Amid early calls for her to run for president in 2020, a lengthy New York magazine profile of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., published Tuesday created a strange picture of the 50-year-old politician.
In her interviews with author Rebecca Traister, Gillibrand seemed to make a deliberate effort to speak in less-than-couth language, peppering her answers with words like “dude” and “pissed” more commonly heard in middle school lunchrooms than the halls of the Capitol. The piece quoted Gillibrand, on the record, using variations of the f-word three times, complemented by one use of “bullshit.”
Though our current president pretty clearly tore down the cussing barrier in his campaign last year, Gillibrand’s coarse parlance came across as oddly-placed, almost as though she was making a real effort to look like the cool parent on the club soccer sideline.
Even worse, Gillibrand, a vocal proponent of feminism, made some questionable statements about women.
Defending her flip-flop on gun control, the junior senator invoked being a “young mother with babies and tons of hormones” during meetings with victims of gun violence as an impetus for her policy shift.
She also claimed women legislate differently than men in Congress, explaining, “When we do our legislation, we’re not trying to figure out how can I use this to run against you.” More females in Congress, Gillibrand believes, would result in “less partisan bickering.”
Conservatives, of course, are more than happy to embrace the everyday impacts of men’s and women’s biological gender differences, but feminists always reflexively swat away assertions that hormones impact political choices. Here, Gillibrand is openly suggesting her hormones were partially responsible for a major policy shift.
Though I agree that men and women are biologically different, do Gillibrand’s contemporaries in the women’s movement really think it’s productive for her to be perpetuating the idea that hormones impact female lawmaker’s decisions? Even Carly Fiorina once rebuffed that suggestion.
The “intersectional” feminists who dominate today’s movement argue that gender exists on a spectrum, distancing themselves from their foremothers who often embraced the belief that women’s unique biological differences made them more empathetic and compassionate in the workplace.
As a conservative, it’s almost refreshing to hear an influential contemporary feminist such as Gillibrand return to those perspectives. But does she understand how out-of-touch that language is with her ideological peers?
Beyond those issues, the profile contained other strange anecdotes.
For instance, for a senator to tell a reporter that the president of the United States is giving her “constant anxiety dreams” that wake her in the middle of the night to think, “Oh my God, I’ve got to f——-g order those cookies. I’m terrible! I didn’t respond properly!” about a conversation with a Girl Scout is just bizarre.
Looking past those distractions, Gillibrand genuinely came across as intelligent and sincere — but the profile overall still felt like a poorly-executed effort to seem relatable.
If Gillibrand is looking to make a run in 2020, interviews such as this one will not help.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
