It has often been said by opponents of President-elect Donald Trump that he is the warped embodiment of everything regarded ugly about American culture, from his avarice to his corruption to his dietary staple of processed cheeseburgers. While I have no desire to draw a false equivalency between the flaws of the two candidates for the 2024 presidency, Kamala Harris was likewise a cultural cardboard cut-out, personifying what is so wrong with modern progressivism. Her vapidity, her patronising, Disneyfied messaging of “joy” and “kindness” and “lifting people up” over astute vision, the disdain for those with more socially moderate or conservative outlooks. Most of all, the palpable sense that she — and by extension, the current incarnation of the Democrats and wider left — have no real grasp on how people think outside their very insulated bubble. 

Was she really the best the left had to offer?

Had Harris beaten Trump and become the first female President of the United States and leader of the free world, she would have shattered what is, to quote Hillary Clinton, “the highest, hardest glass-ceiling”. It would have been a feminist victory only in the most superficial sense though. The fact that — as her opponents (rightfully) gloated again and again — “She doesn’t even know what a women is!” is only the tip of much bigger problem. Look, women and racial minorities are always going to be held to disproportionate standards when it comes to being elected political leaders compared to white or male counterparts but the EDI ethos the left has tried to combat this dismaying reality with does more harm than good. Harris was literally dubbed the ‘EDI candidate’ by opponents and while undoubtedly there exists some people who would have labelled her as such even if she had been a visionary stateswoman, the point stands she was not. 

For what its worth though, I suspect Harris has a lot more depth and principle than she was allowed to show throughout her campaign — the absence of any concrete policy, with the exception of abortion, was clearly a tactic in order to keep the emphasis on Orange Man Crazy.  I daresay she even does know what biological sex is. But what competency she might have been hiding is irrelevant to the image she projected. In answer to the incredulous demand of many: was she really the best the left had to offer? I propose…yes. My hypothesis for that is what the mainstream left — and much more painfully, mainstream feminism — has crystallised into in the last decade, actively disincentivises women from displaying actual leadership traits. 

Earlier this year, I was a contributor in a Sunday Times bestselling anthology of essays entitled The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, published in the USA on the 19th November. It documents the (ultimately successful) fight on Scottish women’s part against the erasure of sex-based rights in law. My co-essayist and fellow feminist campaigner Nicole Jones writes in her chapter about what she has coined as “the war on competency” that has emerged from this particularly ludicrous issue progressive institutions have obsessed themselves with. Another co-essayist, poet and writer Jenny Lindsay cites this idea and explores it further in her recently published book Hounded: Women, Harms, And The Gender Wars. Put simply, it doesn’t seem a coincidence that a lot of the women who have suffered massive attempts to destroy their livelihoods — whether it succeeded or failed — happened to be ones who were, as Lindsay puts it, were “at the top of their game”. Professor Kathleen Stock, Professor Jo Phoenix, J.K. Rowling, Joanna Cherry KC, Allison Bailey, Lindsay herself. Alongside those who were genuine devouts in the church of gender, there were plenty of envious ill-wishers who capitalised on the chance to knock out a worthy adversary — and it was not just men who got in on this.

It’s important to look beyond the gender row™ to understand the far more grim truth underpinning this. The mistreatment of women by women who go against the grain on the left — namely on gender identity but also on racial politics, Brexit or whether positive discrimination is indeed positive — has betrayed a major cognitive dissonance at the heart of mainstream feminism. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a sisterhood sceptic and I don’t believe that the jealousy towards the aforementioned women listed  — Bailey, Cherry, Stock etc — is strictly professional. A lot of it is character envy. 

For all the intersectional feminist warbling about gender diversity and how there’s no right way to be a women, there seems to be a palpable loathing for women who genuinely break the mould. Women famously stick together in numbers and what the women hounded in the gender wars have shown is that they are brave enough to stand — at least temporarily — alone and face down a mob, to keep saying no and keep speaking the truth regardless of how much their voice is shaking. No shouting, no screaming, no whinging or emotional manipulation, just calm, rational assertion. What marks a leader better than integrity and courage in the face of such social pressure?

The political right, as ironic as it sounds, displays more tolerance for women with balls

The war on female competency then is a war on female stoicism. Back in secondary school, I once had the alpha mean girl scream in my face and I made myself stay utterly unresponsive, blinking steadily and holding her eye. The more I refused to cry or cower, the more hysterical she got and tried to enlist more and more friends to break me. My aforementioned friend Nicole Jones had a similar experience when, as she recounted in a episode of The Lesbian Project, she went along to a feminist meeting at Edinburgh University and, by virtue of being able to eloquently express the ‘gender critical’ argument, left them aghast and hostile. Not because of her words but because she had to audacity to say them — and not break under the pressure to conform when they ganged up on her. Amidst the eye-rolling and glares, she made the private observation “they weren’t doing it for me, they were doing it so they could see each other doing it”. This female social dynamic is regrettably found in every progressive sector, as countless women will attest and, as well as the psychological ramifications of such hivemindery, the greatest cost has been the intellectual price to feminism and the broader left.

Over the past week, I’ve seen various Democrat-leaning elites lamenting that America will not have a female president in their lifetime. I completely disagree. I think it will happen sooner rather than later but that she will be a Republican. And the simple reason for that is that the political right, as ironic as it sounds, displays more tolerance for women with balls. This is not to glorify the right or disregard its own hypocrisies and failings — from a feminist standpoint or otherwise — nor is it to oversimplify things. But that rightwing ethos is coded towards the traditionally masculine dynamic of ‘task first, relationships second’ mean they are much better than the feminine-coded left at rallying around someone they may personally find disagreeable. Given that being disagreeable is one of the most socially unacceptable things a woman can be — punished just as badly for it by her own sex, there’s less chance in conservative circles this will work against her ambition prospects. If you take the two main UK parties for instance, this accounts at least partly why the Conservative party have just elected their fourth female leader whereas the Labour party has had none, despite being the party much more aligned with the politics of “equality and inclusion”.

Until progressivism and “intersectionality” stops holding women in such a scold’s bridle , they will face a near-impossible task of balancing honesty and rationality with the constant threat of facing a coup by the triggered in their ranks. Consider: during Kemi Badenoch’s leadership bid, she made the comment during an interview that “not all cultures are equally valid”, citing cultures that permit child marriage as an example. People more left-wing than me would concede this in private (I invite anyone who genuinely wouldn’t to defend the Iraqi government’s decision to lower the age of consent to nine). The public reaction from the left was predictable shouting about “racist dog-whistles” and Islamophobia. Had Badenoch been leading Labour, I’d bet handsome money that she would have been made to, at best, issue an apology or, at worst, get thrown out the race. Not because what she said was contextually untrue, not because the broader issues of illegal immigration and changing British population isn’t something vitally important to discuss for national security, but because it might hypothetically make someone — or a group of people — feel unsafe. Any leader who is beholden to such empathy-based fecklessness — such as Harris — is unsafe. (Aside: “But Trump is even more unsafe!” and that, generally, men get off much lighter with incompetency than women is besides the point I’m making.)

I have no clue how the left climbs out of this rut nor do I know how the feminist brand unclaws itself from the grasp of mediocrity and meangirlism but I do know — and I speak for many, many women on the left — I am sick of it. Whether it’s Claudine Gay , Sandy Brindley, Nicola Sturgeon or Kamala Harris, I’m tired of vapid incompetency supercharged by luxury beliefs that harm women’s rights and lobotomise critical thinking, being the face of female empowerment. Especially given the unbelievable horrors and challenges women across world are facing; horrors that grassroots feminists ARE trying to fight against an uphill battle of, not only rampant misogyny, but elite, self-serving careerists chattering over them.

I don’t say this with much hope but should the girlboss she/hers of the left ever feel like engaging with those on their side they have branded — actively or passively — “TERFS”, “SWERFS”, “Islamophobes” or just plain “Problematic” ever feel like practising robust, rational arguments, the golden bridge remains open. For now, I invite them to consider that if they really want to understand why society seems to show such hostility towards strong female leaders, they might want to start by looking in the mirror.