Behind every great man there's a strong woman. It's a quaint and somewhat antiquated idea, certainly in the two thousands, when the concept of gender equality is old news, almost as old as I am. I grew up with the small, incremental victories of budding enlightenment; I still remember when they changed the rules and allowed us girls to wear pants to school.
By the time I went to law school, classes were more or less equally divided between the sexes. There were no barriers to success, to having it all. Well, not until later on, when we had to figure out how to juggle careers with motherhood -- not just in the logistical carpooling kind of way, but in the visceral and instinctive kind of way that none of us anticipated when we were studying for the bar. Back when our strength and our brains and our independence were ours alone.
Behind the nominee for the highest court in the land sat his wife, cringing inwardly, no doubt, as they sat for a softball interview on Fox News. They were both robotic -- he, with his repetitive non-responsive responses that would have had even the most passive jurist tearing at her robe, and she, with her perfect posture and preternatural muteness. At one point, a question was directed at her, the woman behind the man. She bobbed her head, opened and closed her mouth a few times, and stared helplessly at her man. He responded for her. Non-responsively, of course.
I don't know what the justice-in-waiting did when he was in high school and college, though I think I know more than I want to. Certainly, his wife, the strong woman sitting slightly behind him for the interview, knows too much, but she also knows her place. She is a kingmaker. She may be strong and intelligent and independent, but her job is to remain mute. He would not be where he is without her.
Only the nominee and his accusers know the truth. But what I do know is this. A man with views as antiquated as the ones I was born into, when I had to wear a dress to school, stands poised to dictate what women can do with their own bodies and, by extension, their own lives. A man who cannot answer a soft question with a straight answer stands poised to demand clarity from others on matters that will have a broad and deep impact on all of us. A man who seemed comfortable with his wife's muteness will shape our nation for decades, a half century after we all thought gender equality was, at the very least, a work in progress.
It should give all of us, not just women, pause. I, for one, never signed on to be a kingmaker.
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