We are going into Battle against Trump. Here’s How to Fight for Harris

Kamala Harris’s historic presidential candidacy will open up a torrent of misogynoir. We need to be prepared to fight it in order to head off Trump’s re-election.

I am not writing this post to convince you to vote for Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee as of 2:30pm ET yesterday, when President Joe Biden announced he was stepping aside and endorsing her candidacy. I am writing because many of you are now in the same position I am in: all in for Harris as the person who can beat Trump and head off the incalculable threat facing our country. We are terrified as and for girls, women, and any person who can get pregnant. We are terrified as and for the racially marginalized people who Trump has firmly in his sightlines. We are terrified for trans and queer folks who would face existential threats to their well-being and very existence under the next Trump administration. We are terrified for whatever semblance of democracy that remains and might perhaps be rebuilt. The list goes on. It is time to fight for and with Harris.

And there is no question that Harris’s candidacy will open up a torrent of misogynoir, a term coined by Moya Bailey and Trudy for the intersection of misogyny and racism (particularly anti-Black racism, although Harris is also of course South Asian). It’s our job to fight it in our circles and even ourselves. Here are some of the forms, some of them subtle, it is going to take over the next one hundred and six days.

Moralism: One of the most insidious forms of misogyny is holding women to higher moral standards. This takes the form both of double standards—Biden may do this, but not Harris—and also being more likely to blame and punish a woman, and more likely to forgive a man, for the same admitted misdeeds. Obviously this isn’t to say that there’s aren’t real moral concerns about Harris’s record as a prosecutor in California worth delving into again when she is in office. But these remain more complex than many people would have you believe, as the brilliant poet and writer Reginald Dwayne Betts has argued, offering a more nuanced perspective as a formerly incarcerated Black man than many white progressives have been touting. Be prepared to say it: labeling a relatively progressive former prosecutor a “cop” is reductive and demeaning. You don’t have to agree with everything Harris did in this role to recognize that memeifying her in this way reflects, however unwittingly, a particular perspective on Black women: namely, that at least after a certain age, they are expected to be mammies, as Patricia Hill Collins has famously argued. That Harris is both required to adhere to, and deviate from, this “controlling image” points to one of the many double binds facing her.

Caremongering: Relatedly, women, particularly racially marginalized women, are widely expected to be caring, loving, giving, and selfless. Harris will be attacked for being “childless” (in reality, she is the step-mom to two kids, but no matter—the more important point is that parenthood is not a prerequisite for the presidency). She will be attacked for being cold, callous, calculating, and conniving. She will be blamed for Biden losing his legacy as a two-term president by some Democrats. She will be held responsible for being maximally attentive to each and every American voter. Yet the population consists in around 335 million people. Demanding a woman somehow connect with every single person in a deep and meaningful way, as Hillary Clinton was constantly attacked for not doing, and as Elizabeth Warren seemingly tried to, is setting them up for failure. As I’ve written before: it goes deep in the nature of patriarchal gender relations that women’s conduct is taken unduly personally. So her indifference becomes aversion; ignorance becomes ignoring; testimony becomes tattling; and asking becomes extortion. In the same vein: I would now add: minor disappointments become unforgivable betrayals. We need to fight these overreactions and to insist that a woman does not need to be perfect in order to be essentially caring and competent—and most certainly, and saliently, a better option than Trump on every conceivable relevant measure. Voting for Harris will be portrayed as an unforgivable sin and symptom of complicity. It isn’t. It’s politics. It’s fighting for survival for the most vulnerable—and, hopefully, some day, something better.

Image source: Mediaite

Disgust reactions: It’s obvious that Harris will be attacked in clearly gendered ways, such as for her dress and her appearance and what it takes—and costs—to maintain these as a woman. But be on the look-out for subtler gendered attacks that will have an outsize impact inasmuch as they involve disgust reactions. Trump has already dubbed her “laughing Kamala,” making fun of her signature laugh, in which she tilts her head back. He is already calling her crazy, nuts, a throwback to his signature move as our gaslighter-in-chief for the duration of his presidency. Characteristically, there’s also more than a hint of disgust for Harris in his description, as not being sufficiently demure, elegant—and silent. And whenever disgust reactions get started, they are politically dangerous. As a matter of moral psychology, disgust is a sticky emotion, which is hard to undo once felt, tends to stain every aspect of the target, and spreads from the person harboring it to other people who witness the disgust reaction. Do not let disgusted rhetoric take off without a fight. In my view, it played a significant role in Hillary Clinton’s shocking loss of the 2016 election. (And one which I, for what it’s worth, saw coming, for many of these reasons.)

Ambition Aspersions: Psychological research by Madeline Heilman and her collaborators had participants compare two files for a masculine-coded leadership position at a fictional company—“James” and “Andrea.” By swapping the names on their files (such that their names were switched for every second participant), the researchers ensured that the participants received identical information, on average, about the two candidates. Yet James was judged more competent than Andrea by 86 percent of participants, regardless of their gender. When information was explicitly included that made both candidates’ competence undeniable, James was judged more likable than Andrea by 83 percent of participants. Again, breaking down these results by participant gender made no difference to these findings: Andrea was judged either incompetent or, if her competence was indubitable, unlikable—specifically, hostile, conniving, pushy, selfish, abrasive, manipulative, and untrustworthy. The researchers described these effects as dramatic.

As I wrote in my 2020 book, Entitled, and for The New York Times, there are things that can help women in these positions: they can be portrayed as caring, giving, and nurturing. But for all of the above reasons, and then some, I cannot see this mechanism being of much help to Harris in this context. She will surely be viciously attacked on these grounds, given the specifics of her social position and background. Being forewarned is being forearmed against the misogyny predictably leveled against any woman who dares to seek power actively.

More broadly, we need to be on the lookout for all of the perceptions, misperceptions, and double binds that dogged Clinton and Julia Gillard, the first female prime minister of Australia (my home country). Harris will be called too ambitious, too slick, too polished, too elitist, and a liar. She will be simultaneously made fun of for having so much as a hair out of place during a windy descent from her jet bridge. She will be expected to make mincemeat of Trump in the debate—and she will. But people will feel suspicious of her when she wipes the floor with him. Harris will need to be supremely, preternaturally competent and poised and flawless. And she’ll be punished for being so, and held to be less than authentic—“fake,” almost robotic, and somehow not quite human. The media will report these perceptions as if they’re just telling you what voters are concerned about. They will simultaneously give these perceptions traction and credibility—a kind of misogyny by proxy.

It’s a lie. It’s a trap. It’s a way to ensure she, and we, don’t win a race in which the stakes have never been higher. Ask yourself about the double binds that mean that Harris literally can’t win in terms of public perception and voter satisfaction. And, of course, if she can’t win, then Trump is going to triumph.

Opposing the misogynoir Harris is about to face loudly and vocally is the only way forward. The fate of our country hangs precariously in the balance.