The private sphere is the real battleground
by digby
Joan Walsh has a nice piece up about the rather odd juxtaposition between the rapid (and thrilling) advance of gay rights with the ongoing assault on women’s freedom. She makes a good case that this is because gay rights, particularly marriage equality, are seen as validation of conservative values and institutions while women’s rights still threaten the traditional order in a very fundamental way. She draws together the two big Supreme Court decisions this week to illustrate both the social and economic issues at stake. Well worth reading.
I think this is right and it goes back to Corey Robin’s observations in The Reactionary Mind:
Every great political blast—the storming of the Bastille, the taking of the Winter Palace, the March on Washington—is set off by a very private fuse: the contest for rights and standing in the family, the factory, and the field. Politicians and parties talk of constitution and amendment, natural rights and inherited privileges. But the real subject of their deliberations is the private life of power.
That’s what conservatives really care about — maintaining their power in the private sphere. Nothing is more threatening to that power than women having control of reproduction and changing the traditional nature of relationships in family and work. That’s where the fight really is.
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