Elizabeth Warren Was Told to Be Quiet. Women Can Relate.

By SUSAN CHIRA FEB. 8, 2017

Was there a woman who didn’t recognize herself in the specter of Elizabeth Warren silenced by a roomful of men?

The explosion of indignation, mockery and free publicity that greeted Tuesday night’s move to prevent Senator Warren from reading a letter about Senator Jeff Sessions written by Coretta Scott King resonates with so many women precisely because they have been there, over and over again. At a meeting where you speak up, only to be cut off by a man. Where your ideas are ignored until a man repeats them and then they are pure genius — or, simply, acknowledged.

Being interrupted or ignored, and being one of the few women in the room, can be both inhibiting and enraging. You check your own perception: Was I being too aggressive, or did I really have a point? Is this about being a woman, or something else?

Raising questions of a double standard, male Democratic senators including Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jeff Merkley of Oregon later read into the record the very same letter that Senator Warren was reading when the Senate voted, along strict party lines, to ban her from further debate on the nomination of Mr. Sessions as attorney general.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opinion/elizabeth-warren-was-told-to-be-quiet-women-can-relate.html?emc=edit_th_20170209&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284