General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMale Supremacy is at the Core of the Hard Right's Agenda
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2023/04/18/male-supremacy-core-hard-rights-agendaHard-right movements are based on exclusion and the construction of hierarchies.
Christianity, many members of the American hard right contend, should hold a preeminent place in our society and even form the basis for our laws. White people, they (often implicitly) suggest, deserve to hold a dominant position in society because of their supposed innate superiority.
The hard right, in other words, wants to revive an older social order, before the Civil Rights Movement, womens and gay liberation movements, and other social and political transformations upset what was a thoroughly white-dominated, patriarchal society. Gender, then how it is understood, practiced and described in our laws is clearly of central concern to the hard right. Their goal is to uphold male supremacy, a movement that scholar of right-wing movements Chelsea Ebin describes as a complex system that serves to assert, support, and promote the supposed superiority of men, and subjugate women, trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people.
But in most scholarship and media focused on the hard right, the movements gender politics are taken for granted or given secondary importance. Writing and commentary on the Jan. 6 insurrection, for instance, has lifted up the role of white supremacy in the attack, but usually fails to explore the fact that the insurrectionists were not only overwhelmingly white but also overwhelmingly men (with some notable exceptions).
White supremacy is central to the hard right, but so is a desire to maintain a patriarchal society where people adhere to strictly defined gender roles and men act from a position of dominance.
Given the hard rights actions over roughly the past year, its impossible to ignore the centrality of male supremacy in the movement. Even far-right extremists have noted the shift. Ive noticed in the last three or four years, there seems to be a lot of generalized resentment of women on the right, like beyond typical, white nationalist podcaster Joseph Jordan said in a July 2022 podcast, calling the Republican Partys positions akin to the Reddit Manosphere, a violently misogynistic online community.
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callous taoboy
(4,599 posts)republianmushroom
(13,997 posts)The reason "CONTROL".
no_hypocrisy
(46,378 posts)Its on YouTube (1975)
jcgoldie
(11,674 posts)The central theme of fundamentalist christianity. Its the main objective that ties together the evangelicals with the rednecks and gun nuts in the right wing coalition.
Sky Jewels
(7,228 posts)Look at the Catholic Church -- "the one true church." It has kept women out of power and treated us like shit for literally centuries. And it continues -- look at what the Opus Dei freaks on SCOTUS did to our rights. Pretty much all of Christianity views women as the lessers and as scum not entitled to autonomy.
jcgoldie
(11,674 posts)100%
Maru Kitteh
(28,352 posts)frivolous, unclean, promiscuous, etc. etc.
Invariably one will try to tell you how much their denomination/church/whatever respects and celebrates women. I've seen their "celebrations" of women in the bible. Xtians idea of celebrating women is way different than mine.
RAB910
(3,547 posts)Confident talented men don't need laws to prop themselves up
gay texan
(2,493 posts)My dad always said "if a fella has to tell you he's a man, he isn't "
Joinfortmill
(14,571 posts)Initech
(100,174 posts)I'm not at all surprised that the GOP's true Nazi colors are being revealed. It seems like all of the shit we've had to endure the last 40 years has been building to this.
NNadir
(33,621 posts)Sky Jewels
(7,228 posts)It's why the mythologies feature only males in important roles. The cruel, all-powerful deity creator and ruler of the universe and his "son" are males, of course, and the other prime roles go to males as well (Moses, Abraham, Noah, etc.). The only major female characters in the stories are Eve, who is blamed for humanity's downfall, and Mary, who is basically a vessel for a far more important being, a male. Women have been cast as "the lessers" for two thousand years. It's much easier to oppress and control them that way.
ExWhoDoesntCare
(4,741 posts)We think of it primarily because it is the primary belief in the US, but nearly all religions promote male supremacy. The other Abrahamic faiths do it, of course, but sexism is also central to the tenets of Hinduism, Sikhism, the far Eastern religions (Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Taoism), Scientology, and etc. If you go back to some of the religions of antiquity, nearly all of them were sexist as well--Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Norse, Sumerian, Zoroastrians, and so on. Even most pagan cults of pre-Colombian America were sexist, as have been most of the animistic practitioners around the world throughout history.
About the only religions that aren't patriarchal are Wicca, Satanism and, if counting it as a religious choice, atheism. It doesn't mean that people who subscribe to those beliefs (or lack thereof) can't be sexists (they most definitely can), but those three are the rarities that don't have tenets professing explicit or even implicit misogyny.
Celerity
(43,923 posts)thinking opens up the door to every type of horrific outcome in the book for humans. The concept of god or gods (and religions to worship them) are the greatest tragedies in all of human history.
Nothing else is close, as the wilful suspension of disbelief needed for them to exist destroys the barriers to inflicting misery, guilt, grief, sorrow, pain, hate, fear, ignorance, greed, sickness, hatred, violence, wars, and death upon other humans.
Humans were never the mistakes of a god or gods, a god or gods were always the mistakes of humans.
Sky Jewels
(7,228 posts)Well said.
Sky Jewels
(7,228 posts)But Christianity is the primary belief system that has been used to inflict misery and oppression on women in the United States.
Scottie Mom
(5,812 posts)SS, DD -- let me tell you that as a female coming of age in the 1960s.
milestogo
(16,829 posts)lame54
(35,395 posts)IronLionZion
(45,704 posts)they can always trot out a token woman, minority, or young RWer to deflect any accusations. See loonies like Candace Owens or Laura Loomer.
lindysalsagal
(20,828 posts)Welcome to The Patriarchy.
Maru Kitteh
(28,352 posts)come in but one color.
Behind the Aegis
(54,087 posts)Anti-female
Anti-gay, lesbian, bisexual
Anti-trans
Anti-non-Christian (this includes Jews)
Anti-non-White
Anti-intelligence
Anti-non-authoritarian
Anti-democracy
Anti-freedom of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
Basically, Anti-American!
ananda
(28,936 posts)everyone else gets nothing.
And if there's anything you non straight white xtian males have now,
we will take it away.
Aristus
(66,587 posts)*Shakes head in disbelief*
Nevilledog
(51,387 posts)Kick in to the DU tip jar?
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