Three years ago, I wrote a post entitled "Women, Women's Sexuality, and the Right". Part of that post addresses my own view in regard to the general topic of "sex and gender" addressed at the Conservative Thought Salon.
A generation later, however, we have yet to grasp the almost elemental fear and hatred of women among many on the right. I do not mean hatred of individual persons who happen to be women; I am talking about the fear engendered by free, powerful, sexually and (relatively) economically liberated women upon men. As long as women fulfill roles defined for them, there is nothing to fear. Once women start to press the limits of "acceptable" behavior, however, one can almost hear the howls of rage.
There is nothing more terrifying for some men than a woman who does not need a man to define or complete her. There is nothing more frightening to some men than the image of a woman undressed. Those who protest the most very often are the ones who, in their heart of hearts, tremble at the thought that there are women whose lives, including their sexuality, are not in need of any man.
Of course, this doesn't deal with the wholly separate issue of queer folk. My guess, however, is that these same men who harbor so much fear toward an independent, strong woman also fear gays and lesbians precisely because they undermine our traditional ideas of gender. The inability to accept difference as human choice, but to see it as error - especially moral error - is a sign, to me, of limited imagination. Moreso, it is a far greater moral failing than the alleged viciousness of gays or strong women. Refusing to grant full humanity, including full human moral agency, to others whose life-choices are different from one's own is only slightly better than writing them out of the human species entirely. To insist that other's lives bespeak a certain moral stuntedness, they are less than fully human, is a kind of dehumanization.
The marvelous panorama of choices available to people should be a source of joy and celebration rather than censure, mockery, and violence. It is too bad there are those who harbor such fear in their hearts they cannot see others without putting labels on them.
