The party that can't define a woman wants to criticize Republican women as not women enough. 

An article published by New York Magazine is pitch-perfect for a liberal audience just five months out from the presidential election. It paints Republican women as right-wing extremists obsessed with femininity while insisting women are strong. 

The female author doesn't seem to understand that both can be true at the same time. Liberal women have trashed Republican women for as long as I can remember. Republican women are more aggressively focused on gender identity, contraception, and sex education in a post-Dobbs America, she claims. 

All of those issues are family-related issues, as I see it. Leftist women don't see family-related issues as Republican women do. The Republican Party has a more traditional view of families, that is true, but there is plenty of flexibility when it comes to individual families. 

Gender identity? Republican women don't want that topic in classroom lessons for young children. They should have those discussions with their parents, who likely will frame the issue within their personal beliefs. That means talking about religion and traditional family values, which the left slams as bigotry and homophobic. Republican families rally around their gay children, for example, because they love their children unconditionally, the same as parents with other political beliefs. 

The same is true of sex education. That topic, too, should not be a part of classroom discussions with young children. Older students can handle the discussions. Republican women don't object to sex education in school, in general, as long as it isn't used to promote the LGBTQ agenda. Sex education has been provided in schools for decades. I remember the class from my school days and I'm old. It was a part of a class that was called a health class, I think, and it was as awkward as it is for most of today's students. 

The contraception issue is a phony one. It comes up every election cycle as Democrats talk about abortion. Republicans do not want to ban the sale of contraception. Newsflash - Republican women use contraception, just like other women. Republican women don't support abortion as a method of contraception. And they want guidelines in place like parental knowledge of minors seeking to purchase birth control, for example. 

Democrat women treat Republican women as though they are animals on display in a zoo. 

On the cusp of an election season that could further reshape this democracy and women’s place within it, the questions facing the women of the American right are tricky. Are they supposed to be cutthroat or cute? Cold enough to kill a dog or warm enough to bake an apple pie? To whom is their devotion chiefly addressed: country, husband, God, or Trump? And how might their womanhood complicate their responses to the closing of obstetrics wards or the fact that their party’s leader was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up an extramarital affair with an adult-film actress?

The challenge of navigating these thorny questions has left many of them caroming from high-pitched rancor, to contorted eroticism, to the seemingly snug comforts of trad-wife chic. The spectacle can provoke amusement, fury, and a frisson of horror-movie unease. For if the women of today’s Republican Party are upending gender conventions in unprecedented fashion, they’re doing it in service of a party that has never been more openly hostile to women and their rights.

It is hard to take seriously such lazy rhetoric. The author used extreme examples of a few Republican women to make her points. The fallacy is that all women are (or should be) the same. I don't recognize her world. Why is it contradictory that Republican women can handle a gun and still wear a pink outfit in a campaign photo? Why is it contradictory for someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene to work out and describe women as the weaker (physically) sex when she defines a woman? It was a Democrat woman who slammed Greene's "butch" body from her workouts during a congressional hearing. Sounds homophobic. 

All women are strong. They were created to give birth and raise children. Holding value in traditional family life and living within the tenets of traditional religion is not weak or abnormal. It is very American. 

Democrat women go off the rails when it comes to women supporting Donald Trump but before there was President Trump, there was Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy. Trump has baggage but he wasn't guilty of extramarital dalliances in office, as president, as Clinton and JFK were. So spare me the double standard. I'm old enough to remember female reporters covering the Clinton White House who would say they would be happy to service (ahem) Clinton as the Lewinsky scandal played out. 

The author tweaked Rep. Nancy Mace for her ability to joke about her sex life as a divorced woman, for example, while calling out her male colleagues at times for being weak in governing. She uses the term "no balls." I hate to break it to the author but lots of women use that term, including myself. If I'm writing, I'll likely use the word cojones but it is all the same. Mace does not compromise her femininity by using a word. She is an accomplished woman - the first female to graduate from the Corps of Cadets program at The Citadel. She is both strong and feminine. Both things can be true. She's only 46. She'll be irritating Democrat women for many more years. 

“There are the traditional roles of women in society, some biological. We’re meant to nurture; we’re meant to breastfeed our kids,” Mace told me over Zoom. “But my mom worked. I’ve worked my entire life since I was 15. It’s a balance between what’s your feminine side and your Main Character Energy.” Mace was explicit: “I do have Main Character Energy. I am an alpha dog, and so is my little six-pound dog, Libby.”

It's insulting that Democrat women think feminine is an ugly word, as though it is the same as weak. There is not just one path for women to take.

Republican women believe that women should live their lives as they see fit. That means it can be a traditional life as a stay-at-home mom, or as someone who works outside the home while raising children. The truth is that it is difficult for a family to live on one income and that has been so for many years. 

Democrats who go off on these tangents, trying to make Republican women into hypocrites or destroyers of democracy because of political views mixed in with real life are not to be taken seriously. They see the world through tunnel vision. Republican women believe in the freedom of choice - the choice to do what is best for their family, and themselves. That is strength. 

I was raised by Republican parents. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, as were most women in those days. She taught me about political activism through her participation in politics. She volunteered for campaigns and that led to my political activism as an adult. No one questioned her strength or her femininity. She started her own business when my father died when I was 19 and she taught her three daughters that they should be able to take care of themselves. I was fortunate enough to be a stay-at-home mom. Then he grew up and I went back to work. That is how life works, no matter what your political ideology. 

Democrat women don't respect Republican women because we don't submit to their ideology. They are the ones who do not think independently. They only support those who think as they do. 

One little bit of the article shows the hypocrisy of the left. It's always an either/or question for them.

Are they supposed to be cutthroat or cute? Cold enough to kill a dog or warm enough to bake an apple pie? To whom is their devotion chiefly addressed: country, husband, God, or Trump?

All of the above. That's how we roll. The author has a very shallow opinion of women. Republican women know that we are complex and do many things with our lives. 

The old notions are fading away and Democrats are going to have to adjust their criticism accordingly. Republican women aren't going anywhere.

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