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 people were free to vote for the democrats.

Who, and i will admit i didn't pay huge amounts of attention since my assumption was Trump would win, were free to make their campaigning based on access to healthcare, crime and cost of living.

Did they do that to any great effect? probably not from the looks of things

did people vote for Trump for weirdly sectarian reasons? probably yes
did a lot of people who voted for Trump on the single issue of women's sports/bathrooms and/or a fanatical devotion to the republican party (or fanatical aversion to the democrats) suddenly find out over the last few weeks that they have fucked up big time? probably yes

The Democrats didn't pay attention to everyone, in the same way the German SPD didn't. Looking at elections around the world, i think the only reason Labour won the UK election was the fact that the Tories had also stopped listening and people just wanted a change.

Joel Webbon is a Christian with a Biblical worldview. I agree with him on this but it takes having a Biblical worldview to understand why he is saying this and why it is a good thing.

This line of argument from Democrats or left leaning supporters of them only makes sense if you think that the reason Trump won was significantly because of trans issues. Whereas people have been at pains since 5 November to point out that it was irrelevant actually the truth is somewhere in the middle

You cant have it both ways, make up your minds.

@Brefugee I'm not disagreeing with you. The democrats' strategy and campaign was pathetic.

And if you do (general you) think that Trump won because of trans issues, then maybe it's time to think about why.

I followed Hillary Clinton's campaign fairly closely. I remember her making many speeches addressing the economy, poverty, social justice, women and children's rights - issues that she frequently addressed in her long career in public office. She was often criticised for being dull and uncharismatic because her speeches were so boringly about policy and issues.

Since she won the popular vote in the election, maybe the people were more convinced by her dull policy speeches about the economy etc., than Trump's flashy performances.

I'm open to correction, but I don't actually recall her making a speech about Pepe the Frog?? I know it was used as a symbol by the Trump side, and I know that was criticised on HC's campaign website, but I don't recall her ever making 'a speech denouncing Pepe the Frog.'

No more than I remember 'Joe Biden in 2012 telling a black audience that Mitt Romney (!) was going to "put y'all back in chains".
It wasn't a black audience, it was a mixed audience, and he was referring to Republican promises to 'unshackle' financial institutions, and the impact on ordinary people, like his audience:
"Romney wants to, he said in the first 100 days, he's gonna let the big banks again write their own rules. 'Unchain Wall Street!' They're going to put you all back in chains."

He shouldn't have said it like he said it, and he was rightly criticised for his choice of words, but he did not tell a Black audience that Mitt Romney would put Black people back in chains.

There are many real things to hold HC and JB to account for, but Pepe the Frog and Mitt Romney threatening to re-enslave Black people? maybe not.

You know this isn't going to happen.

How do you know?

Because the vast majority of Americans believe in universal suffrage and America is a democracy. Shall we just reconvene here in four years and see who was right?

I remember going to a woman's place meeting about reproductive rights in the same week that it was announced that Roe vs Wade was going to be repealed.
It wasn't the christian right outside filming the women going in, banging on the doors, shouting 'shame on you' and requiring that the women going in needed a police escort. It was trans activists.
Trump and the right are no friend to women and I do agree with pp that there are definitely elements who would remove our voting rights if they could.
But the idea that trans activism is somehow pro-women and pro-choice by contrast is absolutely laughable.
They're both cheeks of same misogynist arse.
I'd be a damned fool if I believed either side was going to support women's rights. They've both demonstrated otherwise.

@MarieDeGournay You're way more over the detail than I am and it's quite possible my memory has made Hillary's "alt-right" speech less boring than it was.

I'm less inclined to give Biden the benefit of the doubt. Racial demagoguery was his stock in trade before his brain turned to porridge. If he referenced chains, I just don't believe he did it by accident.

I'm not a particular fan of Romney, but he's got that very Mormon combination of being sincerely anti-racist while never seeming comfortable around nonwhite people, and it's my firm belief that Biden played on that consistently.

@SionnachRuadh ‘brain turned to porridge’ is an extremely unpleasant way of referring to an elderly person suffering from cognitive decline/dementia.

@Mielikki You say that as if I've got no experience of caring for elderly family members with dementia. For those of us with that experience, what was unpleasant was the tame media lying to us for years about what we could plainly see.

It’s because I do care for family members with dementia that I would never use a disrespectful phrase like that.

You do you. I regret that my manners don't meet your standards.

Just in case anyone is interested, I didn't write the article nor do I know if it was fact checked before being published.

I perhaps misled in the title by not adding a quesiton mark at the end. ie if Republican women's rights are going to be removed then surely it means all women in the US will their rights removed.

So not sure the intention of the writer, but it reminded me more of the sort of lecturing of AGCL (Actual Gender Critical Left) of blaming Republican women for somehow being responsible for what Republican men have and are wanting to do. ie even when men are the cause of the problem it is still women's fault.

(NB not posted to derail this thread to talk about AGCL again!)

I did notice on a discussion programme I was listening to that Trump himself appears to have no particular interest in the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025, but as always is happy to play along with appearing to be aligned if it gets him votes.

But also whether segments of Project 2025 would just be used rather than have the bother of thinking or writing something else. ie Trump's slash and burn approach based on personal opinions about taxes and how politics should be like a business dont actually have a wider belief system than that basic transactional purpose.

ie could the Heritage Foundation bring in policies they want via the back door as Trump's presidency is about personal wins rather than some political plan.

Although as we know from the UK political parties may get elected on a manifesto and usually within weeks deviate from them.

Although it is strange that there doesn't seem to be any Democrat platform putting forward responses to Trump in the same way (even if ineffectual) Kemi Badenoch responds to Labour statements.

Heritage Foundation blueprint describes an America poisoned by ‘wokeness’ and overtaken by lawlessness that only conservatives can save https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/14/project-2025-election

I don’t believe a blanket description of Conservative, Right or Centre-Right women as complicit is fair: they are women who have a different set of priorities and a different conceptualisation of the world.

They are not setting out to betray other women, they are working towards what they believe will benefit society.

Do I agree with them on the majority of their policy proposals and ideas? No. But, as a lifelong Lefty I no longer agree with a lot of policy proposals coming from parties on the Left these days.

I’m a lot more keen on discussion and compromise and I feel very discouraged by the increasing political polarisation that’s affecting our various polities.

Good to see that the TechBros who are now in charge have been re-inforced by the arrival of the Tate brothers in the US.

Hard to see how men with fundamentalist Christian values can work with the sort of crude, sexist, shouty "politics" of the TechBros.

This.

It's different priorities. Not necessarily a lack of interest in feminism tbh.

US women had no good option in the elections. Neither of the parties offered protection of women's rights.

Exactly. The choice was between two parties who have proved themselves untrustworthy over women's rights. I assume that US women made the best choice they could and I abhor attempts to blame and shame them.

For me this could be considered a definition of feminism and liberation of women. Women free to choose what to support and why they support it. The vote of women both in elections and with their money having equal value to the men in the free market of ideas.

It seems to me that some people just want to change who "owns" women from the patriarchy to the ideology of the person making the argument. "Men shouldn't be telling women what to think and do ! It should be us instead ! For your own good of course......"

So you don't think these kinds of figures matter? I hope not. What about Douglas Wilson though, and figures like him? His links to Pete Hegseth worry me. I know his actual views on things like women's suffrage are fringe, including in evangelical etc circles, but he still does seem to have quite a lot of evangelical influence.

I realise Mother Jones had an anti-Republican bias, but I did think the TheoBros article that OP also links to seemed to show more influence is possessed by these type of figures than you imply.

Yes. I very much doubt most of these women who support the Republicans want to harm women. There are certainly women with positions that I regard as extreme and harmful within it : severely limited abortion rights (eg. Only to save mother's life), women not having the vote, preaching extreme submission to husbands, Quiverfull etc. But these are nowhere near the majority. I do view these types as a threat, but I still think they probably think they're helping women. Even people who DO have bad intentions often lie to themselves about them.