Nobody gets into politics thinking that everyone is going to politely agree with everything they have to say. A bit of name-calling and rude behaviour is, unfortunately, par for the course.
The news reports of threats and harassment directed toward Premier Rachel Notley and her ministers are an obvious and well-publicized if somewhat extreme example of this, but the problem isn’t limited to those at the top of the government ranks.
St. Albert-area MLAs past and present say they’ve experienced some distressing comments and harassment as well, and just have to take it in stride.
Marie Renaud has commented on her public Facebook account about some of the things people have said to her, including recently being called a “sociopath” because of her support for Bill 6, the controversial legislation aimed at enhancing safety and other protections for paid farm workers – and that’s by no means the worst thing she’s been called. Most wouldn’t be fit to print, and many are specifically directed at her as a woman.
“I think what’s really sad is when in particular women are criticized or harassed, the words people use are very sexist,” she said. “They’re just so ugly. The things people are saying are really, really violent.”
It’s not just words, either. She said someone has been sending cryptic messages on Twitter referring to what she was wearing on one particular day, and another time this person wrote he was going to “change” her and posted the address of her constituency office.
And based on what Renaud heard from her colleagues in the more rural areas, where opposition to the NDP has been more pronounced, she hasn’t had the worst of it.
“One woman, of course we’ve been going to the rallies and going to the meetings, she had someone just roll up his paper and swat her,” she said. “People have been called names right to their face, really disgusting names. It’s just wrong.”
The harassment and threats aren’t limited to this premier and the NDP government, either. Maureen Kubinec, who represented Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock under former Progressive Conservative premiers from Alison Redford to Jim Prentice, experienced more than her fair share of untoward behaviour as well.
“I never received death threats, but I have to say that when we had a former woman premier, calls came into my constituency office that were … I don’t know what word to use,” she said. “They were so bad. They weren’t necessarily death threats but they were so awful I can’t even describe it.”
There was the person she referred to as “my own personal troll” who would reply with nasty comments on everything she posted online, and there was one individual who would repeatedly phone her campaign office late at night with harassing and threatening comments.
Kubinec said despite the threats and harassment, the commitment to doing the job outweighed the discomfort of reading and listening to what people were saying and writing.
“You can’t say it doesn’t affect you because it does, but you had to go on. There was work to do, and you went on and did it,” she said.
Renaud said while sometimes it’s difficult, she refuses to be intimidated by threats or harassment.
“I think it makes me more resolute, to say I’m not going to run away and I’m not going to be fearful,” she said. “I’ve always stood up for what I believe in, and I think this just makes me stronger.”
The harassment is not limited to women, either, as any man in politics can attest to. Glenn van Dijken, the Wildrose MLA now representing Kubinec’s old riding, said not everyone has been particularly kind to him – although nobody has been particularly threatening either.
“It’s politics, but there’s nothing I would say was violent or threatening, or put me in a situation I felt was uncomfortable,” he said. “I’ll say there’s been heated discussions.”
Like others, he roundly condemned the threatening and harassing behaviour.
“It’s totally unacceptable. From my standpoint, we are in a civil society that requires civil discussion,” he said. “We’re not in a situation that requires civil unrest to the point of threats, violence and that kind of thing. It’s totally uncalled for.”
For Doreen Slessor, the director of St. Albert’s Stop Abuse in Families (SAIF) Society, the kind of misogynist harassment and bullying that’s prevalent in the political discourse these days is distressing, but by no means surprising.
She noted even as far back as the days of Marie Antoinette, who was the Queen of France in the late 1700s, the political cartoons and commentary at the time were fairly vile – depicting various sexual acts and the like.
While it’s nothing new, though, the mass-communication media we have these days make these kinds of threats much more visible and enable the perpetrators in many cases to stay anonymous.
“I think being able to hide behind that veil of anonymity, and if you’re not going to get caught, some people will think ‘just go for it,’” Slessor said. “The people we call trolls thrive on that.”
She said ultimately gender-based violence is present not just in the form of the harsh insults high-profile politicians might experience, but in a lot of everyday language and culture as well.
In video games, for example, women are typically depicted as being either in need of rescuing or as overly sexualized and having loose morals. Even in real life, she used the tone of the language in sports as a good example – it’s not at all uncommon to hear comments along the lines of “stop whining like a bunch of girls,” or, “did you put on your skirt today?” if somebody misses a shot.
“How come the worst thing you can call a man is a woman? When you think of all the bad things men call each other, the worst one is to call them a woman,” she said. “When did that become acceptable?”
Ultimately, Slessor added, the solution is not straightforward and simple, but it begins with people recognizing three basic principles: recognize, respond and refer.
First one must recognize the sexism inherent in language or act, then respond to it appropriately by referring people to other forms of expression that don’t carry all the negative connotations.
She said this message is applicable to everyone, from the highest levels of government all the way down to the schoolyard.
