There is no valid argument disputing the simple fact that America is a paradise for patriarchs and, to a slightly less degree, champions of misogyny. What defies logic, especially in the 21st Century, is that Republican patriarchs are able to maintain their hold on political power when women make up 51% of the population. Even shaky reason dictates that a robust women’s electoral movement would cleanse Republican patriarchs from Congress, governorships, and state legislatures, and bring the Republican war on women to an abrupt and just end. However, that is certainly not the case and it is down to American women’s greatest enemy and it is not Republican men per se, but the evangelical women electing them.
Republicans have historically, and regularly, opposed any legislation aimed at granting women equal rights as American citizens, and although no Democrat or Republican has the courage to admit it, the unspoken and permanently entrenched “male supremacy clause” is founded in the biblical edict that women are commanded by a mysterious deity to be subservient to a man; any man, any time, any place, and under any circumstances. Although America is not a nation under bible, Republicans have had the greatest measure of success known to man in keeping women as subservient, second-class citizens in an nation alleged to be founded on equality, and their greatest supporters are not necessarily other patriarchs, but women who vote for Republicans.
What is stunning beyond comprehension is that women who support Republicans, particularly evangelical women, know full well that their support for Republican patriarchy is inflicting second-class status, and certain misery, on their own mothers, sisters, daughters, and other evangelical women. It leads one to assume that evangelical women either suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and adopted their patriarchal masters’ cult belief that women are born to be subservient to men, or they just hate other women; there can be no other explanations.
Republicans running for the Senate and House have made little effort to conceal their anti-women’s rights agenda; particularly restricting every woman’s right to choose their own reproductive health. In both the House and Senate, Republicans have introduced “personhood” legislation that, if passed in a Republican-controlled Congress, will effectively criminalize birth-control as premeditated murder; choosing when to give birth will be eliminated. Many so-called conservative Christian Republicans have more-than intimated that they are in strict agreement with Catholic doctrine that contraception is a mortal sin. And yet, even though over 95% of American women have used artificial birth control, including Catholics and evangelical Christians, at least half of them regularly vote for Republicans intent on adopting the Catholic prohibition on artificial birth control. Not only to force women into perpetual birthing machines, but to control them.
Evangelical women also dutifully vote for Republicans in state legislatures and Congress intent on abolishing women’s access to reproductive health providers and advocates such as Planned Parenthood, despite the lion’s share of their work is devoted to family planning, pregnancy counseling, pre-natal services, birth control, and cancer screenings; all things Republicans are adamant that women, especially poor women, do not deserve and will not receive if they control Congress. One can hardly imagine that any woman, even a staunch evangelical woman who embraces her own subservient position, would advocate for restricting other women’s access to any healthcare, much less reproductive health care, but when they vote for Republicans they are willingly, and with malice aforethought, denying other women’s access to health care.
If a woman refuses preventative cancer screenings, new baby coverage, or contraception, it is their right to choose for themselves. It may be inherently stupid, but it is their right to be inherently stupid whatever their motivation. However, for any woman to give unwavering electoral support to Republicans who promise to deny every other woman that coverage borders on pure evil, whether they are trapped in a cult or suffer Stockholm Syndrome.
Look, any person who would deny women the right to any healthcare options is deficient of basic human compassion, and all Republican candidates, especially males, appear to lack any regard for women. One just expects other women to show more compassion than Republican males, but as the evangelical Republican war on women demonstrates, there is no difference between Republican patriarchs or evangelical women; they both lack compassion for women.
Evangelical women are also aware that many, many women, especially their evangelical cohorts in the Confederate Bible Belt, work to help support their families and either earn poverty minimum wage, or if they are very fortunate to hold “professional” positions, earn 76-cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts. Republicans have not only blocked every single piece of legislation to provide women equal pay for equal work, they vehemently oppose raising the pathetically-low minimum wage of which women make up the majority of the workforce earning poverty wages.
When women vote for Republicans, they are voting against not only their own economic well-being, they are voting to keep all women economically disadvantaged. One might think that being Christians these women would be aggrieved at the thought of anyone suffering in poverty due to Republicans keeping wages low, especially other evangelical women. However, they must be mesmerized by their cult’s demand that subjection to a man is a pre-condition to enter heaven to deliberately vote for Republicans pledged to keep women economically disadvantaged.
Republicans have made no secret of their economic agenda they claim appeals to women; but what woman in their right mind is attracted to earning less than a man because they are a woman, or loves earning poverty wages with no hope of an increase? Obviously many evangelical women do because they will help elect Republicans on Election Day. Also, what woman in their right mind embraces the prospect of perpetual pregnancy that Republicans will impose on them when they restrict access to contraception and a woman’s right to choose with a certain-to-pass personhood bill in a Republican-controlled Congress? Evangelical women, of course. It begs the question; are women who vote for Republicans’ anti-women policies devoid of compassion for their own mothers, sisters, and daughters, suffering Stockholm Syndrome, or brainwashed into helping force all women into biblical subjection to men? The answer is likely all of the above.
It is true that Republicans, primarily patriarchal males, are enemies of American women; of that there is no rational dispute. But without a majority of evangelical women loyally electing Republican patriarchs to positions of power, Republican men would be impotent to wage war on women; a war they could not prosecute without the loyal support of American women’s greatest enemies; evangelical women.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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