Harpy. Shrew. Harridan. Virago. Vixen. Hellcat. Scold. Fishwife. Fury. The English language has no shortage of words for belligerent and bossy women, and nowhere was this behaviour more in view than during the confirmation hearings of Trump’s cabinet picks. After following hours of hearings, my overwhelming mind’s eye image was of pained, forbearing men closing their eyes as they endured various congresswomen such as Elizabeth Warren, Mazie Hirono and Kirsten Gellibrand yelling and raging at them.

There has been no shortage of women misbehaving recently. The rude and déclassé behaviour of Grace Tame, with her ‘F… Murdoch’ t-shirt at the Lodge for an Australia Day event, is a standout. Would a bloke with the same t-shirt have been allowed into the event, one wonders? They certainly would never have got into the Parliament House gallery, where abusive signs are not allowed. Then there’s former ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy bad-mouthing her cousin Bobby Kennedy Junior on the eve of his Health Secretary nomination hearings with tales of bad behaviour in his youth – he was a ‘predator’, a drug addict, dangerous. Melbourne’s Mary Leunig reworking evidence-free slurs of wife-beating and misogyny against her beloved cartoonist brother Michael Leunig before he was even in his grave. All this without referring to Senator Lidia someone, whose name I refuse to remember, who regularly makes a headline-grabbing spectacle of herself. We even have a new collective name now for these badly behaved women – Karens, defined by Wikipedia as excessively entitled or demanding upper middle class white women.

In this moment of late-stage feminism, some women seem to think that the normal rules of polite behaviour don’t apply to them, that they have a free pass to behave exactly as they want and others must simply put up with it. Their experiences have been so painful that they are entitled to rage away at all and sundry. In one of the new taboos of our age, men have not enjoyed the same freedom to yell and scream at women. That would be attacked as toxic masculinity, which begs the question, why do we allow what could be seen as toxic femininity? Have we swapped toxic masculinity for toxic femininity? Not that men should respond in kind; good manners make debate, conflict resolution and social life possible within a community, but surely the same standards of behaviour should apply to all.

Thankfully, a new breed of women has now stepped on to the political stage, women such as Homeland Security boss Kristi Noem, new White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, new White House correspondent Natalie Winters and Bobby Kennedy Jr’s former presidential running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who is using her substantial fortune to work for the health of America’s children.

Not a head of blue or pink hair among them, they are all beautiful, well-groomed and presented, younger than the elderly congresswomen, and manage to get their points across without finger-pointing and shrieks of anger and accusation. Leavitt and Winter are the feistiest and the youngest, and both are motormouth graduates of Steven K Bannon’s Warroom school of Right-wing political activism.

Leavitt in particular has displayed a deft touch at the press corps podium, reminding the largely leftist media that Trump’s characterisation of Covid as ‘the China virus’ from the Wuhan lab has turned out to be correct, that the dismantling of DEI was voted in by the American people, and that Trump’s ‘public profanity’, far from earning the snooty tut-tutting of the Washington press corps, simply showed he said what many people thought, but lacked the courage to say. Her performances so far show her as a happy warrior with a detailed grasp of the issues, already more expert than the previous occupant of the position, Karine Jean-Pierre, who was known as ‘Binder’ for her many referrals to her resource folder. As former White House press secretary Dana Perino noted, Leavitt has showed a wisdom far beyond her years.

I doubt that it would occur to any of these new conservative spokeswomen that they have been discriminated against in their lives, and that they should start yelling and weeping to get their way. Yes, they owe a debt to the trail-blazing feminist pioneers, who broke down the barricades and rendered the playing field much more equal than it has ever been, at least in the Christian West. But the pioneers of the women’s movement did it with argument, civic activism and writings; one cannot imagine Germaine Greer, with her withering tongue, or poised activist Gloria Steinem, ever so losing control of themselves as to descend to raging and yelling. That would have been seen as counter-productive, as playing into the hands of stereotypes, the hysterical, uncontrollable women unable to keep their heads in difficult moments, and so being unworthy of leadership or responsibility.

Then there’s the sobbing Selena Gomez, bewailing the deportation of ‘all her people’. Apart from the evidence that she feels Hispanic, rather than American, despite being born in Texas, her emoting on X provoked such an unexpected backlash that she quickly took down her post. One assumes she thought weeping in public would work for her and her cause, just as the angry Democrat senators thought rage was a justified tactic against Trump’s nominees. That these behaviours now play badly is a sign of our changed times.

They say the female of the species is deadlier than the male, and maybe what we are seeing is these entitled women feeling confident enough to junk their inhibitions and go straight for the jugular. There’s a place for emotion in politics, but it’s rare and should be unusual, like former Prime Minister Bob Hawke weeping about his family issues. Emotional antics such as losing control and yelling rarely play well in the long run, and these women instead look like the outdated remnants of a once-powerful movement, rather than a reflection of current moods and realities.