Published in the Anthropology Undergraduate Journal vol. 9 at the University of Toronto, April 2021: https://anthro.sa.utoronto.ca/anthropology-undergraduate-journal/
Abstract:
At a campaign event in October, Lindsey Graham was quoted as saying, “I want every young
woman to know there’s a place for you in America if you are pro-life, if you embrace your
religion, and you follow a traditional family structure—that you can go anywhere, young lady” (Dzhanova 2020). Situated amidst a push by the political right in the United States to roll back reproductive and gender liberties for women, this statement bears significant ramifications. This paper seeks to investigate how Graham’s words situate womanhood in Republican visions of the ideal American society. Analyzed through the concepts of biopower, heteronormativity, and patriarchy, this paper argues that Lindsey Graham’s words construct a version of womanhood that is legitimated only within the specific ideological framework of Christian patriarchy. I conclude that Graham’s rhetoric attempts to mass-regulate women’s bodies through implied consequences, legitimates women’s positions only by their relations to male figures in nuclear family structures, and reinforces patriarchal power by reducing women’s bodily autonomy and perpetuating the gender binary.
On October 31, 2020, in discussing the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the
Supreme Court, United States Senator Lindsey Graham said, “I want every young woman to
know there’s a place for you in America if you are pro-life, if you embrace your religion, and you follow a traditional family structure—that you can go anywhere, young lady” (Dzhanova 2020). This statement, made by a prominent member of the Republican Party, is emblematic of a wider push by the right in the United States to roll back reproductive liberties for women, reverse gender and sexual liberties under the Constitution, and reinforce the dominant patriarchal values of America’s past (The Republican Party Platform 2020). In this paper, I inquire into the gendered ramifications of this statement, specifically how it situates ideal womanhood in Republican visions of the ideal American society. Analyzed through the concepts of biopower, heteronormativity, and patriarchy, I argue that Lindsey Graham’s words construct a form of womanhood that is legitimated only within the specific ideological framework of Christian patriarchy. Achieving the status of the proper “woman” and gaining social acceptance can only be done by performing specific values and behaviours, in which women are subordinated to men. This shall be explored through Michel Foucault’s concept of biopower, used to examine how women’s position in society is framed as conditional upon specific bodily practices and adherence to patriarchal values. Through this discursive regulation of the body, the “acceptable woman” is constrained to a specific performance of subordinated gender. Furthermore, Lindsey Graham’s words will be unpacked for their heteronormative ramifications, implying that women’s identity is constituted by their relations to men against the disciplinary threat of social exclusion, and shapes women’s habitus with patriarchal values. Finally, Graham’s statement will be situated within the concept of patriarchy, showing how a pro-life stance compromises
women’s bodily autonomy, and how his rhetoric is predicated upon and perpetuates the gender binary in service of patriarchal social classification. These analyses fuse to represent Lindsey Graham’s stance on women as ideologically constricting them to a subordinate social position that promises opportunities to women only upon submission to patriarchy and threatens the positions of women who do not. His words not only construct an ideal form of womanhood, but an exclusive one, in which gender is conditional upon a specific performance of sexuality, religion, and gender relations.
To begin, the statement by Graham was made at a campaign event in Conway, South
Carolina, in the days leading up to the 2020 state and national elections. He was discussing the recent appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative judge with strong ties to the religious right, to the ninth seat of the Supreme Court recently vacated with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death (Baker 2020). A law professor who once clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett had formerly been appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017, after being nominated by President Donald Trump. She is a proponent of originalism, a philosophy of interpreting the law as it was written, adhering to the approach of former Justice Scalia (Brannon et al. 2020, 1-2). In the cultural sphere, she has become a symbol for the American right, hailed by some as the pinnacle of conservative feminism: as a successful career woman with seven children, balancing family and work in collaboration with her husband, she is held to embody the notion that women can put family first and still succeed in the career world (Bachiochi 2020). Through her, the Republican party has pushed to improve its image among women, attempting to re-frame the narrative that traditional women’s roles and gender values are incompatible with the modern career world—a re-framing that she actively promotes, as well (Green 2020; Bachiochi 2020). Her public
record indicates anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage leanings (Dzhanova 2020; “Letter” 2015), further compounded by her history of membership in the Christian group, People of Praise, which allegedly “teaches that wives must submit to the will of their husbands,” who are the “divinely ordained” heads of the family (Biesecker et al. 2020).
In his statement, Graham praised Barrett’s ideological positions, notably her Christian
faith. Taken in this context, the “religion” mentioned in his statement does not connote all
religions, but specifically Christianity, which he linguistically positions as the religion in
America, purposely excluding all others which are historically viewed as threats by the party
(Lemon 2020; Roth-Rowland 2020). Such phrasing reinforces Christian hegemony in the United States, attempting to naturalize Christian values as fundamentally “American” and shape national policy accordingly, with significant ramifications for patriarchal structure. This is not the first time that Graham has implied that social citizenship and liberty in the United States is conditional upon ideology—in South Carolina, he made a similar comment on the basis of race, in which he said, “If you’re a young African American, an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state. You just need to be conservative, not liberal” (Dzhanova 2020).
Additionally, the Republican Party’s stated mission is “to empower families, pregnant
women, and all children, no matter what circumstances they face” (Wagner 2019); however,
Lindsey Graham’s senate voting record reveals “No” votes on acts to help protect both women and children such as the 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization and Expansion, and the 2013 Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, as well as “No” votes on the 2008 Equal Pay Bill and multiple Paycheck Fairness Acts in 2010, 2012, and 2014 (Vote Smart 2020). Overall, considering Graham’s personal and party records, both favour policies restricting women’s autonomy and marriage freedoms, and supporting the influence of Christianity in the operations of the state. His words have significant ramifications in the context of biopower, heteronormativity, and patriarchy, all shaping a distinctive and exclusive form of womanhood which is a performance of conservative Christian patriarchal ideology.
Firstly, Lindsey Graham’s words are shown to construct a patriarchal definition of
“legitimate” womanhood in the context of biopower, enlisting coercive rhetoric to control
women’s sexuality and reproduction. Patriarchy can be defined as a social system which, by
classifying people into a gender binary of men and women with accompanying roles, accords men power over women and establishes them as the dominant social category. Men are positioned as the heads of all social relationships, from the familial level to the societal level to the religious level (Joyce 2010, ix-x; Watanbe 2015; Eller 2009, 99). Such positions are anchored in the legitimizing institution of the Christian religion, holding the divine hierarchy as the model for social structure, thus placing women below men on a seemingly innate level and naturalizing such hierarchies. Furthermore, biopower, a term coined by Michel Foucault, is the method of mass regulation of people’s bodies by systems of power (Hird-Younger 2020), steering people’s decisions and bodily practices through symbolic means rather than overt force. Where Lindsey Graham mentions the pro-life stance as being a quality of the proper “woman”, his words represent a form of social control by establishing that women’s legitimacy, and accompanying career opportunities, are a direct product of specific reproductive decisions. This influences women’s use of their bodies based on social factors, undermining their agency. However, Lindsey Graham’s words imply more than merely social consequences to breaching the ideal
form of womanhood. These words not only paint an image of an “ideal” woman in opposition to an “undesirable” woman and their ways of life, but also contain a material threat to women who breach this ideal form, implying that they will not be permitted to achieve positions such as that of Amy Coney Barrett. If they do not subscribe to “pro-life”ideas wrapped up in Christian faith and the nuclear family structure (Joyce 2010, ix), they will not “have a place” in his vision of America (Dzhanova 2020). Women’s ability to progress in careers, or to pursue their goals, will be directly contingent upon their social and bodily behaviours.
Drawing upon Mariana Valverde’s (2014) work on the regulation of sexuality, the implied
threat to women’s participation in society from a government figure indicates the use of
coercive tools to regulate women’s sexuality and reproductive practices. This is done by both constructing obstacles geared towards women seeking abortions and contraception, and enacting consequences upon those who use them—both of which his senate record supports (Vote Smart 2020). Similarly to Valverde’s conclusions, Graham’s statement is part of a broader “regulatory project” which promotes women’s loss of bodily autonomy through the issue of abortion, which is framed as the “right to life”—a conceptual framework deeply rooted in Christian patriarchal ideas of birth as “the work of God” (Joyce 2010, 146). This argument rings hollow when paired with Graham’s dismissive stances on social and maternal welfare programs and policies discussed above. Overall, the maintenance of women’s rights and freedom is contingent upon a loss in their reproductive rights and exemplifies the role of biopower on women’s bodies by the Republican Party. Women’s agency is legitimated only through adherence to specific positions on reproductive rights. With social coercion, the Republican ideology defines proper womanhood through the performance of patriarchal values enacted upon the body.
Secondly, Graham establishes a version of womanhood that is only legitimate within the
criteria of Christian patriarchal performance by his reinforcement of heteronormativity. His
rhetoric of the “traditional family structure” (Dzhanova 2020) prescribes heteronormative
social relations and sexuality to women, implying that women can only have a place in America if they are engaged in specific subordinate relations to men. Heteronormativity is the naturalization of heterosexuality in the male-female gender binary. It both assumes and
enforces heterosexuality as a universal reality for people, and marks non-heterosexual relations as deviant. When Lindsey Graham references the “traditional family structure” (Dzhanova 2020), he refers to the Republican Party’s views of the “‘natural’ family unit” as a cisgender, heterosexual married couple and their children, in which the man is the head of the family (Peters 2016). This is connected to a long party legacy advocating for (white) women’s occupation of the domestic sphere; a century ago, Roosevelt proclaimed that “women being ‘good wives, housekeepers, and mothers of enough healthy children to keep the nation going forward”’ was the key to national survival (Joyce 2010, 172), explicitly connecting the performance of gender roles to constructions of the nation. In the American context, this vision is shaped by western, colonial Christian fantasies of social structure imitating divine structure, with men as the “earthly head” of the family echoing God as the divine head of humanity. Under the patriarchal structure framed by Christianity, women’s submission is predestined, and procreation is the mandate of God. Such a structure legitimates the system of social classification and its hierarchy as natural and innate (Joyce 2010, ix). Additionally, this vision of the patriarchal nuclear family is deeply tied to race and class, positioning the white middle-class family as the “norm” and categorizing any who fall outside of this “norm” as “‘outside’ of the family” (Wodak 2015, 151). This form of “family” is a benchmark of legitimacy through which power is conferred, and those who fall outside of it are denied representation and protections, therefore not having the same access to cultural capital. This regulation of the norm places non-
traditional families at a social, political, and economic disadvantage. Graham’s assertion that women only have “a place … in America” within the heteronormative relations of the Christian, patriarchal nuclear family operates as a form of social discipline (Dzhanova 2020). Embedded in his words is a threat to exclude women from conservative womanhood if they do not perform the idealized gender relations. By only welcoming women and guaranteeing them opportunities if they engage in the “traditional family structure” (Dzhanova 2020), in which the man is the head of the family and women fulfill the obligations of motherhood, women are coerced to submit to the patriarchal social structure.
Moreover, by articulating the ideal womanhood as heterosexual and as engaged in a
patriarchal familial relation, women become defined by their relation to the dominant men in their lives. In turn, this shapes their positionality, articulating their identity by their relation to men, and structuring ideas of agency around female submission; women’s power must emerge through their positions as “mothers,” “wives,” “daughters” and “sisters,” constraining their authority to relational positions. This reinforces a distinct habitus, or a fusion of structure and agency in the individual which shapes and limits their terrain of thought and action, with reduced autonomy and independence from male authority (Sedgwick 1995, 18). Overall, Graham’s statement perpetuates heteronormativity, through which women are socially disciplined for not submitting to the Christian patriarchal nuclear family structure and are defined by their relations to the men in their lives, which constructs a version of womanhood only legitimated in a patriarchal ideological framework.
Thirdly, the ideological ramifications of Lindsey Graham’s statement can be further
illuminated by the analytical concept of Christian patriarchy, considering how his anti-abortion stance reinforces hegemonic masculinity through women’s bodily submission to external authority, and how his statement legitimizes and further naturalizes the gender binary. The notion of “pro-life”that Graham refers to in his statement is an anti-abortion stance, which holds that pregnant people—who, within anti-abortion rhetoric, are often assumed to be cisgender women—must carry their child to term. They do not have the right to terminate the pregnancy by their own will. This necessarily means that once pregnant, women (or any pregnant person) no longer have absolute autonomy over their bodies, as the fetus inside of them is assigned rights that dominate their rights, signifying a compromised bodily autonomy. This logic subverts their agency in contrast to cisgender men by assigning a different level of bodily autonomy based on assumed sexual characteristics. Under Christian patriarchy, such logic is legitimized through the rhetoric of God’s will—therefore also metaphorically subverting women’s agency to that of God, with (cisgender) “man” and “God” occupying the same side of the power dichotomy of authority against submission (Joyce 2010, 3). This ties into a long history of bodily subordination for people classified as “female,” as explored by Katrina Karkazis et al. (2012) in the context of Olympic “sex testing” which was only performed on women and required often-invasive practices (7). In both anti-abortion and sex testing circumstances, the boundaries of the bodies of people classified as women are reduced, and greater authority over their bodies is transferred to institutions—the United States government and the International Association of Athletics Federations, respectively. Their institutional power echoes that of
Christianity, subverting women’s bodily autonomy to established societal authorities.
To continue, all three elements of ideal womanhood in Graham’s statement—the anti-
abortion stance, the “traditional” nuclear family, and Christian faith—are constructed upon the gender binary, assuming it to be the underlying structure of gender relations. As discussed by Maria Watanabe (2015), patriarchy is both a perpetuator and product of the gender binary, and is therefore reinforced on a cultural level by Graham’s statements. Graham’s pro-life reference within his exclusive description of womanhood inherently ties the gender performance of cisgender women to their reproductive capacities. His references to Christian faith, which is predicated upon the biblical sex-gender binary of Adam and Eve, calls on the cultural and institutional power of Christian religion to reinforce the legitimacy of such a binary. Additionally, the “traditional” nuclear family, intrinsically connected to both reproduction and (western) Christian social organization of male hierarchy, depends upon an acceptance of binary social classification. Through the social control of his words outlined earlier in this paper, coercion to adhere to these ways of life further naturalizes, legitimizes, and enforces the binary which underpins them. Overall, through his reduction of women’s autonomy with “pro-life” rhetoric and his perpetuation of the gender binary as naturalized and innate, Lindsey Graham’s statement structures the ideal version of womanhood firmly within the Christian patriarchal
societal structure, and therefore defines womanhood by the performance of beliefs and
behaviours which conform to this categorization.
In conclusion, Lindsey Graham’s statement that women in America have a place if they
adhere to pro-life beliefs, Christian faith, and a male-dominated nuclear family structure
constructs a version of acceptable “womanhood” that is attained through the performance of specific Christian patriarchal values. Based on this statement, women who fall outside of these criteria are implied to not belong to the nation. Therefore, Graham’s words define the version of gender that he recognizes, one that is the product of specific conservative performances, rather than an inherent social quality of all people. To qualify as a woman, one must do more than perceive themselves and present themselves as such in the cultural codes of American gender; they must also project specific political values. This assumption was first unpacked through the concept of biopower and the social and political consequences implied by Graham’s words, which mass-regulate women’s bodies to embody Christian patriarchal values, as well as design coercive and indirect regulation of women’s sexuality. Heteronormativity was then introduced to examine how women’s position in society is legitimated only by their relations to male figures in nuclear family structures. Here, the threat of social exclusion acts as a social discipline, and the constitution of women based on their male relationships alters their habitus, or their terrain of thought and action produced by the fusion of agency and structures of power. Finally, the concept of patriarchy was used to show how the pro-life stance reduces women’s bodily autonomy compared to men’s, and how the gender binary, which is the structural bedrock of patriarchy, is perpetuated in Graham’s anti-abortion, pro-Christian faith and pro-
nuclear family rhetoric. These analyses fuse to connect this single comment to a broader ideological project by the American right to increase regulation of women under Christian
patriarchal norms and values. Further investigation could analyze how race shapes his rhetoric, especially considering the relation of white supremacy to ideas around women’s reproduction. In Republican President Theodore Roosevelt’s writings from a century ago, amongst rhetoric of women’s proper place in the home, he proclaimed, “‘If you do not believe in your own stock enough to wish to see the stock kept up … then you are not good Americans, you are not patriots. I, for one, would not mourn your extinction’” (Joyce 2010, 172). Such a statement, with its threats of exclusion, value-based definitions of national membership, and enlistment of Christian patriarchal power alongside white supremacy, bears multiple continuities to Graham’s words in the twenty-first century—continuities which, like Graham’s words themselves, bear serious consequences.
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