Conservative Myths and the Women Who Love Them

I have never been able to understand why any woman on the planet alive after 1965 could possibly, with a clear conscience (or one at all), actively promote their own oppression by being either Republican or Christian/Muslim. I always thought growing up that all women were closet Democrats and just placated their Republican husbands because it didn't really matter to them. But today I can turn on the TV and see any number of young, beautiful women telling other women they should bow before their men and never, ever think for themselves. It's depressing, and confusing.

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Jessica, you would not be alone in having more disdain for anti-feminist women than for anti-feminist men... nor even in the more generalized sense, having more disdain for someone whom you might normally take to be an ally than you would for someone you might normally consider to be an adversary.

Read Elaine Pagels' book "The Origin of Satan". Elaine illustrates how the concept of Satan was reserved by ancient Jews for condemnation, not of their oppressors, but of other Jews who did not see things as they did.

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I don't know if anti-feminism benefits any woman. Women who promote/justify wage gaps, decreasing rights over our bodies and abstinence education over smart sex education are only shooting themselves in the face.

They, their daughters, sisters and friends (and the men in their lives also) feel the very discrimination that they are propagating.

They just don't realize it.

Maybe that's why they rub us the wrong way. A smart woman should know better.

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there is a large and noisy subset of female/minority conservative commentators who make a living from simply being the relative novelty of female/minority conservative commentators.

They enhance that by being loud and vacuous (do you honestly think the likes of Ann Coulter, Michele Malkin or Alan Keyes are anything but the "shock jocks" of political punditry?). There are certainly some female/minority commentators who are conservative by legitimate conviction, but they aren't the topics of Ms. Valenti's post, as far as I can tell.

Re Independent Women's Forum has come up, I'd like to reference Media Transparency's page on it.

"The Independent Women's Forum is neither Independent nor a Forum. Not independent because it is largely funded by the conservative movement. Not a forum, because it merely serves up women who mouth the conservative movement party line."

Rather than being independent, it's leaders are mostly the spouses of high-ranking Republicans such as Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell. It gets the lion's share of its annual funding from Richard Mellon Scaife, a well-known neo-con sugar daddy.

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I am working mom. I am a feminist. I am a Christian. I am grappling with the possibility that one of these doesn't fit. My church (presbyterian) doesn't directly "put down" women, but it doesn't exactly put women and men on equal footing. When we have church dinners, the women always have to meet to determine who will bring what. The women are "in charge" of set up and clean up etc etc. I guess I read into things too much, but this just pisses me off. A prominent woman at our church (or should I say wife of a prominent man...the sunday school teacher) gives me grief in an under the table, sneaky way about being a working mom. Because I don't want to rock the boat, I don't. I smile and nod when I really want to kick her in the head. She and her husband have 2 daughters in college and they had a huge hand in choosing which church their daughters would go to in the college community. They stated that the new church could obviously not have a woman pastor. The whole time I was thinking "WTF"? (not exactly the best thing to be thinking while chit-chatting in the foyer of the church). I sometimes feel these people are crazy, back-woods, and oppressive. I'm not sure I want my daughters (4 years and 7 months) around these influences. Suggestions?

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Perhaps the most ironic thing about Wendy Wright's comment is that the people that actually profit from teen sex education (or lack thereof) are the purveyors of abstinence-only sex education who receive millions of dollars in federal funding every year. They are the ones that really have an interest in keeping teens ignorant and unsafe, otherwise they might lose their livelihood. I mean, I guess it totally moral and Christian to make a buck off the teen's backs - particularly at the cost of their sexual health and reproductive freedom.

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You could try an Episcopal church. Our presiding bishop is a woman. Some parishes are pretty conservative, though.

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I, like many other readers, have to question why this is occurring. The reason this is so baffling to me is, it seems that conservatism across many fields doesn't mean anti-woman, at least it doesn't have to. Ideally women can and do identify as conservatives and are still successfully independent and progressive as far as womans rights are concerned, and no where can I find a guideline of conservative politics that states you must object to an egalitarian society. Yet I will throw something out there that can be controversial. Religion seems to be the only frontier ideologically restraining our otherwise generally progressive American society from moving forward. This should not be a roadblock. We criticize other religions and other nations of there oppressive injustices towards women yet we see those same dynamics to a significant degree in our own society. Its time we stand up and acknowledge our own hypocrisies and work towards being a truly fair society even with faiths role. We are a strong nation; we can have faith and gender equality.

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In a similar vein Christianity has been historically oppressive toward black people when wielded by immoral white people. Whites taught that blacks were the cursed descendants of Ham from the Bible. Today blacks don't believe that of course but some racist, eugenicist whites probably still do. Blacks maintain their own version of Christianity that does not degrade nor denigrate them in such a fashion. White Christianity and black Christianity are in fact two separate religions in many aspects.

My point is that people tend to sanitize their interpretation of religion and conservatism when it benefits them to do so. Let's be honest. There are some women that like being controlled and having someone make decisions for them. I know some of them. The larger issue in my opinion here is about the true nature of women. Humans pretend that we are not animals and that we didn't evolve over hundreds of thousands of years to get to this point. We came from hunter-gatherer societies and just because technology has relegated that way of life to a museum it doesn't mean our genes have adapted to it yet.

I hate when feminists decry women that want to be submissive. What's wrong with that as long as it is not emotionally or physically abusive? There are submissive men too. People have all sorts of S&M fetishes, including penchants for bondage and torture. You cannot take a women that has grown up Christian and conservative out of that environment and expect her to become Mary Tyler Moore over night. Women are more emotional than men and need those connections with people, even if they are wrongheaded on gender issues. It's just like the whole burka fiasco. Most Arab women are quite happy with their role in their countries. Who are we to force them to become feminists? Americans are some serious exceptionalist egoists. We think everyone should conform to our way of life. If we have all the answers then why is this country so screwed up on almost every front?

I don't long for the day when women were beaten and men got away with it. What I long for is women that act like women instead of always trying to compete with men. Men are women evolved to complement each other.The workplace is different but men and women have forgotten how to appreciate the splendor of our differences. We are pieces of the human puzzle that used to fit together nicely. Now it's like trying to mix oil and water. Of course men are men at work and when we leave but women have to turn off their corporate persona when they leave and assume their feminine role. Many of them either cannot do it or simply choose to not play that dual role. The "I'm equal in every way and you better act like it no matter what" machismo comes home with them. It's a light switch many women cannot turn off and it's crumbling society.

I liken it to the double-consciousness of black people. We have to be black but at the same time we have to be aware of the white status quo. Women have to be women but at the same time they feel like they have to be cold and calculating like Hillary Clinton. Obviously women don't think much of men if that's how they view us. I guess imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery. When it comes down to it these are all individual decisions. What happens collectively is just politics. I prefer demure but confident women myself not because I'm insecure or intimidated by the opposite. They just work better with my personality and I find them more sexually appealing. Some men prefer the opposite. It's almost as if feminists want to control not only how women are treated but what men should find attractive. Well it's not up to feminists.

Yes we live in a white male dominated culture and world. Yes women suffer because of that but our innate gender roles served us well over the ages. If they hadn't then it is unlikely our species would still exist.

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Shouldn't we clear up that myth first?

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