So it's true: Republicans really do hate women

[DonViejo]

It’s not just Trump. With the vote to move forward on Kavanaugh, the misogyny at the heart of the GOP is revealed

AMANDA MARCOTTE
OCTOBER 5, 2018 6:00PM (UTC)

They really do hate women.

It's long been frowned upon to acknowledge this fundamental truth: Misogyny is at the heart of right-wing politics. Pointing out that hatred of women and a desire to keep them under the boot is an animating force of Republican politics is sure to draw pained expressions from many liberal men, certain that the feminists are being hysterical again. Surely feminists don't think it's quite as simple as that, right? Surely we understand that anti-abortion views are about a sincere belief that life begins at conception and anyway, Republicans aren't serious when they say they're going to ban abortion. That's just something they say to rile up the rubes, to trick them into voting for the real agenda, which is about economics and taxes. Certainly you women can't think you are important enough that oppressing you is a major priority for Republicans, right?

We're not hearing that argument much these days, though the price that had to be paid for the wake-up call was steep indeed: The election of a gloating misogynist who brags about his lengthy career sexual assault. Now the Senate, with Friday's cloture vote to move forward with the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, is one step from seating a piggish frat boy who has been credibly accused of abusive sexual conduct by multiple women to the Supreme Court. Once there, he will almost certainly be the fifth vote to gut abortion rights and to start chipping away at LGBT rights and contraception access.

In his famous 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas," Thomas Frank laid down the argument that became almost a doctrine in some quarters of the left, which was that gender politics and the culture war and gender politic were just distractions thrown up by Republicans to bait the masses into voting against their economic self-interest. Frank wrote that culture war politics "may count when conservatives appear on the stump," but "once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations."

"Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished," he intoned, setting up a decade-plus of liberal men, right through the 2016 election, insinuating that feminist priorities like electing more women to office were a distraction from real issues. That pressure campaign was largely successful, leaving many women too ashamed to be frumpy feminists who were mysteriously undermining the progressive cause to get excited about the possibility of electing a feminist like Hillary Clinton.

Seems like feminists aren't being shamed into silence so easily these days. The videos populating social media from the protests at the Hart Senate Building are a cacophony of mostly female voices raised high, screaming disapproval of the Kavanaugh nomination and no longer intimidated by accusations that they are shrill, hysterical or, heaven help us, not sexy. And Republican reactions strongly suggest their misogyny is more than an act put on to bamboozle the yokels.

more
https://www.salon.com/2018/10/05/so-its-true-republicans-really-do-hate-women/

[Squinch]

1. That's a "duh," there, Amanda. Really, where have these people been?

[GoCubsGo]

3. They've been too busy buying into the "I'm not a feminist" narrative.

And, living in their "super heroes" comic book fantasy land.

[GoCubsGo]

2. Which means republican women are self-loathing.

Sad.

[Funtatlaguy]

4. They hate women that "don't know their place". They long for the 1950s.

[dlk]

5. The GOP Has Shown Themselves to be the Women-Haters Party for Many Years

Their War on Women isn't a myth.

[Guilded Lilly]

6. The hatred, fear and insecurity runs bone deep. Not just in the obsessive...

desire for male political power, but patriarchal “religion” as well.
It’s bred from birth, in thought word and deed.

[smirkymonkey]

7. I really think that any woman who votes republican is an idiot.

[JI7]

8. Thomas Frank has always been BS. ignoring what is happening

and making excuses for the bigots.

in fact he makes the bigoted men out to be the victims.

[CousinIT]

9. No. I don't think Republicans CARE ENOUGH about women to hate them.

Republicans are INDIFFERENT to women.

The opposite of love isn't hate.

It's INDIFFERENCE.

It's just plain ol NOT. GIVING. A. DAMN. LOOK at and LISTEN to their responses to Dr. Ford's testimony. Even if they thought she might be credible, they just DIDN'T. CARE. That was and is ever will be the bottom line with them. They. just. don't. care.

They won't SAY that exactly. They'll say "she's confused", or "she's lying!", or "Democrats are just trying to derail this nomination!" They'll say ANYTHING except what the truth is -- because the truth is too TERRIBLE for the public to hear if they want to retain any support at all. So they have to disguise it inside other statements.

The TRUTH is that Republicans JUST. DON'T. GIVE. A. DAMN. about women.

AT ALL.

Women are just a nuisance to them.

Male service units. Used for control and war exercises. Sexual gratification. Incubators. Maids. They're not EVER considered human. This is why in the Republican mind, healthcare for women is just not worth anything. Why spend so much money on a the health of a breeding cow? Especially when there are so many more of them out there?

Not hate.

INDIFFERENCE.

ONE HALF of the United States population is shit to them. They have no use for women and would just as soon see them enslaved as to look at them. That's the way it was. That's the way it is. And that's the way the patriarchy (Republicans) want to keep it. And that is a large part of what this goddamned "nomination" (judicial rape) was about.