"For the right, celebrating he-men like Rumsfeld and Bush was surely a way to litigate the gender wars, to use 9/11 not just to push for a new war in the Middle East but also as an opportunity to fight feminism and LGBTQ normalization. "
I'm old enough to remember when Oliver North was fetishized ("heroic", "independent") and Anita Hill was demonized ("angry", "spiteful") in the same decade by the same people. The Right wing patriarchal and anti-feminist manipulators of media began to steer the ship after the "Reagan revolution" and we didn't see a true progressive backlash until the Obama years 20-30 years later.
"For the right, celebrating he-men like Rumsfeld and Bush was surely a way to litigate the gender wars, to use 9/11 not just to push for a new war in the Middle East but also as an opportunity to fight feminism and LGBTQ normalization. "
I'm old enough to remember when Oliver North was fetishized ("heroic", "independent") and Anita Hill was demonized ("angry", "spiteful") in the same decade by the same people. The Right wing patriarchal and anti-feminist manipulators of media began to steer the ship after the "Reagan revolution" and we didn't see a true progressive backlash until the Obama years 20-30 years later.