Letter to a Male Feminist who became a Republican:

This is an actual letter written to a friend of mine whom I’ve known for 30 years. When I first met him he did clinic defense, and was a climate activist. He became more and more enamored of guns, and said he became a Republican because it was the only way he could get promoted in his city. I didn’t think he was actually a Republican, and he allowed me to think that

A year ago I gave him the George Will essay, and asked him to leave the Republican Party. He pushed back.

He has since texted me to say that he has left the party, but only because Trump was too crazy. I’m glad to hear that, but I wanted to address the underlying issues, and how that has affected our long friendship.

I’ve called him Bob. That’s not his name.

Dear Bob,

Until very recently, if someone had asked me about my friend Bob the first thing I would have said is that he’s one of those few, fabulous men who openly and proudly calls himself a feminist.

That was the thing I most loved about you, the thing I see as taking the most courage and reflecting a deep commitment to decency and equality.

So your response to Nancy Pelosi’s first tenure as Speaker of the House was disquieting to me. I thought that, like me, you would feel a real sense of pride that a woman had finally made it to an important leadership position. It felt then (and still feels now) as a very important step forward.

I recall Pelosi had made a misstep, something that would be forgiven quickly if she were a man, but that she had received quite a lot of bile around it from the center rightward. I had assumed that, like me, you would have the attitude that she had screwed up but it wasn’t the end of the world and that she’s a person, just like any other person. But your response was vitriolic. I don’t exactly recall your words, but I remember the night, and I remember your response. It was at the old restaurant and we had gone out to dinner with our spouses that night (you were still married to Marie).

I told myself that maybe you simply didn’t like Nancy Pelosi for whatever reason. I told myself that people are allowed to have responses to others in ways that have nothing to do with politics or culture. I knew you, I knew you to be feminist and I was simply going to take it on faith that your obvious deep dislike for her had nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman of power.

Then, a few years later, you voiced support for Ann Coulter. You said that you were reading her and you thought she made some good points. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. You tried to walk it back the last time we talked about this but I strongly recall my jaw dropping when you said that, sitting in my kitchen. I said she was a racist and pulled up a quote where she said that Latino cultures endorsed child rape. Your first impulse was to say ‘maybe they do’ and then we argued about that for an hour. In the end I think you walked it back, but it was a kick in the gut to see your first instinct was to defend Ann Coulter and her slander of a family of related cultures

That was also alarming to me, in many ways it was more alarming than your vitriolic response to Nancy Pelosi, but I told myself that it was the gun thing, you weren’t actually someone who opposes equality and tolerance. I wanted to believe that you were still the Bob who did clinic defense, who supported equal rights and abortion rights. I wanted to believe you are still one of the men I can trust to work side by side with women to ensure that our daughters (my daughter) has a better life than I did.

At the core of feminism is that deep thread, that deep commitment to the next generation. In many ways it is too late for me and for millions of women like me. We grew up in a culture of sexism. We learned those lessons so early that we didn’t have cognitive shields in place to keep bigotry and self hate from lodging in our souls. It’s always there. I fight it every day. We all do.

You grew up the same way, but you are not female. I always saw the ways in which a feminist man must disavow his considerable privilege in service to justice. That’s an enormously beautiful, courageous thing. It was always the thing I loved most about you. But, just like all of us, you grew up with those horrible, sexist ideas. They attacked your soul before you were old enough to grow a shield as well. In some ways you have to fight harder against them, because you have less incentive to deny them.

And they are powerful, persistent, hidden. The forces of inequality never leave us.

When you became a Republican you said it was for your career. You know the politics in your city better than I do, and I believed you. I know plenty of cities where one’s political affiliation is central to their opportunities for promotion. But I didn’t think you were actually a Republican.

I didn’t think a man who called himself a feminist and engaged in clinic defense could actually support an organization dedicated to undoing all the gains women have made over the past 50 years. I didn’t think you would happily contribute to an organization dedicated to taking away abortion rights, rights to birth control, preventing equal pay for equal work legislation. I didn’t think you could really do that.

And the environment. For years I knew you to be an environmental activist. You are the only person I’ve actually known who went on Pete Seeger’s sloop. You seemed to me to be a tireless advocate for addressing global climate change in an effective, scientifically grounded way. It seemed crazy to me that you could support people hell bent on disputing the encroaching and existential threat that is climate change.

So when I contacted you with that George Will article I thought it would be a slam dunk. I thought you would say ‘Yeah, the Republicans have gone off the deep end with Trump and all these former Republicans are right, we decent people need to leave.” I thought you would say that you were never a real Republican anyway, that you had just done it for your career and now that you were retired you could be completely honest.

I was shocked when you pushed back. And it all came rushing back at me. All the times you had said or done something counter to values I thought we shared and I had denied it inside my soul because I loved you for 30 years and I just didn’t want to believe it.

So, yes — — let me answer this right now. I have had Republicans in my life for whom I had great affection, perhaps even love. But I always knew that being a Republican meant opposing equality and tolerance and those are central tenets of my moral life. I cannot trust a Republican will value my life chances, or my daughter’s life chances because inequality is central to the GOP.

The personal really is political. Before Roe v Wade my mother got stuck in a bad marriage because she got pregnant (with me). But women like my mother worked to change that. I was able to have an abortion and didn’t get stuck in a bad marriage so I had better life choices. Now the Republicans have successfully stolen a SCOTUS seat from Merrick Garland and installed an entitled, privileged would be rapist on SCOTUS by ignoring, marginalizing and demeaning women’s voices. If not impeached these two will almost certainly roll back at least some of the rights we have won, and make life more difficult for my daughter, and for all the women who come after us.

The fact that you willingly allied yourself with these people is mind boggling to me. It says that you were able and willing to disavow your commitment to equality, to women, and your commitment to the environment we all share.

What, I thought to myself, could lead you to do that? What would make a man committed to equality into a man willing to enable those who deny it? What could make a man who saw me, and all women as moral equals into a man willing to support an organization hell bent on treating us as lesser beings? What could make a man committed to preserving and honoring Mother Earth into a man willing to enable those who view her only as a resource to be plundered?

So I asked you. “Why are you a Republican?”

You gave me these reasons:

Your first reason was that you would become a Democrat “When the Democrats support a stronger military”

This is a Republican talking point. As a matter of policy and politics it’s a bad one. But it is a good point as a matter of culture.

Yes, there was some truth to that especially after Vietnam, and it lingered through Clinton’s ‘peace dividend.’ But Democrats have supported a strong military and a strong presence in international affairs for decades.

But that’s not the real issue here. The real issue is that Republicans Center their culture around an ideal of the male warrior acting in a top down, hierarchical way. Democrats Center our culture in an ideal of tolerance, egalitarianism and diversity that honors the warrior model but doesn’t center it.

For Democrats the warrior model is one.among equals. For Republicans the warrior model is first among equals.

This isn’t about policy. It’s about culture.

Then you said that you would become a Democrat when Democrats ‘support fiscal responsibility”

This is nonsense. The economy has always done better with Democrats than with Republicans, mostly because Democrats are interested in growing the middle class directly, while Republicans are still stuck on the long discredited ‘trickle down’ model. And, time and time again, Democrats reduce or retire the debt while Republicans blow it up.

But the idea that Democrats are fiscally irresponsible fits into a ridiculous stereotype which Republicans have used very effectively to paint Democrats as lazy, shiftless takers. Nothing could be further than the truth, and the most cursory of investigations clearly shows that blue states contribute more and red states take more.

Often, the trope of ‘fiscal responsibility’ is simply code for “I want lower taxes and I don’t really care what that means for the country as a whole.” The GOP Tax Scam has harmed us deeply, from the effect on the deficit to increasing inequality and to our ability to finance everything from infrastructure to regulatory oversight.

Your next point was that you would become a Democrat when Democrats “close the borders properly.”

This is a racist dog whistle. Visa Overstays outnumber Illegal border crossings more than 2 to 1, but Trump and the Republicans are beating the issue of illegal border crossers. Visa Overstays are often European or Asian, but border crossers are nearly always Latino

Your final point was, I think, the most important. You said that you would become a Democrat when Democrats “stop dictating politically correct actions at the expense of human discourse”

While you did not elaborate on this it sounds to me like it’s a complaint that our culture is working it’s way away from centering cis white males. It sounds like a complaint that, at least on the Democratic side, we are trying to be the kind of people who don’t assume gender roles are natural or inevitable.

For someone like me that’s a hopeful thing, it means that I can live a less oppressed life as I get older, and that my child will have a better life than I did. When these cultural changes happen people like me get closer to equality. But for people like you equality means the loss of privilege.

I think political identities are expressions of culture. And I think somewhere along the line you started to see changes in the culture as an attack on you and your identity. The Republicans have been doubling down on the culture wars in some pretty distinct and effective ways. They offer a narrative that can be very seductive to people who feel endangered by the loss of privilege. I can see why you might find it appealing, but I am hopeful that you can return to the kind of man who proudly called himself a feminist, who grounds his morality in tolerance, inclusion and equality and who really can hear the voices of others whose lives and experiences differ from his. That is, I think, who you were for many years.

I really want you to return to being that man, because he was a great guy and I fucking miss him.