Nancy Pelosi’s Minimizing Behavior of AOC Explained
Nancy Pelosi’s dismissive and minimizing comments towards Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) where, for example, Nancy suggested that a glass of water with a D on it could win AOC’s district, is a common behavior amongst women and mothers and daughters. In my therapy practice, where I work exclusively with mothers and daughters of all ages and from different countries and cultures, I hear how mothers can downplay a daughter’s achievements, dismiss a daughter’s opinions, or question a daughter’s self-knowing and choices. All too often within the media, and unfortunately within the therapy room as well, the mother’s dismissive behavior is criticized rather than understood. As I say in my books, blogs, and talks, mothers and daughters do not relate within a cultural vacuum. How a mother and daughter relate, tells the story of how women are treated within their family and wider socio-cultural environment, and the same is true for Nancy Pelosi’s behavior towards AOC. Nancy Pelosi and AOC relate within a political environment that has it’s own way of silencing and minimizing women.
In this blog I explain what may be going on between Nancy Pelosi and AOC, a younger newly elected female politician. I outline how generational differences and the power struggle of who gets to be heard are common conflict-causing dynamics between women and mothers and daughters, and how these dynamics are created.
Before the Women’s Movement changed women’s lives and gave daughters freedoms and choices their mothers could not dream possible, daughters walked a repeat of their mother’s life. In my family, my mother walked a repeat of her mother’s life, my grandmother. I did not want to do that. I grew up in a different era than my mother, and my updated vision of myself and the opportunities I was able to take advantage of, threatened my mother’s sense of who she felt she was and the choices she had made. My mother needed to see her life reflected in mine, and when I didn’t follow her lead, she minimized and dismissed my choices and achievements.
This dynamic is common between mothers and daughters. As I write in “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle” “For some mothers and daughters, being different isn’t a problem. They eagerly revise their beliefs and incorporate their new roles and opportunities into their relationship. But for others, change doesn’t happen without a fight.” Mothers can feel threatened if their daughter’s choices and opinions are different to theirs, and this conflict doesn’t always present on the surface as a fight over their differences. Generational differences can also cause conflict within workplaces and in politics. I wonder if difference is not being embraced like it should be between the older and younger politicians within the Democratic party? Are older, more powerful politicians needing the younger politicians to follow their lead? Is there a power struggle going on about who is being heard and who is right?
Power struggles about who is heard is an incredibly common conflict-causing dynamic between women and mothers and daughters. To understand this dynamic we must understand the environment women and mothers and daughters relate in. When families, organizations, and politics silence women, women are set up to fight over who gets to be heard. When being heard is not a norm or a given, being heard becomes a battle that is either won or lost. And sometimes for the older generation who have spent their life fighting to be heard, being listened to by the younger generation can feel like a mark of honor and respect.
The silencing of women is the single-most important cause for conflict between women and mothers and daughters around the world, and I believe that the silencing of women within politics is causing the same kind of generational rift between women within the Democratic party. When women fight to be heard, it leaves little room for opinions and ideas to flow freely. And the best way to address and solve this global theme is education. Women need to understand how the silencing of women sets women up to engage in an either-or dynamic that makes women fight with each other about who gets to be heard. And women need to understand how this either-or dynamic plays right into the hands of those who are threatened by the power in women’s voices. While women are dismissing and minimizing each other, they are not addressing the culture of silence that is the root cause of their silencing and conflict.
This is where the political is deeply personal. Women around the world know what it feels like to be silenced, and many of us come from families where our mothers and grandmothers did not know how to ask for what they need clearly and honestly. The way forward for both mothers and daughters and women in politics is to challenge the countless ways women are silenced. We need to bravely do our own emotional work and understand when we feel threatened by another woman’s freedoms, opportunities, and achievements, and not shame ourselves and each other for our feelings. And we need to understand how we engage in an either-or dynamic and silence ourselves because we don’t believe we will be heard, or silence other women because we are afraid that if she’s heard, we won’t be.
Laws cannot facilitate this emotional awareness, nor can they create family, organizational, and political environments where all women’s voices are heard. Creating a new normal where every woman’s voice counts requires a different kind of political work. It requires that we hold ourselves and each other accountable to the many ways women’s truth and achievements are dismissed and minimized. This emotional and political work is largely being overlooked by the Women’s Movement at the moment, even though it is key to healing mother-daughter relationship conflict and creating greater solidarity amongst women.
Reprinted with permission from my American Counseling Association blog.