Republican women learn the hard way: Complicity will not protect you
There’s no rhyme or reason to the given reasons for why the House Freedom Caucus ousted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., last week. She should be right at home in a group established to draw the House GOP to the right. After all, she’s one of the nuttiest members in historical memory, an avid fan of both right-wing conspiracy theories and nakedly fascist rhetoric. The claim that she’s “too close” to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also doesn’t make sense. As Politico’s Rachel Bade told ABC News over the weekend, fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is one of McCarthy’s “best friends.” Plus, most of the 49 members of the caucus in January voted for McCarthy as speaker on the first ballot. Nor does it follow that she was booted for calling Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., a “little b*tch.” Freedom Caucus members all worship at the altar of Donald “Grab ‘Em By The P*ssy” Trump, and are neither offended by profanity nor misogyny.
No, there’s a much simpler explanation for why this hyper-right congressional club kicked someone out for the very first time: Plain old sexism.
Greene’s celebrity and ambition clearly alienate the mostly-male membership that still views women either as helpmeets or sex objects, not as equals. This resentment of Greene for trying to rise above her station isn’t far from the surface in most coverage of the controversy. One member whined to CNN that Greene is “bigger than the group,” while excusing Jordan’s similar fame because “nobody has done more for the cause.” Considering how Greene is a fundraising powerhouse for the GOP, this explanation for differential treatment falls apart.
Greene, like most Republican women, is deaf to the clear lesson here: Complicity will not protect you.
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Sure, Republican men will make some space for someone like Boebert, but that’s only because she’s not a real threat. Boebert likes to get a lot of attention but doesn’t have serious leadership ambitions. Greene has designs on being a real power player. She is swiftly discovering that Republican men like the glass ceiling exactly where it is.
Greene’s celebrity and ambition clearly alienate the mostly-male membership that still views women either as helpmeets or sex objects, not as equals.
Recent years have borne witness to an increasingly shrill Republican panic over changing gender norms. It really took off under Trump, a proud sexual predator who even fantasizes out loud about sex with his own daughter. Yet many Republican women seemed shocked when the far-right Supreme Court actually made good on the threat to overturn Roe v. Wade. The subsequent wave of abortion bans has been politically unsettling for the party because it seems like it lost them a small but significant number of female voters who have had enough of the misogyny.
Sadly, however, most Republican women have stayed put, telling themselves that abortion bans won’t affect them. Now even post-menopausal women are finding they aren’t safe from the surge of overtly anti-woman policies embraced by the GOP.
Late last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., signed a bill dramatically curtailing access to alimony and, in particular, ending permanent alimony. In doing so, he’s siding with “men’s rights” activists against the traditional conservative concerns about disincentivizing divorce and adultery. Notably, the people who will be most harmed by this are not feminist women who embrace “modern” lifestyle choices, such as getting an education and having a job outside the home. Typically, permanent alimony is awarded to women who tried to live a “traditional” lifestyle: Older women who spent decades as housewives and who have no marketable skills.
“I’m really disappointed because I’m a Republican who voted for Gov. Desantis,” Camille Malone Fiveash told ABC Action News. She had been married for over 30 years before, she says, her husband cheated on her. “My ex-husband wanted me to stay home. He wanted to pursue his career and me to take care of the kids and keep the household and everything just perfect for him.”
“I held up to my end of the bargain,” she argued. Of course, the “bargain” was always a lie sold to women to get them to comply with an unfair system.
“The so-called party of ‘family values’ has just contributed to erosion of the institution of marriage in Florida,” Jan Killilea, 63, told the Orlando Weekly.
As feminists have often patiently explained, “family values” is just code for male domination. If protecting male privilege conflicts with protecting families, Republicans will choose the former. That’s why Trump’s status as a thrice-married chronic adulterer has never been a problem for the party of “family values.”
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Yet, the GOP continues to successfully bamboozle shocking numbers of women with promises that complicity will protect them. Witness the rise of Moms for Liberty, a group like many before it that sells conservative women on the idea that they can somehow gain power through embracing submissive gender roles.
Moms for Liberty “have to be understood as a core part of a broader and longstanding reactionary movement centered on restoring traditional hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality — a movement in which conservative mothers have always played a particularly powerful role,” historian Nicole Hemmer wrote for CNN last week.
Marjorie Taylor Greene will always find there’s a hard limit to how high the men in her party will let her fly, no matter how much lip service she pays to their sexist values.
The group recently drew national attention when one chapter in Indiana ran a quote from Adolph Hitler in a newsletter: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.”
Initially, Moms for Liberty tried to justify this by claiming they quoted Hitler to oppose his views. The excuse never made sense, since they clearly do believe owning the youth equals gaining the future. More to the point, the group’s views reflect what Hitler was advocating at the time, which is a claim that women’s “power” runs through home and hearth, instead of the “men’s” realm of public power. (This was captured in the German slogan “Kinder, Küche, Kirche,” which means “children, kitchen, church,” a shorthand to describe a right-wing view of women’s proper role.)
Sure enough, after a few mealy-mouthed disavowals of the Hitler quote to the press, there was “a marked shift in tone around the Hitler” quote at the Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia late last month, Kiera Butler, who reported on the convention for Mother Jones, wrote. Speakers lamented that anyone had ever apologized for publishing a quote from Hitler, insisting the group should stand by the choice. By the end of the summit, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, R-N.C., was hollering about how “it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes.”
In clinging defensively to this quote, the Moms for Liberty are missing the point. This isn’t just about Hitler being a genocidal maniac, though that really should be reason enough. He was also, crucially, lying to women. The “soft power” that women are promised through the dutiful performance of traditional roles isn’t real power. That’s why women spend decades being obedient housewives, only to be slapped in the face when they want fair compensation. It’s why someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene will always find there’s a hard limit to how high the men in her party will let her fly, no matter how much lip service she pays to their sexist values. Republicans may center hate of blue state feminists in their propaganda, but when Roe was overturned, it was those Republican-voting populations who saw their access to abortions taken first. But, as the popularity of Moms for Liberty shows, there’s always a bunch of Republican women ready to fall for the lie that there’s strength through submission.
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