I don’t know a whole lot about Virginia Heffernan, but from what I do know, she frightens me. She’s clever, widely published and universally admired, in part because—in Louis Menand’s words—“she can refer intelligently to Barthes, Derrida, and Benjamin—also to Aquinas, Dante and Proust.” The author of Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art (2016) is a “gleeful trickster, a semiotics fan with an unabashed sweet tooth for pop culture,” according to the New York Times, and when she gets her dander up—this is me talking now—look out. 

And if Heffernan has decided you’re “vile,” run for cover. A few years ago, she called Eric Clapton “vile” for his anti-vaxxer utterances, and now she has decided that four female Trump administration appointees are “vile” as well. 

“The future did turn out to be female,” Heffernan writes in the New Republic, but not in the way she hoped or expected. True, Trump has appointed women to Cabinet-level positions, but such women! Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, Linda McMahon and Kristi Noem constitute a “quartet of harpies…whose vileness blends their private and public actions in a filthy smoothie.” 

Heffernan, when incensed, does a pretty fair imitation of what were once scorned as “male chauvinist pigs,” if only they too had read Lacan. She doesn’t like Bondi’s appearance, for starters. She’s “hollow-eyed” (not sure what that means) and became famous “in blonded-and-bronzed” Fox shows. Heffernan seems to have forgotten to include “Mar-a-Lago face,” but she makes the point all the same. 

Gender, to be fair, is performative, as Judith Butler reminds us. But to treat these women as little more than reality-TV celebs, as failed fashionistas, does seem a tad regressive. Heffernan does not approve of the way Bondi, Gabbard, and Noem look, “with their trademark Trump-girl glam” and “cheugy hair and smeary MAGA makeup.” (Does anybody out there know what “cheugy” means? I don’t. Heffernan also refers to something called “groyper porn,” which I have never heard of and don’t really care to know more about.) 

In the broader scheme of things, however, these insults can be overlooked. Now you don’t have to be a great admirer of any of these Trump appointees, but it does seem a bit much to call them “middle-aged Manson girls.” The Manson family comparison we can overlook, too, as easily as Nazi or fascist, terms of abuse we hear routinely these days. But referring to them as “middle-aged” crosses a line. 

So is asking when (not how or why) Republican women “aged 44 to 76” became so awful. McMahon is 76, so citing this figure seems deeply gerontophobic as well as sexist. (It also seems sexist for Heffernan to hold McMahon’s estranged husband’s appalling treatment of women against her. Vince, she writes, is a “serial sex pest and allegedly much worse.”) 

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All this is unfortunate, and Heffernan no doubt does not intend in these seemingly offhand references to inflict such abuse upon any women, not least women “of a certain age,” as the French say. A trope like “harpies,” conjuring up images of viragos and witches, adds insult to injury.

When it comes to age, women just can’t win—even with other women who regard themselves as feminists. This is most unfortunate considering what irredeemable swine men are. In this patriarchal society, women “are old as soon as they are no longer very young,” as Susan Sontag informed us way back in 1972, and while Heffernan might not intend to perpetuate such hurtful stereotypes, they are there nonetheless. The feminist organization Women of Influence+ finds that 80 percent of women already face ageism in the workplace, and this will not help. Younger women are considered inexperienced, middle-aged women are quizzed about family obligations, and older women, who are still amazed by “the Google,” are slightly ridiculous. 

We’ve come a long way, baby, but we have a long way to go, and sexist and ageist attitudes cannot stop the onrush of herstory. Feminism “was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.” Rush Limbaugh said that, and—if and only if you accept Heffernan’s assessment of the age appearance of these Trump appointees—he might have been onto something.