My Long-Time Conservative Mom Broke Up With Her Boyfriend After His Remarks About Kamala Harris
How misogynistic statements like these undercut the achievements of women everywhere.
Syda Productions | Canva I grew up in a conservative household. My mother spent her thirties and forties driving around in a car with a Pro-Life license plate, which makes the below event even more surprising.
“I broke up with my boyfriend,” my sixty-nine-year-old mother said a few weeks ago.
“You did?” I asked. When my mother first started dating during the pandemic, she went through men-like matches, but this boyfriend had been a constant for a couple of years. “Why?” I pressed.
She thumbed her phone and averted my gaze.
My long-time conservative mom revealed she broke up with her boyfriend because he said Vice-President Kamala Harris slept her way to the top.
"I kinda lost it on him," she said. When my mother feels passionate about something, there’s no holding her back. My three sisters and I know that with certainty. I gulped. “You did,” I said.
“I just couldn’t believe he would say something so asinine. It’s one thing to disagree with her policies. That I can respect, but to undermine her achievements. She’s a law school graduate who was a publicly elected attorney general and senator. It’s so sexist for him to say that,” my mother said.
Knowing the debunked rumors, I nodded along. According to fact-checking by Time Magazine, Vice President Harris dated Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California State Assembly in the 1990s. VP Harris was elected state attorney general from 2011–2017 and served in the Senate from 2017 until 2021 when she became Vice President.
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Linking Vice President Harris' success to a relationship in the 1990s undercuts not just her but women everywhere who face similar sexist statements, yet another way to link a woman’s success to a man.
“It was so hard for women to achieve, and people still like to belittle their achievements and take the wind out of their sails,” my mother continued.
Her blue eyes caught mine. At that moment, she reminded me of my grandmother, an ardent women’s rights advocate. During the pandemic, my mother took care of my grandmother.
In spending that time together, my grandmother passed the torch of her passion for women’s rights to my mother. My heart melted. “You thought of grandma,” I said.
“You are darn right I did. Men have no clue what it’s like for women, especially years ago. She couldn’t even buy her first car without her father or brother co-signing because she was unmarried.”
I shook my head in agreement. “You should write about this,” my mother said.
“Are you sure?” I shrugged. Being vulnerable about myself is one thing; being vulnerable about my loved ones is another. (Except for my husband, who willingly allows me to discuss our married life in essay after essay.)
“Yes, I want you to write it because it needs to be said. I am from a long line of women’s rights advocates, and the buck won’t stop with them.”
I smiled because when I write my “feminist” essays, I hear my grandmother on my shoulder whispering in my ear: “Progress doesn’t happen from inaction.”
Despite everything women like my grandmother did to pave the road to equality, comments like Vice President Harris “sleeping her way to the top” and referring to her as a “childless cat-lady” illustrate how rocky that road still is.
Society will still believe the worst rumors about a woman while ignoring the worst facts about men. It also demonstrates how society still undervalues women’s potential in leadership roles.
An emerging body of research from Yale University has shown people simply don’t see potential in women in the same way that they do men. The article cited a study in which participants ranked male candidates highly if they focused on their potential but held females to much higher standards or overlooked their leadership potential completely. This double standard also filtered over to politics, highlighting that women must build up years of experience, accomplishments, and recognition to be credible.
Zoe Chance, an assistant professor at Yale School of Management, stated that women must “compete on their record” and “men can compete on their vision.” Even then, people will collaterally undermine a woman’s political record with sexist comments.
If you are a man, you can have five children with three wives, have never held political office before running for the presidency, and be commended and labeled untouchable. But, if you are a woman, you can have two stepchildren from one spouse, be a former elected attorney general and senator, and be a current vice president and be deemed a childless cat lady and labeled unelectable.
We also see this perceived inferiority from the conversations surrounding how to pronounce VP Harris’s first name. People ask me left and right, “What do you think about Kamala?”
I always respond, “You mean VP Harris?” Why is her first name relevant at all? When was the last time anyone referred to President Clinton as “Bill” or to President Bush as “George.” Call her Vice President Harris, and how to pronounce her first name becomes as irrelevant as the rumors that she slept her way to the top.
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Like my mother said to her boyfriend, you can disagree with her policies without undermining her based on sexist innuendos.
My mother’s close friend, who’s also a conservative, agreed. She said she was a manager at her corporate job and dealt with similar statements that undercut her successes.
As a woman, I know I stand on the shoulders of all the other women who have pushed for equality. It is that spirit that keeps pushing me forward. As a single mother in the fifties, my grandmother fought for women at every turn.
She marched for the National Organization for Women (NOW), including marching to the New York governor’s office to advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment. Even into her 90s, she advocated for women’s rights.
When I got to college and began studying legal history, only then could I appreciate her struggles. She had been raised in a world where she was treated as a second-class citizen, where she needed a husband or father to co-sign for her car loan even though she had a job, where she was judged for being a single parent even though her husband was an alcoholic and abusive.
I realized I had no clue what it was like to live in a world without equality, where you were vulnerable to not only the world but to laws that were used as a weapon instead of a shield, where coat-hanger abortions weren’t just a card from Cards Against Humanity.
I didn’t know what it was like to live in that world because my grandmother had fought to give me and other women a better one. Her mother also did her share of paving the road to equality, attending community meetings, and working full-time as a nurse in New York for almost sixty years. She helped carry her family through the Great Depression and World War II.
My mother also worked as a nurse and raised four head-strong independent daughters. Just as her own mother inspires her, I’m inspired by her. When she divorced at the age of thirty-five, my mother put herself through nursing school with four children to be able to provide for us.
None of their success was due to a man but due to hard work and commitment. I recently returned to full-time work as an attorney to keep their torch of equality burning.
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Despite this and all the progress that has been made, it is clear progress still needs to be made. I tell my children exactly what my grandmother told me: you can’t control the dialogue if you do not have a seat at the table.
You can’t expect anyone else to fight your fight and advocate for you. You have to advocate for yourself. And I have to fight for my children like my grandmother fought for me.
My mother did end up reuniting with her boyfriend after discussing the issue with him, but I’m proud of her for sticking up for herself. She said her boyfriend better understands why such statements are harmful. He told her he hadn’t thought about it before. I’m glad my mother is helping to frame the narrative away from sexist statements and towards aptitude.
My grandmother was inspired by her mother (a nurse who worked full-time during World War II). My mother was inspired by my grandmother (a nurse and single parent in the fifties). My mother (a nurse who raised four head-strong independent daughters) inspires me.
We must be the inspiration for the next generation. Our daughters are watching and listening. How people speak about Vice President Harris and women generally could be how society will talk about our daughters and their achievements one day.
Politically and in corporate America, we must call out inappropriate characterizations of women based on their sex, looks, and marital status and focus the discussion on what’s relevant: their capabilities, policies, education, and achievements.
Julie Calidonio is a writer, lawyer, and mother. Her essays published in Scary Mommy, Motherly and Medium highlight her comedic yet poignant writing style.