What Happens When Female Politicians Try to Stand Up to Sports Fans – The Atlantic

Lorena Gonzalez, a freshman council member who cast the final, decisive vote against the alley measure, said that as a woman of color and the city’s first Latina council member, she was taken aback by the sexist comments; she’s more accustomed to racism. The backlash was a wake-up call that even in liberal Seattle, women have a long way to go before they’re fully respected as public leaders, she said.

“We have achieved a lot in the movement for women’s rights in our country, and certainly in our city, but that doesn’t mean that sexism is dead—it just means that it’s a sleeping dog, and when that sleeping dog is kicked, suddenly it bites you and you’re reminded that the dog has teeth,” Gonzalez says. “We cannot fool ourselves in this city, as progressive as it might be, into believing that sexism is a thing of the past because it is not.”

Council freshman Lisa Herbold adds that the five women’s decision to oppose the measure is an example of a hardball negotiation strategy that’s rare in Seattle. “We showed that we are willing to vote ‘no’ if the deal being offered didn’t meet our policy objectives,” she said. “Some men aren’t used to women acting as tough negotiators to get what they want. They expect us to be conciliatory.”

Two days after the vote, after pressure on social media about his failure to promptly condemn the attacks, Mayor Ed Murray read a statement condemning the sexist comments at an unrelated press conference in a neighborhood far away from city hall. Only one female council member, Herbold, was present, and she says the mayor didn’t bother telling her he planned to make a statement, much less ask her if she wanted to speak for herself. The next week, with no formal statement from Murray forthcoming, the five women signed an op-ed in The Seattle Times decrying the sexist backlash.

Murray spokesman’s, Jason Kelly, said there was nothing unusual about his decision to speak up about the backlash at the end of a press conference without formal notice to the press. Murray “frequently speaks about other emerging issues, even if they are unrelated to the planned topic of the day,” Kelly said. “The mayor felt very strongly that as the elected leader of the city he needed to respond to the misogynistic comments about the councilmembers in the wake of the street vacation vote.”