Nancy Pelosi is no feminist icon
Does the fact that more than 11,500 children have been slaughtered in the past four months in Gaza bother you at all? Are you in any way disturbed that 100,000 Palestinians are, according to the World Health Organization, “either dead, injured or missing and presumed dead”? Are you desperate for the bloodshed and misery to end?
If you answered yes to any of the above then, congratulations, you are officially a Russian operative! Yep, I’m sorry to break it to you but it seems Vladimir Putin is pulling your strings. Or, to be fair, it might also be China who is manipulating you. That’s also a very strong possibility.
Such is the logic of one Nancy Pelosi. The former speaker of the House has suggested dark forces are behind calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. In October, for example, she told pro-Palestinian protesters from the group Code Pink to “go back to China” where their “headquarters is”. (It seems that Pelosi was referencing a New York Times article which claimed Code Pink has links to the Chinese government.)
Then, in January, Pelosi appeared to decide Putin is to blame for all these pesky people who are desperate to stop kids getting bombed. In a recent interview with CNN, Pelosi said that calling for a ceasefire “is Mr Putin’s message”. She added: “I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.” She provided no evidence to back this up.
When asked to clarify whether the thinks pro-Palestinian activists were “Russian plants”, Pelosi replied: “Seeds or plants. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”
There have been, I should note, lots of investigations into what’s happening in Gaza at the moment. The international court of justice recently said, for example, that although it will not make a final determination right now on whether Israel is guilty of genocide, it is “plausible”. Human Rights Watch has said: “The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime.” But Pelosi doesn’t seem particularly concerned about these investigations – she wants the FBI to look at peace protesters. Amid unspeakable human suffering, what seems to bother Pelosi the most is the fact that there are people asking for all this to stop.
A survey in November found that 61% of Americans – and 76% of Democrats – support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. It is not a fringe position. The fact that Pelosi seems to think that Putin must somehow be behind ceasefire protests says a lot about how little she thinks of Palestinians. And it speaks volumes about how dehumanized Palestinians are in the west. So dehumanized that the New York Times sees nothing wrong with letting one of its star columnists write a piece titled “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom”. So dehumanized that American lawmakers face zero consequences for saying things like Gaza will be “eviscerated” and “turned into a parking lot”. So dehumanized that one of the most powerful women in American politics thinks sympathizing with Palestinians makes you a Russian plant.
For all her concern about foreign meddling in US politics, it’s also interesting, by the way, that the former House speaker doesn’t seem too bothered about the influence of pro-Israel lobbies when it comes to the Israel-Gaza war. The Guardian, for example, recently found that “Congress members who were more supportive of Israel at the start of the Gaza war received over $100,000 more on average from pro-Israel donors during their last election than those who most supported Palestine”. Slate has also reported that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) is expected to spend at least $100m in the Democratic primaries to unseat progressive Democrats who have been calling for a ceasefire.
Pelsoi is often lauded as a feminist hero. There is a lot of truth to that portrayal. She has broken through numerous gendered barriers and pushed through important legislation. She has taken a number of progressive stances, including opposing the Iraq war and fighting for LGBTQ+ rights before it was fashionable to do so. But there is a deeply reactionary side to her as well – as her slanderous and borderline racist comments about ceasefire protestors demonstrate. The former speaker also has a problematic history of publicly belittling young progressive women of colour in the Democratic party. While there is no denying that she has done a lot of good in office, the 83-year-old increasingly seems more and more like an out-of-touch reactionary multimillionaire rather than a feminist trailblazer. But, hey, I would say that, wouldn’t I? Putin told me to.
Joe Biden says he doesn’t want ‘abortion on demand’
Reproductive rights are at the center of Biden’s re-election campaign. Yet the president can’t seem to stop himself from expressing ambivalence about the issue. Last year, for example, he noted that he’s “not big on abortion”. And, speaking at a fundraiser this week, Biden said: “I’m a practicing Catholic. I don’t want abortion on demand, but I thought Roe v Wade was right.”
What on earth does Biden think he is saying here? Is he saying he wants abortion by lottery, instead? Abortion with a three-month waiting list? It’s beyond infuriating that, in this critical moment, Biden is echoing rightwing talking points that frame abortion as something frivolous and selfish. Abortion, of course, is neither of those things: it is healthcare. Yet Biden doesn’t seem convinced of this himself. As Moira Donegan has written in the Guardian: “What the Biden campaign is offering American women … is that his administration might be willing to make minimal efforts to stop the people who are working maximally hard to make it worse.” American women deserve so much better.
France is suffering from ‘an unprecedented decline’ in sexual activity
And the French are not the only ones experiencing a sex recession – it’s an international problem.
Rishi Sunak made an anti-trans joke in front of the mother of a murdered trans teenager
The prime minister of Britain then refused to apologize for the joke.
Antidepressant use higher for women around breakups than men
This might be linked to the fact that women tend to be in a weaker financial position than men following a divorce and less likely to re-partner.
Black women in the US are, on average, six times more likely to be murdered than white women
That’s according to a new study in the Lancet that looks at homicide trends among women between ages 25 and 44. In Wisconsin, Black women were 20 times more likely to be murdered than white women in 2019 and 2020.
Why the world should be celebrating beer-brewing Saint Brigid
I, for one, will always celebrate a woman who can turn muddy water into ale.
The week in pawtriarchy
An anti-ageing pill for dogs has entered clinical trials. The first participant? An 11-year-old whippet called Boo. It’s too early to know how effective the pill is yet but we do know that Boo wolfs the meat-flavoured pills down with gusto.
