Senator Elizabeth Warren at the Capitol on Wednesday, a day after Republicans voted to prevent her from reading a letter by Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor.Credit
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Was there a woman who didn’t recognize herself in the specter of Elizabeth Warren silenced by a roomful of men?
The explosion of indignation, mockery and
free
publicity that greeted Tuesday night’s move to prevent Senator Warren from reading a letter about Senator Jeff Sessions written by Coretta Scott King resonates with so many women precisely because they have been there, over and over again. At a meeting where you speak up, only to be cut off by a man. Where your ideas are ignored until a man repeats them and then they are pure genius — or, simply, acknowledged.
Being interrupted or ignored, and being one of the few women in the room, can be both inhibiting and enraging. You check your own perception: Was I being too aggressive, or did I really have a point? Is this about being a woman, or something else?
Raising questions of a double standard, male Democratic senators including
Bernie Sanders
of Vermont and Jeff Merkley
of Oregon later read into the record the very same letter that Senator Warren was reading when the Senate voted, along strict party lines, to ban her from further debate on the nomination of Mr. Sessions as attorney general.
The firestorm came as liberal women have placed themselves in the vanguard of opposition to the administration of President Trump. Casting him as anti-woman, they cite the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, when Mr. Trump boasted of forcing himself on women; his comments that women who criticized him were ugly and overweight; a cabinet with four women in a sea of men; and policies including restricting access to abortion and contraception.
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Axios that Mr. Trump wants his female staff members to “dress like women” — whatever that is supposed to mean — inspired a separate round of Twitter mockery, with posts of female soldiers, astronauts and firefighters.
Yet talking over women, or shutting them down, is a bipartisan exercise. During the Obama administration, women in the White House banded together to work on “amplification,” taking care in meetings to repeat other women’s points and give women credit for ideas they had first raised.
Loren DeJonge Schulman, who worked 10 years at the Department of Defense and the National Security Council in the Obama administration, has vivid memories of watching men bridle as senior women challenged them. “The constant allegation from the Department of Defense was that the National Security Council was micromanaging them,” said Ms. Schulman, now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “Is it really micromanagement, or are you complaining about women nagging?”
The unpalatable truth is that women encounter this behavior in most professions. It often comes from well-intentioned men who are horrified when it is pointed out or oblivious when it is going on, as well as those who are less enlightened.
Indeed, Senator Mitch McConnell’s condescending defense of the vote to silence Senator Warren prompted the creation of a social media meme and new
rallying cry: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”
Under the hashtag #shepersisted, women posted pictures of their own personal heroines from Coretta Scott King to Rosa Parks, Margaret Sanger and Ruby Bridges, who integrated her elementary school in New Orleans.
Elizabeth Warren is no shrinking violet, and she clearly won this skirmish, if not her larger battle to stop the confirmation of Senator Sessions. Most women have learned how to shrug these episodes off and muster to fight again. Unfortunately,
research
suggests that they too often pay a price, being labeled too aggressive. Tuesday night was another reminder, as if many women needed it, that speaking up remains an arduous and necessary task.
McConnell's behavior, shutting down Elizabeth Warren was disgusting, and undermines his role as a leader. He should be censored by the Senate. He and allies have indicated they will not work across the aisle or treat their Democratic colleagues with the respect due them. We've already seen them ram through cabinet nominees, pull tantrums, make secret deals, and ignore the very rules they screamed about when President Obama was in office. They don't believe in fair-play and they are reducing the stature of Congress day by day. The hurt they want to put on the opposition is going to hurt them. If only we didn't have to pay.
When history is written, this senate will go down as one of the worst, if not the worst, it will still be regarded as one that is despised by the majority of the voters.
Many of the GOP senators are in office due to states that have a minority of voters. In states like Oklahoma and Idaho, they are in office because they have the money and visibility to the public that better candidates do not.
Several of them dispute scientific fact such as evolution and the cause of climate change. Some consider the bible as the ultimate word even regarding geological forces such as those that created the Grand Canyon. They empower a nation of ignoramuses.
Some of them have constituents that believe the U.S. has to act tough and tell other countries how to act, and these senators approve of that. They believe diplomacy is for wimps, that it makes us look weak. As we hear that is Trump's mantra, with a core of those who think beating others up is the answer to making the U.S. great again, whatever that means.
Senator Warren challenges their inflated views of themselves, their manliness is in question, but when in a face off with another male, they show their true nature, cowardice. Yes the country is being run by cowards, petty little satraps with no redeeming qualities, just acquiescence to the big despot and his followers of quivering rodents in the backwoods of the country.
I heard today the real reason McConnell whipped out the Rule 19 excuse to silence Warren is the fact she really gets under their skin. In other words, she's smart, won't hold back, and doesn't stand in awe of the men.
It's the only reason I can think to explain why four other male Democratic senators were "allowed" to read the very same letter by Coretta Scott King as evidence against the qualifications of Sessions. Just more proof of hypocrisy on the part of Mitch.
It is stunning that after Elizabeth Warren was silenced, three of her male colleagues in the Senate were allowed to read the letter of Coretta Scott King, Senator Tom Udall asking that it be included in the written record, to no objections.
"Be quiet, men are talking." I'm 46, and have been hearing this from men my entire life. I've had to develop strategies at work around this (not all jobs), and it usually involves having an ally or groups of allies that make sure I stay in the loop. But with elder relatives, I'm still figuring out how to navigate.
I am a man and I have committed these acts. Without looking for an excuse where there is none and while saying that we all are products of our upbringing, a good part of being a decent human being is to offer apologies to people we have wronged when needed and continually correct our ways. Not easy to do but good for the soul.
As humans, we are all learning wrong ways as well as good ways, and the "Know Thyself" from Socrates is the marker for behavioral changes.
Men (and some women), sometimes, need to get red in the face, apologize and aim to be better.
Bad manners shows up in all races, all genders and all humans.
Blowhards such as Trump, Mitch McConnell, or Coulter (and many others) are definitely instances of people who need to repeatedly be put in their place if we are to be decent toward one another as a nation.
I will go as far as saying that if one could catch Mrs. Trump or Mrs. McConnell or whoever puts up with Coulter, they probably would make a grimace that would speak volumes.
Dear (not meant to be endearing, just respectful) Mr. McConnell, you have now joined the list of the most outrageously biased and hypocritical people ever to hold office in the US Senate. We already knew you were no stranger to the world of the undignified, the shameful, the lower than low power mongers. You have been warned - you are on the list of powerful women who won't shut up because you say so, who will make sure your name goes down in history as THE lead pimp to Jeff Sessions and his inhumane and ignorant boss. Sincerely, American women (who you can count on to remember your actions every minute of every day from this day forward.
"Well-behaved women rarely make history." Let's applaud Senator Warren and all the other women who will not be dismissed, silenced, or diminished. They deserve positive recognition and leadership. Cowards like McConnell and Trump don't.
Elizabeth Warren silenced? Really? She went immediately out on the street and on public media and made her same points with double volume and exposure.
Her speech was designed to bait Mitch McConnell and draw a Republican backlash, and succeeded. I personally deplore her politics, but I admire her spunk and chutzpah. She will NEVER be silent or even soft-spoken. But she might benefit from saving her most vitriolic outpourings and vociferous attacks for more critical issues. For the record I strongly oppose the nomination of Jefferson Sessions.
What a dark, dark thing of McConnel to do. She was not discussing a senator, but rather a nominee of the presidents. In essence this what this says is that if a president nominates a senior for a job, then other senators cannot speak truth about the nominee. That is simply called a muzzle. I'm so glad EW is not anybodies dog.
Seems to me that the "silencing" of Elizabeth Warren was a purely hypothetical injury given the predictable "let's defend our progressive darling" reaction on social media, general media, etc. that was bound to occur and the immediate speculating that exploded over the news about "Warren's 2020 presidential run", etc. If you are aware that you're going to become a rockstar within a few hours for doing it, I'm not sure that deliberately disobeying your own lawmaking body's procedures is either very courageous or worthy of much sympathy.
Oh, please. Here we go. First a desperate attempt to make it about race, and now to make it about her gender.
What was she thinking reading something that goes back decades? Granted anyone who claimed "racism" under Obama had an immediate audience, but things have changed, and Senator Warren is clearly having trouble adapting. In that regard, she's the perfect symbol for the unhinged anti-Trump left.
My own view is that she appears slightly unhinged whenever she's on screen. My guess is that her days in office are probably numbered if she doesn't do more than yell her opposition.
I had a disagreement with management at a job in the past when I was passed over to work on a project because, straight from the male manager's lips in front of the whole team, "no one would take a woman seriously" on the project. I objected to that and asked to be considered based on merit. It was a big Thing. The biggest kicker of the whole fiasco was when I was admonished to apologize to the manager for "making him uncomfortable." LOL, no. I ended up on the project and was a top performer. I was warned. I was given an explanation. Nevertheless, I persisted.
(By way of ending the tale, of course I did not stick around that odious place long-term. Somehow the company was blindsided when I quit some months later [having taken the time and care to develop a strategy to exit on MY terms]. And shocked yet again that I would turn them down for work during a period I was unemployed. I persisted then, I persist now, and I will persist in the future.)
We will not be silenced! To see Mitch McConnell's fiendish glow in his eye in suppressing Elizabeth Warren's speech was to uncover his deep hatred of women and of free speech. What a horrible specter of oppression! He should be tarred and feathered as the treasonous tyrant that he is! Trump crossed all boundaries in sexually assaulting women, and Mitch the Miasma assaults our fundamental liberties. Put them in stocks and stifle their tongues as the warlocks that they are.
This Senate Republicans are showing their true colors towards women. Silencing a woman who is talking and then letting men do THE SAME THIING without being silenced. Moving a male candidate forward (Pudzner) who has hired an undocumentedl nanny when that derailed Zoe Baird, a female candidate. You go, Elizabeth Warren, for going down still talking. Let's all get out there and persist!
I believe that this is such a battle for all of us. I have experienced constantly within the work place. It is just proof that this continues to exist at all levels from the very bottom to the very top. How will this ever change?
Once again, the Republican Party leadership shows that is has broken faith with America and in this case particularly with American women. Those to whom a spoken truth is a threat are most likely to attempt to silence it.
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