Did Sexism Do Michele Bachmann In? - Yahoo! News
...During the campaign, I asked a few influential Christian conservatives why Bachmann was never able to recapture her initial support. One cited Bachmann’s claim about the HPV vaccine causing mental retardation as proof that she wasn’t a serious candidate. Obviously, that is proof that she wasn’t a serious candidate, though it’s odd that he should have seen it that way, since the right has rarely been troubled by the spread of misinformation about reproductive health. One of Perry’s claims to fame, after all, is a Texas law that requires doctors performing abortions to give their patients a booklet claiming, falsely, that abortion can increase the risk of breast cancer.
In the end, the reason Bachmann was a frightening candidate was because she’s such a perfect product of the Christian right. As such, she believed in its doctrines about gender. She disavowed feminism, proclaimed the duty of wives to obey their husbands, and told Sean Hannity that her daughters aren’t allowed to ask boys out on dates, saying, “They have to wait for the boys to call.” Perhaps she thought if she championed such strictures passionately enough, they wouldn’t apply to her.
No comments:
Post a Comment