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Trudeau was right to apologize more clearly on Thursday to both Brown and Brosseau.

His actions revealed an impatience and a sense of entitled control that are exactly why so many people worried he was “not ready.” It’s easy and lazy to turn that into a gendered thing as New Democrat Niki Ashton was too quick to do just minutes after the incident. It plays well; it might get headlines.

It’s also as infantilizing as it is infuriating.

Brosseau was right to be shaken regardless of her gender, not because of it.

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To suggest otherwise is to imply that women are, in fact, a weaker sex and in need of special, precious protections. That undermines two centuries of women fighting for the right to an education then the vote then a place in parliament and equal wages. Raitt knows that, I’m sure, and so do many of her Conservative and NDP colleagues. But if they can tap into a popular debate, and gain some partisan points and link the prime minister with one of the most loathed men in the country, they will, facts be damned.

It’s very clear to anyone who watched the footage — as May, who had a front-row seat put it — that Trudeau hit Brosseau “unintentionally.”

Gendered violence is not and cannot be accidental. It’s intended purpose is to control or belittle women, to keep them in their “place.” That elbow could have just as easily hit a male MP, had the way people were standing been just slightly different. You can’t commit gendered violence against someone you can’t see.