Could Nikki Haley become the first female president?
Donald Trump is ending 2023 on quite the low. On Tuesday a Colorado supreme court ruling barred the former president from the state’s presidential ballot, which drove him predictably bonkers. Then, to add insult to injury, he got some bad news from New Hampshire: Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and the woman Trump appointed to be his ambassador to the United Nations, is catching up to him in the polls. A new Saint Anselm College survey shows Haley with 30% support among likely Republican primary voters in the state, 14 points less than Trump.
To be fair, Trump probably isn’t quaking in his boots: he still has a sizable lead. But he can’t be enjoying Haley’s momentum. Business heavyweights have flocked to her; she’s landed a coveted endorsement from New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu; and her polling figures have doubled in three months. The 51-year-old is quickly becoming a viable candidate.
So could she actually do it? Could Haley become the first female and first Indian-American president of the US? It’s unlikely but not impossible. More important, however, it’s not anything anyone vaguely to the left should wish for. Haley may be a woman (she’s certainly been very happy to lean into her gender and ethnic background when it’s convenient) but she’s no friend to women or minorities. She’s got reactionary views on abortion, immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. Her politics are just as hate-filled as Trump’s are. She’s just as opportunistic and self-serving as the former president. She just comes across as less obviously dangerous and extreme.
Partly that’s because she’s not as mercurial, of course. Chaos doesn’t follow her everywhere, like it does Trump. She’s frequently described as the “adult in the room” because she acts like more of a grown-up than the other Republican contenders – which, to be honest, isn’t saying much. But another reason so many people seem keen to paint her as a “moderate”– when her politics are very much to the right – might be because she’s a woman.
Women are becoming increasingly prominent in the far right. Last year Giorgia Meloni, head of Italy’s most rightwing government, became the first female prime minister of Italy. In France, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party, has gone from strength to strength. In the UK some of the most aggressively anti-immigrant policies have been voiced by brown women like Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. And one of the rising stars of the Conservative party in the UK is Kemi Badenoch, a Black woman who has styled herself as anti-woke culture warrior.
The feminization of fascism isn’t happenstance – it’s highly strategic. “It is a trend Marine Le Pen started about 10 years ago – she softened the image of the party [the former Front National], getting rid of the unappealing aspects and the macho image,” Dorit Geva, a sociologist at Central European University told DW last year.
“I think that women do play a huge, important role in mainstreaming more radical ideas,” Seyward Darby, author of the book Sisters in Hate, similarly told Vice World News shortly after Meloni was elected. “They are … crucial to spreading the ideology with a smile and making it seem palatable … It’s about putting a certain veneer on it, a certain gloss on it.”
It would be patronizing to say that women are being used by far-right organizations to soften their image, but they’re certainly useful. Haley gives a veneer of respectability to an increasingly dysfunctional and dangerous GOP. Beneath her grown-up gloss, however, is the same old rot.
It’s 2023 and a woman with short hair is still shocking apparently
Eve Gilles has become the first contestant with short hair ever to win Miss France and the usual suspects are very angry indeed about it.
Sniffing women’s tears makes men 40% less aggressive, new study finds
This builds on previous research which showed that women’s tears reduced levels of testosterone and self-reported sexual arousal in men.
Judge orders release of over 150 names of people mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein lawsuit documents
The list of names will be made public on 1 January 2024. A very unhappy start to the year for a lot of rich and powerful people!
The couch-surfing predator
A horrifying story: Dino Maglio, a former Italian police officer, hosted over 200 young women travelers he had connected with on couchsurfing.com at his home in Padua. He would lace their tea or wine with drugs and assaulted many of them. But then some of these women found each other and fought back – eventually securing justice against the odds.
Being sexist makes you a worse parent
Both mothers and fathers who firmly believe in traditional gender roles are less responsive parents, a new study has found.
Rise in women facing domestic abuse at Christmas, English charities report
Calls to England’s national domestic abuse hotline in 2023 were still far higher than pre-pandemic, the charity Refuge has found. “Devastatingly, the increased cost of living has also meant that Refuge is seeing many survivors faced with the impossible position of choosing to stay with an abuser or risking homelessness and destitution.”
Women in California facing homelessness at an alarming rate
“Homelessness is a phenomenon that historically has predominantly affected men,” the Guardian reports. “But in California, where the number of homeless people surged to 181,000 this year, the number of homeless women has also grown.” The state had 60,000 unhoused women in 2023 – nearly as many as New York, Texas and Florida combined. Domestic violence, which increased during pandemic lockdowns, is a big driver of homelessness among women.
Risk of penile fractures rises at Christmas, doctors find
“[I]f every day was like Christmas, 43% more penile fractures would have occurred in Germany from 2005 on,” one doctor said. A sobering statistic.
The week in pawtriarchy
An orange tabby named Taters has rocketed to intergalactic fame after starring in Nasa’s first ultra-HD video streamed from deep space. “This test will pave the way for high-data-rate communications in support of the next giant leap: sending humans to Mars,” Nasa said in a tweet. Little Taters is making hisss-tory.
