The right, including elected Republicans, hates women. This is not a secret, they are quite open about it.

There’s something that I have been wanting to write about for going on two weeks now, but so much has happened that it has been shifted a bit to the back burner, even though it is important. Plus, it relates to Mardi Gras, which is one of many areas of expertise of Adrastos, given he lives in New Orleans.

So, a video was shared on Tik Tok back in late February of young women dancing to a hip-hop song called Mr. Weatherall, which is a tribute to a man named John Weatherall III, who is known for his videos of fun activities, including Mardi Gras, in his hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana. Basically, the point is to show that Mardi Gras happens in areas outside of New Orleans, and this fun little video of college gals doing their thing, shot by Weatherall, is sort of a meta salute to Mardi Gras in this part of the world.

This is the video.

@mr.weatherall

So Many Stanley’s 😅 #MrWeatherall #ChurchPoint #Louisiana #Stanley #StanleyCup #JohnEWeatherall

♬ Mr. Weatherall – Young Hub City

Fun stuff, right? I’d even say, by Mardi Gras video standards, it’s kind of wholesome, just young women experiencing the joy that comes with being young.

Nope! Not to some in the far right. I won’t bother linking to the moron winger influencer who posted this video and started this very strange firestorm, just will say he did it and said “Why don’t men want western women?”, alluding to the idea that dancing to a hip-hop video is bad. This led other right-wingers to chim in, including sadly enough, some women saying that they’d never dream of shaming themselves by doing such things. Robyn Pennacchia over on Wonkette caught some of the crazier responses, including those who described dancing happily as “feral behavior.”

They make hemorrhoids seem fun.

Setting aside the obvious racism, it might be tempting to just dismiss this as TwitterX nonsense. I imagine some hear “influencer” and immediately tune out. But here’s the thing…these influencers reach a lot of people and can gin up quite horrible movements. One example of how sadly effective they can be is Christopher Rufo, who many people are not aware of but he has been instrumental in driving anti-trans and book-banning legislation. These people really are “influencers.”

And this is part of the larger War on Women. There are many fronts. The battle against reproductive freedom has now expanded to in vitro fertilization (IVF) because an embryo is a person, so they believe. That belief really complicates things with IVF, because a frozen embryo must be used at all costs, and cannot be thrown away. So, in Alabama, this belief threw IVF into chaos after a very stupid law was passed, and the attempted fix turned out to be just as stupid.

The War on Women has forged new frontiers of shittery such as coming out against recreational sex, claiming that sex is only for reproduction. This is a creepy throwback to the time when women were not to enjoy sex and were supposed to look at the ceiling and think of flowers, God, and their country. It is pretty clear their crosshairs are aimed at birth control, but it’s kind of a weird stand to take, that sex should not be fun. Doesn’t seem like a winning campaign platform!

So, becoming enraged about young women dancing has the racism element, since it was mostly white ladies dancing to the hip-hop song, but also it’s about the lengths that the anti-women movement will go to. In this case, it’s about going after a very basic human right: the right to experience joy.

The joy on the dancer’s faces is evident. This seems to anger the right-wing pundits the most. The dancing was not outwardly sexual, nor were the young women wearing revealing clothes (although to be clear, that wouldn’t have mattered in the least). They were doing what young women have done for decades, going back to the Charleston to The Twist to The Hustle to New Jack Swing to the Criss-Cross. Having fun and dancing with their friends.

But the far-right, including many in the GOP, have become so lost in their hate for women that even the sight of women experiencing joy makes them want to shut it down. That is not something to ignore or write off as silly and not important. It’s all part of the modern right, and their effort to create a Handmaid’s Tale-style America. Something that we must confront, deal with, and defeat, whether you are a she, a they, or a he.

The last word goes to, of course, Cyndi Lauper.