanges, pluses and minuses.

I’m sure there are plenty of careers where a woman could feasibly sleep her way to the top, or at least use her sexuality to advance herself. Electoral politics, where a ton of individual citizens have to personally vote you in for the job, isn’t one of them. Kamala Harris received 3 million votes in California when she was elected to the Senate in 2016. Are we suggesting she slept with 3 million people? My gosh, think of how good she’d be at diplomatic negotiations. Having multiple partners is an art form that takes great skill.

But of course, as with most insults, the point isn’t logic.

The point is to degrade a woman, to cheapen her accomplishments and talents by reducing them all to sex. That’s exactly why my abhorrent admirer characterized my enthusiasm for the election of Vice President Harris in the vulgar way he did.

I have many reasons to be excited about Harris’ policies, presidency and representation, all of which are well thought-out and intellectually defensible by me. But that doesn’t matter to men like the one who emailed me (and there are so many of them out there). To guys like him, women are no more and no less than their body and what they do with it. And I’m sure folks would attack any sort of relationship choice Harris made.

If she never dated any man and focused solely on her career, she’d probably be called a lesbian or a childless cat lady (judging from the way vice presidential nominee JD Vance talks about that, you’d think childless cat lady is right up there with ax murderer as the worst thing a woman can be). If she leapt right into family life super early, married her first boyfriend and had kids, everyone would say she should stay home and focus on being a mother.

There’s no right way to be a woman in this world. There’s no winning if you’re a woman. And that’s just the way that men like Trump, Vance and the emailing reader want to keep it.

Victoria Hugo-Vidal is a Maine millennial. She can be contacted at:
themainemillennial@gmail.com
Twitter: @mainemillennial