Nothing to Offer But Name-Calling

With regard to last month's Women's March in Washington and its sister marches, Religious Right figures have condemned the marches loudly, but few have had anything substantive to say about it. Rather than dissect the values and strategies of the marches in order to have a constructive conversation, Religious Right commentators have instead clung to anti-feminist stereotypes, spouted superstitious nonsense , and mocked the participant. Two recent examples of this behavior stood out to me.

First, in a January 31st column at World Net Daily, Linda Harvey contrasted the March for Life to the Women's March, accusing feminist participants of "hat[ing] their own fathers, brothers and ex-husbands, and sometimes their mothers."

"They hate authentic marriage, law enforcement, capitalism, Republicans, American patriotism, Western civilization and, of course, Donald Trump and his family.

These females hate modesty, humility, sacrifice. They claim to be "survivors of sexual assault" and desperate for "dignity." So what better way to express dignity than to flaunt vulgar nicknames for female genitalia, via hats?"

Harvey spewed even more venom at the Women's March participants, accusing them of loving hedonism, big government, and anti-Christian attacks.

"There are things they love. They love Marxism and Islam ... These women love sexual excess, lawless borders, people who label themselves “LGBTQIA,” big-government funding, racism politics, neopaganism and attacks on Christians."

Hyperbolically, Harvey accused feminists (as represented by the Women's March) of exalting "unrestrained womanhood" that is mutating into "Christ-hating blood lust", claiming that they would happily transform America into a nation that worships "a goddess who requires child sacrifice".

Harvey wasn't the only right-wing figure who resorted to childish jabs. Josh Bernstein, spokesperson for the right-wing Association of Mature American Citizens, put his immaturity and sexism on full display during the January 25th edition of Focus Today. At the 3:46 mark, he called the event the "Million Skank March" and refused to even acknowledge the march's relevance to women's issues. (Hat tip to Right Wing Watch.)

"This was nothing, and had absolutely nothing to do with women's rights. It had everything to do with bashing Trump. These women should be ashamed of themselves ... I’ve been renaming it the Million Skank March for a reason, because these women were absolutely horrendous, dressing up in women’s private parts costumes and running around. What did they think that they were going to accomplish by doing any of these things? ... I’ve talked to lots of women on both sides of the aisle and they are disgusted with the behavior of these Hollywood elite idiots."

At the 5:22 mark, Bernstein denigrated Women's March participants as "post-menopausal skanks", "deplorable", and "disgusting", seemingly oblivious to how childish his name-calling sounded.

"This is what feminism and the feminazi movement has devolved into in the year 2017. You know, a real feminist is someone like an Ivanka Trump, a family woman, a business woman, a jack of all trades, a renaissance woman, beautiful, bright, articulate. That should be the type of woman that women should look up to, not these old post-menopausal skanks from Hollywood that are really just deplorable and disgusting in every fashion."

These Religious Right figures won't articulate intelligent responses to the Women's Marches because they can't. They have no reasonable arguments to offer against the Women's Marches, whose calls for women's equality make logical and moral sense. Still, they find feminist activism alarming because it threatens to throw their assumptions about religion, sex, gender, and society into question. Thus, they demonize the marchers, literally and figuratively. They paint the marchers as monsters and libertines so that they do not have to take the marchers' calls for equality seriously. They ridicule them using the language of immature 12 year-old boys. They close their eyes and cover their ears when confronted with all the injustices that women endure.

And while they retreat into their ideological bubbles, the world moves on without them.