Men have a rich vocabulary of sexual slurs to denigrate women. Turnabout is fair play. White Christian MAGA men have limp little junk and do whatever they can to conceal their impotence (except those who call themselves Proud Boys and will forever be boys). They put Trump stickers, slogans, and confederate flags on their pick-ups. They tote military-style weapons and wear camouflage garb and gang insignia. They pretend to manliness by macho posturing and paraphernalia, and by bullying others wherever, whenever—all to conceal and compensate for their weakness and insecurity.
The many expressions of misogyny—denigration of women; discrimination in law, education, and career; and denial of their full personhood from dress codes to abortion restrictions—are personal and political. Personal misogyny of White Christian men reflects their latent fear that women are the stronger sex and getting stronger.
White Christian MAGA men express fear of replacement by many others unlike them: Blacks, Hispanic immigrants, Muslims, and Jews. But they do not admit that women are replacing them and cannot admit that they are displacing themselves. Significantly, they are evading education. A higher percentage of women than men graduate from high school and college, and a higher percentage of women than men have professional and technical jobs. Increasingly, women enter and enlarge the number of women, even outnumber men, in jobs from which they were previously discouraged or excluded. These men avoid these white-collar livelihoods now viewed as “women’s work” and “manned” by women and associated cultural lifestyles viewed as womanish. Or they leave with their egos wounded by women’s superior performance. (You go, girls!) More generally, they oppose a modern world in socio-cultural transition from male-dominated societies historically based on brawn to more gender-equal societies based primarily on brains. They cling to a worldview of male dominance, of brawn over brains. Of course, dominance does not concern those valuing themselves and self-confident.
Unmarried young and middle-aged White Christian MAGA men especially lack self-esteem and confidence. They are involuntarily celibate (incels) and intensely resentful. They are bitter about their lack of appeal to women no longer inclined to “settle” or to stay as they once did when they were denied educational and career opportunities. As a result, much of the MAGA movement is made up of male losers trying to become winners through the muscle masculinity of fascism.
Their resort to fascist masculinity appears in threats of violence or harassment, now embedded in almost all Republican language, often tainted by misogyny, from MAGA chants to hang Hillary Clinton to House Republican promises to impeach Nancy Pelosi without a scintilla of evidence of any criminal offense by either woman. But, given Republican views of the use of political power, especially to punish enemies and reward friends, and given a Supreme Court corrupted by its conservative Catholic-born justices determined to adjudicate according to their preferences and prejudices, Republicans hope that SCOTUS will uphold their perversions of the law and the rule of law, and, ultimately, the ensuing violence of tolerated lawlessness.
The political range of White Christian MAGA men’s misogyny extends beyond their belief that women are possessions to be owned, ruled, and controlled by men. (White Christian women who accept their subordination, as Justice Barrett claims to do, regard it as religiously sanctioned.) This extension appears in the snide Republican expression “owning the libs.” It suggests that liberals, Democrats, Progressives, and other kinds of “Lefties” as well as women are property to be owned, ruled, and controlled like slaves. The analogy is apt because most of the Republican Party is racist as well as misogynist. The evidence is clear in intersectional cases. The only votes against the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman, to the Supreme Court came from 47 of 50 Republican Senators. Of the three Republican votes for confirmation, two were women’s.
White Christian MAGA men’s fear of their inferiority to women fuels their general hostility not only to women, but also to minorities and their supporters. It appears in major Republican policy positions, none of which “promote the general welfare” and all of which disproportionately and adversely affect women and children regardless of race, religion, or national origin. Among others: anti-gender-oriented legislation about rights (abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage and adoption, transgender treatment); anti-immigrant policies; anti-gun-control legislation; anti-democratic laws to disenfranchise Democratic and minority voters, and rig elections or results for Republican candidates; and anti-safety-net efforts to shrink or end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other anti-poverty or anti-hunger programs. All these Republican “anti” positions target people to hurt, not help, them. Government of the people: no. Government by the people: no. Government for the people: absolutely not.
The divisive and debased politics which Republicans have pursued, and the deceptive platforms which Republicans have published should urge people in District 2 to think carefully before voting for any Republican on the ballot. Straight party tickets used to be the fashion; they may come back. Steve Bannon has urged Republicans to launch from-the-ground-up crusades to capture control of policy-making bodies: school and library boards; city councils, county commissions, state legislatures and governorships; and congressional seats and the presidency. The danger to democracy of their proto-fascist rule is something not long ago and far away, but here and now—as near as their threat to all women in our families, friendship circles, and communities.
Many profess to vote for the best person, not for best party. But since most votes now follow party lines, there is no best person. Candidates who do not reveal their party affiliation should be suspected of being Republican, denying the 2020 election results, scheming to overturn the votes of future majorities, and hiding their agenda behind fear and smear campaign literature. No one should vote for someone who keeps secrets from you. One such is current District 2 Republican Yvette Herrell, stout member of the House Freedom Caucus, a collection of proto-fascist crazies willing to destroy democracy if they cannot have their way by forcing it on others. Voters should support all candidates of the party which serves best their interests and those of their fellow citizens, is most responsive to people, and is most respectful of democracy. Even a weak candidate could run on the slogan “I’m not Yvette Herrell” and very much deserve your vote.
10-11-27
The Weaker Sex
“Frailty, thy name is woman.” Hamlet refers, not to women’s physical weakness, but to their moral weakness, an idea going back at least as far as the Biblical story of Eve’s succumbing to the Serpent’s temptation. The fact that women are physically weaker than men has, on the assumption that might makes right, led to the idea that women are morally weaker than men. Of course, the assumption embraces a pro-male bias favoring physical strength.
Human evolution and group organization placed a premium on physical strength (as well as speed, stamina, and throwing ability) in the millennia when it counted for the survival of the species and the success of states. Reliance on physical strength inclined groups to accept male dominance and gender-based divisions of labor. Throughout human history, these adaptive arrangements have become societal norms in almost all cultures. A man’s place is in the world; a woman’s, in the home—so goes traditional thinking.
But—O temporal, o mores—they are a-changing. Medical science supplants myth about biological strength. Males may be physically stronger, but not all strengths are physical; in fact, females are stronger in other ways, from start to finish. Boys have a higher infant mortality rate, and men do not live so long as women. Disease for disease, injury for injury, men die at higher rates than women. Physiologically, if not physically, women are stronger than men.
Thanks to labor-saving devices, physical strength matters less and less. Such devices have reduced the number of people working on farms and ranches; in mines, forests, and fisheries; and on assembly lines. A need for heavy labor may always exist, but the market for it will continue to shrink. In post-industrial economies, more jobs require less brawn and more brain—not a change favorable to physical strength, male dominance, and gender-based divisions of labor.
Women are also stronger psychologically and morally. Although they suffer from depression many times more than men (from male domination?), women better support each other, work better together, and do the same work better. Women’s greater emotional and social competence suggests their greater moral strength of compassion, consideration, and cooperation.
The Industrial Age created the conditions for women’s efforts to secure rights comparable to men’s. Because cultural change lags technological change, progress has been erratic and slow. Women did not get the vote until 1920. They did not get many jobs until World War II, but were displaced by returning veterans. Not until the advent of women’s liberation, did women begin to make sizeable in-roads in the male-dominated economy and male-dominated professional fields. Their struggle for careers outside traditional women’s jobs—from low-level jobs as seamstresses, secretaries, telephone operators, waitresses, and other service jobs; to mid-level jobs as librarians, nurses, and teachers—and for compensation equivalent to their male peers has significantly, but not entirely, succeeded.
Men maintained dominance in education and employment as long they maintained economic hegemony. However, when women have had equal opportunity for education and careers which relied on intellectual capabilities, they have not only succeeded, but also surpassed men. They get higher grades than men; more women than men attend, and graduate from, college; and more women than men now enter the professions of engineering, law, and medicine. Women now run major corporations, and their numbers as elected state and federal officials are growing. All of these developments are good and for the better.
But not all the consequences are good and for the better. We are making progress toward a gender-neutral society, but that progress has its costs. One obvious cost is the decline in public education as many of the best and the brightest women who once entered teaching now enter professions previously denied them, to be replaced by their less academically oriented and talented sisters.
A barely acknowledged cost is the effect of this social change on men. Because of unprecedented competition in school and at work, men are leaving fields or losing benefits once reserved almost exclusively for them. The asymmetry of the change hurts. Women have long aspired to “men’s work”; men have long belittled “women’s work.” When women do “men’s work,” men, sexist as many are, redefine it as “women’s work.” The directionality of mobility also hurts. Women’s upward mobility corresponds to men’s downward mobility. As women enter the world of men, men exit it; as women move into academic positions and technical professions, men move out of them. Few appreciate the issue created by women’s equality with men: men’s equality with women.
Can men accept equality, and can they achieve it? Today, the weaker sex has its work cut out for it. Many men are confused about their identity and worth, and uncertain about roles no longer defined by physical strength or rewarded by men-only privileges. Many failing to cope increasingly resort to brute force to re-assert dominance; one result is increased domestic violence. Images of men show masculinity by a two- or three-day stubble and male vulnerability by a knee or blow to the groin. Advertising identifies “real men” by their interests in watching sports, drinking beer, ogling big breasts and flat bellies, and driving rugged trucks over rough terrain at unrealistic speeds. The cliché “boys will be boys” has an ominous significance. America now needs a concept or model of mature manhood to liberate men and make them strong enough for the so-called “weaker sex.”
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