JD Vance is the "strict daddy" that none of us asked for

Vance picks up where Katie Britt's "benevolent sexism" left off, the lie that dangerous men will keep us safe, and why you feel triggered by it all.

A man who just wants to help you!! Image by CBS/Getty Images

Earlier this year I wrote about how when I saw footage from Katie Britt’s now-infamous SOTU address I gasped. Not because it was so strange, but because it was so familiar.

It was like a private scene straight out of my Mormon youth was being broadcast to the entire country.

All the familiar elements were there: the soft lighting, the boring-but-flawless White lady hairstyle. The demure makeup and jewelry that carefully signal conventional femininity. The pleasing, disarming smile. The odd, hyperfeminine speaking style used to address adults in the voice of a kindergarten teacher reading a children’s book (the now famous “fundie voice.”)

Most importantly, there was the heavy-handed emphasis on the maternal and domestic in a speech that is delivered to women, that defies logic by intoning: Yes, I’m a woman who only has the power to address you in this way because I have a role outside the home, and I gain outsized status from this role outside the home—but I’m here to tell you that the home is the only place women really belong.

Look, they even have the same wardrobe! Photographic evidence that Katie Britt and women leaders of the Mormon church might be the same people.

The gist of Britt’s message, which was aimed squarely at White women, went something like this:

Ladies, yes we know that it feels like things are getting worse for you and your children in this country. We know that you are anxious, that you feel unsafe, and are having a hard time sleeping. We have sent this woman as a messenger to remind you that you have so little power that the best you can hope for is our benevolence and the “soft power” of a woman in her kitchen. That so-called power is, as you can see from this flailing woman on your screen, is just helplessness with carefully applied lipstick.

We are not coming to you with solutions for how we could make things better for you and your children, but a warning that things could get worse if you don’t fall into line behind powerful white men.

Britt was sent from the higher-ups of the male-dominated MAGA GOP that want us to believe that the problems that patriarchy and a male-dominated society have created are so scary that our only recourse is to kneel down and serve that same white patriarchy.

And this week, I got Deja vu again, when we saw JD Vance pick up the message where Britt left off.

This is a slick and cynical trick: patriarchy creates crises and then tries to sell itself as the solution to those crises.

As I wrote about here, it’s a sleight-of-hand that male-dominated organizations, from the Mormon church to political organizations like the GOP (and not only the GOP, but it’s currently CORE to their strategy) have leaned into for a long time.

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And this is exactly the playbook that Vance was playing from in his debate performance. Yes, it felt gaslighting to watch him come across as empathetic and even-tempered with his even tone and his clean-scrubbed boy-scout looks and the piercing Republican blue eyes of Jack Donaghy. ¹

But what’s crazy-making isn’t just that he’s lying, it’s that we know that it often works. The same guy who is best-known for his greatest hits of woman-hating, smallest-man-in-the-world comments puts on a Barbie-pink tie and smile and tries to play it all off like he just cares about women so much.

If it feels chilling, it’s because it is indeed creepy AF. As a fact-check/reality check, here are a few of his woman-hating greatest hits: He suggested that people (read: women) without children are not just “cat ladies” but possibly sociopathic and deranged, said that it was merely “inconvenient” for 12-year old child rape victims to be forced to give birth, and agreed that the reason post-menopausal women exist is to perform unpaid labor for men by doing childcare for them.

Then he stands in front of a camera with his parted hair and with his nicest family-man voice says:

“The cultural pressure on young families, and especially young women, I think, makes it really hard for people to choose the family model they want.” As though his party’s abortion bans weren’t killing mothers as we speak, and making it impossible to choose a “family model.” And meanwhile, his party’s Project 2025 plan would cut off no-fault divorce, cut off funding for affordable birth control and replace it with messages to “get married,” and make IVF illegal.

But okay, JD!

Footage of a man who wants to help women and children, and really, really loves his beautiful wife

Oh yeah, and then he outright lied and said that he doesn’t support a national abortion ban, when that has transparently been his party’s end game all along.

And! One of his most callous and heinous lies is that “school shootings are a fact of life” while collecting money from the NRA. And if standing by while American school children die is not an anti-child, anti-family policy, I don’t know what is.

Tim Walz seemed thrown off by the gaslighting and the lies, and you know what? Maybe he’s not really used to a guy with parted hair in a suit lying to try to get you to betray yourself to do what he wants. What a gift!

Tim Walz maybe isn’t accustomed to the gaslighting duplicity of “benevolent” sexism and patriarchy. But I am. And all women are.

And those who come from patriarchal religions have had extra doses. So if, like me, you felt especially triggered by Vance’s performance, it’s probably because it’s so familiar—and you know how it works. Because this particular kind of manipulation has worked on you at some point or several points in your life.

So-called “benevolent patriarchy” or benevolent sexism, is a set of patronizing attitudes that are seemingly positive—or presented as positive and “nice”—yet reinforce women’s subordinate status. A key component is the myth of protective paternalism—chivalrous beliefs that men, and only men, can provide safety for women. (Never mind that 99% of violence toward women and children, including political violence, is perpetrated by men! Your abusers are really your protectors, ladies!)

Benevolent sexism also relies on the myth of heterosexual “complementary” gender roles—women and men have complementary traits and roles. But. Those roles associated with women are low in status and power.

Thus, white women have been conditioned to believe that we must maintain access and good favor with white men in order to survive. We must perform for white patriarchal males to stay safe—our basic sense of security is linked to being a “good girl” who is “likable” according to the rules of white patriarchy.²

Feminist Bethany Webster calls this the archetype of the “strict daddy” which I like because it sounds more hot and kinky.

But also because it speaks to the metaphor of women following the rules of a cold paternal patron to earn safety, approval, status, and to be “good enough,” but those things never come. (No offense to actual dads who do point out the BS of gender inequity.)

This is why both Britt and Vance’s messages are pointed so squarely at White women, and their sense of safety. And dangit it often works, because these beliefs are old and deep and in our culture everywhere.

Benevolent sexism sometimes feels “better” because it’s not as nasty as good old “hostile sexism” which is Trump’s brand, and often Vance’s, too. I think that’s part of the reason Vance feels particularly triggering to some of us, because he’s worn the hostile mask so proudly and then donned the smarmy “benevolent” mask so easily. It feels creepy. It feels abusive.