It’s called "Calendargate," and it’s raising the question of what — and whom — the right-wing war on "wokeness" is really for.
It’s called “Calendargate,” and it’s raising the question of what — and whom — the right-wing war on “wokeness” is really for.
While most people were enjoying the holidays, extremely online conservatives were fighting about a pinup calendar.
Last month, Ultra Right Beer — a company founded as a conservative alternative to allegedly woke Bud Light — released a 2024 calendar titled “Conservative Dad’s Real Women of America 2024 Calendar.” The calendar contains photos of “the most beautiful conservative women in America” in various sexy poses. Some, like anti-trans swimmer Riley Gaines and writer Ashley St. Clair, are wearing revealing outfits; others, like former House candidate Kim Klacik, are fully clothed. No one is naked.
But this mild sexiness was just a bit too much for some prominent social conservatives, who started decrying the calendar in late December as (among other things) “demonic.” The basic complaint is that the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust, debasing conservative women, and making conservatives seem like hypocrites when they complain about leftist immorality.
I'm really enjoying all the right wing women getting offended by this. Like, no shit these men don't respect women, they never did. You're not different or special just because you're a giant pick-me, and conservative men only put you on a pedestal when they can use it to insult liberal women. Cry more about the situation you put yourself in.
“Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. ... They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. ... Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. ... Male violence acts directly on the girl through her father or brother or uncle or any number of male professionals or strangers, as it did and does on her mother, and she too is forced to learn to conform in order to survive. A girl may, as she enters adulthood, repudiate the particular set of males with whom her mother is allied, run with a different pack as it were, but she will replicate her mother’s patterns in acquiescing to male authority within her own chosen set. Using both force and threat, men in all camps demand that women accept abuse in silence and shame, tie themselves to hearth and home with rope made of self-blame, unspoken rage, grief, and resentment.”
See also: right-wing women who are obsessed about trans women being rapists, drag queens and bathrooms. Obviously trans women raping women is incredibly rare. But they're a 'safe' and acceptable target for victimised and often traumatised women. Women who are too weak to criticise or attack the men who actually hurt them. Eg. JK Rowling is a victim of sexual and domestic abuse. The perpetrator was her husband. Instead of attacking straight men, she spends all day going on about trans women.
You see this kind of psychology in most (quasi-)fascists. It's sadomasochistic. Kiss the boot of those who opress you, hold those you hold to be below you in contempt and treat them accordingly. Of course, in reality right wing women have common cause with all the people they hate. Just like most right wing men have more in common with a poor black trans sex worker, than a billionaire.
As you say, it's hard to feel sorry for them. They're sabotaging themselves, their gender and their class. They're actively hurting those who could be their allies. It's partly self-preservation, but it's also vanity. They lie to themselves that they're not (fellow) victims.
Yeah I would feel sorry for them, but as a trans woman I stood up for women as a whole. I’ve demanded equality my whole life. Conservative women respond by acting offended I consider myself their equal, ignoring that I consider them their husband’s equals
conservative men only put you on a pedestal when they can use it to insult liberal women.
Also when they want to keep "known predators of white women" (anyone who isn't a white Christian) out/away. Though statistically they have no reason to fear the "competition", they are already the biggest predators themselves..
Yes. In believe so in many different forms. I don't think extremely toned shirtless guys on magazine covers are disrespectful. It is just puritanical thought process that pushes the rhetoric that it is bad. Is employing women disrespectful? Not at all. There can be completely clothed women, completely nude women, a mixture of everyday people... which surprise, women who are found attractive do exist in. If someone doesn't like something, they can not purchase it for their home. Note that when you looked at the not so covered man sexily draped across a poster/calendar/movie/book cover you don't look down on all men because of it. They aren't being disrespected. If someone thinks it is to revealing they think, that guy shouldn't have done that. They are shunning the individual, not the whole gender/sex. So why would it be different for women?
I think so. If you recognize that women aren't just neatly categorized as either a Madonna or a whore and they can want to look hot while also still being a full human being worthy of respect, then sure.
Did you read the article? The point here is that there is a division in conservative circles, so talking about conservative men as a single group is missing the point.
The same division, presumably, exists among conservative women (albeit bearing in mind that in the USA men are more conservative than women) so there will be an alliance between pearl-clutching Christian women who decry the debauchery, and women who are feminist but for whom feminism culminated with the third wave, for whom objectification exemplified in a mildly raunchy calendar is something to, at worst, roll ones eyes at.
So by all means enjoy the division in conservative ranks, and hope that it splits their base and ruins their chances of victory, but at least understand what is going on properly. What you think of as "respecting women" is probably not what conservative women think of as respecting women; you're judging and understanding their beliefs through your own lens, in a way that makes you misunderstand quite badly.
Do you have to practice being that condescending or is it a natural ability? First, there's no such thing as a conservative man who actually respects women, so this "division" is really just a disagreement about how they want to be disrespectful - via mildly titillating pictures, or via religious control.
Second, I spend huge amounts of time in ex-fundie communities, and both religious and secular conservatism are basically the topic of conversation. I know what conservative women consider to be "respect," and was applying their standards to this subject. Even by their absolute bottom of the barrel expectations, men are letting them down in this case. The only men on "their side" still view women as property and are only really upset because they think women should only be showing their bits to the man who owns her.
“Grab-em-by-the-pussy” Conservatives vs. Puritan Conservatives is pretty funny to watch. However, I presume that both sides will vote for Trump because they have no sense of hypocrisy or irony.
There's a reason "woke" became the rallying cry over the past few years. It's the only common thread holding the political coalition together. Everything else in each camp is nearly antithetical to one another. They vote together because they have the same enemy, not because they have the same interests or values.
That's every election cycle with them, they need a boogyman to get people to vote. For "us" it's Trump, (try to imagine how many people wouldn't give a shit about voting if it was "only" Biden vs Romney.) For "them" it's whatever fox says to keep them glued to the t.v, so last time it was vaccine conspiracies and abortion, before that it was the big bad Hillary boogyman and abortion, and now it's "Woke."
(As a side note, I get so unbelievably disgusted when I see discussions on "Steam" with new games where it's always some form of "woke game? Bad! Bad woke game! Don't buy, woke!" Like for fucks sake, if you don't want to set a pronoun then don't! If you don't want a male character with female hair styles then don't you don't have to do these things, they're options!)
Who knows what it will be next time, maybe they'll come back around to holding snowballs in Congress to "debunk" climate change... Then again if Trump wins I'm not really sure if there will be a "next time." I think Republicans know long term they're going to lose so they need to consolidate power permanently this time.
I'm not sure if you mean in primaries or election, but wouldn't their situation in elections be the same as the other sides: you vote for the less bad (from your pov) of the two. Surely it'd be Trump rather than Biden for them, even if they're on the wrong side of that right-wing divide
I have a hard time understanding any justification a Christian puritan would have for voting for Trump. The man embodies the excess of every sin that they obsess over, but I guess he’s the only politician who’s so open to lying to them about the things they most want.
LOL, let them fight. Also, the right wing's weird obsession with trans women is just soooo revealing. I think they have some real inner demons they are wrestling with. I truly think some of them are deathly afraid they'll be "fooled" by a trans woman and one of their buddies will find out and tease them mercilessly and their inner proclivities will be revealed...
I think people that are on the more hetero end of the sexuality scale don't really think about this kind of thing at all (other than - "hey, that's not really my jam, but live and let live"). But it seems to consume a certain kind of man, I've noticed.
The left should absolutely fan the flames with questions about who is actually in charge: the people making decisions or the people shutting down those decisions?
Is a calendar that celebrates women a bad thing if it embraces feminity?
Does a man have the right to his own decisions or does he have an obligation to lead and, by extension, be a moral leader?
How can a man enjoy being moral and enjoy women?
This is how the left breaks the right: the small minded man vs the moral minded man.
There is a great desire to see this kind of turnabout - for a long time people have said, without evidence, that the most anti-gay people are closeted, self-hating gay people themselves.
The real reason for this is because that juxtaposition, when it does occasionally happen, sticks in the mind precisely because it's so weird. But good luck backing it up, especially to the degree people portray it, as you have done. (which is fairly black and white, "more hetero people don't really think about this kind of thing")
By definition, a man being attracted to a femininity is the least homo thing possible. A man dating a woman is a hetero relationship, irregardless if she is cis or trans. Ironically, this post is telling on yourself for your own bias against trans people.
Having dated as a pre-op trans woman, there absolutely are a bunch of guys who clearly want cock (as in they beg me to top them/let them go down on me/cover them in rivers of sticky jizz), but still want to think of themselves as straight and feel guilty about wanting said cock. I think this is the population OP was talking about, they are often referred to as "chasers".
My guess is that there are more conservatives in this situation because of the social repression associated with that belief. I also know from experience that unwanted feelings of attraction are often sublimated into anger and disgust ... b-b-b-BAKA!
The guys who call themselves pan or bi and are like "I like tits, I like cock, let's do this" behave completely differently and far less weird.
And there are also haters because Fox News told them to be (my father is one of them).
the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust
I've been looking porn since I was a teenager. Which would be 30 years now. I've been married for 23 years. Figure it out, Christians. You don't have to fuck everything you look at, even if what you're looking at is naked.
Many Christians believe that lust is just as sinful as actually doing the deed. It’s based on one saying of Jesus where he says if you look upon another woman with lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart.
This interpretation is foundational to a lot of Christian sexual thought and explains why they have failed to have a healthy relationship with sex.
I mean, at that rate the only viable solution is to nudify everything to the point it becomes completely desensitized. Then they won’t feel lust every time some girl shows her ankles.
This is what I find most hilarious about it.
The whole point of that teaching is to remove the lust - if you actually love your wife, you won’t lust after others. But simpletons’ answer is to not look at stuff. It’s bizarre.
"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." - Jesus
And oh yeah I discovered porn at age 8 or 9. He knows he's setting an impossible standard which was his point, but the people arguing about a sexy calendar don't understand.
I like to ask this question. If men's lust is uncontrollable, why aren't there more assaults in go-go bars? The answer is always the same; there's a big bouncer at any club to defend the girls. Controlling lust is easy if you know there will be consequences.
I don't even think a bouncer is necessary for a lot of men. I'm not into strip clubs myself, but if I was, I'd still be able to keep it in my pants because there's the whole consent thing. I realize a lot of Republicans don't give a shit about consent, but most of the rest of us do and I'm guessing that the majority of men who visit strip clubs would never think of sexually assaulting a stripper.
I'm not suggesting they shouldn't have a bouncer, because there are some men who can't control themselves, I'm just saying plenty of men are perfectly able to see strippers and not attack them.
The basic complaint is that the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust, debasing conservative women, and making conservatives seem like hypocrites when they complain about leftist immorality.
Right, I went looking for the images to see about the hubub, and they had one woman twice.
In fairness, when I googled the term calendargate, the only thing that popped up with this article, so I don't know if this is actually somethign that people are talking about or just five people on twitter are in a huff about, and as we all know, twitter ain't fucking a source.
This was always the bargain of the patriarchy for the men in power, right? Barstool conservativism in private (ie "locker room talk", strip clubs, paid for mistresses) but then a religious culture that enforced their public power (ie family, chastity for at least women, bans on people gossiping about their private Bartool Empire).
They are at odds, but not really. What's the point in religiously subjugating women if you can't ogle them and cheat on your wife? This hypocrisy IS patriarchy. At least as I understand it.
There's an entire wing within the MAGA movement that has spent the last 50 years fighting to send women back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, who can no longer fill their days extoling the horrors of medical abortion...so they've moved on to next issue...which apparently is women's ability to dress themselves. Once they've perfected whatever the Christian version of a hijab will be (I'm imagining something similar to what Mennonite women and girls wear), they can start kicking them out of workplaces and higher education. I remember back when Obama got elected, and they all started talking about how Sharia was coming to America... I always assumed it was just anti-muslim ranting. Guess it was a policy proposal.
You might be a bigot but there is always someone more bigot than you. It reminds me of this anti-secularist protest walk in Turkey. Some participants were playing music during the protest and some other guys came and started arguing with them saying it was not very Muslim like to play that kind of music so loudly out in the open. It is just so delicious when this happens.
This is easily resolved. Just start referring to the scandal involving the Watergate hotel as "Watergategate". Then the contradiction is resolved with only one change.
“This is the problem with conservatives who think they can act just like the secular world,” writes Jenna Ellis, one of Donald Trump’s attorneys during the 2020 election fight. “If conservatives aren’t morally grounded Christians, what are we even ‘conserving’?”
Such a good slam by the writer that probably went over Ellis’s head.
Calendargate raises the question of what the war on “wokeness” is for: freeing conservatives to have raunchy fun without fear of left-wing censorship, or imposing a new vision of right-wing virtue in place of the reining liberal cultural ethos?
From evangelical film studios to right-wing literary imprints to borderline scammy survival kits, there’s a long and storied history of products being marketed specifically to conservatives as counterweight to what they see as the unacceptably liberal mainstream.
So while both Barstool and social conservatives groups might be comfortable voting for Trump and his fellow Republicans to fight against “wokeness,” they have wildly different views of what an ideal society might look like — including the kinds of cultural products they want to consume.
In a 2023 column, the New York Times’s Jane Coaston traced it back to a debate between William F. Buckley, the patron saint of movement conservatism, and Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine.
In 1966, Hefner appeared on Buckley’s television show Firing Line to defend a political doctrine he defined as “anti-puritanism” — the idea that “man’s morality, like his religion, is a personal affair best left to his own conscience.”
“The narrow ideological frame that the right operates in permits only a long, unending line of ‘conservative alternatives to [X],’ reproducing the values and animating assumptions of the dominant culture with a thin coat of right-wing policy priorities painted on top,” he argues.
The original article contains 1,764 words, the summary contains 237 words. Saved 87%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Side note: what a bizarre thing for them to be squabbling over. All the pressing problems in the world, and this is what they are prioritizing. Even funnier that the reason they after picking isn't "should women be treated like objects?", but "should men be responsible for controlling their sexual urges?"
But while part of the post-Trump right-wing coalition, [Barstool Conservatives] are very different from traditional social conservatives. They don’t see a society with widespread porn access and legalized weed as a problem; they see it as progress. Christian sexual morality holds less than zero appeal to them; they might even support same-sex marriage or (like Portnoy himself) legalized abortion.
They're libertarians who want to still want to enjoy the trappings of the patriarchy, and will vote to slow progress just to feel okay with telling gay jokes and objectifying women just a while longer. The trouble is, they will be on the menu as their postliberal "allies" begin targeting their alcohol consumption, their gambling, their pornography, and their sinful language.
And there will be no sense of irony when they throw in with those rebelling against Gilliad.
Yes, but if you convince them that "liberals want to make everyone gay/trans and molest kids" and that therefore no "patriotic straight white man" can be a liberal, then they'll vote red everytime.
Gay marriage bans don't affect them so even if they would tolerate it they don't REALLY care either way. Same with abortion bans. Same with all the liberal views they "hold" that don't directly impact them.
They're "liberals" that only care about themselves which isn't liberal at all.
No, that is not what liberal means - even though that is how most people think of liberal, it isn't really what it is. We need to stop using liberal/conservative as a label, it isn't helpful to any discussion on politics where details matter.
Liberal means that you agree to live with someone you find offensive. While conservative means you find someone offensive enough that you try to kill them (you may not have opportunity but you want to and cheer when someone does). It comes from protestant and Catholics realizing that going to war was just getting each other's children killed and not convincing anyone to switch religion - it was better to just let God sort it out and in the mean time work nicely with each other on earth.
That these people find pron not offensive means they are not liberal, at least not on this subject (they can be on other subjects). They may be aligned with others on the "right wing" who find Pron offensive but are at least somewhat liberal about it, but they are not liberal, at least not on this subject, there are many different aspects of being a human and they probably are liberal on some, and conservative on others - just like everyone else.
I didn't bother looking to see who is and isn't in the calendar, nor do I know any conservative women aside from the loudmouth dumb asses, but you just know someone like Boebert would privately sulk if she wasn't in there.