Essay: Hatred of Women as Policy
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon on June 22, 2025. Photo: Andrew Harnik
In 2019, a researcher into the impact of digital cultures on anti-feminism and the far right told the New York Times that she had noticed a worrying trend in the online white supremacist subcultures she studies.
“What’s gaining more of a foothold is the idea of reversing a woman’s right to vote,” Annie Kelly said. “That was something I used to see in the overtly neo-Nazi spaces, but now I’m seeing it introduced in less extremist spaces. First introduced as a joke, of course, then as an acceptable policy that maybe not all users agree with but is worth discussing.”
On August 7, 11 days before the 105th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted women the right to vote, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video about a Christian nationalist church that included various pastors saying women should no longer be allowed to vote. One of the pastors argued that only men should cast household votes, and another said he supported scrapping the 19th Amendment altogether.
From neo-Nazi spaces to the man who is sixth in the succession line to the Presidency and runs the nation’s military, what was once considered inconceivable is nudging its way into the mainstream. This, in a country where the federally protected right to abortion has been reversed; and a major theme of the 2024 Presidential election (that gave Donald Trump his second term in office), was the fear of white women–the nation's largest voting bloc–that their husbands could find out who they voted for.
When asked about her boss’ position on women’s right to vote, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson went into full lady who doth protest too much mode.
“Of course, the secretary thinks that women should have the right to vote. That’s a stupid question,” said Wilson, who has used her social media posts to spread antisemitic views and the far-right “replacement theory.”
Understand, these are not Hitler’s Nazis, rooted in 1940s Germany; they are the U.S. - baseball, hot dogs, apple-pie and Pete Hegseth.
Today’s neo-Nazis are not just calling from within the (White) house; they are not only in the (White) house; they are running the White House and this administration. Understand, these are not Hitler’s Nazis, rooted in 1940s Germany; they are the U.S. - baseball, hot dogs, apple-pie and Pete Hegseth.
The 19th Amendment prohibited the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the basis of sex. It wasn’t until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 which banned racial discrimination in voting made real the promise of the 19th Amendment for Black and women of colour.
In the U.S. today, both the 19th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act are in the crosshairs of the white supremacist Christian zealots who ushered Trump and Hegseth et al to power.
The center of the Venn diagram for all of this of course is Black and women of colour who have never taken for granted any right. Unlike the majority of white women, Black and women of colour have always always been at the crosshairs of the white supremacist patriarchy that is the beating heart of this country.
Hegseth’s endorsement of disenfranchising women is happening at a time when the “manosphere” delivered victory for Trump, and the right wing is now pushing the “womanosphere” to target young female audiences and deliver that demographic to the Republicans.
That is all happening at a time when Democrats are increasingly setting their sights on young men and how they can wrestle them away from the GOP.
Again, the center of the Venn diagram of harm here is specifically Black women, who are the most reliable bloc of voters for the Democratic Party.
It is they who Hegseth is targeting. White women voters vote Republican in their majority and have done so for decades. Hegseth knows that.
When he supports calls to disenfranchise women voters, he pushes forward on right-wing aims: the submission of white women to their husbands in the name of zealotry, recruiting white women’s wombs for the white supremacist obsession with declining birth rates, and disempowering Black women.
The majority of people in the U.S. don’t take seriously any of those aims. But Black women know very well the vicious gendered racism–misogynoir–that targets them.
So successful has white supremacist patriarchy been at convincing white women that they’re lucky to live in the U.S. and not Saudi Arabia or Iran, that so many of them did not pay enough attention to the theocracy that white supremacy was building right here, at home.
It was being built by men right here in the U.S. - white men who look like their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons–men who look like Pete Hegseth–not the scary brown men with beards.
And it was being built by white women who are your mothers, aunts, and sisters; white women like Pam Bondi, Karolyn Leavitt, Amy Coney Barrett, Kristi Noem et al, who are all too willing to foot-soldier for the patriarchy in return for its crumbs. Those same white women who helped destroy the right to abortion and who continue to do Trump’s bidding.
White supremacist patriarchy so successfully lulled them into a delusion of “Be grateful you don’t live over there” that they sleep walked their way into the disaster that is now and over here.
The Associated Press said that Hegseth’s repost of a report by CNN examining Doug Wilson, cofounder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) “illustrates his deep and personal connection to a Christian nationalist pastor with extreme views on the role of religion and women.”
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell told AP that Hegseth is “a proud member of a church” that is affiliated with CREC and he “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”
“Wilson’s church and wider denomination practice complementarianism, the patriarchal idea that men and women have different God-given roles. Women within CREC churches cannot hold church leadership positions, and married women are to submit to their husbands,” AP reported.
Since assuming the helm of the Defense Department, Hegseth has fired or moved to largely invisible roles at least five senior female service members, including Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Admiral Linda Fagan, commandant of the Coast Guard, and Vice Admiral Yvette Davids from her post as the first female head of the U.S. Naval Academy.
They are part of a growing list of women and Black and people of colour who served in top military roles who have been ousted as Trump and top officials conduct a purge of so-called "wokeness" in the military.
Hegseth has also stripped the name of a U.S. Navy veteran and gay rights activist from a ship and moved to return the last names of Confederate generals to U.S. Army bases.
As an anarchist, I oppose the military everywhere, especially in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the history of the world. Being from a region of the world that has long felt the brute force of that military, I am aware of the crimes of that military in a way that many in the U.S. rarely pay attention to. Add to that a feminism that refuses to celebrate the patriarchal violence of war, regardless of the gender or race of the soldier fighting that war. That patriarchal violence is the reason that the biggest threat for many women in the military comes from sexual predators among their own ranks rather than the threat of enemy forces.
Hegseth shares none of those concerns with me. His opposition to women’s combat role in the military and his removal and reassignment of top military women is not due to concern over the alarming rates of “friendly fire” in the form of sexual assault from fellow servicemen and officers.
The man who runs the military of the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world is purging women and Black and people of colour from top military positions–and possibly the force in its entirety (who knows with Trump’s bootlickers) because he is a white Christian nationalist who believes in the supremacy of white people, specifically white men.
The Defense Secretary’s misogyny and racism predate his tenure. From his fetishisation of the Crusades to his violent history with women, that includes an accusation of rape that almost derailed his nomination, and an opposition to their combat roles in the military; nobody expected the former Fox and Friends host and Trump’s nominee to run the military to be progressive.
Combined with his ultra-conservative Christian nationalism, it has long been clear that Hegseth, like many of Trump’s Cabinet and hangers-on, is an enforcer of a white supremacist zealotry that is increasingly unabashed in the direction it insists on taking the United States. Just as the once marginal view that women should not be able to vote has moved from neo-Nazi outliers to support from the heart of the Trump administration, it is a reminder that when the right wing says it will do something, they do it, even though so many white people–the last to be hurt by those dangers–dminish or dismiss them.
Trump doesn’t always chicken out.
Many white people in the U.S. fail to see the danger of Hegseth et al because–as I have said in countless essays–it is difficult to see a zealot when he looks like you. It is also easy to overlook that danger when the zealot looks like you and you believe that your whiteness will save you from his harm.
Who is safe from Hegseth’s zealotry?
He has called for an “American Crusade” against the “internal” and “domestic enemies” of the U.S. and Israel. In his book, called American Crusade, he “describes leftists, progressives and Democrats as ‘enemies’ of freedom, the US constitution and America.”
That same Hegseth signed the order this week putting service rifles into the hands of National Guards soldiers now occupying the U.S. Capitol. Hegseth gave literal crosshairs to the military which has put figurative crosshairs onto women and Black and people of color.
I have written that if Hegseth were a Muslim, the U.S. would’ve invaded his country to save the “free world” from his jihad. Instead, he is re-forging and stamping the Pentagon with his zealotry.
Hegseth gave literal crosshairs to the military which has put figurative crosshairs onto women and Black and people of color.
Days after Hegseth reposted to his personal X account the CNN segment on Doug Wilson (the pastor who says women should not have the right to vote and who counts Hegseth as a congregant at one of his churches), the Pentagon posted a recruitment ad showing paratroopers and soldiers in full tactical gear aiming rifles at an enemy in a desert meant to resemble one in the Middle East, complete with a Biblical verse.
U.S. Veterans say that Hegseth’s religiosity, and the ways it has influenced new recruitment ads and official US Department of Defense social media activities, was dividing the ranks and doing untold damage to the future of the U.S. military.
Hegseth’s sexism and racism are doing untold damage to an entire country that has never reckoned fully with the legacy of either forms of discrimination.
Pete Hegseth is a moseeba.
This August marks the 105th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) calls “the crown jewel of civil rights legislation.”
“In the past year alone, the ACLU was in federal court wielding this very law to ensure that Black voters have an equal opportunity to participate in the political process in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi,” the ACLU said. “These two realities capture where we are: celebrating the VRA's legacy, while fighting desperately to save it from destruction … increasingly, we’re fighting to save the act itself.”
Add to that the growing danger to women’s right to vote, as espoused most recently by a man who believes white men are superior to women and white people are superior to the rest of us.
The theocracy is here. It is now. Are you paying attention?
In Arabic, a language richer and more evocative than English, we have a word–Moseeba–that would require the marriage of disaster, chaos, catastrophe, mayhem, and the synonyms they would give birth to.
Pete Hegseth is a moseeba.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her new book, an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World, will be published March 5, 2025. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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