Conservative women believe complicity will save them. But an emboldened far-right is gunning for their rights - and therefore all women in the USA

[IwantToRetire]

... now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned and Donald Trump is back in the White House, many on the right feel they no longer need to hide the naked sexism fueling their movement or put up with the annoyance of women in even token leadership positions. As Kiera Butler at Mother Jones reports, the anti-abortion movement is embroiled in an escalating civil war right now over these issues. Male leaders of the Christian right have been swarming Kristan Hawkins, the 39-year-old head of a "student" anti-abortion group, demanding her ejection from the movement. It started after she objected to Republican legislators introducing bills to charge women who get abortions with murder, an extreme move she fears will backfire on the movement. But mostly it was about growing male anger on the Christian right that women are allowed leadership positions at all.

"Removed [sic] this woman from public service," declared influential Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon, part of the "TheoBros" movement that includes the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's church. Soon other TheoBros jumped in, declaring "We need Christian men leading the fight against abortion," arguing that women's suffrage was a mistake, and accusing Hawkins of emasculating her husband by being "busy jet-setting."

Webbon and the TheoBros have been clamoring more loudly in recent months about their wish to strip women, especially their own wives, of the right to vote. "You won't let women vote? Well, our society doesn't let five-year-olds vote," Webbon explained in a May podcast. He added that "a woman is like a child" and that "God has appointed men to protect them." As Sarah Stankorb at the New Republic documented, there has been growing support in Christian nationalist circles "for the repeal of the 19th Amendment and support a 'household vote' system in which men vote on behalf of their families." Hegseth's former sister-in-law reports she heard him echo similar sentiments.

This isn't mere idle chatter, either. House Republicans passed a bill (which stalled in the Senate) this session to require citizens to have a passport or birth certificate matching their name to vote. This would be a back-door ban on voting for any woman who took her husband's last name and doesn't have a passport, an estimated 69 million women. It would also disproportionately affect Republican women, who are more likely to be married, more likely to have changed their name and less likely to have a passport.

article as a whole with many shocking comments about women is at https://www.salon.com/2025/02/26/a-woman-is-like-a-child-maga-quickly-turns-its-sights-on-stripping-women-of-power/

but nobody said MAGA were pro-women, did they? PP made a good point upthread in that conservative republican women are often those who believe that self-reliance is what counts, and so on. Just because we're born female, doesn't mean that we were born left wing. Women like Thatcher exist and they have to align with a party if they want to vote or get on in politics.

The Democrats totally cocked up. They failed dramatically to address the actual issues voters care about in favour of some college debating topics of equality and diversity. Yes, equality and diversity are hugely important (to me, less so to others, probably more so to some) but so are a whole raft of other things to do with healthcare, employment, defence and the environment. We must prioritise, and many many many people vote holding their noses for that reason.

it doesn't mean you have to stop marching for women's rights, or environmental rights or whatever you hold dear to your heart even if the party you voted for gets in.

You can only say 'this is what you voted for ' to people who voted Republican when things have actually been enacted. I think we all know that women aren't going to lose the vote in the US in the next four years. Tightening up voting id will affect some people - mostly poorer ones - but it's not a shocking betrayal of women's rights to have voting id rules. There will always be extremists in any political party. It doesn't mean that the party will adopt their extreme views. I think the Trump presidency is shocking but I don't know if that will be all bad. Perhaps we need to be shocked, to be forced to evaluate what we really stand for, rather than drifting along with the crowd.

Why didn't the left pick up on the concerns from women instead of deriding them?

that, @EasternStandard is the $64,000 dollar question. Ask Kamala Harris.

Thanks, I remember you talking about this before and that was what was at the back of my mind when I posted.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves
Project 2025 was not explicitly official Republican policy during the election campaign as far as I am aware. The people who professed to believe it was all going to come to pass - Democrat leadership and party machine - did not think it was sufficiently terrifying a prospect that they had to drop their commitment to extreme gender identity ideology. They had a choice, they chose men over women. Just like the far right.

To return to your earlier post, can you please demonstrate the connection between supporting women's rights to be identified as a discrete sex class and to have the rights to privacy, dignity and safety, the right to equal educational and sport opportunities - and supporting transactivism? You seem to think that there is one.

Trump's administration has done and will do some awful things. None of that is caused by women having rights.

Trump's administration has done and will do some awful things. None of that is caused by women having rights.

Well said 👏

@WandaSiri precisely, Trump denied all knowledge of Project 2025 and those who warned that he would put it into practice if he won were accused of TDS.

The democrats were completely asleep at the wheel, and still are. Thank god we have a system in the UK where the head of state is held to account by the leader of the opposition on a weekly basis (not at the moment obviously, as Badanoch is about as effectual as a damp sock).

@Brefugee absolutely

And also all those who derided concerns throughout because they backed Harris

Why didn't anyone say yes women have a point, let's listen

No. They will give the womans vote to the man of the house. Because all women will be the property of a man.

@Mielikki we have a system in the UK where the head of state is held to account by the leader of the opposition on a weekly basis

Badanoch has a crack at the King every week? Are you sure?

Apologies, I meant head of government of course.

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, establishing female suffrage, has been around since 1920. To repeal it would require not only majorities in both houses of Congress, but ratification by 75% of the states.

We're really at the point here of Joe Biden in 2012 telling a black audience that Mitt Romney (!) was going to "put y'all back in chains".

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, establishing female suffrage, has been around since 1920. To repeal it would require not only majorities in both houses of Congress, but ratification by 75% of the states.

Only if the courts enforce it.

No one becomes a voting citizen without their paperwork in order. Migrants who haven't been regularized aren't voting.

This works both ways, presumably anyone who votes Democrat is complicit in the sterilization of children, and putting men in women's prisons?

The other thing about Project 2025 is, any politician with even a bit of savvy knows that they shouldn't outsource their whole programmes to ideological think tanks.

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were thoroughly trained by the Institute for Economic Affairs. The Conservatives may be the Stupid Party, but I don't see them repeating that experiment soon.

That's quite a bold take. Do you know of any states that are proposing to end female suffrage?

Which is bolder: backing Russia or ending female suffrage ?

E2A: To be clear I do not see what is happening in the US currently as being in anyway good for womens rights. I believe it will look to history like cutting off a leg to cure an ingrowing toenail.

Why not answer the question? Are any states currently proposing to remove the right to vote from women?

Yes.

I always think - do people spouting this rhetoric not know any conservative, or Republican, women? Or know of them? Like .... all the ones in Trump's administration? Or people like Condi Rice? Do they really see these women as barefoot in a kitchen? There are a lot of Republican women in the American Senate now, and in recent years they've elected the first Cherokee woman and first Korean woman. I just can't get over this casual claim that Republicans are looking to disenfranchise women, it's a complete fantasy.

The whole "women in the kitchen" thing is at the level of saying any woman who is aligned with the Democrats believes in the dissolution of the family or wants infants gestated in bags.

More generally - the article in the OP is 20 years out of date. The Christian evangelicals aren't a powerhouse in the party these days at the federal level. It's more variable at the state level I believe, but state politics are a different beast and not something that people in the UK seem to have a very good handle on.

I don't think that the current US government will end female suffrage. But I do think they will ignore court decisions against them, including potentially supreme court decisions. Trump is busy politicising the US Marshal Service, who are responsible for enforcing court decisions. The aim is clearly to insulate himself from any enforcement actions. Musk's personal bodyguards have even been deputised as Marshals.

Trump is building a Praetorian guard across multiple law enforcement agencies to ensure that he is untouchable and can ignore court rulings against him with impunity. I would not be at all surprised if he attempted to run for a third term.

The people actively campaigning to take the vote off women sound like fringe lunatics and this bill about passports sounds like badly thought out legislation by stupid politicians rather than a deliberate attempt to stop women voting.

The focus should be on the real problems American women face; these extreme scenarios are just a distraction.

I'll bite. What have women lost that they weren't already in danger of losing? as i understood it Roe vs Wade was already on very shaky ground with several states watering it down to meaningless words anyway.

What else have women lost? DEI initiatives weren't really promoting women, were they? I can see that individual women (head of the coastgard) are losing jobs but women as a whole? They are possibly losing their access to reproductive healthcare faster than they were before, but that is acceleration not new. They have not lost their right to work, vote, earn money, own property etc etc and from my very cursory glance at the newspapers in relation to the US none of that is on the cards.

They HAVE won, in some instances, the right to sport free of men, and in federal buildings toilets without men. While much of what is going on is an absolute shit-show, for the most part it is affecting men and women of all races, the same. The middle-aged middle-class white men who are always in power are still there. No change. So in respect of things that really affect women's day to day lives - nothing has happened. Yet.

And if it does? They will dig out their pussy hats, their signs and their banners and take to the streets.

So cost of living, access to healthcare, and crime. The first two are clearly not priorities for Trump and while the last is, I doubt his policies will reduce it (given how strongly crime is correlated with poverty).

They're not even actively campaigning. They're shitposting on fairly obscure message boards.

I'm getting flashbacks to that moment in 2016 when Hillary Clinton, rather than pitch an appealing offer to working class Americans, took time out to make a speech denouncing Pepe the Frog.