As I wrote a couple of years back, the right wing constantly whips up misogyny as a recruiting tool. Vent outrage at women for anything and everything, including that they’re not sleeping with you. Then present yourself as the solution to restoring men to dominance, whether by voting for you or giving you money.
The trouble is, as Roy Edroso noted years ago (I can’t find the link though), they’ve created an audience of rageaholics who need increasing hits of outrage. As CS Lewis and hilzoy have both said, this is intensely corrupting: once you get used to feeling righteous rage and pretending you’re virtuous because you hate evil, it’s hard to stop (believe me, I feel the temptation at times).
Which may explain why right-wing jackholes Chris Rufo and Charlie Kirk are now whining that ASL interpreters on news reporters about the LA fires are bad, bad bad. Plus shrieking that someone, somewhere in California, is a DEI hire (i.e., a POC or a woman or LGBTQ) and therefore unqualified. And lying that California opposed aid for Florida and North Carolina last year, therefore they don’t deserve aid. How dare they! As Adam Serwer says at the link, they’re opposing disaster relief and justifying it with outrage over a non-existent attack by Them on Us.
There are very few trans women playing in college or high school sports but the right wing is whipping rageahol up over them anyway (and translating it into laws). Spoiler: America’s trans population is less of a threat to women and children than religious conservative groomers. Or SBC groomers. The outrage is almost always bullshit, but it becomes real, and harmful.
This isn’t new. George Wallace became a serious third-party presidential candidate in the 1960s by marshaling rage against people who dared suggest black Americans deserved equal right. But as we’ve inched further towards equality there’s that much more rage to fuel.
