GOP Women Still Embracing Mama Grizzly Chic

Last updated on April 28th, 2012 at 10:36 am

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.

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

“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.

Image from Reuters

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.