Sexism, as in the case of Jansen, can erupt when party loyalty is shattered. Women politicians are subject to harsher media coverage generally, including misogynistic innuendos and direct assaults on their fidelity that exploit societal views on sexuality. For example, Le Devoir reported that an unnamed source alleged that a member of the national assembly who switched parties was so uncontrollable that her husband had to be persuaded to get her to calm down and work as part of a team. In particular, the misogyny that Jansen encountered online echoed the mass media vitriol that Belinda Stronach endured in 2005.

The frames questioning Stronach’s integrity and credibility, along with punditry about how her move would stoke cynicism about politics, were by far the most intense of any of the cases we examined. Conservatives were fed message lines that she had been a no-show at parliamentary committee meetings and that she was trying to get out of paying her leadership campaign debt. Pundits discussed how she had left her romantic partner, Peter MacKay, the Conservatives’ deputy leader, who had sympathized in private yet was loyal to the leader in public. After the news broke, MacKay allegedly compared her to a disloyal dog. Male callers to talk-radio shows labelled her a “political harlot” and the “Benedict Arnold of Canadian politics,” while a prominent female columnist tagged her as a “treacherous wench” and a “political whore.” A Journal de Montréal cartoon depicted Stronach as a sex worker. She received death threats, and security guards were assigned to her children at school.