Left and right unite and fight women
Jennifer Rubin says don’t go thinking forced birthism isn’t part of Trumpism:
Pundits and politicians tend to observe a bright distinction between the Donald Trump MAGA movement’s assault on democracy and the right-wing evisceration of women’s reproductive rights.
Do they? I hadn’t noticed. I don’t. I suppose if asked I would say I think any opposition to abortion Trump claims is basically opportunistic, but then that’s true of nearly everything Trump says. I’m sure he’s quite happy to stick it to the bitches along with sticking it to the feminists and lefties and Democrats and yadda yadda, but I doubt he has a systematic worked-out plan as opposed to a determination to do whatever he feels like doing in the moment.
The attack on women’s self-determination and autonomy is as much a part of MAGA’s fascistic affinities as is the cult’s fondness for violence and white Christian nationalism.
Oh yes. Of course it is. People who love violence naturally love attacking women because it’s so easy.
One need only look at right-wing regimes present and past to see that they invariably include appeals to hyper-masculinity and demands for women to be limited to their roles as women and mothers. Modern authoritarian regimes — such as Viktor Orban’s Hungary or President Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil — and European fascists of the 1930s alike have sought to compel motherhood and limit women’s participation in society.
Fascism is about violence and force, so naturally it’s about hyper-masculinity, so naturally it considers women worthless apart from whelping more men and vessels to whelp more men.
The xenophobic right-wing movement in the United States today is obsessed with “replacement theory,” regarding women in the dominant group as essential to the preservation of white supremacy.
Mainstream media coverage has no problem recognizing the link between the MAGA anti-democratic movement and racism/white nationalism. One need only look at the Confederate flags carried through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, or listen to right-wing fearmongering about immigrants to understand racism is intrinsic to the MAGA movement. However, when it comes to women’s rights, we see little acknowledgment in mainstream reporting and commentary that misogyny and deprivation of women’s rights are central to a movement playing largely on White male hysteria.
I think I know why that is. I think it’s the same old reason we keep seeing: because women don’t matter that much. That’s why racism always precedes misogyny in news stories: because women don’t matter that much. It’s still considered fluff to talk about women’s rights and the hatred of women. It’s still an afterthought to talk about rape and domestic violence. It’s still considered dubious to talk about women’s rights in the same breath as real people’s rights. Lots of women are Karens, you know – probably most of them. The woman who complained to her husband about Emmett Till is far more to blame for his murder than her husband and brother-in-law who tortured him to death. Women are sly and sneaky and devilish, and also trivial and stupid and boring. Let’s put them at the bottom of the list every time.
Hysteria. Unintentional irony is still irony.
So tell us, Ophelia, don’t hold back: what do you really feel? ;-)
I know, I’m way too wishy-washy about these things.
‘It’s still considered dubious to talk about women’s rights in the same breath as real people’s rights.’
This is a lesson I need to learn over and over again, because it’s just so hard to believe–many if not most (or am I fooling myself) men don’t actually think women are people.
I may have mentioned here before that many years ago I was having a casual conversation with a man and happened to say ‘most people are women’–and it just stopped him dead. He simply could not understand the sentence.
Same. I keep learning it over and over and over.
And as a matter of fact, she didn’t complain to him. He heard about it from a third party.
Do we know that? There are so many conflicting accounts there’s not much we really know. I haven’t been able to find a source for that claim.
Ok now I’ve found one.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/emmett-biography-roy-carolyn-bryant-and-jw-milam/