Shrieking banshees with snake-filled heads
Missouri dude runs for nomination to Senate on Eww Feminism ticket.
Republican Courtland Sykes posted a statement to Facebook in response to questions about his stance on women’s rights. In the post, he said his wife had “ordered” him to respect women’s rights, but she knows that “I want to come home to a home-cooked dinner at six every night – one that she fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix after they become traditional homemakers and family wives”.
The candidate expanded on what he expected of his daughters, saying he didn’t want them to grow up into “career obsessed banshees who forego home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic [sic] hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the tops of a thousand tall buildings they think they could have leaped over in a single bound – had men not ‘suppressing them’.”
Tragically I can’t find the post now; perhaps he took it down because it got too much attention from banshees and she devils.
Mr Sykes criticised what he called “mean-spirited radical feminists”…
Being so genial and sweet in his own way of speaking.
Mr Sykes is one of four Republican candidates jockeying for the chance to challenge two-term Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in the November general election. The candidate previously drew condemnation for posting a photo comparing Ms McCaskill and other Democratic women to Disney villains.
He should read some Marina Warner.
At least there’s a screen grab in circulation.
From a candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri:
"I don't want [my daughters] to grow up into career-obsessed banshees who forego home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she-devils.' pic.twitter.com/5WYUsxcar4— Charlotte Alter (@CharlotteAlter) January 25, 2018
“Their own nasty, snake-filled heads” – come on, tell us what you really think.
And this is a candidate for MISS-ouri?
Funny, when I listen to Hillary, I do not hear her saying “we’re finished”. She, Elizabeth Warren, and a host of other “snake-filled head screaming banshees” are going strong and saying to keep fighting.
And I wouldn’t trade either Hillary or Warren for dozens of this man, no matter what he might think his value is, no matter how important or smart he thinks he is.
And I am so sick of that trope that implies that feminists will not tolerate women making a choice to be a stay-home wife and mother. All we ask is that she has the freedom to make that choice, which feminism has given her. Prior to feminism, it wasn’t a choice, it was just what was expected of her and what she had to do. Now she can proudly say “it was a choice” (and does, even if it wasn’t because it was the only option she was presented in her fundamentalist, male-centered upbringing).
I still can’t do much better than this mini-rant I posted on Skepchick during the harassment policy wars a few years ago:
To be fair, if you are the kind of guy who whines about “man-hating” feminists, there’s a pretty good chance that many feminists do indeed hate you (I know I do). Your mistake is thinking that this is because of your gender rather than your repugnant, insufferable, ugly personality, your rude, obnoxious, boorish behavior, your petty, small-minded, self-righteous sense of entitlement, your sociopathic disregard for the feelings of your fellow human beings unless they happen to have/be a dick like yourself, your hateful, intolerant, fascistic bigotry, and your general lack of any traits that any person in his/her right mind could find anything other than infinitely disgusting. And I haven’t even gotten to the bad part yet.
Since I think facts matter, I had to look up the stats, and according to http://civicyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2016-Youth-Voting-by-Age.jpg , the 18-29 yo Republican vote did *not* go up between 2012 and 2016 – it remained steady at 37%. Though the Democrat vote went down from 60% to 55%, those who changed went to support “other” candiates – likely Bernie, probably not anti-feminists.
So perhaps rumours of the death of feminism are somewhat exaggerated.
But having just started reading moral philosopher Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, this quote came to mind:
I notice that he is living with and presumably fucking his fiance before marriage, even while giving the usual clack about Traditional Family Values™. I guess traditions are great and all until they interfere with him having fun.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1794001203951666/?type=3&theater
I wonder why The Independent changed ‘fiancee’ to ‘wife’? Editorial slip, maybe, or a sharing with me not knowing (or particularly caring) how to create an acute?
Anyhow, Sykes sounds like a member of the Christian Patriarchal Movement, although they’d frown on his living in sin* and not mentioning Jesus in every sentence.
*or not; many of the CPM are married by one of their own pastors (who are not necessarily ordained as such by mainstream Christian religions) without licence and without notifying the government . It’s a way of objecting to legalised homosexuality and more recently to same-sex marriage. So Sykes could be married in the eyes of his religious sub-cult (if he is CPM affiliated) but not according to federal or state laws. In some states common-law marriages aren’t given the same protections as official marriages, this gives the man the added ‘bonus’ that his ‘wife’ has no claim on his property or wealth should they seperate, and he has no need to actually divorce her, as they were never legally wed anyway.
I wondered that too, and figured maybe just unconscious translation aka fallible memory.
In Missouri? What chance he gets a majority of the Republican-Xtian-White women’s vote?
I do wish that were a much smaller Venn diagram overlap than it is.
Ordinarily, I would sympathize with the fiancee in this situation, but in this case we have a couple who are apparently competing to be the worse person (see http://www.chanelrion.com/about):
Google some of her lovely artwork if you have the stomach for it. I’m amazed what ugliness passes for cleverness on the far right (e.g., TV host “Wretched Madcow” & grotesque caricatures of Hillary Clinton).