The War on Women Continues!

When I read the news today, I sometimes feel like I'm stuck in a time warp back to the 1950s. The racist undertones, talk of socialism and Hitler, attacks on gays and the war on women again moving to the forefront of conservative politics sound like the pulpit of some firebrand Elmer Gantry poser. Maybe most surprising among the current issues stirring the conservative heart are those of abortion and contraception. Not condoms of course, as that would actually mean men shouldn't have sex either. It is the continued attempt to control women's bodies that seems to resonate so strongly with the evangelical crowd. Putting the argument into context, it appears that conservatives feel they can't win on their absurdly retrograde economic argument alone and are thus returning to the cultural wars as the only way to retake the Presidency. 

And at the heart of the cultural wars is the war on sex. Not just sex between men or sex before marriage, but any sex that involves pleasure of any kind. The only sex worth having to the evangelicals appears to be sex to procreate. But where does this come from? Where is it written in the bible that sex is only for reproduction of the species? Why in 2012 do we still have to hear that women are the evil force in the universe that is undermining God's work (along with the gays, of course, who want to destroy marriage)? What does the fear emanate from? Sexual repression, of course, is a powerful way to control a population as Nietzsche so aptly understood, but the question I have always had is why so many Christians buy into the absurd claim that pleasure is to be avoided at all costs. Sure the repression of pleasure is supposed to be the road to God's grace and the utopian afterlife, but the obvious question that emerges is why God would make the thing most pleasurable to humans verboten but in the singular case of two married people having a baby. 

At the deeper level though, the war on abortion and contraception is really a war on women's bodies, an attempt to discipline these bodies to religious doctrine and arguably to restore patriarchy as the law of the land. One can't help but wonder if the male support for these initiatives is not based on a deep-seated fear of emasculation and loss of power that followed the feminist victories of the 80s and 90s. What is most interesting, and beguiling to me, is why so many conservative women also support these initiatives. The pro-life fight at least makes sense as an ethical position. But to support essentially outlawing female contraception seems to be a call to return to the 1950s, when women were called to marriage at a young age and asked to forgo careers to serve their husbands and raise their families. Certainly not questioning the power of the church and religious doctrine plays a role, as does the very effective attacks on feminism that Reagan launched in the 1980s -- convincing many conservative women that their rightful place was in the home and that feminism had been highjacked by radical women that sought to destroy the fabric of American society. 

But in the end, the cultural wars is yet again attempting to displace the real blame for the declining standards of life in America -- the new economic order and corporate power. Conservatives seem unwilling or unable to see behind the veil that blames affirmative action, liberal elites and progressive reforms from the 1960s as the source of Americas decline, more comfortable displacing the real blame onto those they feel are not part of the utopian America constructed by their heroes (Reagan foremost on the list). The thought that the American dream could be dying, that America is no longer a White, middle class, Christian nation where everyone know their place and that the future could actually be worse than the past all foreshadow a fear that needs both victims and perpetrators. And it is much easier to play the victim and find the perpetrators amongst those who so readily disagree with their inherent values and morality.