A Feminist Critique of Amy Coney Barrett: Internalized Misogyny and Gender Weaponization on The Supreme Court
Amy Coney Barrett has secured her seat on the Supreme Court due to two interconnected and anti-feminist factors: internalized misogyny and gender weaponization.
Internalized misogyny is the female identity working against female liberation. An internalized misogynist is a prop to advance a male patriarchal agenda or, worse, is a dangerous force whose mission is to undermine female progress by engendering and bolstering notions that women do not want to be liberated.
Barrett suffers gravely from internalized misogyny, which means that she subscribes to beliefs and systems that support the continued oppression of women. Put plainly, Barrett’s anti-abortion views are comprehensively anti-feminist. There is no issue with Barrett’s personal choice to not have an abortion for herself; however, it is unacceptable for Barrett to impose her anti-abortion beliefs on other women. Bell Hooks, renowned American author, activist, and feminist, exclaims that, “It is not anti-feminist for us to choose not to have abortions. But it is a feminist principle that women should have the right to choose.” A woman’s right to choose and to have autonomy over her body are fundamental to the feminist movement, therefore rendering anti-abortionists as anti-feminists.
As a female misogynist, Barrett, at the very least, is a male puppet in a painted feminine mask, and, at the most, is a female destroyer whose mission is to foster doubt and, ultimately, outward contempt for feminist progress as it pertains to both women’s reproductive rights and women’s roles as social, political, and economic equals.
Perhaps more frightening than anti-feminist men are women, like Barrett, who are brainwashed into believing that they can obtain power and privilege by clinging to a white, misogynistic, patriarchal system. How disgusting that, so far, this approach has worked swimmingly for her.
Power in the hands of a woman like Barrett is a dangerous threat to feminism. Her anti-feminist beliefs, coupled with her female identity, directly undermine feminism by suggesting that women do not want to be liberated from oppressive patriarchal systems. By elevating Barrett as a representative of women to the Supreme Court, her role erroneously elevates and allusively projects her beliefs as representing the beliefs and best interests of all women, which, of course, is not true. Most women want women’s rights and female liberties.
Of course, some women are against women’s rights. In a society as sexist as ours, these sentiments touch everyone, not just men. Not all women are feminists, and not all men are anti-feminists. The truth is that women do not merely exist within feminism simply because of their female gender identity and expression. As Bell Hooks famously stated: “Feminists are made, not born”. Regardless of gender, any force that works to halt or dismantle women’s rights is an enemy of feminism.
A woman on the court should be a woman for women. As a Supreme Court Justice, Barrett has immense power and a lasting impact. Instead of planning to use her power to lift up women, she plans to, instead, dismantle social liberties, directly harming women, especially marginalized women, in America.
Barrett’s internalized misogyny made her an ideal nomination to the Supreme Court in the eyes of the conservative republican party because, after all, an internalized misogynist can be weaponized by her gender to further patriarchal motives.
The conservative republican party has weaponized Barrett’s female gender as a way to forcefully shuffle their political beliefs, cloaked within the disguise of a woman, no less a mother, onto the court. Barrett, as a female justice, is a Trojan horse that is hiding misogynist ideas and male-rooted motives.
The nomination and selection of this justice is not because the conservative republican party thinks Barrett is uniquely qualified, but it is simply because she, as a woman, can advance the anti-feminist agenda in a different, more insidious and more abominable way than a man could.
This Supreme Court Justice nomination and confirmation had everything to do with filling the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat with another woman. Barrett’s gender is more symbolic than it is a literal representation of female progress. The role of gender in the nomination for Supreme Court Justice, or any position, should not merely be a ploy to save face or check a box. Women should be on the Supreme Court because female experiences, struggles, and needs must be felt on the bench firsthand. To serve the people, the bench should represent the people.
The new justice’s policies and political views are not representative of her gender but are despite her gender. Barrett is blinded to the oppressive, systemic realities faced by women, and therefore clouded in her ability to serve the American women. She is a betrayer of her gender, plain and simple.
Barrett is taking on a role for life because of her gender, and yet she does not plan to lift up her fellow women, but, instead, likely plans to disassemble the liberties that benefited women like herself to get to where she is.
Barrett, in the context of the patriarchal system that fuels her, is a prop, a token, a symbol, and a puppet that is comprehensively anti-feminist. She is a vehicle of male power, and she is the antithesis of a woman who plans to fight for women and minorities in America. Compared to the late, and mighty, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Amy Coney Barrett is stunted and limited in her capacity to protect American women from the patriarchal system that seeks to oppress them.
If one thing is clear, Barrett may on the surface represent women, but her policies do not.
