As
a republican candidate for president, Rick Santorum is almost required to
possess certain beliefs about family roles and women’s rights to even be
considered a legitimate party leader.
His views on federal funding of contraception, gay marriage, gay rights,
and abortion rights all limit the reproductive rights and empowerment of women.
Recently, he has been under attack from the left and women’s groups for
statements he has made regarding limiting female involvement in society. As a
first offense, he recently expressed his concerns with women’s participation on
the front-lines of war. Initially,
his issue with it seemed to revolve around the emotional capacity of women to
handle such pressure; his statements led one to believe that some sort of
emotional distraction during front-line combat could sacrifice the mission,
without referencing to whom he was referring. He later clarified, after much
political uproar, by stating that it is the emotions of men he is concerned
about and their socially ingrained desire to help those who are vulnerable,
particularly women. He fears that physical strength and capability limitations
would put men at greater risk as their focus will switch from the target to the
helpless female; additionally, her lack of physical strength to be able to
rescue an injured male from the front-lines is also problematic.
It
also came to light recently that in his book, It Takes a Family, he took
aim at radical feminists for “undermining
the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments
are the key to happiness.”[1]
His justification for this statement is that 1) his wife wrote it and 2)
academia and Hollywood are to blame for the encouragement of these feminists, who
seek to convince men and women that success at work is the only thing that
matters. Rick Santorum’s
incorrectly believes that his disapproval of female roles on the front-lines as
well as his disapproval of feminist-aims to undermine familial relations are
justified and equitable when, in actuality, they represent patriarchal,
anti-female perceptions of women.
Based
on his dismissal of the widespread idea that he had intended on targeting
female emotions as the object of his criticism, Rick Santorum seems to believe
that he is not male-centered in any way.
He justifies his statements and placates the public by refuting their
presumptions and explaining that it is males’ emotions that are to blame for
potential disruption of mission goals. By explaining that he is merely
concerned with the ingrained desires of men regarding women, he is an active
participant in the perpetuation of the patriarchal society in which we
unmistakably live.
Johnson’s
description of patriarch includes “the standards of feminine beauty and
masculine toughness, images of female vulnerability and masculine
protectiveness.” [2] Santorum claims that his fears come from the safety of the
mission, but is it not also highly plausible that he is being governed by the
idea that the socially accepted norms are “anger, rage, and toughness in men
but not in women, and of caring, tenderness, and vulnerability in women but not
in men?”[2] Are his beliefs not
also influenced by his fear of men losing the ability to “power over—control
events…or one’s self in spite of resistance?”[2] If soldiers, our symbols of
strength, honor, and perseverance, cannot preserve their power and resist
temptation, they become vulnerable and weak, and lose their credibility and
manliness.
Experimentation
on the cohesion of gender-mixed combat groups is inconclusive; simulations are
often pre-maturely dismissed because of male soldiers’ claims that the events
are too unrealistic.[3] Santorum’s other claim about female strength and
ability is unclear; it is true that many women do not have the same physical
strength as men, but that is not enough to conclude that all women should be
barred from the front-lines and prohibited from utilizing their own unique
strengths, as long as weaker men are not forbidden from the front-line as well.
His original statement and his clarification of those comments are not as
different as he may believe; they both address female vulnerability and male
dominance, the only difference being in the latter he does not address women’s
deficiencies directly.
He
is very direct with his criticism of women in his book, where he attacks
radical feminists, operating under the widespread assumption that they are
extremist, elitist, family-haters. In Susan Douglas’ book, Enlightened
Sexism, her chapter called Castration Anxiety discussed the anxiety
increase at a societal level because of the actions of Fisher and Lorena, two
women who broke the traditional mold of male domination and raised awareness
about domestic violence. They raised concerns among mostly the male population
about maintaining hierarchies and controlling feminists who were assuming male
roles and removing themselves from males’ powerful grasps.[4] The radical feminists Santorum discusses
hide somewhere in entertainment industries, academia, and threaten the
traditional women’s role of domestic caretaker rather than corporate
participant. He is under the assumption that these feminists have radical views
on women’s rights, rather than understanding that feminists simply desire gender
equality and a decrease in emphasis on male-domination. They do not declaring
that the only chance for fulfillment is through employment and that families
diminish a woman’s chance for happiness.
They instead want women to have equal access to employment
opportunities, which in most cases can be very mentally fulfilling, and not
operate under the societal pressure to be the leader of domestic life. Santorum
addresses them as family-haters because the population feels very threatened
when the narrow view of family life and traditional order is disrupted. The
very powerful historic organization of marriage and families--using a
bi-gendered system, a requirement of only one member per sex, and a goal of
reproduction--is a societal construct and works in conjunction with patriarchy
to repress women and transgender, homosexual, bisexual, infertile individuals,
etc.
Santorum
attempted to placate the disapproving public by claiming that he did not write
that chapter in his book and it was, in fact, his wife wrote those aggressive
words. This brings up many
additional concerns about his feelings on women in intellectual roles and his
opinion of how society will be most easily appeased. If his wife did write that chapter, she is not acknowledged
at all as an author or contributor. Given that Santorum is using this excuse to
justify the opinions in the book, he clearly thinks that a situation in which
his wife was not acknowledged for her work is acceptable and almost natural;
the public accepted this excuse and moved on. There should be nothing amiss, in
a patriarchal society, about a woman contributing but only the man reaping the
rewards. Without outwardly and obviously oppressing women, Santorum, and
society as a whole, is not grasping that “there are people who are caged, whose
motion and mobility are restricted, whose lives are shaped and reduce.”[5]
There was no general objection to his excuse because “to live in a patriarchal
culture is to learn what’s expected of men and women—to learn the rules that regulate
punishment and reward based on how individuals behave and appear.”[2] As a wife, it is her
socially-established duty to support her husband, improve her husband’s book,
and thus speak through her husband.
An
alternative view of this issue is that, in our political system, we only find
it to be acceptable for candidates to criticize those in the equal or superior
role. For Santorum to speak
negatively about women is to allow him to dismiss the oppression that women
have faced for many years and treat the two groups as equally fair-game for
judgment. Attributing the origin of those claims to his wife rather than
himself is considered acceptable because she clearly is seen as possessing a
lesser role than him, at the same level of power as other women, making her
attack legitimate. This censorship not only inhibits honest and open debate, it
is evidence of society’s perception of women as lesser than men. The exemption
of women from derision by male political figures is not a positive development
as some might believe, but is instead an attempt to protect the vulnerability,
meekness of group of individuals needing to be protected.
Rick
Santorum has comforted the masses and assured the country that he is a worthy
candidate for president, a family man, and a supporter of women’s rights—for
goodness sake, he even believes they should be allowed to fly small planes! He,
however, unsurprisingly perpetuates a male-centered and dominated perception of
societal norms. His words and actions are constantly inhibiting the
constitutional freedom of women. His love of “family” is actually a love of the
status-quo, female docility, and a restriction of the reproductive rights of
women. His success in this political race is scary, to say the least, but
unfortunately is not surprising, given our ingrained beliefs. His fellow politicians perpetuate the
same stereotypes, and it will only be through active awareness, rejection of
this system, women embracing their differences and forging a strong, powerful
bond for advocating change, that we can hope for an improvement.
[1] Coontz,
Stephanie.. “Santorum’s stone-age view of women.” CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/14/opinion/coontz-santorum/index.html
[2] Johnson, Allan. The Gender Knot. Temple University Press, 2005.
[3] Henley, John. “Women on the Frontline: The right to
fight.” The Guardian. 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/23/women-in-armed-forces
[4] Douglas, Susan. Enlightened Sexism. Times Books, 2010.
[5] Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983.
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