I'm really enjoying all the right wing women getting offended by this. Like, no shit these men don't respect women, they never did. You're not different or special just because you're a giant pick-me, and conservative men only put you on a pedestal when they can use it to insult liberal women. Cry more about the situation you put yourself in.
Yep.
Andrea Dworkin:
“Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. ... They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. ... Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. ... Male violence acts directly on the girl through her father or brother or uncle or any number of male professionals or strangers, as it did and does on her mother, and she too is forced to learn to conform in order to survive. A girl may, as she enters adulthood, repudiate the particular set of males with whom her mother is allied, run with a different pack as it were, but she will replicate her mother’s patterns in acquiescing to male authority within her own chosen set. Using both force and threat, men in all camps demand that women accept abuse in silence and shame, tie themselves to hearth and home with rope made of self-blame, unspoken rage, grief, and resentment.”
See also: right-wing women who are obsessed about trans women being rapists, drag queens and bathrooms. Obviously trans women raping women is incredibly rare. But they're a 'safe' and acceptable target for victimised and often traumatised women. Women who are too weak to criticise or attack the men who actually hurt them. Eg. JK Rowling is a victim of sexual and domestic abuse. The perpetrator was her husband. Instead of attacking straight men, she spends all day going on about trans women.
You see this kind of psychology in most (quasi-)fascists. It's sadomasochistic. Kiss the boot of those who opress you, hold those you hold to be below you in contempt and treat them accordingly. Of course, in reality right wing women have common cause with all the people they hate. Just like most right wing men have more in common with a poor black trans sex worker, than a billionaire.
As you say, it's hard to feel sorry for them. They're sabotaging themselves, their gender and their class. They're actively hurting those who could be their allies. It's partly self-preservation, but it's also vanity. They lie to themselves that they're not (fellow) victims.
TLDR: humans are weird.
Yeah I would feel sorry for them, but as a trans woman I stood up for women as a whole. I’ve demanded equality my whole life. Conservative women respond by acting offended I consider myself their equal, ignoring that I consider them their husband’s equals
There's the "sad world theory" here: Some people don't care how good or bad their life is, they only care whether others have it worse. There are enough of those people that they're an actual social problem.
So in this case, the theory is that they'd rather be slaves to their husbands as long as they can look down on trans people. That's preferable to being equal to their husbands and also to trans people.
conservative men only put you on a pedestal when they can use it to insult liberal women.
Also when they want to keep "known predators of white women" (anyone who isn't a white Christian) out/away. Though statistically they have no reason to fear the "competition", they are already the biggest predators themselves..
This is it. Every conservative imagines that they're at the center of the in-group. In reality, they're usually closer to the edge.
Can you have a calendar with hot women in it while respecting women?
Yes. In believe so in many different forms. I don't think extremely toned shirtless guys on magazine covers are disrespectful. It is just puritanical thought process that pushes the rhetoric that it is bad. Is employing women disrespectful? Not at all. There can be completely clothed women, completely nude women, a mixture of everyday people... which surprise, women who are found attractive do exist in. If someone doesn't like something, they can not purchase it for their home. Note that when you looked at the not so covered man sexily draped across a poster/calendar/movie/book cover you don't look down on all men because of it. They aren't being disrespected. If someone thinks it is to revealing they think, that guy shouldn't have done that. They are shunning the individual, not the whole gender/sex. So why would it be different for women?
“Grab-em-by-the-pussy” Conservatives vs. Puritan Conservatives is pretty funny to watch. However, I presume that both sides will vote for Trump because they have no sense of hypocrisy or irony.
There's a reason "woke" became the rallying cry over the past few years. It's the only common thread holding the political coalition together. Everything else in each camp is nearly antithetical to one another. They vote together because they have the same enemy, not because they have the same interests or values.
LOL, let them fight. Also, the right wing's weird obsession with trans women is just soooo revealing. I think they have some real inner demons they are wrestling with. I truly think some of them are deathly afraid they'll be "fooled" by a trans woman and one of their buddies will find out and tease them mercilessly and their inner proclivities will be revealed...
I think people that are on the more hetero end of the sexuality scale don't really think about this kind of thing at all (other than - "hey, that's not really my jam, but live and let live"). But it seems to consume a certain kind of man, I've noticed.
the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust
I've been looking porn since I was a teenager. Which would be 30 years now. I've been married for 23 years. Figure it out, Christians. You don't have to fuck everything you look at, even if what you're looking at is naked.
Many Christians believe that lust is just as sinful as actually doing the deed. It’s based on one saying of Jesus where he says if you look upon another woman with lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart.
This interpretation is foundational to a lot of Christian sexual thought and explains why they have failed to have a healthy relationship with sex.
I mean, at that rate the only viable solution is to nudify everything to the point it becomes completely desensitized. Then they won’t feel lust every time some girl shows her ankles.
But game theory isn’t religion’s strong point.
I think one of the main issues with the interpretation is the meaning of lust.
Is it attraction? Is it masturbation with a woman in mind? Is it flirting?
In the time these things were written, women were widely viewed as property and desire was not a huge part of marriage. Who knows what specific sort of cultural thing he might have been referring to?
Personally I think lust is the debasement of a person for your own enjoyment. People consensually engaging in sexual exhibition and other feelings of attraction or sexual fantasy are probably not what Jesus had in mind and aren’t really harmful to healthy adults.
Not widely.
Ancient Egyptians, who were around when the Bible was written/collected, absolutely had the concept of women being more than objects and while not having equal rights, as I recall they were at least allowed to own things/land and go out on their own.
Ditto the Gauls and Celts. Hell, one of the reasons for Boudicca's revolt is the massive loss of rights for women going from Celtic culture/law to Roman culture/law.
I like to ask this question. If men's lust is uncontrollable, why aren't there more assaults in go-go bars? The answer is always the same; there's a big bouncer at any club to defend the girls. Controlling lust is easy if you know there will be consequences.
I don't even think a bouncer is necessary for a lot of men. I'm not into strip clubs myself, but if I was, I'd still be able to keep it in my pants because there's the whole consent thing. I realize a lot of Republicans don't give a shit about consent, but most of the rest of us do and I'm guessing that the majority of men who visit strip clubs would never think of sexually assaulting a stripper.
I'm not suggesting they shouldn't have a bouncer, because there are some men who can't control themselves, I'm just saying plenty of men are perfectly able to see strippers and not attack them.
I realize a lot of Republicans don’t give a shit about consent, but most of the rest of us do
I'm pretty sure the core goal of right wingers in their respective domains is preventing us from gaining the ability to consent to more stuff - or in their more extreme, for taking away our ability to consent to things - so yeah you're right about that. Democracy is a system of consent, and our progress towards that was being challenged during the Enlightenment. Today, for example, many right wing economists are against democratically elected managers/bosses, unions, democratic government owned enterprises, government welfare safety nets for the vulnerable, housing cooperatives as a solution to the housing crisis, the list goes on. The pattern being that all of those increase the average person's ability to consent to more stuff by leveling power asymmetries.
You don't have to fuck everything you look at, even if what you're looking at is naked.
I mean, they're a bunch of ascetics, so they're wound up tighter than shibari ropes.
"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." - Jesus
And oh yeah I discovered porn at age 8 or 9. He knows he's setting an impossible standard which was his point, but the people arguing about a sexy calendar don't understand.
"Don't be horny. Here's a horny brain. Lol." -God, probably
The basic complaint is that the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust, debasing conservative women, and making conservatives seem like hypocrites when they complain about leftist immorality.
Oh, sweetie... it's not the calendar.
Good article, because it really could have just been this line:
On one level, this is all very stupid.
This was always the bargain of the patriarchy for the men in power, right? Barstool conservativism in private (ie "locker room talk", strip clubs, paid for mistresses) but then a religious culture that enforced their public power (ie family, chastity for at least women, bans on people gossiping about their private Bartool Empire).
They are at odds, but not really. What's the point in religiously subjugating women if you can't ogle them and cheat on your wife? This hypocrisy IS patriarchy. At least as I understand it.
This is about the dumbest thing I've seen all day. Every time I think maga can't get any more stupid they keep proving me wrong.
There's an entire wing within the MAGA movement that has spent the last 50 years fighting to send women back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, who can no longer fill their days extoling the horrors of medical abortion...so they've moved on to next issue...which apparently is women's ability to dress themselves. Once they've perfected whatever the Christian version of a hijab will be (I'm imagining something similar to what Mennonite women and girls wear), they can start kicking them out of workplaces and higher education. I remember back when Obama got elected, and they all started talking about how Sharia was coming to America... I always assumed it was just anti-muslim ranting. Guess it was a policy proposal.
The No True Scotsmaning cycle of othering and auto-cannibalization continues unabated, I see.
You might be a bigot but there is always someone more bigot than you. It reminds me of this anti-secularist protest walk in Turkey. Some participants were playing music during the protest and some other guys came and started arguing with them saying it was not very Muslim like to play that kind of music so loudly out in the open. It is just so delicious when this happens.
It's good to see that this problem can affect the right as much as the left for a change. Let them pick each other apart.
Am I the only one who hates "-gate" used to call something a "scandal?"
Watergate was the name of the hotel, it wasn't a scandal involving water!
This is easily resolved. Just start referring to the scandal involving the Watergate hotel as "Watergategate". Then the contradiction is resolved with only one change.
Yes, I am with you! I have always hated it, it's such an American thing to do, not understand our own fucking language.
What shocking information to come out! Not even two weeks into 2024, and we've already started Gategate
I know it won't happen but could you imagine if this was the event that fractured the republican party instead of all the previous BS
“This is the problem with conservatives who think they can act just like the secular world,” writes Jenna Ellis, one of Donald Trump’s attorneys during the 2020 election fight. “If conservatives aren’t morally grounded Christians, what are we even ‘conserving’?”
Such a good slam by the writer that probably went over Ellis’s head.
...and making conservatives seem like hypocrites when they complain about leftist immorality.
Everyone knows they are hypocrite. They fool no one but themselves. And even that is done poorly.
“It’s the devil Bobby!”
"She showed me her boobies and I liked them too!"
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Calendargate raises the question of what the war on “wokeness” is for: freeing conservatives to have raunchy fun without fear of left-wing censorship, or imposing a new vision of right-wing virtue in place of the reining liberal cultural ethos?
From evangelical film studios to right-wing literary imprints to borderline scammy survival kits, there’s a long and storied history of products being marketed specifically to conservatives as counterweight to what they see as the unacceptably liberal mainstream.
So while both Barstool and social conservatives groups might be comfortable voting for Trump and his fellow Republicans to fight against “wokeness,” they have wildly different views of what an ideal society might look like — including the kinds of cultural products they want to consume.
In a 2023 column, the New York Times’s Jane Coaston traced it back to a debate between William F. Buckley, the patron saint of movement conservatism, and Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine.
In 1966, Hefner appeared on Buckley’s television show Firing Line to defend a political doctrine he defined as “anti-puritanism” — the idea that “man’s morality, like his religion, is a personal affair best left to his own conscience.”
“The narrow ideological frame that the right operates in permits only a long, unending line of ‘conservative alternatives to [X],’ reproducing the values and animating assumptions of the dominant culture with a thin coat of right-wing policy priorities painted on top,” he argues.
The original article contains 1,764 words, the summary contains 237 words. Saved 87%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
letThemFight.gif
Side note: what a bizarre thing for them to be squabbling over. All the pressing problems in the world, and this is what they are prioritizing. Even funnier that the reason they after picking isn't "should women be treated like objects?", but "should men be responsible for controlling their sexual urges?"
But while part of the post-Trump right-wing coalition, [Barstool Conservatives] are very different from traditional social conservatives. They don’t see a society with widespread porn access and legalized weed as a problem; they see it as progress. Christian sexual morality holds less than zero appeal to them; they might even support same-sex marriage or (like Portnoy himself) legalized abortion.
So… liberals. They’re liberals.
Yes, but if you convince them that "liberals want to make everyone gay/trans and molest kids" and that therefore no "patriotic straight white man" can be a liberal, then they'll vote red everytime.
Gay marriage bans don't affect them so even if they would tolerate it they don't REALLY care either way. Same with abortion bans. Same with all the liberal views they "hold" that don't directly impact them.
They're "liberals" that only care about themselves which isn't liberal at all.
They're libertarians who want to still want to enjoy the trappings of the patriarchy, and will vote to slow progress just to feel okay with telling gay jokes and objectifying women just a while longer. The trouble is, they will be on the menu as their postliberal "allies" begin targeting their alcohol consumption, their gambling, their pornography, and their sinful language.
And there will be no sense of irony when they throw in with those rebelling against Gilliad.
This is amazing. It’s like it’s short circuiting their brains because they have to decide between owning the libs or submitting to the Dark Lord.
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