04/23/2026
This is such an important post about how some elected officials are weaponizing misogyny against those who are actually trying to fight it in our city! Don’t be fooled. From our predominantly female workforce expected to take less and give more each year, we will continue to stand up for our students!Please read and share!
Misogyny? Sir Archibald McWeasley face is exhausted by the endless attempts to weaponize civility to silence the demands of the vulnerable. He is particularly disgusted by the conceptually impoverished claims of misogyny based entirely on the perceived identity of public officials. Who can blame him!?
In a recent newsletter and on the WHMP airwaves, Councilors Loisel and Klemer have expressed their outrage that the pushback they and other pro-austerity voices on the city council, the Mayor, and those who work for her administration receive, is misogyny. You might think they have evidence to support these claims, perhaps statements that show a clear and consistent hatred of women or gendered bias, you would be wrong. Instead what is voiced is simply a crass identity politics - if women are in elected positions or leading departments and they are criticized then it must be because they are women - there can be no other explanation.
In this framing, the content of the criticism is completely erased and the identity of those being criticized (or those making the criticism) are simply the only things that matter and the only lens through which to view the situation. Imagine if I dismissed any criticism I receive as antisemitism, regardless of the content of the criticism, because I am interpellated as Jewish. This type of essentialized framing is dangerous because it is weaponized to silence the vulnerable, it undermines real efforts to overcome misogyny that we face within our community, and it makes dialogue impossible.
Over the past four years I have been pointing out the structural misogyny that is reproduced by our local political discourse and reflected in our budget and practices. For example, every year we see our Mayor and the majority of Council ignore the pleas of our overworked workforce largely made up of women. We have seen the budget cuts shift more and more costs onto teachers' personal funds while we don’t ask police, fire, or DPW workers to provide their own work supplies. We see the integrity and professionalism of our majority women workforce questioned while only praise is heaped upon the more departments dominated by men. This gendered framing of care work vs. emergency work is not unique to Northampton but I am still stunned each time I witness it from a majority women government that prides itself as progressive.
I’ve witnessed internalized misogyny from women colleagues who defend the historic practice and expectation that women working in education should provide unpaid labor - perhaps subsidized by a husband as breadwinner. I’ve witnessed women colleagues reframe their questions and points in the most gentle ways in order not to appear aggressive or rude, especially to men , and witnessed these same colleagues become furious when other women colleagues break this unspoken gendered etiquette.
Ironically, a similar argument was made by Councilor Klemer in her recent interview on WHMP, where she suggests the women who supported her opponent Al Simon in the last election did so because he was a man and they just assumed he knew what he was talking about - their vote was evidence of internalized misogyny. Unfortunately, in suggesting these women voters could not possibly have made their own educated decision on the merits of the argument made, Councilor Klemer merely shows us how her own internalized misogyny and how central her identity politics are to her analysis and understanding of politics.
This is misogyny and it has structural effects on our budgets, our practices, our expectations, and our norms. As a feminist and critical theorist I am interested in understanding the materiality of discourse and how systems of domination reproduce themselves. When we reduce misogyny to simple identity - to standpoint epistemology - we eliminate its critical capacity and weaponize identity to silence the vulnerable. I hope my fellow elected officials can think more deeply about the claims they make and the evidence they draw their conclusions from but I anticipate they will simply dismiss this post as yet another instance of misogyny because the author is a man. Northampton, we can do better.
Below is a revised Guest Column authored by three women in our community responding to Councilor Loisel’s accusations of misogyny against me in her recent newsletter. While it was submitted, as usual, the Gazette chose not to publish it or even acknowledge it’s submission. While they have endless room for the words of Loisel, Silver, and their supporters they have little tolerance for voices that challenge the political establishment's narratives. Thanks to Anat, Jamie, and Lisa for writing such a powerful rebuttal.
"It can be said that Northampton has two mottos. The official motto: “Caritas, educatio, justitia” (Caring, education, and justice), and an unofficial motto that welcomes people to the City, “where the coffee is strong and so are the women.” Our School Committee has long been led by women. The Mayor, who chairs that committee, is also a woman. On the surface, this all suggests a progressive, feminist city.
However, surface imagery can be misleading. For years, many of these same leaders have passed budgets that cut services for our most vulnerable children, especially in public education, while ignoring repeated pleas from parents and a predominantly woman educator workforce. Enter Michael Stein, the lone male voice on the School Committee, and one of the few voices of elected officials in our City who dare to speak up against such harmful policies.
At a recent City Council meeting, Councilor Laurie Loisel made statements about school funding that were demonstrably incorrect. Member Stein posted an open letter, citing data, slide decks, and legal obligations, critiquing those statements. Councilor Loisel’s response was not a rebuttal of his facts. Instead, she accused him publicly of "misogyny." She claimed he has a "pattern” of directing "vitriolic diatribes towards women."
Disagreeing with a woman in power is not misogyny. Critiquing an elected woman’s understanding of a 256-page budget is not misogyny. Raising concerns about misplaced priorities, like focusing on a “five-alarm fire" about cell phones, while completely ignoring a Justice Department investigation into special education failures in our City, is not misogyny.
Misogyny is the systemic contempt and hatred against women because they are women. It includes dismissing women’s expertise, silencing them, or reducing their decisions and behaviors to emotion. It is violence against women, physical and symbolic. Engaging with policy, citing evidence, and asking difficult questions – which is what Member Stein did and what we all hope our elected officials will do on behalf of the public – is not misogyny.
Discomfort is not misogyny.
In a recent radio interview, Councilor Debby Klemer discussed misogyny in local politics and reproduced the same narrow and simplistic idea of feminism and misogyny that Councilor Loisel, and so many others in Northampton, believe. Councilors Loisel and Klemer reproduce a very white, very classist idea of feminism from a few decades ago. Further, Councilor Klemer’s ensuing bizarre suggestion that the “demographic” of “a lot of older women [who] just fell for” her male opponent in Ward 2, and his smile and kindness during the elections last year, is disturbing and degrading. Women who dared vote against her did so, according to Councilor Klemer, because a man smiled at them and they got conned by a man’s car salesmen ways. Now that is a misogynistic statement.
Feminism today, if it is to transform the world, must be intersectional, understanding the multiple perspectives of women as they are embedded in diverse experiences related to class, race and multiple identities. And it must protect the reality of the violence of real misogyny.
The weaponization of the term misogyny by Councilors Loisel and Klemer cheapens actual sexism, making it harder for real victims to be heard, and it shuts down debate. It also shifts the focus from policy problems to interpersonal issues. This is another strategy often used by those in power to dismiss critiques to their policies, and focus instead on tone policing, identity politics, and feelings.
Let it be known that Member Stein isn't the only elected official to speak out. Others, including women, have spoken out countless times. While others who speak out are also attacked in myriad ways, for example through threats of censure, his identity makes him uniquely vulnerable to the label of misogynist triggering knee jerk reactions in our City to ignore the content of the critique for a shallow response related to the tone of the critique. If this standard holds, critique of our elected officials will be watered down to weaponized identity politics. An educated letter becomes “intimidation." A demand for evidence becomes “hostile.”
This is not a path to equity. It is a path to authoritarianism where identity protects policy from scrutiny. If feminism has taught us anything, it is to challenge and disrupt power that maintains systemic oppression.
We need more elected officials willing to stand up for our most vulnerable children and the public employees who care for them. We need less performative outrage and more honest debate. Councilors Klemer and Loisel claim we need to "name" misogyny. We agree. Let’s name it accurately, though: It isn’t when a man with a spreadsheet asks where the money went. It isn’t when community members vote for a man who ran against you. And it isn’t when your support of budgets that harm children and a women dominated workforce are challenged. It is using the weight of a false accusation to bully political opponents who champion the needs of children and families, into silence.
Back to our City’s official motto. True feminism nurtures and upholds caring, education, and justice – for all, not just white, wealthy, second wave feminists."
