It’s called “Calendargate,” and it’s raising the question of what — and whom — the right-wing war on “wokeness” is really for.
While most people were enjoying the holidays, extremely online conservatives were fighting about a pinup calendar.
Last month, Ultra Right Beer — a company founded as a conservative alternative to allegedly woke Bud Light — released a 2024 calendar titled “Conservative Dad’s Real Women of America 2024 Calendar.” The calendar contains photos of “the most beautiful conservative women in America” in various sexy poses. Some, like anti-trans swimmer Riley Gaines and writer Ashley St. Clair, are wearing revealing outfits; others, like former House candidate Kim Klacik, are fully clothed. No one is naked.
But this mild sexiness was just a bit too much for some prominent social conservatives, who started decrying the calendar in late December as (among other things) “demonic.” The basic complaint is that the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust, debasing conservative women, and making conservatives seem like hypocrites when they complain about leftist immorality.
Am I the only one who hates “-gate” used to call something a “scandal?”
Watergate was the name of the hotel, it wasn’t a scandal involving water!
What shocking information to come out! Not even two weeks into 2024, and we’ve already started Gategate
I’m glad my comment was so powerful and meaningful that it’s creating a whole scandal of its own!
But what if Dana Loesch has a dick?
Shouldn’t have hitched their wagon with a bunch of authoritarian Puritans, huh?
I know it won’t happen but could you imagine if this was the event that fractured the republican party instead of all the previous BS
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Calendargate raises the question of what the war on “wokeness” is for: freeing conservatives to have raunchy fun without fear of left-wing censorship, or imposing a new vision of right-wing virtue in place of the reining liberal cultural ethos?
From evangelical film studios to right-wing literary imprints to borderline scammy survival kits, there’s a long and storied history of products being marketed specifically to conservatives as counterweight to what they see as the unacceptably liberal mainstream.
So while both Barstool and social conservatives groups might be comfortable voting for Trump and his fellow Republicans to fight against “wokeness,” they have wildly different views of what an ideal society might look like — including the kinds of cultural products they want to consume.
In a 2023 column, the New York Times’s Jane Coaston traced it back to a debate between William F. Buckley, the patron saint of movement conservatism, and Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine.
In 1966, Hefner appeared on Buckley’s television show Firing Line to defend a political doctrine he defined as “anti-puritanism” — the idea that “man’s morality, like his religion, is a personal affair best left to his own conscience.”
“The narrow ideological frame that the right operates in permits only a long, unending line of ‘conservative alternatives to [X],’ reproducing the values and animating assumptions of the dominant culture with a thin coat of right-wing policy priorities painted on top,” he argues.
The original article contains 1,764 words, the summary contains 237 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
LOL, let them fight. Also, the right wing’s weird obsession with trans women is just soooo revealing. I think they have some real inner demons they are wrestling with. I truly think some of them are deathly afraid they’ll be “fooled” by a trans woman and one of their buddies will find out and tease them mercilessly and their inner proclivities will be revealed…
I think people that are on the more hetero end of the sexuality scale don’t really think about this kind of thing at all (other than - “hey, that’s not really my jam, but live and let live”). But it seems to consume a certain kind of man, I’ve noticed.
By definition, a man being attracted to a femininity is the least homo thing possible. A man dating a woman is a hetero relationship, irregardless if she is cis or trans. Ironically, this post is telling on yourself for your own bias against trans people.
If you are gonna speak about trans issues, then you need to understand the issues they face. Because frankly, this sort of argument does more harm than good.
Having dated as a pre-op trans woman, there absolutely are a bunch of guys who clearly want cock (as in they beg me to top them/let them go down on me/cover them in rivers of sticky jizz), but still want to think of themselves as straight and feel guilty about wanting said cock. I think this is the population OP was talking about, they are often referred to as “chasers”.
My guess is that there are more conservatives in this situation because of the social repression associated with that belief. I also know from experience that unwanted feelings of attraction are often sublimated into anger and disgust … b-b-b-BAKA!
The guys who call themselves pan or bi and are like “I like tits, I like cock, let’s do this” behave completely differently and far less weird.
And there are also haters because Fox News told them to be (my father is one of them).
Perhaps! I am a trans woman not interested in bottom surgery, and that has led to a lot of men saying “where there is two pensises it’s gay”, regardless of the fact that I outwardly pass as a cis woman and have no interest in “using” my penis. Chasers were a real problem for me as well while I was dating, before my current (ace) relationship.
I think we could probally agree that there is a lot more conservative bigots out there then closeted chasers, but that’s kinds inherently unknowable, it’s not like these guys are gonna self report on survey.
So to my mind, it seems more likely to read this as a well intending yet confused ally instead of the much smaller subset of “publicly republican/closeted chasers”.
(and Im sorry for your father, my own family thinks I am dead because they are too concerned with making America great than respecting me)
This is amazing. It’s like it’s short circuiting their brains because they have to decide between owning the libs or submitting to the Dark Lord.
This was always the bargain of the patriarchy for the men in power, right? Barstool conservativism in private (ie “locker room talk”, strip clubs, paid for mistresses) but then a religious culture that enforced their public power (ie family, chastity for at least women, bans on people gossiping about their private Bartool Empire).
They are at odds, but not really. What’s the point in religiously subjugating women if you can’t ogle them and cheat on your wife? This hypocrisy IS patriarchy. At least as I understand it.
the most beautiful conservative women
So, no one?
The basic complaint is that the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust, debasing conservative women, and making conservatives seem like hypocrites when they complain about leftist immorality.
Oh, sweetie… it’s not the calendar.
