This article appears in the April 2024 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
Because I’m cursed with having a capacity for empathy, I sometimes spare a thought for how much it must suck to be a woman in the Republican Party. Sure, many Republican women have it good: They tend to be wealthier and their homes are big enough to never have to see their spouses, who think of them as trophies rather than humans. But they’re also trapped in a party that relishes misogyny. It’s not golden handcuffs so much as a gilded obstacle course that gives an illusion of freedom but disciplines them swiftly if they wander off-track.
Two events that led to my latest bout of sympathy? Nikki Haley’s exit from the Republican primary, and Sen. Katie Britt’s overacted rebuttal to the State of the Union address, which was torched even by her own party.
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“All a woman’s good for in my book is having babies and taking care of the house,” a male Republican voter in North Carolina told NBC when asked if he would vote for Haley. An older female Republican voter in Texas told Fox News she wouldn’t vote for Haley either, because “she’s probably menopausal.” That was the level of respect Haley garnered from the GOP base. Now, as a progressive, I’d like to toss Haley’s hawkish neoconservative corporatism into the dustbin of history. But you can’t help but appreciate her for staying in the primary as long as she did, and having a bigger pair than any of her male counterparts when critiquing Trump. But rather than knock her on the merits, she’s reduced to her gender.
Then there’s Britt, whose monologue was called “creepy” and “cringe” by Republicans. And I mean, sure. Except she gave Republicans what they claim to want out of women: a beautiful tradwife in her rightful place, the kitchen, railing against Joe Biden. She even served up a harrowing anecdote about a woman who was supposedly raped by a drug cartel in the U.S., only to be caught lying about nearly every part of the story, all in service of re-electing Donald Trump, a guy found legally liable for sexual abuse and a serial liar.
Republicans are arguably more desperate for women to represent their cause than ever, as they simultaneously seek the female vote while explicitly taking away those voters’ rights to abortion, and in some cases, even IVF. So you’d think they’d be a tad more forgiving of the women still trying to participate in GOP politics, which for them has become a beauty pageant where the interview question is “How would you make yourself a second-class citizen?” And yes, there is a swimsuit portion.
Contestants must meet impossible qualifications: be conventionally hot, white, feminine, married, unquestioningly loyal to your husband whose infidelities you forget and whose kids you raise, well educated but not smarter than any man, an effective attack dog but never the alpha—ALL while pretending you don’t love Taylor Swift. If you don’t check all of those boxes, then you had better overcompensate with Stepford Wife loyalty coupled with craven bullying—Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elise Stefanik, Nancy Mace, Kristi Noem. If you’re a woman just getting your start in GOP politics, you had better throw on a wet MAGA T-shirt and take a blowtorch to a children’s library full of “woke” books. That’s not even a joke: Missouri secretary of state candidate Valentina Gomez did that in a campaign video.
And even if you somehow do check all the boxes, all it takes is an overrehearsed speech full of lies to take you down. You know, the kinds of things Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham or Donald Trump regularly get away with, all while looking like a slice of salami that fell on the floor.
Of course, these handmaids of the patriarchy are not without agency. Maybe for elected officials, the money and the fame, as limited as they may be, are worth tying yourself in knots to excuse your party’s contempt for your gender. But what’s in it for average female voters who don’t get the big house and the private jet? And why am I the one concerned? Why don’t they have any empathy for … themselves?
