The Real Woman’s Club

Although I’m super happy with how the election turned out, an uncomfortable thought occurred to me as I was watching PBS’s tearful celebration of Kamala Harris’s numerous glass-ceiling breakthroughs: Would they be celebrating her thus if she was a Republican? I doubt it.

I remember my 8th-grade teacher telling us that all of the problems of the world would vanish overnight if women were in charge. War and hunger would cease to exist if women were running the show. I said: “What about Margaret Thatcher?” She said: “Thatcher’s not a real woman.” I said: “What about Ayn Rand?” She said: “Rand’s not a real woman.”

I brought up a few more examples and, as you might expect, I got more or less the same answer. I was young, so it took awhile; but eventually it became clear to me that, for her, a “real woman” was a woman who shared her politics.

I must confess that this was surprising to me. I had already realized, much to my chagrin, that all men were not “real men”. But it was surprising to realize that, when you pierced through the rhetoric of sisterhood, The Real Woman’s Club was every bit as exclusive as The Real Man’s Club.

What gives us the right to decide who does and doesn’t belong to The Real Woman’s Club, or The Real POC’s Club? Look, I’ll readily admit that there are some fairly clear-cut cringeworthy cases—people like Clarence Thomas, who reminds me of John Turturro’s character in The Plot Against America (2020). But it’s much harder to excommunicate Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell from The Real POC’s Club.