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Resist. Persist.

Published by digby on February 8, 2017

Resist. Persist.

by digby

You have no doubt heard by now that Mitch McConnell shut down Elizabeth Warren from reading Coretta Scott King’s letter from 1986 criticising Jeff Sessions’ racist history on the floor of the Senate last night. His comment about it was:

“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless she persisted.”

When men speak about women as if they are 5 year olds refusing to obey their daddies, women get very … angry.

There are many layers of odiousness about what he did, but this was certainly part of it.

While Republican senators would, naturally, try to diminish any attempt, by either a male or female Democrat, to re-examine Sessions’s unsavory history on matters of race, I have my doubts whether they would have chosen the blunt-force method of silencing used against Warren had she been a man. I also wonder over the lengths to which they would go to erase Coretta Scott King’s letter had it been written by one of the eminent male civil rights leaders of the day. They know they’d have a much harder time getting away with such displays of contempt were their targets of the male persuasion. Institutional misogyny is so ingrained in the fiber of American culture that people of every stripe often fail to see in such attacks on women leaders the particular markers of that disease. But in our hearts, women know. Elizabeth Warren was effectively told, in the words of Politico’s Seung Min Kim, to “sit down—and shut up.” Any domestic violence expert will tell you that those are the sort of words that often precede the connection of a male fist to a female face…

Make no mistake: McConnell’s bullying of Elizabeth Warren for reading the words of Coretta Scott King was intended to convey to women—white, black, and of every other color and identity—just who’s boss.

That’s from a longer, must-read piece by Adele Stan in The American Prospect. It will make your blood oil.

Resist. Persist.

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