It's funny, how I just now realized this. When Republicans slap down Democrats who stand up for themselves? They use the rhetoric of patriarchy to do it. They discipline Democrats with the same words and attitudes that are used to teach them damn uppity women their place. It's the same words, over and over: hysterical, frenzied, shrieking, Bush(=man)-hating, and my personal favorite: shrill. Shrill is such a dead give-away too...how did I miss it? What is that word ever used for besides to describe a woman, overexcited about some silly thing or another, busy shrieking at some poor, brow-beaten man? Besides liberals, of course.
And it goes so well with their other meta-narratives, too. The Democrats are a bunch of pansies, a pack of limp-wristed metrosexuals one frou-frou girlie drink away from belting out Barbara Streisand tunes. If they aren't, you know, actual girls. It plays to their audience, who wish they had the opportunity to impose their masculine views on the women around them, if it weren't for that whole "sexual revolution" bullshit, and now you gotta pretend to respect them as people, pay attention to them, and buy them flowers, and what is up with that shit anyway? It is a perfect accompaniment to their militaristic macho psuedo-heroic posturing--God, why didn't I see it before? The same rhetoric that exists to perpetuate the repression of women is being used to discipline the Democrats, to keep them in their well-delineated and worthless place.
On the bright side, it does mean that we have countering rhetoric waiting for us, already made: feminists have decades of material tearing apart patriarchal assumptions, some of it ought to be applicable. It means we can multi-task, if we have the guts--we can tear down patriarchal assumptions at the same time we rejuvenate liberal rhetoric. I already thought that the Democratic party ought to adopt a feminine character in order to counter the Republican's patronizing paternalism. Given that they have already established the frame, it would be an astounding act of political jujitsu.
