There were men too—Fauci, of course, among others—but Biden’s women seemed to play a specific role. They offered confident reassurance and normalcy, especially to other women, who had reason to be concerned about Covid.
…
I call these propagandists Biden’s “handmaidens,” because of the sacrificial role they played on the frontline of Covid minimization, an essentially patriarchal project.
…
I’d like to propose a fifth wave of feminism that is really grounded in our bodies and aware of how all of the structures that build our society are designed to benefit men and their bodies.

I get the point that the author is making - the selection of Kamala Harris as VP tells us all we need to know about the Biden admin’s cynical use of identity to engineer compliance with its policies, and it seems uncontroversial to conclude that the fact that many of the prominent officials responsible both for promulgating covid policy and absorbing the inevitable blowback were women is not a coincidence. But the “fifth wave of feminism” part seems to overlook the conversations that have already taken place about this topic. Covid normalization might be a novel manifestation, but for Black women the idea that their bodies are of secondary (or worse) concern is probably not a revelatory one. The novelty is now that the consequences - largely because they’re being administered by a virus that doesn’t respond well to the implicit social conventions governing the value of a human being - are hitting privileged women, too.

Reminds me of how had a gay black immigrant woman do lots of his Gaza genocide interviews