The whole point of writing about Undead Sexist Cliches is that these ideas — women shouldn’t vote, women shouldn’t have sex before marriage, women’s brains aren’t as smart as men’s — have been around decades, it’s only the details that change. Women’s brains are inferior because they’re smaller. Or because the important parts of the brain are smaller. Because the two sides of their brain are less connected than men’s. Or more connected. Because of testosterone. If one rationale goes down, switch to another. The cliche lives on (if you want details on any of these, you can find them in my book).
However there are always new cliches coming up that I haven’t encountered before (which is not to say they’re new rather than new to me). Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the big worry for conservatives was teen moms — babies having babies! Lots of young moms! Usually with a subtext that birth control wasn’t working so we’d better teach all those teenage sluts to abstain until marriage (and pay right-wing groups and churches to provide abstinence only education in schools. There’s always an angle).
Now though, as we face a dwindling birthrate, conservatives are very concerned women need to have more babies, and they need to start young. According to right-winger Dr. Marc Siegel, “the problem is teens and young adults. From ages 15-19 the fertility rate is down 7% and it’s down 70% over the last two decades, meaning we’re telling people that are young not to have babies, to wait until they’re in a more stable life situation, till they’re more financially secure, maybe they haven’t found the right partner.”
Wow, how crazy. Imagine telling 15 year olds to wait to start a family until their life is more stable, they’ve found a good partner, they can afford a baby. What are we thinking? Think how many more babies she can pop out if she starts young! The problem with birth control isn’t that it lets teenage girls become sexual, it’s (according to Stephen Miller’s wife Katie) that it stops them getting pregnant! An option they hate, which is why they’ve been trying to ban contraception for years (a goal the Toddler administration is in favor of).
Let’s break this misogynistic bullshit down. First, it’s about the claim (as noted at my first link) that America needs more babies to keep our work force up, pay into Social Security, etc (I guarantee you if they axe Social Security they’ll still be demanding women become breeders). It may be the shrinking population is a problem — but simply demanding women have more babies, or taking away the option not to become pregnant, are not the answer. Women are not means to an end. They have their own ends and they’re entitled to strive for them, even if those ends do not include children.
Having a lack of young workers is a problem; fine, let’s solve it. Immigration is a simple way but that means America would no longer be a white-dominant, Christian-dominant nation and that horrifies forced-birthers. Never mind that immigrants have been coming here for more than a century, and despite being shat upon as not Protestant, not white, not Anglo-Saxon, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Polish, the Chinese, etc. have become as American as anyone (though Republicans viscerally recoil from admitting this). It will happen with future immigrants too. There may be other solutions, too; if we can spend billions on ICE and on the Toddler’s Iran stupidity, we can fund Social Security and Medicare.
For that matter we could provide serious support for women. Pay for their ob/gyn care. Police companies that don’t provide a space to bottle breast milk. Fund child care. This wouldn’t turn all women into happy homemakers but it might influence a number of them. Republicans have discussed this idea for years; nothing ever happens. One “pro-natalist” couple hand-wave giving financial support in favor of giving women medals for children and deregulating daycare.
Second, but equally important, it’s a way for men such as Siegel and his ilk to shore up patriarchy (one reason proposals that would help working mothers rarely get buy-in from the right). The right-wing shrieks about groomers a lot but they’re fine with teenage marriage and resist efforts to raise the age limit. A girl of 15 is much easier to control; pass her from her parents to a husband while she’s young and she may never learn to stand on her own. She’ll have much less opportunity to get an education or a job because becoming a mom is time consuming. As Anna Kendrick says at the link, men can enter parenthood with a good chance it won’t disrupt the rest of their life; women, not so much. A standard talking point on the right is that this is fine — have your kids, then tackle your career, you’ll have time. As plenty of women have testified, starting into the workforce when you’re late 30s or early 40s ain’t so easy.
If women can’t get an education or an independent income, they’re much more dependent on marrying a man who can support them. Which some shitbag misogynists such as Scott Yenor consider a plus (Yenor wants a world of “public men and private women”). If that also makes it harder for young girls to escape an abusive, violent husband — well, I doubt anyone on the right gives a crap.
I used to think talk about the right-wing seeing The Handmaid’s Tale as an inspiration were a little exaggerated. It’s been quite a while since I was that naive.
