Lauren Boebert is Now Finally in the Mainstream

     All jokes aside, if Lauren Boebert is trying to get out of an abusive marriage, as I suspect, and for good reason, and wants to establish independence outside the bounds of marriage, I say more power to her. No woman should have to live in an abusive relationship. With four sons, I don't think she took this step lightly. Beside, divorce is a highly personal matter and is never funny for the parties concerned. So, yeah, they deserve their privacy.

     However, that's made exponentially more difficult when the one who files for divorce happens to be a very visible and vocal congresswoman who seems to have predicated her entire political career on grandstanding, trolling and being an obnoxious, right wing bleacher bum. Not to mention a hypocrite.

     But, as Amanda Marcotte writes in her newest article at Salon, Boebert's impending divorce exposes a still-rich vein of misogyny in male right wing circles as well as the uncomfortable hypocrisy of right wing women denouncing feminism while openly embracing it as a pragmatic necessity instead of a political or social evolution in their thought. Because God forbid Republicans should ever evolve in any way, shape or form.

     Boebert's based her brief and shaky political career on comfortable conservative tropes- Traditional marriage, even though her marriage to Jayson was far from traditional, the blessing of children, even though she dropped out of high school when Jayson knocked her up and made her own mother a grandmother at 36 just as her oldest son had done to her. And sex ed? Bad, she said, just before announcing her 17 year-old son had knocked up his teenage girlfriend. 

     In an episode ripped out of the Palin playbook, sonny promptly celebrated his impending fatherhood and paternal responsibilities by cracking up a car and nearly killing his friend. Then he showed he was descended from the party of personal responsibility by skipping his arraignment.

     No, he's not some senator's son but apparently young Tyler doesn't need to be.

     But this isn't about Tyler Boebert. Hell, it's not even about Lauren. This is about her finally joining the mainstream on something. And she's in the mainstream perhaps for reasons she'd rather not contemplate or acknowledge: That 70% of divorces are initiated by women. In 2019, 62% of women in England and Wales were the first to file for divorce.

     So, yes, even conservative women are flexing their muscle and filing for divorce. Stephen Crowder can tell you all about that. But to show that there's a silent but growing rift between conservative men and women, the right wing menfolk are taking steps to abolishing no-fault divorce, which is currently recognized in all 50 states.

     Republicans, always eager to trap their women into situations in which they'd rather not find themselves, would love to bring that number drastically down. No-fault divorce is, of course, the legal concept that states one party or the other in a marriage can petition for divorce without having to show fault, or, as in Boebert's case, need only say "irreconcilable differences".

     And, again, Republican men are all about taking rights away from women. The right to divorce, even when just cause is established, the right to an abortion, the right to an independent life.

     But therein lies the hypocrisy. Their forebears over a century ago risked life and limb so women could have the right to vote. The women's liberation movement stated that women should enjoy the same rights and pay as men. And Republican women ride into Congress each year on the shoulders of those hated suffragists and women's libbers by gladly taking full advantage of the rights given to them through, literally, blood, sweat and tears.

     Lauren Boebert, and every other woman in Congress, makes the same $174,000 a year and the same exact benefits as their male counterparts. They hold chairs on important Congressional committees. And Elise Stefanik is the third most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives.

     Try taking away any of those things from them and see what happens. But that's exactly what right wing men are trying to do. Republican male lawmakers tried to impose an abortion ban in South Carolina recently and female Republican senators joined forces with Democrats to defeat the measure.

     This is not a fluke, anomaly or outlier. In Kansas last year, a significant number of Republican women also voted with progressives to keep the right to reproductive freedom enshrined on the law books. And, in a wider ripple, in 2020 a significant number of Republican-voting suburban women repudiated Donald Trump and went with Biden.

     But those same right wing women still aren't at the point, for some reason, of being aware that their counterparts, Republican men, have, if anything, embraced their inner Neanderthals and chauvinism and have declared a not so quiet or subtle war on women, even their own. Like the men, they're not going to suddenly turn in their conservative bona fides just because their men are asshole anomalies.

     Yet, they also need to understand they are where they are today because of the work and sacrifices of radical feminists and left wingers like Mother Jones, Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem. They enjoy equal power and pay with men, have the right to vote, run for president and get a divorce without having to come up with a compelling and provable reason why they should be granted one.

     And if Lauren Boebert can juggle a congressional career with raising four sons as a single mother, if she and her sons are safe and happy in their new life, then that's justification enough for filing for divorce. But at some point, they also need to come to terms with their own hypocrisy.