It’s a Guy Thing: the Republican Debates and the Optics of Gender

I spent most of my academic life in a department that expected female faculty to host (and cook and clean up for) parties . . .  and to keep silent when male models of pedagogy (all-knowing lectures from on high rather than, say, collaborative dialogue) were constantly rewarded. Thus, a formulaic academic title — catchy phrase, colon, and real subjects A and B — seems appropriate for this short rumination on the upcoming Republican debate and its potential for being a total body slam against women.  

Fox News has just announced the Thursday line-up.  All white guys except for the BINO Ben Carson and LINOs Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.  As I said: all [virtual] white guys.  Even if Carly Fiorina (a WINO) or Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal (an IINO) had been included, it still would have been an all-white-guy line-up.  But the optics might have been different, particularly if disastrous-CEO Fiorina had been standing on the stage.

You know that Planned Parenthood funding will be brought up.  It’s the hot issue of the day.  So imagine this:  ten middle-aged guys thundering about how that organization should be defunded by every governmental and private agency known to man. Will Jeb Bush be asked about his comment re Planned Parenthood, “I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues?”  Will Donald Trump be asked why he thinks breastfeeding is disgusting?  Will Mike Huckabee be asked whether championship of ‘traditional marriage’ means championship of traditionally subservient women’s roles? Will all of them be asked why Hillary Clinton is un(pants)suited to be President?  

This is just the start of what could be a monumental fail for the Republican Party.  So many issues that voters actually care about are entangled in gender considerations. Minimum wage:  important for women trying to support a family on a shoestring income. Gun violence: important to women who fear being shot in domestic disputes and/or who fear for their children’s safety every day.  Immigration: important to women who want their families to remain together and for their kids to succeed.  Policing and incarceration:  important to women who see their husbands, sons, and fathers imprisoned for relatively minor offenses, thus rupturing their families, not to mention their own risks if they get caught up in our anything-but gender-and-income-and-ethnicity neutral justice system. Health insurance:  uh, duh — particularly when improving women’s health services is a key component of Obamacare, which all Republican candidates seem to think is the Nazi Muslim devil’s plan to . . .  oh who knows, to make the unterfrauen dominant? 

I’m not arguing that these issues have impacts only on women.  Instead, I suggest that they have distinctive impacts, ones that need recognition and articulation.  Which no one on the Republican debate podium will be able to do.  

They could, of course.  You don’t have to be a woman to support and advocate for women’s issues, experiences, and points of view.  I can imagine, for instance, that if Joe Biden enters the scrum, he would be as articulate (in his endearing Uncle Joe way) about such matters as would Hillary Clinton (whose adult life has been significantly dedicated to women’s issues [and don’t even bring up slut-shaming vis-a-vis Bill’s sexual adventures because what in the hell would you do, ladies, if put in that horridly no-win situation?)].  In an alternate political universe, I can imagine some current Republican candidates trying to do the same as Vice President Biden.

But it’s this year’s political universe. The Republican Presidential Debate of August 6, 2015, will be an all-guys thing, not only in gender optics, which may be bad enough, but in defensive white male-based attitude. White males — white Republican males, or I-think-like-a-white Republican male because I’m a victim of ‘liberal’ change — are the core of the Republican base. No one will contest this base ideology, I suspect, even if their life experiences and private souls prompt them otherwise (nonetheless, I hold out a modicum of hope for John Kasich).  The debate will be an unhappy and antiquated guy thing:  in effect, as the men trumpet their dislike of everything that’s happening currently, women will be told to bake cookies while they shut up and listen and internalize the misogynistic message.

I hope I’m wrong.