Homelander

I'm on the threshold of 65 years of age and NEVER, not ONCE, in my life--from my childhood in the Midwest through my double Ivy-League degrees and medical and political careers--have I ever felt disadvantaged as a girl or woman versus boys or men. Quite the opposite, thanks to the generations of women--including my own valiant, brilliant, beautiful mother--who went before me, and to the men (including my equally brilliant, endlessly loving father, who with Mom championed my success throughout my life) who took their concerns to heart. Princeton's all-male Board of Trustees made the decision in the late 1960s to admit women, and I benefited from their transformative vision. I'm also the mother of two sons who has known painfully well that their way and that of their fellow young males was made harder by the distinct institutional bias against males that has dominated the 21st Century in which they came of age. When I was a Republican in the House of Representatives, I was welcomed enthusiastically as a woman, and my mentors came from both sexes. If anything, I felt disproportionately advantaged to be a woman, not that my male colleagues did anything but excel, and rightly. MERIT was what mattered. So I am sick unto death of the whining by women like the ones described by Ms. Vigeland, giving entirely undue credit to an untalented hack whose political ascent was the result of a shameless exploitation of identity, devoid of any consideration of talent or character. Misogyny should be considered dead and buried in the United States, but for its usefulness to women who would otherwise actually have to compete on a playing field that was long ago made even for us and in fact has now been tilted wrongly in our favor. STOP IT, grow up, and get to work the way Donald Trump and the talented women--and men!--on his team do every goddamn day.