Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

By their own logic, feminists should support Marine Le Pen

Why aren’t feminists lining up behind Le Pen? I thought women had a moral responsibility to back women standing for office? That’s certainly what they said during the Hillary-Trump clash. Yes, I am voting for Hillary because she’s a woman, because she ‘knows what it’s like to menstruate, be pregnant, give birth’, said one American feminist. So does Le Pen. She has three children. According to the rather crude biologism of feminist identitarianism, that makes her an even better candidate than Hillary, who has one kid. So why the silence, feminists? Aren’t you ‘With Her’?

Looking back at the Hillary love-in, its remarkable how much it hinged on ‘Hillary’s a woman’. Robust talk about Hillary’s ideas and policies — her cosyness with Wall St, her role in plunging Libya into bloody mayhem — was actively discouraged in favour of basically saying: ‘America needs its first female president.’

Indeed, you could find yourself branded misogynistic for daring to raise Hillary’s dodgy political decisions. This search for ‘dark deeds’ in her political life is a ‘misogynistic horror show’, said a writer for the Guardian. The core vibe of the Hillary campaign was, ‘How can you talk about her past or policies — she’d be the first female president, for God’s sake?!’ The question now is why that isn’t being said of Le Pen: ‘Ignore her hard-right policies and the old photos of her with fascists — she’d be the first female president of France, for God’s sake!’ That’s the logical feminist position.

Back in 2016, the gender-trumps-policy argument was everywhere. American feminist and Guardian contributor Kate Harding said: ‘I intend to vote with my vagina.’ Voting for Hillary ‘just because she’s a woman’ is a ‘damned solid reason’, she said. Would Harding back Le Pen? After all, Le Pen has a vagina, and Emmanuel Macron has a penis, just as every other bloody French president in history has had a penis.

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