Our True Enemy Has a Vagina, Not a Penis
Update: As the discussions about reproductive rights continue to heat up, we here at Nursing Clio are going to share some of our past blog pieces that have touched upon these issues. I am sure we will have more to say in the upcoming months, but for now, enjoy and share!
Well today’s the day that Americans decide if whether we will have a 45th president or we’ll keep our 44th president. If you are a regular reader of Nursing Clio, you are well aware that we do not hide our political affiliation and we are all waiting with bated breath for tonight’s results. Regardless of the outcome, we cannot assume the war on women is over. Starting on Wednesday, this war will change. If Romney wins, well, who knows what Mittens has in store, but it is safe to say that the war will escalate. If Obama wins, the war will subside a bit, but we cannot let our guard down. If we are going to win this war, we need to set our sights on an enemy that has remained largely in the wings, although there are a few who have made their way onto the stage. Our real enemy is not the white male blowhards, who use politics to advance legislation that openly limits women’s rights. No, the real enemy is the conservative woman who uses a warm smile to distract you from the fact that she is using her well-manicured hand to strangle your vagina. Our true enemy has a vagina, not a penis.
For the past month or so, I’ve been thinking about the war on women and wondering if feminism had, in some ways, failed the undecided or conservative female voter. I thought about how after the election, feminists need to find ways to bridge the distance between ourselves and those on the Right. Was there a way to reach a compromise and respect our decisions to have control over our bodies, regardless of where we stood on the spectrum of reproductive rights? All women should have the right to control their bodies. If they want to get an abortion, fine. If not, that’s okay too. If they want birth control, sure. If not, okie dokie. I mean, does it really have to be this hard? Feminism could become even stronger if feminists could find some common ground with conservative women, because this all comes down to control of what is biologically ours, right? To quote Rodney King (sorry), “Can’t we all just get along?”
No, no we cannot.
There are many examples in the present as to why a “sisterhood” does not exist (and never existed, ever). We of course have women like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman, and Anne Coulter, whose craziness and outlandish statements provide numerous memes that bring a chuckle or two. We brush these women off to a certain extent because we identify them as puppets of patriarchy. As much as feminists have to keep them on the radar, they don’t pose a true threat because their strings can be easily cut. The women we have to worry about are the ones like Charmaine Yoest, who is the president and CEO of Americans United for Life.
To be very honest, I had no idea who Yoest was until I read the New York Times article, “Charmaine Yoest’s Cheerful War on Abortion.” When I first clicked on the article, I figured I would read the usual mantra that every life is sacred (of course until they are born, then it’s adios amigo, but I digress). The article did not disappoint, but what startled and scared me was how Yoest perceives herself and the current pro-life movement. Since taking over the AUL, the article states “she embraced this idea and has tried to make the case that being anti-abortion is being pro-woman.” I’m sorry, but what? Yoest’s views are unsurprising given her religious views, but she uses science to back her claims that abortion is harmful to women’s health. Why? Well according to Yoest, there is a link between abortions (and I am assuming she means induced abortions) and breast cancer. She claims that scientific research has found links between the two, but when challenged by the reporter as to which reports she was referring to, Yoest brushed off her off and “declared that the scientific establishment ‘is under the control of the abortion lobby.’” Scientists have debunked the link, but Yoest’s stance reveals two points that are amusing and disturbing at the same time. First, Yoest and women like her will deny the validity of science when it comes to evolution and climate change, but with abortion, science rules. Second, Yoest is not some crackpot puppet who sits on Fox News regurgitating Rush Limbaugh’s talking points. This woman, who holds a Ph.D. from University of Virginia, is working behind the scenes as the leader of the AUL to shape state legislation that limits women’s reproductive rights. However, the real caveat is that this legislation is written under the guise of protecting women’s health. So for example, in Texas, doctors must tell their patients about the “link” between breast cancer and abortion. In Arizona, Yoest helped push through the new legislation that bans abortions after 20 weeks, because again it protects women’s health. But this type of legislation is not just about protecting women’s health; it is also maintaining gender roles: ‘“We’re fighting Planned Parenthood to protect women,” she said. “When those babies aren’t born, that is a loss for their mothers, and that’s part of why they need a chance to live.”’
This gendered, conservative viewpoint is of course not new. The beginnings of the conservative female begins with the maternalists of the early twentieth century. The term conservative is relatively new, dating back to 1950s, but maternalism provided a foundation for female political action. Maternalists reformers sought to uplift the conditions for both mother and child, especially when it came to maternal and child health. To achieve their goals, these women, who subscribed to very middle-class ideals about gender, supported government reforms to change the lives of women and children, especially those from poor and immigrant populations. Yet starting with WWI, a new group of women, “conservatives,” sought to push back government intervention, or the “internationalism’ of the progressivism, by linking it to communism.[1] They used gender roles to define their political position, stating that as mothers and wives they had the moral right to fight back an expanding government that threatened “civilization most basic unit: the family.”[2] Any government policy that advanced welfare institutions threatened the sanctity of the family and women’s role within the unit. Since the nineteenth century, women’s roles as wives and mothers placed them as the moral head of the family; as angels who guided and led their children and even spouses through the social decay that came with the rise of an industrial nation. The role of mother and wife gave middle-class women moral authority and that, according to these conservative women, was under attack due to expanding government programs, the suffragist movement, radicalism, socialism, and communism. By the 1950s, this female conservatism shifted somewhat because women who supported and fought for right-wing agendas used gender to define their role within the growing conservative party. Their role as wives, mothers, and citizens meant that they had the duty to fight continuing government intervention (which now included anything to do with civil rights), the assault by elites (usually associated with education) as well as communists, which all together threatened the family and community; the bedrock of America democracy. [3]
By the 1960s and 1970s, conservatives’ concerns shifted yet again. Communism was still a threat, but not as much as the growing youth culture and well as various liberal movements, including the women’s movement. Disturbed by what they perceived as attacks on motherhood and family, many female conservatives worked nonstop to strengthen the conservative movement on both the local and national stage. They knocked on doors, held coffee klatches, stuffed envelopes, and recruited new members. Like their predecessors, these women saw it has their responsibility to fight back the forces, including abortion and gay rights, which threatened the sanctity of marriage and motherhood. For these women, motherhood was their core identity and it gave them a purpose in life, and any threat that jeopardized this sacred role must be stopped. By the 1970s and into the 1980s (and still today), conservatism leaned farther and farther to right, incorporating a new breed of evangelicals, hell-bent on creating God’s world on earth.[4] Conservative women found solace in that and used it to accomplish their goals.
It is this history that shapes women like Yoest. I cannot help but think about My Big Fat Greek Wedding, where Toula’s mother tells her, after she complains that her father will never let her take college courses because he is the head of the house, that “the man may be the head, but the woman is the neck and she can turn it any which way she wants.” Now, this might seem odd to link conservative women to a movie line, but it is a great analog because it is women like Yoest who are the neck of the conservative party. Although conservatism developed as staunchly patriarchal, women’s power within the movement is undeniable. They use this power to shape new views of conservative womanhood that employs the same rhetoric from the past, but with a twist. So, it is arguing that limiting abortions is about protecting a woman’s or a mother’s health. It is arguing the validity and existence of evangelical feminism. It is arguing that to be pro-woman is to give up control over one’s body for the sake of some moral agenda. In short, it is arguing that they are the only ones who are truly enlightened.
For the past year, we have heard white men, afraid of losing their majority status, open their big mouths and spew hateful rhetoric about women’s bodies. They validate that patriarchy still exists in all its glory and it is easy to fight back against these men long identified as the reason for women’s oppression. But where do conservative women fit into all of this? Is patriarchy to blame for their existence? Many feminists might say yes and point out that these women are victims in many respects and that they do not know any better. Memes are shared on Facebook and other social media networks making fun of the woman who votes Republican, brushing her off as a freak of womanhood.
As of tomorrow, that needs to end. These women are not freaks and they are certainly not victims. Every time we chastise them or dismiss their ideas of womanhood, we give them more incentive to fight back. If we continue to ignore the neck and only concentrate on the head, this enemy with a vagina might very well be the undoing of the tenuous control we have over our vaginas.
[1] Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Unviersity Press, 2012), 3
[2] Ibid., 7.
[3] Idid, introduction.
[4] Lisa McGirr, Surburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Unviersity Press, 2002), Chapter 6.
Other books of interest:
Mary Brennan, Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade Against Communism (Boulder, CO: Unviersity of Colorado Press, 2008)
Glen Jeansonne, Women of the Far Right: The Mother’s Movement and WWII (Chicago: Unviersity of Chicago Press, 1997)
Catherine Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
Francesa Morgan, Women and Patriotism in Jim Crow America (Chapel Hill: University fo North Carolina Press, 2005)
Cheryl Lemus earned her PhD from Northern Illinois University in 2011. Her dissertation, “‘The Maternity Racket’: Medicine, Consumerism, and the American Modern Pregnancy, 1876-1960,” examines the rise of the modern pregnancy in 20th-century America. She is mainly interested in gender and women’s history, the history of medicine in America, and the rise of consumer culture.