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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. On today's show, we're going to have a conversation we teased yesterday, but didn't get a chance to have it, because of that breaking Supreme Court news. This is about ranked-choice voting. The filmmaker of a new documentary about it, an advocate for the voting system in New York, will join us. Plus, for The Climate Story of the Week, how the new city budget affects climate goals of New York City school buildings.

Teachers, principals, we're going to want to hear from you during that segment. Lastly, if you are experiencing sticker shock while shopping for summer clothes, or maybe you have to buy a dress for a summer wedding, you're not crazy. That's because clothing prices have jumped recently. We're going to dig into why, and the differences between expensive items and the $14 fast fashion dress. First, we're going to take a moment today to consider the evolution of Republican women candidates in the age of Donald Trump.

Maybe you saw that recent New York Magazine cover featuring a collage of body parts, including the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kristi Noem. That fractured image is part of the theme of writer Rebecca Traister's exploration of the reconstructed hyper-femininity and hyper-masculinity that's come to define the women who are now the face of the modern Republican party, as the illustration shows a high heel on one foot and a hiking boot on the other.

Traister writes, "As we cruise toward November with two ancient white men on the presidential ticket and the rights of millions of people who are not white men in the balance, the public performance of Republican womanhood has become fractured, frenzied, and far less coherent than ever." In the performance of modern Republican womanhood, there are many contradictions.

Rebecca Traister is writer-at-large at New York Magazine and The Cut, and she joins me now to talk about her recent cover story, headlined, How Did Republican Women End Up Like This? The baffling, contradictory demands of being female in the party of Donald Trump. Rebecca, welcome back to WNYC. Thank you so much for joining me this morning.

Rebecca Traister: Thanks so much for inviting me.

Brigid Bergin: Rebecca, let's just start with a little bit of background on this story. What made you want to explore this idea of modern Republican womanhood and the people who are now running for office in elected office?

Rebecca Traister: The origins for this specific piece-- I've written about women in politics for a long time, and I mostly write about women in Democratic politics, but I've also written about Republican women. I once wrote a long profile of Susan Collins, the Senator for Maine. I've, obviously, in my work over the years, spent a lot of time thinking about how women political leaders, elected officials candidates, present themselves. It's a lot of what my work has been.

I'm interested in that process and those choices, on both sides of the aisle. This specific piece, I would say the origin came right after Katie Britt delivered her response to Joe Biden's State of the Union earlier this year, and it was such a remarkable performance. It struck me, particularly, because I've had to do so much thinking over the years about how female candidates and politicians handle the performance of maternity and white womanhood, which Britt was trafficking in.

Brigid Bergin: Sure.

Rebecca Traister: That response to the State of the Union had all those trappings of the traditional expectations of white maternal femininity, talking about her kids, talking about being a mother, talking about being a wife. It was in a kitchen, in her kitchen. There was something so gothic about it, because the material was so dark. She was offering this dystopian view of the United States and telling stories about violent sexual assault that had nothing to do-- I write about this in the piece.

She was telling the story of a woman who was repeatedly raped as a kind of anti-immigrant parable. Later reporting turned up that this woman she was talking about, this experience was years ago, not even in the United States, under the George W. Bush administration. It was all disjointed and false, but it was also threatening and hissed, her performance was so played up, and her voice was this threatening whisper combined with a smiling, giggling warmth. I was like, "What is this?"

I have been thinking about how women in politics present themselves to the American public for years. This is something very fractured and twisted, and I'm really interested in it. That is when I started thinking about-- Maybe I should be writing about what's going on with Republican women right now. It's all against the context of-- Of course, there's the fight about abortion in a post-Dobbs universe. It's obviously been going on long before the Dobbs decision, but is particularly intense right now.

It's so much at the heart of our electoral choices. There's also the right-wing obsession with gender identity, and defining what a woman is, as a sort of anti-trans gambit, that I find chilling, but also puts the question of, "What does it mean to be a woman?" right at the forefront. Then, this spring, there was Kristi Noem's book tour, where-- She has a very different aesthetic self-presentation right now. She's really glammed herself up.

Brigid Bergin: Sure.

Rebecca Traister: Then she was publishing a book in which she told a story about killing a puppy, which is extremely unusual for traditional female self-presentation. Altogether, I was like, "Wait. I really want to explore this." That's the origin story of how I came to write this feature

Brigid Bergin: Since you teased it, we were going to save it for a little bit later, but I want to play a clip from that very memorable Katie Britt's speech. This was part of her Republican response to President Biden's State of the Union.

Katie Britt: I want to make a direct appeal to the parents out there and, in particular, to my fellow moms. Many of whom I know will be up tossing and turning at 2:00 AM, wondering how you're going to be in three places at once, and then somehow still get dinner on the table. First of all, we see you, we hear you, and we stand with you.

Brigid Bergin: Rebecca, that was the speech that got you thinking. I think that particular moment had some of us just looking over our shoulder to make sure no one was actually looking into our living rooms, where we might have been watching that speech. Tell me, you started to tease out some of the content of that speech, the fact that she was, in essence, co-opting another woman's story and that it needed to be fact-checked later on.

What does that tell us about what she was trying to telegraph? Who was the audience of that speech, and what was she trying to say to them?

Rebecca Traister: Oh. Well, those are really good questions that presume a cogent goal here. Now, some of it's very clear. The co-optation of the story of a woman of color, especially in this anti-immigrant portion of her speech, which is slightly different from the clip you just played, where she talked about the woman who had told her about her experience of being raped. Again, that actual experience was described by an advocate named Karla Jacinto Romero, who'd had the experience in the years between 2004 and 2008.

George W. Bush had been president. It didn't happen in the United States. All of that was later reported by Jonathan Katz, the reporter who fact-checked this. That actually was one of the more classical gambits, rhetorically, what she was doing, because it was in this portion that was presenting the notion of immigration as policy decisions that were going to threaten particularly white women, who she's there speaking to, and that's the broadest answer to your question of who is the intended audience here, with the threat of the intruder.

Now, it was not even a white woman to whom this had happened. That's an old script. It's an old reactionary script in which American womanhood presented, or imaginatively subtly presented as inherently white, is being made vulnerable to violent sexualized attacks by Black and Brown people. That's a classic anti-immigration racist script that has long been deployed in various direct and not-so-direct ways. That's the thing she was trying for, and that's pretty classical.

That's not unusual, and it's not particularly new. It's like the Trump beat of a lot of reactionary conservative politics in this country, going back over centuries. What is different is the specificity of her performance. The fact that she actually just got all the facts wrong and somehow thought that nobody was going to notice. She did not even produce a cogent example. The actual reality of how she performed, her voice, that audio that we just heard, where she was modulating her voice, and it was not coherent.

She was saying things like, "I know you're up at night turning and tossing, and worried." She was doing it with a laugh in her voice. If I smiled so hard that you could hear it right now through the radio, that is what Katie Britt was doing on television while telling horrible stories about sexual assault. That was bananas. There was a threatening quality to it, and I write this in my piece, that reminded me very much of some of the scorched earth dystopian American carnage rhetoric that we heard from Donald Trump during his inaugural address in January of 2017.

I don't know how many of you remember that brutal dire view of this country, and that is very much at odds with the cozy setting and the cozy traditionalist rhetoric that is often deployed in that classical messaging, around a woman in her kitchen, talking about her kids and her husband, and what we're all worried about, at the kitchen table. That is in stark contrast to the American carnage dystopian vibe that she's also trying to get across. That's part of what strikes me as so frenzied and incoherent about that evening's presentation.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, particularly women, we want to hear from you in this conversation. Do you have a question for my guest, Rebecca Traister, about any of the Republican women she spoke with in her reporting? Are you a Republican woman? How do you feel about the direction of your party and the Republican women who have been elected under Trump, and your role within it? Even if you're not a Republican, how do you feel about the portrayal of womanhood by some of the Republican party's current leaders?

Are there contradictions that jump out to you most? Why? How are you feeling about it? Call us. Tell us your story. You can also text us, the number 212-433-9692. Again, it's 212-433-9692. I want to take a step back, Rebecca, to how you set the piece up, and some of these larger questions of gender identity, trying to force definitions upon people. You share that scene with Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, questioning Ketanji Brown Jackson during her 2022 Supreme Court hearing. I'm going to play about a minute of that exchange.

Marsha Blackburn: Can you provide a definition for the word woman?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Can I provide a definition?

Marsha Blackburn: Yes.

Ketanji Brown Jackson: No, I can't.

Marsha Blackburn: You can't?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Not in this context. I'm not a biologist.

Marsha Blackburn: You believe the meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can't give me a definition?

Ketanji Brown Jackson: Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is, I address disputes. If there's a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law, and I decide. I'm not--

Marsha Blackburn: The fact that you can't give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is, underscores the dangers of the progressive education that we are hearing about.

Brigid Bergin: Rebecca, why was this such an important starting point when you wrote the piece?

Rebecca Traister: That speaks to-- Again, I mentioned in my earlier remarks, the right-wing, and it's particularly something that's been taken up by women on the Right in recent years, transphobic attachment to the notion of defining, and thus imaginatively defending the very notion of womanhood itself from those who understand that trans people exist, and gender is fluid in many ways.

This has been a foothold, I think, for contemporary Republican party's women, into imagining themselves as defenders of women in a terribly distorted feminist tradition. I think it mirrors some of the stuff that we see happening around the transphobic changes in feminist rhetoric in Britain, for example. It is this obsession with thinking about asserting constantly what it means to be a woman. Now, this is different.

It's different from part of what I'm writing about, which is the performance by Cis women of what womanhood entails. I think it strikes at the heart of why it's interesting to me, and to a lot of us, to see how cis-gendered women on the Right, in leadership positions, as candidates, as elected officials, are presenting themselves as women because so much of their rhetoric at this point is consumed by these questions of gender.

Who counts as a woman? What does it mean to be a woman? Then, in response to questions like Blackburn's, they themselves are offering up these definitions that are incredibly narrow and rigid. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's another politician that I write about in this, she is making stabs, publicly, at answering these questions, "Can you define what it means to be a woman?" She says, "We're Adam's rib. We are the weaker sex."

These women, because they're asking these questions and insisting on having this very closed and cruel conversation about the limited definitions of womanhood, are themselves, then, presenting these definitions of womanhood that they inherently are contradicting through their own actions. Marjorie Taylor Greene is also somebody who, I think, very fascinatingly, is very open about lifting weights, her own strength, her own bellicosity, her own aggression that is in opposition to this very traditionalist view of women as subservient to men.

It's, again, part of why none of this flows rationally.

Brigid Bergin: When you looked at Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, you also looked at Nancy Mace, South Carolina, because both of them project that certain toughness. Also, trying to balance this eye towards traditional roles for women. You spoke with Mace over Zoom. I am so curious what that conversation was like. Maybe you'll tell us a little bit about what main character energy is.

Rebecca Traister: [chuckles] I was so grateful, I just want to say, to the Republican women who spoke to me. Nancy Mace especially gave me a lot of her time, was really thoughtful. This is not meant to be-- In my writing as a journalist, I'm very open about my politics. There's no secret about what my politics are. I'm a feminist journalist who's written critically about right-wing policy. I went into this with a deep curiosity about how these women were thinking about this.

This piece was undertaken with respect and curiosity. I'm so grateful to the Republican women who offered me their time. Nancy Mace was chief among them. She was the first female graduate of The Citadel, the military Academy in South Carolina. She wrote a book called In the Company of Men, about that experience. I was particularly excited to talk to her, because in writing that book, she has done a lot of thinking about gender, self-presentation, sexism, institutional marginalization, and all of that.

She's somebody who presents herself as somebody who thinks about women and gender. She said that to me and was very open with me about it. One of the things she talked to me about was this balance between maintaining a traditional feminine demeanor. She said things to me, like, "I believe there are certain natural biological functions women have, like we're meant to breastfeed our children, but I also have--" What she called main character energy, which is a very online term for being-- I like it.

Brigid Bergin: I do too.

Rebecca Traister: For being an aggressive, attention-getting, being the main character on Twitter. Being the main character on social media, getting a lot of attention for doing things that are eye-popping. Nancy Mace, in her time in politics-- She was sworn into office in the House of Representatives just a few days before January 6th, in 2021. She has been an attention-getter in her time in office ever since, for a lot of reasons that really strike at this balance that she was trying to describe, between a traditional femininity and that main character energy.

She was very outspoken at the beginning, in the wake of January 6th, about how she felt that the events of January 6th and the insurrection damaged Donald Trump's legacy. She was critical of Donald Trump and his role in instigating that, and then he attacked her for it and spent money on a primary opponent to oppose her. She immediately recanted and did not vote for his impeachment, ultimately, and went and filmed herself outside of Trump Tower, claiming that she was a longtime fan of his. It's been very difficult.

It is very difficult to function in the Contemporary Republican Party if you have voiced criticism of Donald Trump, who does have this almost god-like role on the right, right now. She's had to really go back and forth in terms of her self-presentation and her impulse toward main character energy, which also comes out in other ways. One of the things she and I talked about at length was her propensity for using really misogynistic insults, crude and vulgar insults.

She loves to say that men that she is arguing with, both in her own party and Democrats, have no balls, right?

Brigid Bergin: Right.

Rebecca Traister: She uses crude, emasculating language, and that's what she would say is the main character energy. That's very gendered insult, and she's trafficking in a lot of Manosphere, Andrew Tate, crude, gendered, misogynistic insults at the same time that she's talking about balancing a demure femininity and, fundamentally, a fealty to Donald Trump himself, which she's had to work on and publicly proclaim, again, and again, and again, in order to stay alive in her party.

Brigid Bergin: Given everything you've said, Rebecca, and some of what you talk about in the piece, the fact that she actually introduced some legislation to protect contraceptive access and rejected Alabama's IVF ruling, do you view Mace as an outlier, or an embodiment of these contradictions you're examining, or maybe both?

Rebecca Traister: She views herself as an outlier, and she was really clear. She actually said to me, and this surprised me. She was really frank with me. Again, I'm very grateful that she spoke to me so frankly. She said, "I'm a unicorn in my party." She talked very openly about how her party has really turned on women, and she doesn't believe that that is where the Republican Party should be. Now, I want to be clear. Nancy Mace is, and she will tell you this too, anti-abortion.

She says she breaks with her party on abortion because she has talked about her own experience of rape and assault, and broke with her party on a rape exception when she was in state government in South Carolina. I want to be clear that we're not talking about, for example, a so-called pro-choice Republican. There used to be a lot of those in the Republican party, and there are no longer. She is anti-abortion.

She is a huge supporter of Donald Trump. She claimed to me that Donald Trump, who, as we know, has been found liable of sexual assault, has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual assault, has just been open in his disregard and disgust for women. She told me he's great on women's issues. I don't want to give credence to her claim that she is a woman's woman, but that is how she views herself.

She claims that she is unusual in her party because of it, but it is also true that all of these other realities, her devotion to Trump, her willingness to say, "The sun is the moon and the moon is the sun," in a very Trumpian fashion, and say he's great on women's issues, mean that she is also an emblem of the contradiction and the impossible chasm of having to bridge, perhaps, maybe really actually wanting to be thoughtful about gender, autonomy, women's position, and her own ambition within the party.

Having to try that work in a party that is ever more punitively, violently, and aggressively in opposition to women's autonomy, and women's rights and protections. How do you bridge that chasm in your rhetoric, in your campaign, in the political choices you make, and she is in that position, and that's why it doesn't always make a lot of sense. There's not one answer to that question, of, "Is she an outlier, or is she--" All the women in the party right now are doing both things.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, if you're just joining us, I'm Brigid Bergin, in today for Brian Lehrer. My guest is Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large for New York Magazine and The Cut. We're talking about a recent cover story about modern Republican women in the party under Trump. We have to take a short break, but we'll be back with more of your texts and calls just after this. Stick around.

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It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, in for Brian today. My guest is Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large at New York Magazine and The Cut. We're talking about her recent cover story, headlined How Did Republican Women End Up Like This? The baffling, contradictory demands of being female in the party of Donald Trump. I want to go to some of our callers. Let's go to Paisley, in Manhattan. Paisley, you're on WNYC.

Paisley: Hi. Something that's really been taking up a lot of space in my head was the very electric exchange between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jasmine Crockett. I think it was last month, but I'm not sure exactly when it happened. Basically, they were fighting or talking at a hearing, and I think Marjorie Taylor Greene used this racialized, it sounded like to me, insult to Representative Crockett, about her false eyelashes.

Then Crockett had this amazing clap back, which was that she had a bleach blonde, bad-built, butch body, which was absolutely amazing except that it felt like it had a tinge of homophobia about it, which is probably the biggest insult that you could hurl at Marjorie Taylor Greene, being so homophobic as she is. I just wanted to get Rebecca Traister's take on what she thought about that, back and forth, and if it was racialized, if it was homophobic, and just--

I don't know, help me process my own thoughts about it, because I have been really dwelling on it, in its amazing back and forth.

Brigid Bergin: Paisley, thanks for that question. I think that's something a lot of people have seen. Rebecca, what's your take on that exchange that Paisley described?

Rebecca Traister: I feel like Paisley put it better than I could, honestly, because I have exactly the same reservations about it. I will tell you that there was something-- I had a whole bunch of reactions to watching that, and I'm going to try to sort through them. I make reference to it in my piece, but I didn't get into it in an earlier draft I had, but I found something about it exhilarating.

I'm going to be honest, because again, as somebody who's written about women in both parties for a long time, there have been so many sexist expectations for civility and a demure comportment. Watching the two of them insult each other, on one level-- I'm going to contradict myself in other ways, but on one level, there was something almost thrilling about watching women fight with each other in an unbridled way, because I'm just so aware, as somebody who's written about how female politicians are punished for their aggression.

There was something like, "Wow, these two are just going at it." Okay, that is one strain of how I felt about it. The other strain, which I think took up more space in my brain, is what Paisley said. I don't think it was just racialized, I think it was racist, Marjorie Taylor Greene's knock at, and it was obviously misogynistic. The fact that it was about each other's appearance--

Whatever little thread of exhilaration I might have felt watching these two women fight so openly and unapologetically was really almost immediately overshadowed by the fact that they were talking about each other's bodies and faces. Yuck. Yell at each other about policy, yell at each other about what you just said. Why do we have to return, if there is a moment of liberation, of being able to just be aggressive and bellicose with each other, then why does it have to be about your appearance?

Why is that the hit on each other? I say that to both of them. My politics are very much more aligned with Crockett's, but-- The other thing is that Marjorie Taylor Greene's comment about the eyelashes was very clearly racist, and that Crockett's butch body comment was homophobic. I didn't like it. I didn't like either of them. At the same time, I did feel this little frisson, of like, wow, there are different doors opening up for how women can communicate.

I'm not saying that it is my wish that we conduct our policies, our policy-making, and our legislative sessions with a constant note of personal aggression. I'm just saying that I know that a lot of those doors have historically been closed to female candidates, and that that was the place where I derived some pleasure, but it was really mostly overshadowed by the ugliness and, I think, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic tones of the insults that they traded.

Brigid Bergin: Paisley, thank you so much for your call and for that question, because it puts into action some of the contradictions that we see play out, really, for women in elected office on both sides, but particularly for some of these Republican women. Rebecca, we're getting tons of text messages. I will not be able to read them all for time reasons, but one question that a listener asks--

The listener writes, "It's difficult for me to understand if these women leaders in the Republican party are a victim of how the party treats women or complicit in perpetuating it. Will the guests speak to that?" I know that you examine that idea in the piece.

Rebecca Traister: Can you repeat the last part of that? I didn't hear it.

Brigid Bergin: The listener writes, "It's difficult for me to understand if these women leaders in the Republican party are a victim of how the party treats women or complicit in perpetuating it."

Rebecca Traister: They're both. That's not unusual, and it is not exclusive to the Republican party. A lot of this ties into the role of white women. In this piece, I'm writing almost exclusively about white women. The Republican women in the Republican party right now are overwhelmingly white. I mention that, in part, because this is a lot of how white women function within a white capitalist patriarchy, which is that they are simultaneously in a white capitalist patriarchy in which white men and their interests are at the top.

White women derive all kinds of benefits from supporting that white patriarchy. They derive benefits of whiteness and through their association with the white men who are at the top of the structure, at the same time they are oppressed within a white patriarchy. White women's autonomy is also damaged within a white patriarchy, and white women's ability to access healthcare is also damaged. We can talk even about, for example, some of the white women anti-abortion politicians that I'm describing in this piece.

Even if they themselves are anti-abortion, their ability to access obstetric care or IVF is hurt. Their ability to protect themselves or to speak out after experiencing sexual assault is damaged by the policies and attitudes of the party that they're supporting, and so, both things are true. They are enablers of supporters of proponents, and they may indeed gain power within a hard, Right, punitive, white, Christian, nationalist, patriarchal Republican party, which is what we are looking at and dealing with right now.

Some of these women may even rise close to the top of that party. They are also fundamentally limited by that party. That's part of what I write about, in terms of how they are expected to conform to and submit to the men who lead that party. Their ability to be fully human is compromised by the policies and attitudes of that party. Both things are true, simultaneously.

Brigid Bergin: I want to talk for a moment about someone who I learned about, through reading your piece, and that's 25-year-old Valentina Gomez. She is an emerging candidate. If you could talk a little bit about who she is, why she stands out so much, as, in some ways, a contradiction, to some of the women you just described, but also an embodiment of the party at its most extreme in this moment.

Rebecca Traister: Valentina Gomez, who also was somebody who replied to my questions for this piece, she's a candidate, one of several Republican candidates who are competing to be Missouri's Secretary of State in this election cycle. She's very young, she's 25 years old, and she has become a viral sensation, because she didn't use the term main character energy, but she definitely has it.

She got a lot of attention for a political ad she did early in her campaign, in which she used a flamethrower to burn a bunch of sex education and LGBTQ books that she'd taken out from a public library. More recently, she cut another ad, in which she ran through St. Louis, where she lives, wearing a weighted vest, and what she said was-- I don't actually know if I can curse on air, can I?

Brigid Bergin: We'd prefer you didn't.

Rebecca Traister: Okay. I'm going to try and bleep it, but she said, "Don't be weak and gay, stay effing hard," but she didn't say effing, which is fascinating, because again, here we're into this question of a crude form of expression that is not necessarily in line with traditional expectations of feminine expression. Within days of that ad in which she said, "Don't be weak and gay," talk about open and blatant homophobia, "Stay effing hard," and presenting a macho, historically, traditionally masculinized view of herself, as brawny and strong--

She then put up a photo of herself in this pale pink pantsuit, smiling, looking up at the heavens, under the very question we talked about earlier, what is a woman? That visual answer that she was presenting in that moment was a very traditionally, pink-clad, demure, traditionally feminized view of womanhood. Yet, that's within days of her running through and saying, "Don't be weak and hard," and again, using, "Stay effing hard," is very akin to Nancy Mace's no balls.

This homophobic, misogynistic language around gender and domination that you would expect from the Trumpian men. She told me very directly, she said, "A true conservative woman," and I'm quoting her email to me here, "Speaks the truth, works hard, loves and knows how to use guns of multiple calibers, cares for the wellbeing of children and her family, doesn't sleep with multiple men, and, most important, does not murder babies."

We had an exchange, which I quote at greater length in the piece, but even if you try to pull apart that definition of conservative womanhood, you find so many contradictions. There's a sexual propriety, that she doesn't sleep with multiple men, and yet, there are these demands of a sexual propriety in combination with a woman who is running through and saying, "Stay effing hard, don't be weak and gay." It's just very hard to straddle these kinds of contradictions, and she's doing so very aggressively, very unapologetically.

Also, another thing that was interesting, that I think is key to this discussion about a lot of these women, is-- She talks to me in her emails about how she was a competitive swimmer in high school, and then, later, in graduate school, that she graduated early with a business degree, that she runs a company. These are all gains, educational access, access to sports, access to economic empowerment, that were made possible by a women's movement.

She was also very frank with me about her loathing of the feminist movement, and that the feminist movement is destined to fail, like the trans movement. Yet, the feminist movement is what is responsible for Valentina Gomez, at 25, being able to be a political candidate, [inaudible 00:39:31] her collegiate, athletic, business experience, being a precursor for her ability to hold political office. That is really, at the heart, one of the key contradictions.

All of these women that I'm writing about here have their political positions, in part, because a women's movement made space for them to run for and hold office, to express themselves in all these kinds of ways, and yet, it is at this point, unequivocal, and you cannot hide the fact that it is the gains of the women's movement, that the contemporary Republican party wants to roll back, and is rolling back.

Brigid Bergin: Rebecca, just in our last couple minutes-- We have this election looming. We have a Supreme Court decision that grants even more power to the presidency. What do you feel like is at stake for all American women? Why is it so important to be examining the role of these particular Republican women leaders in this moment?

Rebecca Traister: I'm not the first to say everything's at stake, our democracy is at stake, the planet is at stake. The Supreme Court decisions of the past few days, defanging regulatory agencies and, of course, permitting a president wholly undemocratic powers, are terrifying. Our democracy is unraveling, and that follows on years of terrible Supreme Court decisions around affirmative action, around Roe.

Just absolutely rolling back the ability of so many Americans to fully participate in this country. We are at a terrible, terrible precipice. That means that everything's at stake for women in every party, and men. [chuckles] I don't know how to say it in any other way. A women's movement was never just for liberal women. It was meant to expand opportunity and protection for people of all genders.

Much of what is threatened right now, is threatening people of all genders, but especially people who do not identify as male, as cisgendered male, people who are not white, people who are poor. All of that is at stake in November, and it is a terrifying moment that we're in, as I'm sure everybody listening understands.

Brigid Bergin: On that note, we will have to leave it there. My guest has been Rebecca Traister, New York Magazine writer and the author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger. Rebecca, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Rebecca Traister: Thank you for having me.

 

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