The New York Times featured this dreck on their opinion page today:

It was quickly edited:

Change in Headline

— Editing the Blue-Gray Lady (@nytdiff.bsky.social) 2025-11-06T13:40:07.850487+00:00

I was already entertained by the Republican response to Tuesday’s total repudiation of the President Grievance administration. What’s not to love about the president ordering his minions to nuke the filibuster and thus laying bare the lie that the Democrats are the ones holding up reopening the government or Mikey Johnson, his voice growing louder and more high pitched, telling us that Tuesday’s results mean nothing and if you don’t stop pointing out the decisive GOP defeat he’s going to turn this car around right now and no one will get any ice cream?

Then today we got this Douthat garbage.

I’m not going to summarize the entire interview because it really doesn’t make a lot of sense, which itself makes a lot of sense because neither of these women have actual points to make, and if they did have actual points to make, Douthat would not be the person who would be interviewing them. But here are a few excerpts so you can get a good sense of what conservative feminism tastes like (SPOILER:  it tastes like shit):

Her theory is that this originated in the mists of prehistory, that men were organized to have warrior bands, which meant they needed to have hierarchical structures. They needed to know how to take orders and give orders and not take it personally when their leader made a choice that they didn’t agree with. And they needed to be able to engage in conflict, to fight, and then, when that fight was over, you needed to be able to make peace. And that women, being more oriented toward child rearing, were more likely to have protracted conflict with their rivals within the tribe and were less likely to reconcile at the end. There are similar insights that can be gleaned from primatology.

Fundamentally, as is always the case with rightwingers, they are just sloppy liars. Here’s something that I can’t believe wasn’t edited out when the title was changed:

So that’s where I think a lot of the indignation at the article I wrote puzzles me, but I think it’s just because it comes from people who are not aware of the way the law is currently lopsided in favor of punishing male vices and allowing feminized vices totally free rein.

Douthat: Just for clarity’s sake, what are female and male vices?

Andrews: So there was a landmark gender discrimination case in the 1990s that involved a woman who worked at a shipyard. The work force there was overwhelmingly male, and she claimed in her lawsuit that she was not given the same opportunities as the men, that she was made to feel unwelcome. And one of the items of evidence in this lawsuit that she offered was that some of the male mechanics had pinups on the walls of their work areas, and that these half-clad women made her feel uncomfortable.

She was successful. The court said: Yes, that is a discriminatory aspect of the workplace. The boss needs to tell him to take those down.

But that is not the only kind of masculine conduct that has fallen afoul of these kinds of lawsuits.

Only, she was lying:

Sargeant: What you’re glossing as a pinup was multiple photos of completely naked women in close-up. The woman had sexist graffiti, and one of her male co-workers thrust his leg in between her legs.

Is there a little bit of rowdiness to men? Yes. But I think it’s actually unfair to men to sweep that kind of pervasive nudity and specific sexist language and physical grabbing as just part of broad male vices that we need more space for in the work force. And I don’t think it’s fair to characterize it as “she didn’t like the pinups.”

And then, because sitting in a room with Ross Douthat means you can just freely make shit up, Andrews responds:

Andrews: This is why I am establishing a spectrum of masculine behavior, and I am using that case as my anchor out at one end as the kind of behavior we can all agree, sure, OK, yes, by all means, that should be grounds for a lawsuit.

And that is all you need to read from that piece. It’s just sheer bullshit:  cavemen good, women are gossips, women who don’t have children don’t have good marriages because their husbands never get to protect them when they are pregnant, and so many women are becoming veterinarians that the field will soon be too woke.

Mostly reading through this reminded me of the single biggest tactical mistake the President Grievance administration has made:  the very public, and very intentional, multi-day destruction of the entire East Wing of the White House, and the destruction of the history of women preserved there, and especially the physical presence of the history of US First Ladies. It’s something I’ve been wanting to write about but I just didn’t have the catalyst I needed. Until today.

Yes, the attack on the White House was meant to upset and anger the Americans who showed to tell President Grievance to fuck off. But it was also the current administration showing its full hand:  the full extent of their sheer hatred for women who aren’t willing to act as brain dead Barbie dolls. This tracks with one of the worst parts of that opinion piece:

The association of the East Wing with the activity of First Ladies began with Eleanor Roosevelt. She was the face of the FDR administration in places her husband could not access. And with her trailblazing activities, the public’s expectation for First Ladies expanded beyond acting as hostesses. First Ladies have had different options open to them over the last 100 years, and it’s only been in the last 40 years that they have seen themselves less as caretakers and housekeepers. Some of you might still remember the furor Hillary Clinton caused when she said she wasn’t going to spend her time as First Lady baking cookies.

The current FLOTUS has never worked—not even as a homemaker. She’s just never worked. She has zero interest in working or working women, or helping people who work. She’s probably the Douthat chat’s perfectg woman in that regard. And in the reflection of that opinion piece and the hatred rightwingers have for women in the workforce, the willful destruction of the real work of so many modern era First Ladies makes complete sense:  you can’t compare Melania and weigh her failures if you simply erase the women she would be compared to.

The same can be said for all of the visible women in the President Grievance administration:  Pam Bondi, Karoline Leavitt, Kristi Noem, Lindsey Halligan, Jeannie Pirro, etc. Just absolute ciphers with hair extensions paid to sell us prepackaged brutality, to lie to us, and essentially and ironically to gossip all the time instead of communicating.

And the fact that this Douthat banality appears 2 days after women won significant electoral victories across the country should not be lost on anyone. The rightwing in this country is so mad right now. Too bad.

This seems right: