What’s happening?

After seeing a news snippet the other night about the AMA having polled college women only about Spring Break and then issuing a press release warning women only against the dangers of binge drinking and promiscuity, I said to Mr. Shakes, “Did the last 40 years just not happen?” And he said, “Apparently not. Get over here and orally service your lord and master, woman.”

Actually he said, “It all seems to have vanished overnight, doesn’t it?” And it does. It really does.

Whamstress, posting over at The Green Knight’s place, points to an article that just makes my head spin and gravely summates: “Women are doomed.” I don’t know if I particularly feel doomed yet, but the target on my back certainly feels bigger than it used to.

I suppose the thing I find most frustrating about this is that there have always been men (and women) who believe that the natural order of things places straight, white males at the top of the food chain, with everyone else following somewhere below them, trailing in various degrees of distance and fighting for the scraps of what those straight, white men deign beneath them—changing diapers, jobs cleaning toilets, residency south of Martin Luther King Drive (or north, or east, or west, depending on your city). So there’s always been some of this backlash, and there probably always will be.

But the rather sudden upshift in bandwagoning social conservatism isn’t the result of anything but an increased need for scapegoating, as the economy struggles, jobs are outsourced, the workforce generally demands more higher education, healthcare is problematic, and the world just gets smaller and faster and lives can easily spin out of control. Someone’s got to be to blame.

And, quite inconveniently for social conservatives who are often among the hardest hit by this collection of circumstances, it’s their boy who’s to blame—the guy with whom it would be the most fun to drink a beer, who understands the common folk, who doesn’t care for fancy book-learnin’ and has a patient and obedient wife by his side who knows her place. He also happens to be the guy who has nothing but contempt for the hoi polloi except insomuch as their tax dollars can be redirected into the pockets of his cronies, though he talks a good game, and uses down-home aphorisms to attract the favor of poor white working folks then uses their votes to aid corporations in undermining their benefits.

King George and his Merry Band of Miscreants are responsible for the feelings of insecurity within which lies the impetus for scapegoating women, gay men, men of color, immigrants, and anyone else who falls into their crosshairs by getting too uppity. But it’s hard to point the finger at the man you voted for without pointing three fingers back at yourself.

So they come after us, telling women to get back in the kitchen, gays to get back in the closet, minorities to move to the back of the bus, immigrants to go back to their own countries. It’s all your fault. If it weren’t for you, everything would be fine.

It’s just not true, though, is it? This country is led almost exclusively by straight, white men, so they needn’t look at the rest of us. They voted for Bush, Bush made the mess, and now they’re standing in it. And we didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.

They can put us back in the kitchens, closets, and the back of the bus, but it won’t change anything, except to make our lives more miserable. That might bring them some small comfort in its own way, but nothing that lasts; nothing that matters. They’re so busy defending their right to unearned superiority that they’ve failed to notice they’re voting for men who sit atop a wholly separate food chain on which they don’t even register—and that’s the fucking problem.

Not the rest of us. No matter how rich a target we seem.