Yesterday Gina Haspel overcame all the obstacles — job segregation by gender, the old-boy network, lax enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, attempts to present evidence that she was a torturer — to become the first woman director of the CIA. A round of applause, please.

On the day before the Senate vote, Jeremy Scahill noted

…Haspel has refused to renounce torture, her role in its use or to condemn the practice of waterboarding. In fact, under questioning from Sen. Kamala Harris during her confirmation hearing, Haspel explicitly refused to say that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” she oversaw at a secret CIA prison in Thailand were immoral.

For a while it seemed the good old boys in the Senate might not go for her, but most of them put aside their gender biases, not to mention their sense of decency, and gave her a big thumbs-up.

It was a landmark decision and a signal that women in government can and will be rewarded for despicable behavior just as readily as men. More to the point, it proved we’ve entered an era when depraved old white women can wield as much power to fuck up the world as depraved old white men.

Who would have thought that a torturer would strike such an important blow for gender equality?