The Conservative Contempt for Women

As low as the Far Right Republican political agenda for 2024 can sink, it still keeps going in a downward spiral. Over the weekend, the media got wind of yet another interview VP candidate JD Vance gave where he exposed more misogyny towards women who did not fit his world-view (via Jason Wilson at the Guardian (US)): 

Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.

The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”...

Ever since he was picked by Trump, Vance has been hit by scandals over his past comments, especially those concerning women and his perception of their role in society.

Last week his campaign was rocked by previous comments blasting a teachers union president for not having “some of her own” children. His previous characterizations of Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” have also troubled the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal to suburban women.

Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on topics including US evangelicals and populist politics, said: “Vance represents a new articulation of rightwing politics that is bridging the Christian right and a tech-influenced hypermasculine conservatism.

“He appeals to evangelicals with the message that we find happiness by fulfilling traditional gender roles, which is a cornerstone of white evangelical Christianity. He also speaks to a misogynist trend emerging out of the tech world among people who would prefer not to talk about any kind of diversity at all.”

“What they share is the view that women shouldn’t be in paid work: they should be in the home and rearing children. But the public line isn’t ‘we hate women’, it’s ‘women will be happier if they stay at home’,” she added.

The Guardian contacted the Vance campaign for comment but received no response...

As a man, JD Vance is trying hard to present himself as a patriarchal Alpha Male: dismissive of women's rights, projecting his own misery onto them, and refusing to express any basic decency at all. 

We've seen these Alpha Male wannabes - and their Incel cousins - running around on social media, showing off their "conquests", expressing their toxic mindsets, and acting out their dominance towards everyone they view as their lessers. 

Remember Andrew Tate, the preening jackass who advertises himself as a male role model and tried taunting a young woman about his prized gas guzzling sports cars... and ended up exposing himself to arrest by Romanian authorities pursuing him for abuse, fraud, and human sex trafficking? He resumed his public behavior as a misogynistic asshole even after that arrest, which all led to fresh arrests by Romanian officials now including sex trafficking of minors.

This is who these women-hating men are: They can't stop themselves from their attitudes that women - and the younger the better - are property, no different than the 16 cars Tate has to own to make himself feel superior to the rest of us. To these men, women are basically slaves to their whims and needs. They don't see women as half the human population, or as humans at all. Ask them if women have brains, these guys will laugh. Ask them if women have souls, these guys will shrug it off.

As human beings, Vance and his Alpha Male colleagues just keep proving themselves - and everything their world-view represents - vile and wrong.

It's not just Vance that's the problem. The guy who hired him as his vice presidential candidate - trump - is demonstrably worse. Above all, donald trump is officially a sex offender, found liable for sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll that the judge declared was by definition rape. There's the long history of trump abusing his "privileges" owning the Miss Teen USA pageants. There's the report he raped his first wife Ivana. There's trump himself proudly boasting he can grab women by the p-ssy in the most vulgar way possible.

And with all that, the so-called "family values" religious-type leadership of the Republican Party accepts trump - and Vance, and hundreds of other vulgar Alpha Male assholes - as their own. Because those "Christian" values aren't about family, or humility, or love.

This contempt, this rage, this violence towards women explains how deep into the rot the conservative ideology has fallen. 

This is who conservatives are, in service to their ideology that only the true elites - rich, white, and male - must rule. Remember what Frank Wilhoit said: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Everyone else outside of their circle - the ethnic minorities like Blacks and Latinos (and even Asians), the youth, the poor, and now above all the women - must be shunned, defamed, disposed of.

Even those lessers who ARE in their circle - the conservative women (and Blacks and Latinos and Gays) in this case - who pander to this message of misogyny are just there to convince these men - if not those in the media looking for narrative cover - that they are ideologically in the right. The conservative women playing to the "tradwife" or anti-feminist stances are doing so because they personally profit - above all, the wealth and social influence - from living in the status quo that the conservative movement seeks to enforce. But the second these women are no longer valued for their contributions, they will find themselves in the same mess - poor, physically broken, emotionally drained - every other American woman suffers now.

Wonder why teacher's pay is so low across so many Republican-controlled states? It's because it's viewed as "women's work." Wonder why women's health care is declining across the nation? Because the bans on abortion - and the coming threat to birth control - are sending many OB/Gyns into retirement - and scaring potential new doctors out of the profession - before they can get criminally charged by ignorant wingnut politicians over basic women's health care.

If trump is trying to walk back the damage he'd done already over abortion - and health care in general - don't listen to him. Look at what he's doing. Look at who he's working with to promote even worse ills on the nation if he - and his cohort Vance - lie and steal their way back into the White House.

The Republican platform on women boils down to one word: SUFFER.

The cruelty remains the point.

For the Love of God and for the women in your lives, Stop Voting Republican.