After getting home from a pre-campaign bus tour of southern Ontario last week, Kathleen Wynne had take-out Thai and stayed in with her spouse to watch the film “Darkest Hour” in her North Toronto home.
The day she was sworn in as premier of Ontario in February 2013, Wynne woke up for her usual early-morning run in a borrowed basement apartment in Cabbagetown, her own home being under renovation.
Which is to say that Wynne – in addition to being extremely intelligent, highly articulate, and in command of a very complicated brief; a mother, partner, daughter, sister – is a fairly ordinary, down-to-earth, middle-class human being.
What hasn’t been ordinary is the vitriol to which she has been subjected during her five years as premier. It has been a torrent so sickening and relentless that her staff released some examples last year.
@Kathleen_Wynne Wish they would announced that the first death of 2017 is you. Then we would have a real reason to celebrate.
@Kathleen_Wynne actually, please hang yourself, or do a shotgun mic, or leave your car running in your garage. Just please end it now.
@Kathleen_Wynne it would been so #Inspiring to see you fall flat on your face breaking yr nose & all covered with blood as u spit teeth.
On it went, vile beyond description. “Wrinkly bitch.” “Subhuman, dirty dyke.” “Lying cheating c—-.”
Almost always, tellingly, such messages are unsigned. They are plainly the work of sexist, misogynistic cowards. The authors of such hate sully only themselves.
Yet they are far too numerous for Ontarians to look down in smug superiority on anything occurring these days in the United States.
“The kind of things we’re seeing on social media undermine civility,” Wynne has said. “I think it discourages people from even entering politics.”
In that, Wynne is entirely correct.
Female politicians at all levels of government in all parts of the country have experienced similar treatment. In one international survey of women parliamentarians, a respondent said that over one four-day period she received more than 500 threats of rape over Twitter.
That Inter-Parliamentary Union report said the characteristics of such abuse is that it targets women because of gender, is exemplified by threats and sexual violence, and is intended to discourage women from becoming active in politics.
As Wynne herself has said, young women hearing about this must wonder why they would ever expose themselves to “that kind of personal attack.”
Wynne is as grounded as it is possible to be in public life. She is confident in who she is. She has been through her crucible. She has developed, through her political journey, a thick hide. She needs no one to defend her.
Still, Ontario will soon be entering an election campaign where the stakes are high, emotions will roil and the less charming aspects of human nature sometimes show themselves.
Most women in political life — including NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and others in all political parties — have experienced it.
To change that, Wynne has said, “people are going to have to speak up.” Again, she is correct.
So here’s another voice urging, as the buses prepare to roll, that all candidates – party leaders Wynne, Horwath and Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford, and contenders in all ridings across the province – conduct themselves in ways appropriate to the positions they seek.
History has shown that it’s quite possible – maybe even easier — to get elected by appealing to selected sections of the electorate and exploiting humanity’s worst instincts.
But it’s impossible to govern effectively that way, to build anything that endures, to use high office in the service of our best selves.
It would stand as an impressive first act of leadership if all would-be premiers said, in their first statements, that they will run, and will demand from their own supporters, campaigns of civility and respect.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2018/03/25/a-civil-election-campaign-is-vital-to-encourage-women-in-politics.html
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