Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic candidate for President, has chosen a running mate.
This post is not about him.
I’ve noticed how much social media buzz there was around the fact that Ms. Harris was in the process of vetting and choosing. Something about the mere concept of that got tongues wagging, and fingers typing.
Why? Certainly we’ve seen candidates choose running mates before. This is nothing new.
Yet this time people were rather giddy about the prospect, somehow. Others described the process in terms of the television show The Bachelor (or is it the Bachelorette?)
Who will get the rose?
For some you could tell that the very concept of Harris choosing among an assortment of well-qualified professional men felt naughty, somehow. It poked at what they have come to assume is acceptable behavior.
And that’s it, right there. What puzzled and fascinated and absorbed our attention during that time of selection was more than a horse race of who would be chosen. It was purely the stunning realization that a woman gets to choose.
A woman gets to choose.
Yes, Hillary Clinton went through the same process in 2016 so you would think that this time around wouldn’t be so titillating. And yet it clearly has been. I’ve been pondering what might be different.
Popular culture is different, and the ages/generational identity of the people involved are different. The ages of the candidates are different. Of course the candidates themselves are different. All of this contributes to the stories people tell themselves about who is running and how the election process is unfolding.
But, more than anything else, it seems to me that so much of this particular election is about a woman’s right to chose. Will women regain the right to make their own choices about their own bodies? Will we lose the right to choose birth control? Will no-fault marriage laws be rescinded forcing women to stay in abusive marriages?
Could the Supreme Court really contemplate and re-adjudicate whether women have the right to vote?
Onto that canvas, swirling with the angry colors of those whose fantasies involve power and control over women, Vice President Harris has the audacity to make a choice.
In fact, she has the authority to do so.
That undoubtedly makes some folks angry. Others, as I have noted, have gotten a little bit giggly. Even as I have rolled my eyes a bit at the popular culture scenarios suggested on social media, the underlying message is clear: watching a woman have the authority to choose is a novelty. Things that are novelties get our attention, challenge our prior knowledge. We use whatever experiences we have to make sense of them.
The realm where most people see women being allowed to choose is in decisions of romantic attachment. (Hence, the images of The Bachelor and The Rose.) When you think about it, that’s ridiculous. Women have been in the workforce, owning and running businesses and even serving in elected office for years. Now a woman is running for president and all we can think of is the Dating Game?
And yet, that’s where we are. Social media and popular culture influence how we see and frame things for good or ill. Honestly, those viral images often come from deeply-held notions that people had already.
The right that women have in our country to exist as independent and valuable human beings with equal choices is under attack. In this election much of that hangs in the balance. So it is in that context that we watch a woman exercise her authority to choose a running mate for the highest office in the land and it somehow feels like the stuff of fantasy.
Oh, how I hope that we are able to move forward in the confidence that there is nothing novel about it. That there is nothing innately different or challenging in seeing a woman get to choose.
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