The 2016 American presidential election reminded me of my years in Canada. Progressive Americans like to think of themselves as more open and tolerant than their political opposites — in a way that resonates of many English-speaking Canadians’ sense of moral and cultural superiority over the Quebecois, my ethnic group. Yet, like English Canada’s refusal to correct its blind spot when it comes to tolerance for the Quebecois, American progressives persistently refuse to buoy one vulnerable group in particular: women.
The omnipresence of English-speaking Canadians in Quebec surprised me most about my six years in Montreal. Particularly, English-speaking Canada’s showy, frequent claims to celebrate its various subcultures — while making a sport of disparaging the Quebecois, “French Canadians.” Whether listening to the English-speaking radio or attending classes at an English-speaking university, I heard slurs against Quebecois food, language, culture and progressive social policies. Quebec is Canada’s only officially French province, which made it all the more surprising to see Montreal’s many English-speakers section themselves off into neighborhoods where the French “Arret” on stop signs was replaced with the English “Stop” and where streets were named after British Royalty instead of Quebecois artists, intellectuals and politicians.
Back in the United States, I’ve been amazed that progressives, the very group that championed the first African-American man’s ascent to the White House, could not summon the same enthusiasm for electing a woman — a representative of half the population, which has been excluded for 240 years, and counting, from the presidency. Progressives too often parroted conservative slurs against Hillary Clinton during this campaign, excavating, it would seem, age-old bigotries about women’s mystical abilities to propagate great harm. Hence the need to keep them out of influential positions.
Many also tried to offer up family legacy as a reason to discredit Clinton’s bid for the presidency. If so, then progressives — and certainly English-speaking Canadians — might consider ending their uncritical support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, son of one of Canada’s most controversial prime ministers, in part for his indiscriminate jailing of Quebecois in 1970, a trauma memorialized in the film “ Les Ordres.”
Has it occurred to those who slandered Clinton for 18 months that millions of women of all ethnic and racial backgrounds were inspired by her? That we saw ourselves in this person, in her necessity to push forward despite additional burdens placed on her that, perhaps, few men negotiate? That we never had a presidential candidate in our lifetimes who better represented our unique realities?
American women have been asked to see ourselves in our male presidents for 2½ centuries. Yet, progressives appeared hesitant to demand that the country see themselves in even one female president.
It seems no coincidence that women were only allowed to vote 50 years after men of all backgrounds were given that right. Women’s suffering, our full humanity, seems to occur as an afterthought. During my decades of schooling, I don’t recall learning that women suffragists were beaten or force-fed in rat-infested prison cells when they heroically stood up, year after violent year, and said, “We, too, are human.” In Canada, English speakers are taught only snippets of Quebecois history.
Progressives’ chilly reception toward perseverance, triumph, and dignity, when these qualities are embodied in a woman, was much more suspect than Clinton’s character or history. Perhaps when a particular group is the longstanding target of unmitigated anger and disrespect, a society collectively and tacitly decides the mistreatment must be justified, enabling the behavior to continue. The Quebecois internalized this message in their popular expression: “Ne(e) pour un petit pain” — “born for a humble life.” The lack of fair female representation in high-profile positions — whether in Congress or late-night comedy — speaks to the same phenomenon in American culture.
My 100-year-old great aunt was born in Quebec before women were allowed to vote either in her birthplace or in the U.S. She and her sisters earned less money than the English speakers in the Maine textile mills, where they sewed train-seat covers. Before the election, she and I made a bet for a dollar: I predicted that Clinton would win. “Wouldn’t that be something,” my aunt said. And then added, “But I just don’t think they’ll let her in.”
Jane Martin holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She was a Fulbright scholar at McGill University in Montreal, where she researched her French-Canadian heritage. She grew up in Biddeford and teaches writing in Portland.