Under normal circumstances, a triumphant woman standing behind a podium giving a political victory speech would thrill me to the core. After all, what feminist worth her salt doesn’t like to see a woman win an election?

Me, when the winner is a Republican – because your gender doesn’t make you pro-woman, your actions do. And the Republican party is not just anti-“women’s issues”; it is anti-woman.

Gender parity in politics – even across the aisle – is essential, but it’s difficult not to bristle when I see women shilling for the GOP. The official Republican platform states that the party “affirm[s] the dignity of women by protecting the sanctity of human life” and wants to “empower them to choose life” – as if they wanted women to have a choice at all. Even the GOP’s efforts to ban women from combat is made to sound like a favor the party’s doing for women in uniform: “We support military women’s exemption from direct ground combat units”. The word “exemption” may sound better than “ban” but, once again, what the GOP wants for women is not an opt-out scenario – it is a method of forcibly keeping rights from us.

In a way, female Republicans almost bother me more than their male counterparts. I can almost understand why a bunch of rich, religiously conservative white men wouldn’t care about the reality of women’s day-to-day lives – they’ve never had to. But throwing other women under the bus? For what? Lower taxes? Three minutes on Fox News in the 3pm hour? It makes me wonder what is wrong with you.

Politics is personal. It’s not about a platform to which no one hews, or about some words on a teleprompter, or even some indecipherable language in a bill. My horror at Tuesday night’s election results springs from knowing the personal and economic degradation to which the Republican party is willing to subject American women – and women throughout the world – and that other women are helping them to do it.

Six new Republican women were elected to the US Congress this week as part of the Democrats’ staggering midterm defeat – including the youngest woman ever elected and the first black Republican woman in Congress. (The first black woman elected to Congress was the Democrat Shirley Chisholm, in 1968.) There will be six female Republican senators, a record number for the GOP. There are now 100 women in Congress.

This may have been an election of firsts for Republicans – and women – but it’s not a “win” for women. Equal representation is important, but it doesn’t equal justice.

“Raising the minimum wage, ending gender discrimination in pay, protecting reproductive rights – those are the victories for women,” Emily’s List communications director Jess McIntosh told me on Wednesday afternoon.

And, as we’ve learned from previous Republican women who’ve held national office – like House members Virginia Foxx , Michele Bachmann or Cathy McMorris Rogers – being a woman doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t support legislation that hurts women. And it doesn’t mean that, if your party jumps through hoops to make its misogyny seem benevolent, you won’t just line up and smile.

We can expect exactly more of the kind of poorly-shrouded sexism we’ve come to expect from Republicans in the lead-up to the 2016 election, the same condescension to women, and the same bafflegab about how they’re just trying to make our lives easier by restricting our options. But given that we’re going to have to listen to all that nonsense for a while, what I’d really like is for every elected woman Republican to explain to a room full of non-rich, non-white women why restricting abortion rights is a good use of our government’s time and energy, to tell them why their birth control isn’t a real medical need, and to discuss how women don’t really need equal pay or a fair wage because they need “real” choices.



Regardless of your gender, if you align yourself with a party that has historically and consistently targeted women’s rights, health and lives – let alone a party that pats women on the head as it strips away those rights from us – you should understand why women aren’t applauding in solidarity with you this week. And maybe you should be at least a little ashamed.



[Disclosure: Newly-elected Elise Stefanik, the youngest woman elected to Congress, is a college friend of my husband’s.]