Sophie Grégoire Trudeau has but one assistant. To have a functioning office, she needs another. In what world is this so dreadful? Recall that in a Conservative government, Mila Mulroney had an office opposite the Parliament Buildings and a staff of at least three.

I only mention this because Grégoire Trudeau has turned out to be wildly popular. “It’s hard to choose, because it’s touching when people ask for your help,” she told Le Soleil this week. “People really lay out their suffering in some of the letters I receive.” She fears hurting people by not responding or by saying no.

What an awful job she has landed. The Conservatives had planned to “leverage Mrs. (sic) Harper,” as the Star reported, but it didn’t really work. If you ever saw 24 Seven videos of Laureen Harper, teeth gritted but game, discussing her favourite Andy Kim song while sticking her hand in a chinchilla cage and leaving it there like a lump, you felt she’d been bullied.

For chinchillas are distant creatures. “As pets they can become friendly or affectionate with proper care, hand taming and consistent effort.” Always buy a pet to match your husband’s level of joie de vivre.

I got that information from a website for weird pets. “What does it mean when guinea pigs breathe fast?” “Why is my hermit crab digging a hole?” Harper had a lot on her plate, I’d say, with that rigid husband and a chinchilla looking to be candy on a better arm.

She is well out of Ottawa; I hope she’s looking at big Calgary skies right now. She’s free.

But the knives are out for Grégoire Trudeau. Sadly, many blades belong to other women. “If we’re going … to talk about women feeling overwhelmed, let’s talk about everyday Canadian women feeling overwhelmed,” NDP MP Niki Ashton told the CBC. Ashton, a high-profile feminist whom I respect, then started up again elsewhere about the Trudeaus having two government-funded nannies while most Canadians struggle for daycare.

How is that relevant to office help? At this point, Ashton sounded just like Candice Bergen and other female Conservative MPs bullying the PM’s wife. It was a sad day.

I oppose cruelty to women, including by other women. This goes undiscussed, but it is another frontier in a battle for women’s rights.

Grégoire Trudeau is a people’s favourite and those who are not are treating her viciously. The House of Commons has become the Grade 12 cafeteria, and we haven’t even mentioned the boys yet.

And I don’t even know what Ashton means. If everyday Canadian women — like me — feel overwhelmed, it is not because we are receiving hundreds of Canada-wide speaking invitations, representing numerous charities like Fillactive, which helps girls 12-17 to get healthy and active, and working to increase knowledge of anorexia and bulimia.

And Grégoire Trudeau, a warm, open person, feels guilty at having to refuse or having failed to respond, because people do take offence even when none was intended.

People like odd things: model trains, the patriarchy, keeping other mothers in the home, sexually assaulting co-workers. But there is one thing many people do not like at all, and that is women.

It’s a generational attitude that will die off, but until then Grégoire Trudeau’s beauty rubs unbeautiful people the wrong way. Her dress sense annoys those who would show up at the White House in sweatpants and carpet slippers. Her sunniness annoys the spiteful. Two-year-old Hadrien, lithium battery of my beating heart, is alleged to be a Liberal party prop.

Take one embittered Globe critic, who recently attacked “a certain kind of mom.” Usually they’re on reality shows but now they’re in his neighbourhood.

“There are times when, like, five out of 10 women on the street are carrying their little yoga mats to class,” he wrote. “They have giant strollers that are meant, I swear, to impede anyone else’s progress on the sidewalk. Their brats — and some of them are totally brats — crowd up the chic little convenience store while they buy sushi. Sushi, no less.”

Imagine that, women doing yoga, buying sushi, wheeling infants in strollers that impede a man heading home from his local. Women. Leaving the house. It’s not smart to mock the long-neglected advertising demographic that might yet save newspapers, but he did.

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There’s a mean historic core to the male dislike of “a certain kind of woman.” Those men don’t like the other kinds of women either and they really didn’t like 2015 when women impeded male progress by invading the federal cabinet.

2016 isn’t looking good for you, my friends.