Sitting here a bit more than three weeks before Election Day, I admit I fear armed men from the Right trying to police the polls or invalidate the election results. The recently foiled attempt to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer shows that this fear is not completely paranoid, unfortunately. As if we didn't already know that, given the many other instances of armed "militias" and Boogaloo boys intimidating lawmakers and regular people, let alone killing people, across the country.
But I want to call attention to the particularly sexist and racist underpinnings of the plot against Whitmer. It wasn't just an anti-government plot or a pro-Trump, pro-Right, anti-shutdown action.
Novelist Sandra Newman put it this way:
I can't be the only one who feels that the kidnapping conspiracy, and the general atmosphere of unhinged hatred toward Whitmer, is largely about misogyny. It even feels as if the kidnapping had a dimension of sexual assault.
The media is doing us a real disservice by repeating the line that they thought Whitmer's actions were "tyranny." This wasn't political in that sense. It was about a woman telling them what to do, and the need to humiliate that woman and put her in her place through violence.
The president insulting Whitmer afterwards and acting ill-treated because he wasn't thanked personally is the same genre of abuse. "Why don't you thank me for you still being alive? This only shows you deserved it."
Freelance writer Lauren Morgan Whitticom was one of many who responded to Newman, adding this:
I was thinking about this earlier and came across a study whose findings were that increases in abortion rates and increases in women in the workforce are the two main societal determinants of American right-wing terrorism.
Essentially, that abstract of a study says that domestic right-wing terrorism in the U.S. between 1970 and 2011 was predicted by three factors: an increase in abortion rates, growing female participation in the workforce, and Democratic Party control of the White House. (Economic factors, demographic changes, and state-level party control did not have predictive value.) In short, women's changing roles were major predictors of backlash.
An illustrator named Cat Finnie also responded with this:
The idea of "locking her up" or "putting her to trial" seem to me to strongly resonate with misogyny, given the circumstances.
And then she posted this image of a page from philosopher Kate Manne's book Down Girl:
There's a lot on that long page of text; please click to enlarge.
At the same time, it's too simplistic to see these men's actions only as misogyny. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, a Black professor at the University of Pennsylvania who's originally from Detroit, had given this perspective the day earlier:
It's not just that Gretchen is a white woman. She is an ally and an accomplice with a track record and receipts, and folks know her father well. There are multiple layers here.
Lest we make this simply about sexism. No. White men in this country, and especially in that state and region, do not plot to kidnap white women who comply with white supremacy. Who know their place. Who aid and abet it. We know this.
She pisses them off, eliciting "race traitor" violent reactions.
We don't talk often about the cost of choosing not to comply with white supremacy. But there are those who have paid that price since the 17th century.
We may not say it. But we see you.
So this egregious set of acts is about wanting to punish a woman for being "disobedient," yes, but it's not just about her being disobedient because she wielded power at all or in just any way they didn't like. It's also because she is a known user of that power to act as a so-called race traitor to whiteness.
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