Trying to get at conservative thought processes is not easily done for liberals; they are too different, the one based on facts on the ground, how things really are, and the other on belief, on how things should be. I wrote about Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi yesterday, arguing that Democrats are hypocrites for not joining him in protecting women from making their own decisions about their health. It is quite obvious from the facts who the victims of this scenario are, and its women. Today we will look at how conservative women are protecting themselves from facing the truth. And there, I am afraid, Mama Grizzly Chic is still the rage in conservative harem culture. I know you all thought we were done with this, but Sarah Palin assures us that Hilary Rosen has “awakened mama grizzlies across the nation.”
She told Hannity, so it must be true, right? And I have further evidence for you.
Caroline Biggs, a Liberty University Chapter Leader with Young Women for America, writes on the Concerned Women for America blog about what she calls the “Feared” Paradox. Now, she puts her quotations around “Paradox” but I am going to put them around “Feared” because her contention is problematic to say the least. She claims that “Any conservative woman who dares to make waves in the political stratosphere by taking a steel-spined stance for what is right can expect to be immediately subjected to a ferocious onslaught of coarse vulgarities from the left. The self-proclaimed “women’s rights” advocates attack these women with the most demeaning, vulgar, and sexist language imaginable. “She provides no examples. It’s just true because she says so. Trust her.
“Why?” she asks: “Because they fear them more than any other set of individuals on the planet; they are a supposed contradiction, the feared paradox that exposes the ultimate liberal hypocrisy.”
This is an interesting take, because I was just wondering myself this morning in the wake of conservatives praying for death MRFF women by incurable breast cancer, why conservatives fear liberal women so much. Fear them so much they have to pray for them to die. And I don’t know about you, but I think praying for somebody to die is beyond “demeaning, vulgar, and sexist” somewhere on an order of magnitude.
Biggs claims that “Conservative women are a blatant contradiction to their belief that women are inherently liberal, pro-abortion, pro-“gay marriage,” and victims at home, school, and work by male domination. Republican men, that is.” In her view, “This entitlement-prone, victim mentality creates a permanent slave to the liberal agenda and a vote on which they can always count.” But she wants us to know that there are apparently “real” women like her (and presumably Sarah Palin) who love enslavement by a hostile and totalitarian-minded patriarchy: “However, liberals should not be so hasty to assume that they have a complete monopoly over women. There are plenty of us who are the exact opposite of what they have so desperately tried to manipulate or — if that doesn’t work — bully us into being.”Right. Because it’s the Republicans who are opposed to bullying and not its champions. Gotcha.
And no conservative pseudo-feminist diatribe would be complete without some Islamophobia sprinkled with dishonesty and fabrication:
Where are the liberal women rallying in support around the women hung, raped, and tortured at the hands of Sharia law? And where are the liberal women crying out in opposition to the systematic hangings of homosexuals in Iran? And where are the liberal women demanding equal rights for the helpless baby girls who are killed in their mother’s wombs in China because their parents wanted a boy but are only allowed one child? Or the babies with handicaps who are not allowed a chance at life at all? Or all the millions of baby girls who would have grown into women if they had not been aborted over the course of the past 50 years? Oh that’s right, there are no liberal women rallying for those causes. They’re all conservatives.
This sound like more of that childish “Oh yeah, look what he did!” routine conservatives have become so fond of, as though somehow what other people are doing to women and children make Republicans more innocent. It doesn’t work because the facts on the ground annihilate Biggs’ wishful thinking:Republicans make a big deal about their supposed pro-life stance, but it is one that doesn’t include the life of the mother and once children are born, it is next to impossible to find any evidence that Republicans care what happens to them. It’s not Democrats, Ms. Biggs, who “would rather kick 280,000 low-income kids off free lunch program than raise millionaires’ taxes” – that would be Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives; It’s not Democrats who want to put an end to protective child-labor laws – but Republicans. It’s not Democrats who want to shut down Head Start – that would be Republicans; And it’s Republicans who want to defund our schools – an attitude which hardly jibes with a supposed pro-child platform.
It’s not Democrats trying to deprive women of cancer screenings by defunding Planned Parenthood – that would be Republicans; It’s not a Democrat who said women have enough rights because they can shop – you would have heard that from Fox News co-host Greg Gutfeld on Friday. Every bit of anti-woman legislation in America in the past two years has authored by Republican hands. That again would be the Republicans.
In fact, there are many liberal-driven campaigns against the mistreatment of women and children in foreign countries, and Hilary Clinton, whom conservatives like Biggs think of as a she-demon, has become the most visible and outspoken proponent of women’s rights in the world, at home and abroad.
And what conservative diatribe would be complete without the Republican mantra of the brave martyr struggling against all odds:
Knowing, living, and fighting for the truth can carry a weighty price for some women. A woman like this in political leadership is to be feared and hated above all else and destroyed as quickly as possible. I have heard this phrase used dozens of times, “You are not a REAL woman,” as though the liberals have the right to define what it is to be a woman. They particularly fear conservative women in politics because they are usually impossible to manipulate.
Here we go again with the “conservative women are real women” stuff we all became so familiar with during the Palin Era. Look, it’s not liberals using the “real woman” line; at least I never hear it coming from liberals. I only hear it slung about by conservatives. Methinks they protest too much.
Eventually, Biggs descends into sheer fantasy, turning reality on its head as she presents conservative women as the victims of media biases and attacks on credibility and reputation when in fact it is liberal women who are the victims:
Most conservative women who enter roles of political leadership are not doing so for career advancement either inside or outside the political world. Instead, they usually attain positions of political leadership as their children are growing older or have moved off to college and, after having become aware of the imminent jeopardy of our country, way of life, safety, and the well-being of their children and grandchildren, they are possessed by a powerful “mama-bear”-type motivation and drive to fight this crisis.
Political maneuvering and manipulation has proved ineffective in containing these women, and so the liberals have realized that they must resort to more drastic means — destroying their credibility, reputation, and image by using the over-obliging media which more than happily blasts them with every imaginable slur, falsehood and sexually brazen insult. After the ugly battle is over (by the time the debris has been cleared and the truth exposed) the damage has already been done, and few are able to survive the aftermath with their reputation, stamina, and respect still intact.
Here’s to those who are brave enough to do the right thing no matter what the sacrifice.
The right thing apparently including lying through your teeth and indulging in fantasies of self-victimhood. Yes, liberals have used the word “slut” as well – it’s not only conservatives who have done it. But this grotesque fantasy that it is only a tool of liberals and that a liberal-leaning media indulges it is so over the top that I was happy I did not have a mouthful of food or drink when I read it or I’d still be cleaning my computer screen. This is no place to tally up the score and I have no inclination to do so in any case; it’s wrong no matter who does it. But the media could hardly be more blatantly conservative than it is, or maybe 70 percent is less than 30 percent in conservative mathematics. And its not only Biggs – the Christian Post actually talked about “liberal misogyny” back in March, liberal misogyny apparently being what we’re guilty of when we refuse to buy what they’re selling.
It’s hardly surprising Biggs should sound disturbingly like Sarah Palin, complete down to the mama bear reference. Conservative women have to create some lies about themselves to justify their willing enslavement to a patriarchal system that has no respect for them at all. Still, it’s a useful exercise for liberals to see and try to comprehend the mental acrobatics necessary for conservative women. I know, I know, I’d rather be providing them a 12-step program too, but that’s simply impractical and you know as well as I do that Republican legislatures would never fund it. The only way we’re going to be able to help these women is break the stranglehold of patriarchal totalitarianism on Election Day, and then they won’t thank us for it.
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Dan Skinner
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 8:35 am
to simplify it: conservative women are irrational hatemongers.
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Reynardine
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 8:36 am
It’s pretty hard to say anything (before caffeine) witty about those who have a dearth thereof, but I am overjoyed to see all your sweet faces again (not Ms. Palin’s so much, though)
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SinghX
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 8:46 am
This is a re-post of something I wrote 2/11. I couldn’t think of any other way to say this…
The word “klesha” means, source of pain. It refers to a specific pain.It is the pain of mis-identification; in the Yoga Suttra’s it is the pain of addiction. If one becomes secondarily involved with a set of “addictive” behaviors that an individual has self-generated, that person is said to be in a painful state, klesha.
Klesha is a recognition that once you immerse yourself in a secondary state to the point where your primary state (the natural self)becomes smothered, all is lost; the self, or the sense of identity is totally invested in that secondary state. The secondary state “takes over”, like an addiction, and, it is now hooked-in. This new identity, “persona” must be protected, preserved come what may. And yet, it is inconsistent with the individuals primary or natural state. Therefore, new identity, the new persona that must be preserved eventually excludes the primary self–all you’re left with is ego, basically.
People who invest heavily in this secondary state, this immersed persona, become more absorbed, more addicted thereby ignoring the reality that surround them. They create a new “map” of reality usually achieved through extreme emotions and ignorance. Ignorance is the correct term because the individual is so incongruous to the primary state they’ve excluded, ignored that they are in a sense, possessed by their own ignorance.
In order to maintain this new “map” of reality, all thoughts and emotions are organized around a defensive posturing, a means of protecting the persona. They no long question their own point of view or perceptions; it’s unnecessary when everything is filtered through their new mis-identity. Their point of view has nothing to do with the truth because they no long “question” their view point. Logically, they are always “right” and have an answer for everything because this is how they map reality. It is the truth–the truth as seen through their source of reality; Klesha.
I say all this because it is kind of a different angle of looking at how GOP operatives who make war on women have utilized this process, klesha, in order to posses power. They’ve use their persona to “map” their reality regardless of the truth, behavior or the facts. They have immersed themselves, invested themselves in a winner take all drive to preserve themselves and exclude all “others”. The secondary self, the “addicted” persona, becomes their a source of power; not the primary self, the natural self, the authentic self. And, it is all done in ignorance, as if ignorance is the “objective”. They don’t question so why should any one else have the right to question them?
It all fits quite nicely, I suppose…I would like to pull one of their mask off and ask,”What is your favorite behavior? Is it making up stuff and pretending to know what you’re talking about? Is it creating Forrest Gump or a Mama Grizzly moments and winking at the camera?”
It’s obvious these folks are proud of their ignorance…maybe that’s it; their favorite behavior is generating pain that translates into behaving like an ignorant asshole in public.
(I was doing so good up to the end, and then, I started channeling Lewis Black)
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Barry Roope
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 9:40 am
Thanks for the post, very informative and helps to understand why people, especially women, would think and vote against their own best intrests, when most people can clearly see when they are being manipulated.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 9:26 am
The funny thing is, Liberal women could ask conservative women where are they on Iran, China and other countrys as well. They are no wheres. But then again does every American have to protest what other country’s do? Strawmen
Let us note that no conservative women who are loud on the subjects talk about how proud they would be to have birth control taken away from them. Sarah never says take birth control away from my horny kids. Without it bristle would be popping like corn in a hot pan
Truly conservative women bow to the men and say whatever they can say to make their sad lives look good. A distinct loss of freedom
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Johnee
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Shiva, I agree with what you said. The “see, look what they’re doing”! is a deflection tactic and a straw man. However, as to your question`”does every American have to protest what other country’s do”? The answer is a resounding yes! If it is a human rights issue, we as liberals shouldn’t give a damn whether it’s America, Europe, the middle east, or any where else.
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GeneralLerong
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 10:20 am
Mistakes Were Made – But Not by Me
The Believing Brain
Thinking: Fast and Slow
Stuff to read on klesha as investigated by neurophysiologists, psychologists, etc.
Reading these books made the case for me that religion is a parasite that sinks its hooks into brains and consumes identities for power. Like those wasps whose larvae develop inside living caterpillars.
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Sarah Jones
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 10:57 am
I suspect a part of it is also the propensity for fear that causes some minority groups to identify with their oppressor, believing (there’s that word again) that if they reject reality and the problems/injustice they face, and simply identify with the “winners” they will be a winner and no longer be oppressed.
Conservative women fall into this category when they crawl into big daddy’s lap and whisper everything he wants to hear about how women who want freedom are ugly sluts. They are cheerleaders for their own oppression, but they believe this makes them free. In their minds, they are the winners because they are sitting on the lap of power.
Liberal women don’t want to sit on someone’s lap to get power. They want to be empowered because they are, as a singular entity, free to disagree, argue, or smile sweetly as they please.
This notion that only conservative women are good mommies and wives comes from the same “precious” making that Palin speaks of special needs kids — it’s a way of Hallmarking oppression by seeming to bend over backwards in adoration, while never doing anything real to advance independence. The way conservative men complain about their kids and wives (fox news boys saying they never want to go home) but then put them on a pedestal for having kids is the same buyout. I’m sure they all send great mother’s day cards.
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SinghX
Apr. 27th, 2012 at 11:58 am
I believe (there’s that word again) that the “identify with winners” ideal is merely a form of “fake it and you’ll make it” as in some kind of positive thinking magically makes it your reality appear. It doesn’t work in real time as in skills upon which you actually have to have as a basis for reality (you’d never find a anyone with a job requiring speed, strength and agility “faking it”). Only in belief systems, like politics or religion does this theme keep resurfacing as an honorable way to get a seat at the table…or the “opportunity” for a lap dance in day-dee’s lap. Why advance independence when you just have to “fake it” in order to “make it”?
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Adescato
Apr. 28th, 2012 at 1:56 am
At what period in time did we liberal women begin to unify? I’m in a debate with my sister and she said it was the early sixties but I think it was later on in the eighties. In the sixties it was pretty much the flower power movement but I noticed that in the late eighties more and more centralizing of thought occurred on a National level and now I think we women get most of our direction from our new wonderful liberal leaders. That’s a good thing because many of my co-workers think that individual thinking is the way to go but I like our liberal way with this top down type of unification where we don’t really have to worry about our message not being unified. It’s given us a lot of political power as a group. Now, really we don’t have to worry about having someone like Palin going off in her own direction because we can nail her as soon as she gets off message, you know, as a group. Remember, keep the message unified and try not to wonder off on your own. Personal feelings and opinions will lead to trouble!
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 28th, 2012 at 7:21 am
It was the mid 60′s
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Reynardine
Apr. 28th, 2012 at 8:53 am
In fact, it was around 1970 that the Second Wave became noticeable. It followed the logic of the First Wave, when Abolitionist women, having fought hard for *other people’s* freedom, dignity, and (eventually) votes, found their own disregarded and denied. Similarly, the women who had fought hard in the civil rights and anti-war movement in the Sixties were told their own proper position was “prone”. Two publications that made a profound impact at that time were “Sexual Politics”, by Kate Millet, and the works of Masters and Johnson, both of which blew the cover off the “giving tree” ethic that was supposed to guide “real women”.
The Eighties were a period of backlash, a phenomenon discussed by Susan Faludi. The Nineties resurgence of which Shiva speaks has been called the Third Wave.
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GeneralLerong
Apr. 28th, 2012 at 11:07 am
I have trouble sometime with species identification – po? troll? lame satirist?
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Anne
Apr. 28th, 2012 at 10:08 am
I can’t understand why any woman would want to be saddled with such a silly, unappealing image as that of a Mamma Grizzly. To me, it suggests someone short on reasoning and intelligence, while being full of bluster, bravado, and a certain amount of machismo. Yet, it’s also about identifying with GOP men who want to return women to the barefoot and pregnant days when they could wield total control over us. Of course, the Mamma Grizzlies are about aiding and abetting these efforts under the transparent guise of “strength.” It’s really disgusting that a loud-mouthed, reality-denying ignoramus like Palin has had a lasting effect on the GOP in touting willful ignorance, divisiveness, and religous bigotry as “virtues.” But I’m equally glad that there are people who see the MG’s for what they are and countering their influence by fighting back.
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jcinco
Apr. 28th, 2012 at 10:52 am
This is odd, wasn’t this article posted last week, like on the 21st? Pointing out what a nitwit palin is can’t be repeated enough times, but still odd. I wish you guys would see what you can uncover regarding tawd palin hooking up ss agent chaney with prostitutes during the “08″ campaign when chaney was “body guarding” sarah up in alaska…
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Caroline Biggs
Apr. 30th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Hello! My name is Caroline Biggs and I wrote the article that the author of this article is quoting. The Feared “Paradox.” I’m so honored to join the ranks of “hated conservative women!” Also, I’d like to thank the author for validating all of my points.
I was reading over the comments and just had to comment in response to someone who claimed that conservative women have no voice on the Iran issue. Iran and Persians are a huge part of my life. I have dozens of Iranian friends, some who grew up most of their lives in Iran and some who still live there. I am incredibly involved with what is going on in Iran, and many of my Iranian friends have told me over and over, that if ever Iran is free again, they would do everything they could to make me an honorary citizen because they so tremendously appreciate what I am doing for them and their country. I love my Persian friends; they are amazing!
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Caroline Biggs
Apr. 30th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Hey, one of my Iranian friends told me they commented. Do you mind publishing their comment? Thanks.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 30th, 2012 at 7:49 pm
Who is it?
If his name is Khashayar Rezaii I will not publish his comment. It is at best abusive.
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Caroline Biggs
Apr. 30th, 2012 at 8:04 pm
I’m surprised you will not allow Iranians to share their opinions (especially since it was not abusive in comparison to many of the other remarks on here). Well, not surprising that Liberals would discriminate against pro-US/pro-women individuals from Iran.
Do I sense another, and perhaps greater, Feared “paradox”? I think so. ;-) Women who are conservative are bad enough, but Iranians who love America and stand up for conservative, American women?? Heaven forbid.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 30th, 2012 at 8:07 pm
The only thing you sense maam is that he is abusive. If he could turn his hate writing into something readable by normal people without calling people names it would be published. I took the time to read his website as well. Keep him in Canada, although his IP is from America
Anyone who is pro women doesn’t separate conservative from liberal. Thats selective pro women. Give him to Sarah Palin.
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 30th, 2012 at 9:19 pm
Call it the “Abusive Factor” if you are going to call it anything, Ms. Biggs.
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