It’s often hard to feel sorry for politicians because one day’s victim can turn around and be equally offensive to someone else the next. However, it has to be acknowledged that female politicians the world over have a tougher time than their male counterparts.
If they are not married, their sexual preferences are queried or they are ridiculed for not being able to find a partner. Married or not — and with or without children — their maternal instincts are mocked, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, among others, can attest. Either way, they are challenged as men rarely are for putting their career over or before a partner and family.
The recent smear campaign — that is the only way to describe it — launched by one-time democracy activist and darling of the international human rights world turned publicity hound Shih Ming-teh (施明德) against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential hopeful Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) shows that even a man who spent more than 25 years in prison for his political beliefs can be just as misogynistic as the average male chauvinist.
On April 14, while making a plug for Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良), one of Tsai’s rivals for the DPP presidential nomination process, Shih said Tsai should “clarify” her sexual orientation because voters “deserved a clear answer” before deciding on a candidate.
Earlier in the day he had attacked the third DPP hopeful, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), not by questioning his sexual preferences, but over his democratic credentials. Neither Su nor Tsai had played a key role in Taiwan’s democracy movement in the 1970s and 1980s, Shih said, adding that not a “single one” of the key democratic trailblazers like himself had gone on to high-level government roles.
If a trailblazer is defined, as Shih appeared to be doing, as someone who was imprisoned for his or her political activism, then once again his misogyny was shining through by ignoring former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) or Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) — his co-defendants in the Kaohsiung Incident trial.
Lu and Chen have certainly blazed trails — and they have battled critics questioning their unmarried state along the way.
Lu was frequently mocked during her years as a legislator over her marital status, not to mention the nationwide snickering that ensued in December 2001 when another publicity hound, Tung Nien-tai (董念台), dressed in a flashy tuxedo and armed with a huge bouquet of roses, attempted to lead a 24-car motorcade to the Presidential Office to propose to then-vice president Lu. Stopped by police, Tung first accused Lu of not having the decency to refuse him to his face, then said she was “not good enough” to marry him. Two months later, another alleged suitor spent a fortune to erect a large billboard along a Changhua County highway declaring his love for Lu.
Far too many people thought it was okay for these two men to try and humiliate Lu because she was in her late 50s and not married. Was she supposed to be gratified that any man thought of marrying her?
Misogyny is no laughing matter, and neither is Shih’s attempt to smear Tsai. It seems unlikely Shih would really want to see his suggestion carried out equally — to say that any man running for office must “clarify” his sexuality or that married politicians must “clarify” if they have mistresses or lovers or if they beat their wives/husbands/partners or children.
However, this is not really a question of sexual identity or gay rights as much as it is yet another attempt to denigrate and sideline a female politician with a sexually based offensive. And it is disheartening to be reminded that someone who once fought so hard for democracy remains so anachronistic in his thinking.
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