RNC Speakers Proved the GOP Still Doesn't Care About Women

It's fitting that former President Trump chose "It's a Man's World" as his walkout song for night three of the Republican National Convention on Wednesday—as president, he was certainly dedicated to making the song a reality. The decades of sexual misconduct allegations and his sexual abuse conviction in the E. Jean Carroll case should disqualify him from office. But as the RNC demonstrated this week, the allegations against Trump make him a hideously perfect fit to lead a political party that’s cozy with abusers and openly supportive of gender-based violence. While the party attempts to posture as “moderate,” even empowering for women, the speakers that the RNC selected—including Christian nationalist leaders and top Congressional Republicans—fly directly in the face of this. Their chosen speakers make it clear they don't intend to even try to attract more moderate or independent female voters. "It's a Man's World" and at this point, the GOP is pretty clearly only interested in a man's vote. The rot starts at the top, and it’s not just Trump. J.D. Vance, his running-mate who in 2021 spoke on a podcast hosted by a man who once said “feminists need rape,” has very publicly advocated against no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce allows people to obtain a divorce without requiring them to prove abuse, desertion, or other mistreatment, as the legal system famously makes “proving” abuse challenging if not impossible for victims. But in 202, Vance said that even domestic violence victims should stay in abusive marriages, so their kids won't be “unhappy.” But Vance is no outlier. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), and House Speaker Mike Johnson—who all spoke this week—have all similarly criticized no-fault divorce, which can be a lifeline for abuse victims. “For the sake of families, we should enact legislation to remove or radically reduce incidences of no-fault divorce,” Carson wrote in his latest book, published in May. He continued, “No-fault divorce legally allows marriages to end much more quickly than in previous decades. When there are relatively few legal or financial consequences connected with divorce, it’s natural for people to gravitate toward that option when their marriage hits a rough patch.” Of course, for many people who seek divorce, that “rough patch” can be life-threatening violence or abuse. Similarly, in a 2016 sermon, Johnson seemed to blame literal school shootings on divorce and abortion:  “Do you remember in the late ‘60s when they invented things like no-fault divorce laws, we invented the sexual revolution, radical feminism, we invented legalized abortion in 1973, where the state sanctioned the killing of the unborn? We know that we’re living in a completely amoral society. It’s, people say, ‘How can a young person go into their school and open fire on their classmates?’ Because we taught a whole generation, couple generations now, that there is no right and wrong.” As a young man, Cotton also railed against no-fault divorce, starting in a 1997 op-ed that women should join him in this position because “divorce leads to their greatest fear in life," which he believes is being alone, or failing to be a "good wife and mother." This was written decades ago, yes, but Cotton’s policies and rhetoric today offer no indication he’s grown or changed his position.  Christian nationalist leader Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse, another RNC speaker, is so opposed to the institution of divorce that he allegedly pressured a domestic violence victim and Iranian immigrant woman to stay with her abusive husband in 2015, according to a Washington Post report from 2022: “Graham told her that abuse is a ‘gray area,’ that an abusive husband was…