Schlafly’s militant masculinity rhetoric directly bridged evangelical politics to Trump
Evidence
In September, Trump took a momentary pause from campaigning to attend Phyllis Schlafly’s funeral. Although the times had changed, the matriarch of the Religious Right, in her waning years, had not. During the Obama administration she continued to denounce “the stupidity of feminists” for getting rid of “all the manly men.” Most women liked “big, strong, John-Wayne-type men,” the kind of men who “put out fires, fight in combat, protect their wives and children against intruders, and save damsels in distress.” For too long feminists had made men “afraid to be manly,” but it was time for women to say: “we love manly men.” Schlafly knew a manly man when she saw one. She had been an early Trump supporter during the primaries, and she had spoken in support of Trump at the RNC in Cleveland, connecting Trump, in the words of his evangelical biographers, to “fifty years’ worth of anti-establishment, grassroots, Christian, Republican Party politics.” Trump eulogized Schlafly as a “truly great American patriot,” a hero of the Christian Right. The day after Schlafly’s death her final book was released: The Conservative Case for Trump. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 594
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how militant masculinity organized white evangelical identity — Schlafly is the direct on-ramp from the GOP’s culture war to Trump.
- SEED: Angle: tracing how the ‘John-Wayne-type men’ phrase Do Mez uses as her book’s title actually circulated in Schlafly’s own rhetoric — the title’s provenance is itself evidence.