Fraser Sherman's Blog

As I’ve blogged about before, the religious right’s worldview is deeply entwined with misogyny and male supremacy. And authoritarian movements everywhere are also anti-woman (I’ve made that point before but I can’t find the link). Women have been part of every resistance movement and freedom movement: not just suffrage but civil rights, gay rights, temperance … and that’s true around the world. And in Minneapolis.

Katherine Stewart points out the flip side: “Throughout history and around the world, male supremacy has supplied the backbone of authoritarian movements. Fascist parties always glorify the virtues of manliness (by which they typically mean some form of brutality) and despise the supposed weakness of womanliness (how they interpret empathy, moderation, and compromise). They always appeal to the resentments of the disempowered, and they promise to dominate the objects of resentment, which for a great many people happen to be sexual in nature.”

But it’s not just practical, it’s emotional. Tariffs are good because they’re manly — they’ll put men back in factories instead of sitting behind a desk (said by people sitting behind desks on Fox News). And if they hurt our pocketbooks, well worrying about that is feminine. “But it’s feeding off a recent trend, fed by predatory social media influencers, that conflates masculinity with punishing self-discipline, the kind that rejects all pleasure and comfort as a feminizing — and thereby evil — force.”

The same point has been made (I don’t have the link) about the desire to bring back factory labor: it’s partly the fantasy that if we have lots of men working manly jobs with good incomes (note: I do not believe for a minute we’d get the equivalent of 1950s breadwinner wages if the factories came back) women would happily quit their jobs and become tradwives. They’d give their eyeteeth to push women back into that role; James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal thinks to make it happen we have to give employers the right to discriminate against women.

Or consider the $50,000 signing bonuses for ICE recruits: “Firing and demoralizing feminized jobs as enemies of the state while brazenly bribing men with violent jobs that almost instantly puts them into the middle of middle class is very basic gendered warfare. Fulfilling the manosphere’s promise.” As is their whole recruiting tone: “ICE is a force of men who have felt small and have now been empowered by an administration that tells them they’re manliest of men, hands them guns and tactical gear, gives them precious little training, explicitly tells them they will be held to virtually no legal or moral standards, and sets them loose on a public it has warned is full of not just criminal illegal immigrants, but un-American subhumans, among the worst of whom are AWFULs: Affluent White Female Urban Liberals.”

Or consider Pete Hegseth, hating the Boy Scouts because now they let girls join.

While I rarely agree with Glenn Greenwald about anything, I think his assessment of Matt Walsh is spot on. And it applies to Hegseth and multiple other misogynists.

Then there’s the new catchphrase, “toxic empathy.” As I’ve said before, “compassion is a weakness” is not a phrase the good guys ever use. However empathy for people like Alex Pretti, Rebecca Good and every other victim in Minneapolis gets in the way of fascism and theocracy. Therefore empathy must be destroyed. And because, according to Allie Beth Stuckey and other right-wingers, empathy is girly. “That compassion is weak and cruelty is strong has become an article of MAGA faith.” Here’s an earlier post of mine discussing fears women must be controlled because they’re too nice to be in charge.

Religious writer Rick Pidcock says it should be simple: “When men witness women being harmed, the choice appears straightforward: Do we protect them, or do we justify the violent power being exercised over them? Do we care for them or control them? For many men of the Religious Right, the answer is not clear.” As Jasmine Crockett puts it, “Now my colleagues want to be the protectors of girls & women. I didn’t hear them screaming this when Renee Good was killed in the middle of the street by the same people the vast majority of you just voted to give more money to. It was a lot of crickets, including about the Esptein files”

Even for right-wingers and patriarchalists,, empathy isn’t always bad. We’re supposed to feel “himpathy” for 90 percent of rapists, for how this could ruin their career or their chance at a college scholarship. For how unfair it would be if Brett Kavanaugh had to settle for a lifetime federal judgeship and lost out on SCOTUS because of a rape attempt or two. Etcetera, etcetera (I’ve got posts on this stuff but no time to link to them today). We’re supposed to sympathize with the poor men petrified that Me Too means they’ll be slapped with a sexual harassment suit if they say one thing wrong and not with the women relieved there might be less harassment. Right-wing jackass Riley Gaines thinks we should have empathy for the heroic ICE agents not for Alex Pretti or Renee Good.

I doubt I’ll live to see the end of the struggle but it’s still worth fighting.