In a recent piece for RT, “Why weird men try to put penises on powerful women,” my dear and insightful colleague Rachel Marsden addresses the current tendency of men to trash women who make it to the top, and focuses on the examples of Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron. These two individuals have indeed been considered by many as men in disguise.

It is very true that there’s currently in the West (only in the West, really) a conflict between men and women. Relationships, intimate or professional, are becoming more tense and more complex. But that is because of an ideological evolution. Adultery, which was the natural core problem between men and women for centuries, is apparently not the main matter of contention anymore. However, questioning the abilities of men and women according to their profession is one issue; questioning the identity of leaders is a completely different one.

One should be cautious about considering Michelle and Brigitte “powerful women,” but we’ll get back to this.

First, examples of powerful women in history abound, and no rational person would question that. Did anybody ever suspect Cleopatra of being a man? Did anybody ever think that Catherine the Great, with all her might and gallery of lovers, was a guy? Margaret Thatcher was nicknamed ‘the Iron Lady’, not ‘Iron Man’. One can argue that those examples are from the past and we in the 21st century live in a different reality, with a conflicting perception of so-called ‘genders’. What about Angela Merkel? What about........

© RT.com