Sexism can be very modern and tech savvy. Misogyny is an ever-evolving idiom, and men and women alike have found particularly of-the-moment ways to operate within the genre. Think of the apps that take images of women and remove their clothes, or the AI bots that men and boys can use to generate pornography or depictions of graphic violence against women and girls for the crime of going to the same school as they do or running for office. Think of the influencers of the so-called “womanosphere” who tell their female audiences that women who seek out friendship or equality with men are morons or cows, all through the gleam of a TikTok filter. Sexism may be the world’s oldest prejudice and its first unjust hierarchy, but it is continually innovating, adapting to new technologies and the most recent rhetorical needs of male supremacy.
But some of the forms of misogyny that have been bubbling up in American political discourse lately can seem a bit retro. I don’t just mean the tradwives, who dress alternately like June Cleaver or like Ma Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie – evoking bygone eras, or at least the ways those eras are depicted on television. And I don’t just mean the pro-natalists, either, who don weird bonnets and propose national breeding medals for prolific mothers. Since last month’s massive election victories for Democrats, some on the right have looked to revive a form of sexism that has been out of fashion for more than one hundred years: the idea that women should not have a right to vote.
