Whenever I wish to speak evil of a member of my own sex, I like to say that I admire her feminist work, allowing young girls all around the world to see that women too can be boring and obnoxious. Meloni, Truss and Le Pen take my line to an extraordinary extreme, (I tend to have these cosmic effects, it is the unburnt witch in me as they say), proving that even women can be demagogues. The daughters of Thatcher and of the hair bleach products seem to be burning the world one Tory party at a time, transforming the Gaslight, Girlboss, Gatekeep joke into political reality.

In the past, I have tried to consider these leaders outside their gender. I would, and still do, condemn sexist commentary against Truss, and it is sexist to only see her via the lens of gender, which is also why I would not support her only because she is a woman. She does not represent women issues and she is not a feminist figure for me. But conversation with friends has made me rethink whether gender might actually be relevant here. My friends seem to have been more disappointed in female right-wing leaders than in male ones, feeling almost personally betrayed.

Even in local spheres, when elected women in societies used their position to recruit a conservative team, or barely invite female speakers, it seemed to upset my friends more, and I found myself emotionally agreeing. What is it about women that makes their evil feel like a rawer betrayal? Perhaps because it really is.

What do we mean when we say we want more women in politics? In an age of image, we are quick to see representation as a vacant aesthetic trope in politics and forget its deeper significance. Representation can go both ways – for the person or for the people. Do we, women, want to have women in politics to show that even a woman can sink the market and get accused of crimes against humanity? Or do we want to have women because they have a first-hand insight on the issues of half the population?

The world loves consuming beautiful women, and hating them

Women can understand the dangers of domestic and sexual violence, of period poverty, of being constant guests in the public male space, they understand that female patients are ignored by doctors, that jobs seen as feminine are underpaid, that women anywhere are underpaid and an endless list of other other issues. Their insight and not their outsight is what matters, their knowledge of women’s experience - not their visual role of a woman in the team.

But the visual aspect is what benefits the mismatch of female leadership and conservative politics, as we are, more than ever, obsessed with seeing women. The visuality of women is economic fuel for public relations and advertising. This is definitely not to say that pretty women get their jobs because of their looks, but it is to say that the visuality of women helps augment the virality in today’s media-based politics.

From Helen of Troy to Amber Heard, the world loves consuming beautiful women, and hating them. And however we view them (personally I am a big Helen of Troy fan) we cannot deny the importance of femininity to the public gaze. It attracts adoration, as it also attracts haters, who usually manage to clumsily unveil their inner sexism in the way. That, of course, attracts new attention back to the right, as they can rightfully attack the sexism, and distract audiences from their own sexist approaches. Meloni managed to capitalise on the sexualisation of women in the public eye when holding two melons to her breasts as part of her campaign, which understandably women could see as a betrayal. The most powerful woman in the country paved her way to success by merchandising objectification – one of the most common tools to weaken and hurt women.

We like to see women, but we love to hear men. And by using sexist tropes to promote conservative thought Meloni combines chauvinistic, masculine voice of the radical right with the sight of a woman. In the modern world, women are still a product, only now, (businesswomen as they are), they can manage their marketing on their own. And once you have sold your soul to the devil, all the rest is a pretty easy deal.

Women should support women, not support themselves upon women. And that is a key difference capitalism has managed to blur when atrophying the revolutionary power of feminism into another gadget. Women are poorer, underrepresented, disrespected, unprotected – their struggle is linked with so many others, their rights are interwoven within every household in every single country. Changing women’s rights could change the structure of dominations upon which the world is built. Instead, we have created a layer of bossgirls, atop a class of exhausted women.

Amid a capitalism that now requires both parents to work full time jobs while women remain burdened with traditionally feminine duties, we do not need any merely a leader who is a woman, we need them to be leaders who see and fight neo-patriarchal structures. Our way to view women should also change for that, as often even the most self-proclaimed liberal of us, will categorise every women who does not look or talk the way we expect as annoying, dumb and irrelevant. If we learn to respect women as people, we will find new leaders, who fight not only for their own ambitions, but for the people they represent.