In a major victory for feminism and equality, longtime CIA official Gina Haspel was confirmed to be the new CIA Director last week by the Senate. With the decision, Haspel becomes the first woman to lead the storied spy agency, showing millions of ambitious female sociopaths that they can indeed reach the pinnacle of their profession.
“This is a huge step toward gender equality in the nation’s military-industrial complex,” one feminist activist told The Face Palm.*
However, like many other Trump nominees, Haspel’s confirmation faced considerable pushback.
Most of the criticism focused on Haspel’s role in the CIA’s torture program. Haspel ran a black site in Thailand where the torture methods, including waterboarding, were used.
This context meant that Haspel’s confirmation was not only a question of whether the glass ceiling would be broken at the CIA; it was bigger than that. Her confirmation process was a test of whether powerful women who made horrible and indefensible choices in the past would still be able to advance to higher positions of power in the future.
For men, this question has never been in doubt.
Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan botched the prosecution of the police officer that killed Eric Garner on video, and then promptly launched a successful campaign for Congress. President George W. Bush won reelection after launching the disastrous Iraq War. And of course, Donald Trump managed to become President of the United States after spending a lifetime being–well, Donald Trump.
But for women, it has always been different.
The most famous example is that of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Due to her long tenure in the public eye, Clinton has made a number of demonstrably bad choices, including supporting her husband’s “tough on crime” policies in the 1990s, supporting the Iraq War in 2003, and lobbying for regime change in Libya in 2011, which sent that country into abject chaos.
These assorted disasters contributed to Clinton’s failed campaigns for the White House in 2008 and in 2016. Voters didn’t reject her just because she’d made terrible decisions; it was because she made terrible decisions and she was a woman.
Perhaps with Haspel’s confirmation, we can finally put this sordid chapter in our nation’s history behind us. Perhaps now, at long last, political officials of all genders will be able to continue their amoral ascent to power, uninhibited by the legendary failures of judgment left in their wake.
*This is a satirical post. The activist quoted in this piece is not real person.