‘Oh, Shut Up’: The Transparent Fraudulence of Feminist Politics

One of the common themes pushed by Democrats and their media flacks, which regularly gets weaponized into bite-sized memes for Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, is the notion that male politicians have shown disrespect to all womanhood by interrupting or otherwise clashing harshly with a female politician who was speaking. We’ve seen this playbook ad infinitum. Rick Lazio, the most nonthreatening New York politician in memory, was cast as some sort of terrifying predator for crossing the debate stage to hand a prop to Hillary Clinton. “Nevertheless, she persisted” became a thing for Elizabeth Warren’s supposed courage in refusing to be silenced, even though the actual issue was that Warren was refusing to abide by Senate rules. Kamala Harris mastered this game in the Senate by persistently interrupting male witnesses, waiting for one to try to complete his sentence so she could intone “I’m speaking” with evident umbrage. (She used the same line the same way with Mike Pence in a 2020 debate and tried a variant on Donald Trump in 2024.)

The idea that there is any sort of gender principle at stake here, however, is a transparent fraud, and always has been. The outrage is always and only when it’s a female Democrat and a male Republican, or perhaps a progressive female and a more moderate liberal man. The yass-kween solidarity memes and the think-piece columns about patriarchy never show up when this goes the other way.

Our latest example: an exchange in last night’s Maine Senate debate between Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Troy Jackson. It started with Collins being interrupted by a shrieking left-wing protester who yelled about data centers poisoning the water. While the moderator tried to get rid of the protester, Collins quipped, “So, this is obviously one of Troy’s supporters.” That’s a fair-enough shot: protesters interrupting debates and hearings are nearly always left-wing, and this was somebody yelling one of the Democrats’ 2026 campaign themes at Collins to try to shout her down. An angry Jackson responded, “Oh, shut up. I don’t even know that kid.” Collins cracked back, “Oh, right.”

The moment has drawn many of the debate headlines, but the media framing is mostly neutral, unaccompanied by the meme-alanche we would see if a Republican man told a Democratic woman, “Oh, shut up” on a debate stage. Don’t expect your social media feed to be flooded with women wearing the line on T-shirts or weeping at how this reflects their lived experience or how Jackson reminds them of every man who ever did them even slightly wrong in a relationship or the workplace.

Some sample headlines:

• Emily Davies, New York Times: ‘Oh, Shut Up’: 5 Takeaways From the Senate Debate in Maine
  The story lists the exchange as the fifth takeaway: “This is not the first debate between the Senate candidates in Maine to grow testy. But it was the first time one contender told another one to shut up on live television.”
• Mike Zapler, Axios: “Oh, shut up”: Maine Senate debate gets testy
  As Zapler explains in the “Why it matters” section, “The two have traded barbs in a series of tense debates, but this was the first time they sounded like children arguing on a playground.”
• Patrick Svitek and Annie Grayer, CNN: ‘You should be ashamed of yourself’: Heated Senate debates in Alaska and Maine become personal
  The headline quotes Democrat Mary Peltola in the Alaska debate.
• Mira Nhakta, The Hill: Troy Jackson tells Susan Collins to ‘shut up’ during Maine Senate debate
  “Democrat Troy Jackson asked incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to ‘shut up’ during a Thursday debate, as tensions boiled over with just more than two weeks until the midterm elections. . . . The moment garnered attention online as the Maine GOP wrote on social media that it was ‘unacceptable behavior coming from Troy Jackson tonight.’”
• Dan Merica, Washington Post: Troy Jackson tells Susan Collins to ‘shut up’ during final Maine Senate debate
• Even the Fox News headline on the story by Paul Steinhauser and Leo Briceno was comparatively restrained: ‘Oh, shut up!’: Democrat snaps at Collins after heckler drives Maine Senate debate off the rails
  “A protester interrupted the final debate between Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in Maine, triggering a heated exchange after Collins suggested the demonstrator was a Jackson supporter.”

At least these outlets are covering the story, but without the garment-rending we would see if the parties were reversed. Most of them are already somewhere down the front page — the Post item is just a newsletter blurb I found only by term-searching the site. Politico has nothing; neither do CBS or ABC News. At MS NOW, Steve Benen’s report on the debate is headlined “Pressed on her work with Trump, Maine’s Collins trips over key part of her record,” with no mention of the exchange. Nobody is acting as if this is some great commentary on the oppression of women because nobody actually believes that when it’s a Democratic woman. It’s just a posture. And we can all see that.