Tag Archives: Federalist

As I put it back in 2022, “every straight male conservative understands the importance of consent if they walk into a gay bar.” (the thought is not original with me). When it comes to women, however, many of the same men say consent is irrelevant. It’s a ridiculous standard. The important standard is whether they were married.

To believe this is to be pro-rape. It’s saying that whether the woman consented to sex doesn’t matter — the only thing that makes sex moral or immoral is whether they have wedding rings on. And yes, some conservatives say this quite specifically. Matt Walsh, for instance, as discussed at the link above. David French, who argues that if consent is the only standard, why shouldn’t a guy just ask a woman in a business meeting to have sex?

The answer to which is, consent is never the only standard, but it is always a necessary standard. There are power differentials where consent is dubious (“If you want to keep your job, blow me!” may get a yes response but it’s rape as much as if the speaker used force). Or where it’s inappropriate — teacher/underage student, for instance, is wrong even if the student consents. If you’re married and you’ve both agreed monogamy, adultery is wrong even if both lovers are consenting (open marriages and all the other flavors are another question).

Which brings us to Sean Davis, founder of that misogynist website, The Federalist. Responding to the Graham Platner rape scandal, Davis explains it’s all the fault of those sluts who had sex with him: ““I’m going to apologize for coming off as a prude here, but we actually have this amazing institution in America. I call it marriage. Within marriage, sex is normal. That’s what it’s designed for. You can do things, and you don’t have to worry about being accused of rape or non-consent.

“And I think when people go down this path, when they’re being promiscuous, when they’re with a guy like Graham Platner who’s obviously a dirtbag that they’ve had a longtime sexual relationship with, bad things happen there. So, I’m not trying to be judgmental, I’m trying to tell people that when you go down that road you are setting yourself up for bad outcomes … they made terrible decisions. Sleeping with Graham Platner, bad decision. Being promiscuous before marriage or ever, bad decision.”

No, Mr. Davis, you do not come off like a prude, you come off like a shit who doesn’t grasp that consent matters. Non-consent and rape happen in marriage and while they may be “normal” they are still wrong. Whether Platner’s lovers showed good judgment in getting involved with him or not, raping Jenny Racicot is not a natural outgrowth of being sexually active. Nor is raping Racicot justifiable because she wasn’t a virgin.

To be clear, these views are not unique to Davis or to right-wingers. There’s a long history of rape getting hand-waved because the victim was sexually active; marital rape wasn’t illegal in all 50 states until the 1990s (and some state laws still treat it more leniently than stranger rape). That doesn’t excuse him actively encouraging the hand wave, any more than Stephen King’s “there are rapists in Congress who haven’t been charged for it'” excuses voting for Platner.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was much concern about teen pregnancy. The percentage of babies born to teens was skyrocketing though historian Stephanie Coontz pointed out in one of her books that was largely an illusion. Married women were having fewer babies, ergo unmarried women and teens became a larger share of the total.

At the time everyone agreed this was bad, though not how to fix it. Conservatives wanted a No Sex, Abstinence Only message in sex ed. Liberals (though not all of them) favored comprehensive sex ed and making birth control available. A standard right-wing talking point was that using contraception increased the chance of abortion: if the contraception failed, the girl/woman had already decided not to have a baby! Statistics have proven that’s bullshit: Colorado offered free contraception and slashed the pregnancy and abortion rate. Republicans killed the program. For all their lies that abortion is “the American holocaust,” they’re more horrified by women having premarital sex.

They’ve also argued that teen marriage is a good thing. Missouri State Senator Mike Moon, for instance, thinks 12 year olds marrying is a win: they’ll be happy and if she gets pregnant she won’t need an abortion (only slutty single women in Republican fantasies have abortions). Besides, parental rights to marry their kids!

For decent human beings, this is a lousy idea. 12 or even 15 is way too young to make a life-changing decision like marriage. However it has several upsides for Republican misogynists. Women who get married that young will have less chance to become independent or learn the skills to support themselves. Plus they’ll have year to churn out Aryan babies for the American Reich. The ever-odious Federalist website, for instance, argued that Republican theocrat Roy Moore hitting on teenage girls was sound family planning. If you want a big family, a teenage girl has years of fertility while an older man has the money to support lots of kids. Isn’t that great? Besides, Joseph married Mary when she was under-age.

And for all their clamor about fighting the groomers, a lot of right-wingers are groomers.

Framing teen pregnancy as the alternative to abortion lets them pretend its a good idea. Lauren Boebert argued her son getting a girl pregnant shows the superiority of Republican morals, because they don’t get abortions (a lot of them do, of course). Efforts to raise the age of acceptable teen marriage face Republican opposition in multiple states. It’s no surprise that “a spokesperson for U.S. Health and Human Services confirmed to Stateline on Friday that the agency is canceling 53 out of 67 grants, worth about $68 million, under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, affecting grantees in more than two dozen states.” Teen pregnancy advances their misogynist agenda; if the parents can pressure the girl into a good old shotgun marriage, then it’s an even bigger win. Jessica Valenti breaks down the details, including an anti-masturbatory slant.

As I blogged about last month, conservatives are trying real hard to present the life of a submissive wife and mother as true, liberating femininity. How can feminists think it’s oppression? No, feminists are the oppressor, using their Jedi Mind Tricks to trick women into forgetting how much they loved the tradwife life.

As I put it in an earlier post, “The issue for feminists isn’t that motherhood is inherently a bad choice, it’s that it’s a choice, period. Not destiny. Not their “natural” role, any more than being the breadwinner is “natural” for fathers. It’s not about working in journalism or finance being better than stay-at-home parenting, it’s that we should have the freedom to pick the path that works best for us and our families.”

As Jessica Valenti says, if tradwife is that wonderful a choice, “why not show young women what their life would look like 20 yrs from now?” Where are the endorsements from the older tradwives?

For more on this kind of misogyny, and others, check out my book Undead Sexist Cliches, available in ebook and paperback. Links here. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights are mine.

Rudy Giulani suggests homosexuality can morph into pedophilia. Apparently he’s fine with pedophilia if heterosexuals do it. Many people are; Fox News jackass Greg Gutfeld thinks statutory rape is fine, if it’s woman-on-boy. And right-wing loudmouth Nick Fuentes recently declared his desire for a sixteen-year-old bride. Neo-nazi misogynist Andrew Anglin thinks that’s reasonable.

A new documentary looks at reality TV’s Duggar clan and their traditions of male supremacy.

America has a manhood crisis — or at least, it has conservatives whining about one (again).

Right-wingers have passed more than a hundred anti-gay laws in the past five years, half of them in 2023. Here’s another.

The Southern Baptist Conference has a long history of misogyny. One of their leaders is also fine with killing gays. Duncan Colton, Kari Lake’s campaign manager, is also cool with stoning gays to death. Heck, right-wing homophobe Steven Franssen advocates bombing Target for being too gay-friendly.

 Here’s a story where misogyny and homophobia at the Southern Baptist Convention intersect.

At the Federalist, a writer opines that Pride Month equals state-mandated homosexuality.

Sexism in the medical profession.

Defund USAF, one Republican says — they’re too pro-gay!

Lauren Boebert claims she gave birth to her son because it was cheaper than birth control — which supposedly explains her opposition to the government lowering prescription drug prices.

A small college fired some of its staff for using their preferred pronouns in emails. I suspect the cancel-culture protesters will not rise up in outrage.

The American College of Pediatricians tries to put a scientific face on anti-LGBTQ bigotry. But if you want a supposedly scientific paper on why gender affirming care is bad, they’ll (allegedly) pull evidence out of their butt.

Nebraska State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh filibustered an anti-trans bill, but couldn’t stop it. Texas has banned trans care for youths.

On the plus side, Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed an anti-trans bathroom bill. John Bel Edwards, Louisiana’s Democratic governor, promises to do the same.

As Jamelle Bouie puts it, the Republicans believe in Four Freedoms: “There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles. There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit. There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class. And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.”

Since second-wave feminism launched back in the 1960s, sexists and misogynists have insisted that they don’t oppose feminism because they’re sexist or misogynist, gosh no. They fight it because it can’t give women what they truly want — marriage and life as a stay-at-home mom. Because that’s what all women want, right? And if they don’t, well, they’re not real women.

The difference between sexists and misogynists — I agree it’s slight — is that sexists sincerely believe that women want it that way. Misogynists don’t really care: if you don’t want life as a Handmaid, they’ll force it on you anyway. For example neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin gives lip service to knowing best — “What gives women happiness is marriage and being submissive to a man” but he goes on to add that “obviously, they don’t do that voluntarily. You’re not going to have a woman voluntarily submit to you; you have to force her. That’s the reality.” No, that’s being a shitty, vicious human being — but Anglin’s a neo-Nazi so we know he is.

Similarly, LGM flags two articles claiming that women going back to the home would be best for them and for America: one, from American Conservative, worries about women (I’m fairly sure it means white women) not breeding enough; another, from The Federalist, approves Trump saying he’ll pass laws to ensure schools are “celebrating the nuclear family, the positive roles of mothers and fathers, and the differences between men and women.” While the focus is trans issues, it’s The Federalist, which defends Roy Moore hitting on teenage girls and denying abortions for ectopic pregnancies) so I imagine they interpret that in the most patriarchal light.

Like I said, this is a familiar vein. Anti-feminists have been complaining for years that women really want to be 1950s style stay-at-home moms, it’s just the feminists blinded the silly sheeple with their Jedi mind tricks. And women totally should not go to college because they’ll end up becoming unfit for marriage. And dammit, women need men in their lives to dominate and boss them around.

Of course, lots of women who lived through those 1950s patriarchal marriages walked out or renegotiated the rules as soon as they had the opportunity; Schlafly, a professional activist and attorney, did so herself. So does her niece Suzanne Venker, an enthusiast for women who aren’t her staying home and letting men be the boss.

There’s nothing wrong with a woman who chooses to stay home with the kids. Ideally she’s doing it because she enjoys that as a life path, not because the mass of sexism in her workplace makes it the easier choice. But even so, it is a legitimate choice. Telling all women they’ll be happier is condescending at best, like pretending women have the real power in society. At worst it’s just a lie, an excuse to fit women into someone’s preferred vision of society without considering what they want.

What they want matters. Women are not means to an end, any more than men. Anyone who makes them a means is on the wrong side.

Undead Sexist Cliches is available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.

In May, two men writing for the popular evangelical website The Stream warned that “maternal sovereignty”—the “right to refuse motherhood”—is so dangerous and “deadly” a notion that “rational women” who abort “for calculated reasons” should be placed in “short but mandatory psychiatric custody.‘” As Charlotte Shane writes at the link, these dudes aren’t outliers in the forced-birth movement: at its heart, it’s built around the belief that women have no right not to be pregnant. Nor any rights, period, compared to the fetus — women, as I’ve mentioned before, are aquariums.

The Federalist has printed multiple articles discussing how women refusing to get pregnant are making a terrible mistake. Matt Walsh thinks the very idea of contraception treats pregnancy as a health issue rather than celebrating the power of women to give birth (never mind that it does, indeed, come with lots of health issues). Despite lies about how the Dobbs decision doesn’t threaten birth control access, they are coming for our contraception (gay marriage too). Why wouldn’t they, when they hate the idea of women having premarital sex without consequences.

In other misogynist news:

“If, in a given day, twenty such fetuses are flushed into the Town’s wastewater treatment systems, it would be the equivalent of a shredded forearm or foot being passed through the system” — a bullshit claim one pro-choice group used against a proposed new Planned Parenthood clinic.

For years Texas pushed a disastrously ineffective abstinence-only education program on students. I’m pleased they’re finally discussing contraceptives in class too.

State Rep. Neal Collins said he was horrified to learn how the state’s abortion restrictions affected women. Faced with a worse bill, however — no rape or incest exemption — he didn’t vote against it, he simply abstained. Way to go!

The University of Idaho says if any of its staff or teachers do or say anything that might be construed as promoting abortion, they face possible jail time and a bar from state employment.

Forced birthers have claimed for years that they oppose punishing women who get abortions. This has always been a lie. I doubt we’ll hear the movement object to Pen. gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano supporting murder charges against women who get abortions.

The FBI recently took anti-abortion activist Mark Houck into custody for injuring a 74-year-old abortion-clinic escort. Franklin Graham, who was fine with Brett Kavanaugh committing assault claims the FBI sent a SWAT team to arrest Houck, which the FBI denies.

While Graham is a lying, immoral snake, it’s possible the SWAT team accounts are right — using SWAT teams when there’s little justification is a common thing. But Graham painting Houck as a godly man who should never have been arrested at all is nonsense, just another iteration of the right-wing belief (as expressed by some of the 1/6 coup group) that police are supposed to arrest other people, not them! I doubt a SWAT team dealing with a liberal activist or any of the unmarked police vans snatching people off the Portland streets a few years ago would upset Graham at all.

The Republican war on women getting non-abortion medical treatment continues apace.

In more general misogynist news

I wrote a lot about the incels in Undead Sexist Cliches. They haven’t gotten any less misogynistic.

I wouldn’t say the online magazine The Federalist is the worst right-wing website out there — the competition is stiff, after all — but they are an abominable mess of misogyny and stupidity (which is why none of the links are direct, though you can get to the magazine if you click through). It’s kind of black-humored funny that the magazine declared trans rights as a war on women when they’re so committed to waging one themselves.

They published an article by Georgi Boorman suggesting abortion isn’t necessary in cases of ectopic pregnancy, which is wrong. Boorman admitted as much later but seriously, that’s a very basic fact on the subject. She should never have made the mistake in the first place, no matter how devoted to the forced-birth cause she is.

Of course Amy Otto topped her with an article about that familiar undead sexist cliche, single women having sex destroys the world. It includes the phrase ““[Women] held a majority of the cards in sexual relationships and, facing a royal flush, decided to fold.” Um, nobody can beat a royal flush so folding is the only option. And contrary to Otto, women have never held all the cards in sex (click at the link for my critique).

We have Nicole Russell’s piece from 2015 gushing about how manly Paul Ryan looks with his beard, and how women need manly men to take charge of them more than they need independence. “Men who fail to embrace their masculinity are as bad as chauvinists who wield it like a weapon” No, they’re not.

The magazine’s senior editor, Mollie Hemingway, claims that women’s enthusiasm for 50 Shades of Grey proves feminism has failed and women secretly crave for men to dominate them (are we seeing a theme here?). Maybe they’d “prefer to be in a loving committed relationship with a dude than get successively better office jobs on the way to the corner office.” Strange how this hasn’t discouraged Hemingway from working her way up to the editorial suite.

From earlier this year, we have their accusation Jane Austen is getting cancelled! You will be shocked this is also a lie. More recently, we have one of their editors, Joy Pullman, writing that getting vaccinated against COVID is pagan — Christians should do without and trust God to protect them (as Pullman’s not advocating we give up all vaccines, safety belts and fire alarms, I presume she’s completely insincere and churning out propaganda for the cause).

Then there’s DC McAlister’s argument that women should make love to their husbands even when they don’t want to (which Jesus and John Wayne showed me is a common belief in the religious right — your husband’s reward for supporting you is sex whenever he wants it!).

But what got this article going was going down one of those Internet rabbit-holes and discovering a 2017 Federalist post by Baptist university professor Tully Borland, arguing that Roy Moore’s habit of (allegedly) sexually harassing teens when he was in his forties doesn’t make him a bad person (for the record, it’s far from the only problem I have with Moore). After all, if you want a large family, you need to start when the girl’s young, right? And to afford a large family, the man needs money which usually means being wealthy, right? Besides, everyone thought it was normal back then, why are we applying modern standards to the past!

No, we aren’t. As someone who was alive back in the late 1970s, I would have thought this was creepy as shit. Particularly if Roy was actively harassing the girls as they claim. I don’t think I’m alone — hell, Borland says he’d have assaulted Moore if it was his daughter (apparently other men’s daughters are fair game).

This piece actually generated some criticism outside left-wing blogs (I doubt many other people are aware of the Federalist outside the right-wing/forced birth/misogynist base) so co-founder Ben Domenech responded with a ton of cliches: isn’t it important to understand why people support Moore despite the charges? Sure, he personally thinks Moore’s a perv and didn’t agree with the article but “we publish the things we think make valuable contributions to the public debate, and represent the views of voters.”

First off, Borland wasn’t doing the equivalent of a “Trump safari,” telling us what Alabama voters think. He’s arguing that they should be voting for Moore. It’s a call for support not a deep dive. Second, even if Domenech doesn’t support Moore (it’s the Federalist. He could easily be lying) he obviously thinks “support the guy who sexual harasses teens” makes “valuable contributions to the public debate.” I don’t believe he’d say the same if I’d submitted a “why Christians should support Hilary Clinton” pitch back in 2016. I doubt he’ll ever run an article explaining why the majority of Americans favor the right to abortion unless the explanation is … Satan!

Third, according to the NYT link in the first paragraph of this post, one of the magazine’s major backers is Dick Uihlein who supported and donated to Roy Moore. So I’m not sure Domenech’s decision to run this piece was purely in the spirit of enlightening the public. But “we have to pay off the money men” doesn’t sound as cool as “free speech!”

Out of the crooked timber of The Federalist, no straight thing was ever made.