re: #65 thedopefishlives

The obscene right-wing fascination with Mike Pence’s refusal to be alone with a woman not his wife is really unnerving. It’s fine and dandy to be respectful of your marriage, but a man in a position of power needs to be able to meet with subordinates without ridiculous, self-imposed religious rules hindering the conversation. It turns out to be incredibly disadvantageous to women in a government that is already very effective at repressing them.

Feature, not bug. A fair number of Christian religious people (and not all of them hard-right fundamentalists) are just fine with repressing women.

Here, any time my wife goes out by herself, anywhere in the county, she’ll get questions about why I am not with her. Some of it is just because we are seen together so much, but a lot of it is also religious people who really feel she shouldn’t be out alone without her husband (Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, &c). Interestingly, the local Mennonites never say such things to her (Mennonites mostly mind their own business about other people’s business).