The “M” in “MAGA” stands for “misogyny”

Michelle Goldberg [gift link] uses the minor rebellion of women in the Republican House conference to point out that the rise of explicit misogyny in the Trump era Republican Party should be considered as alarming as the rice in overt racism and antisemitism:

It’s tempting to roll one’s eyes at women who are shocked, shocked to discover sexism in a political party led by Donald Trump. But it’s a sign of progress that these women are not responding as Schlafly did, demurely accepting their subordinate position within conservatism. They may not all call themselves feminists — though at times Mace has — but they’ve internalized basic feminist assumptions about their entitlement to equal treatment. What they’ve failed to understand, however, is that those aren’t assumptions their party shares.

Much has been made about the rebirth of gutter antisemitism and racism within the conservative movement. There’s been less public alarm about the resurgence of unapologetic misogyny. Last month, there was an uproar over the support that the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, offered to Tucker Carson after his softball interview with Nick Fuentes, the influential antisemite. We’ve seen far less backlash to Heritage’s hiring of Scott Yenor, who believes that workplace discrimination against women should be legal, as head of its B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies. Among the sort of young men who revel in transgressive antisemitism — which is to say, among much of the conservative movement’s rising generation — calls to repeal women’s right to vote have become commonplace.

Not long ago, most Republicans at least pretended to accept liberal premises about human equality, sometimes even gloating about one-upping Democrats on diversity. In 2008, Republicans tried to capitalize on the disappointment some women felt about Hillary Clinton’s primary loss by putting Sarah Palin on their ticket. There was a moment in 2011 when Michele Bachmann was a leading candidate in the Republican presidential primary race. For years it was almost a truism that the first woman president would probably be a Republican, some steely American version of Margaret Thatcher in high heels and pearls. Republicans didn’t want to raise up women as a group, but they valorized a certain kind of powerful woman, one who disdained feminism and proved through her success that the strong didn’t need it.

Today, however, Republicans are much less defensive about being the party of chest-beating patriarchy. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has purged women from the highest ranks of the military. Johnson has attributed school shootings to the “amoral society” wrought by “radical feminism” and the sexual revolution and has said Americans should strive to live by “18th-century values.” Vice President JD Vance is famously contemptuous of women without children.

And the lower levels of the administration are littered with defiant chauvinists. Paul Ingrassia, who Trump recently made deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration, is probably best known for a leaked email where he referred to his “Nazi streak.” But he also reportedly intervened during a federal investigation on behalf of the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate — who is his former client and has been accused of sex trafficking — after electronic devices belonging to Tate and his brother were seized at the border, and he called opposition to women’s suffrage “very based,” a term of high praise on the right.

There are still plenty of opportunities in the MAGA movement for women who embody Trump’s preferred style of hyper-femininity, espouse traditional gender roles, or both. Indeed, the president’s obsession with aesthetics can open doors for women who might otherwise never have careers in politics. Many Republicans like having beautiful women around, and they appreciate being able to put a feminine face on their culture war crusades. But as some women in the party are realizing, there’s a big difference between being useful and being respected.

One of the big questions for American politics going forward is whether this will start alienating more new and marginal voters, or if they can keep getting away with it or even profiting from it.