When Women Speak, It Better Be From The Kitchen

When a powerful woman is reduced to a trope.

I’m certain I’m not the only one who was aghast at the Republican response to the State of the Union address delivered last Thursday.

Once I picked my jaw up off the floor, where it had gradually dropped during the weird, breathy, sometimes bordering on hysterical, performance delivered by Alabama Senator Katie Britt, I really began pondering…

‘Who is this woman and why was she the mouthpiece for the Republican party at this most critical juncture?’

Most of all, I wondered… why??

The setting

Why in the kitchen? I most certainly had an immediate reaction to that, and when my husband (so, not a raging feminist woman) walked into the room midway through her speech and immediately asked, “Why is she in a kitchen?” I realized it was, in fact, weird.

Since I’ve been, for my mental health, keeping my attention to the intricacies of American politics much less involved as it has been in years past, I had never heard of the senator from Alabama. My first introduction to this woman was seeing her, at her kitchen table, dressed like a housewife with a sparkling cross necklace, her eyes bordering on crazy as she delivered perhaps one of the most bizarre political speeches I’ve ever heard in my lifetime.

My immediate assumption was that she was a nobody, a junior politician that her own party saw fit to frame and throw away with this surreal stunt.

Researching her, however, somehow made me even more angry.

Katie Britt is certainly no ‘nobody.’

Katie Britt is an impressively educated and qualified woman. She is my age, exactly, and far from being a kitchen-bound housewife, she is an accomplished attorney in her own right. She graduated from the University of Alabama and went immediately to work in politics. She began working as a deputy press secretary under Senator Richard Shelby in 2004 (so at the age of 22) and within a year and a half was the head of the department (again, at ~24 years old). She worked at this press department for three years and left in 2007 to go back to school at the University of Alabama School of Law.

Graduating from law school, she was offered employment at an established law firm and rose quickly within its ranks. She was appointed President and CEO of the Business Council of Alabama, becoming the first woman to hold the position. In the 2022 election, she became a United States Senator for the state of Alabama.

Katie Britt is no housewife.

But that is exactly how her party chose to present her on Thursday, March 7, 2024, giving the Republican response to the State of the Union address — from her kitchen table.

How unbelievably disrespectful, patronizing, reductive, and rude.

I thought perhaps my reaction was one borne of my more liberal political persuasion, so I took to the interwebs. I looked up the social media profiles of conservative politicians and checked out the comments under their most recent posts. What I saw there gave me hope.

Conservative women were not impressed.

In fact, many were downright offended. That’s right, the party that cannot be offended found that actually, they do have points of outrage as well. Many conservative women objected to her positioning in her kitchen, many more bemoaned her extremist rhetoric calling to the fringe members of the party, and still others were disappointed in her use of a sexual assault that occurred in 2004 as an emotionally manipulative appeal to fear and hysteria.

Overall, the impression I got was that Senator Britt’s speech was a colossal flop, even to conservatives.

Once again, a strong, smart woman was thrown under the bus.

The rhetoric

I will not sit here and say I agree with Senator Britt’s opinions and political persuasions. She has repeated conspiracy theories made popular by our former President, and she has used those lies as stepping stones in her own political career.

She’s echoed rhetoric that throws shade on women just like herself; strong, hardworking, high-achieving career women. She has supported ideologies that would just as quickly see her back in her kitchen as in the White House, and that was most spectacularly demonstrated in that video where she was, in fact, relegated to give a political speech from her actual kitchen.

Seriously. It doesn’t get more clear than that.

More than anger, I actually feel a bit sorry for Senator Britt. To have worked so hard and achieved so much in the first forty years of life, to go neck and neck with men in the workplace, the courtroom, and the halls of the Senate, and win, not just once but as a matter of routine, to then be put back in the kitchen — it’s incomprehensibly disrespectful.

But her party has shown us how they feel about women, haven’t they? Even their own? Nikki Haley, who is a former Governor and US Ambassador, was mocked and reduced to tropes during her short-lived Presidential campaign. Marjorie Taylor Greene is seen, even by their own, as the ‘psycho girl’ of the group, allowed to behave and misbehave with impunity so long as she garners a moment of press attention.

Let’s take a look at who the Republican party could have chosen to issue this address; a woman with a career she’s already proven with her own actions and choices to be disposable. Lauren Boebert is a high school dropout and former McDonald’s employee. She rose through the political ranks by virtue of rhetoric alone. She campaigned by aligning with the radical Proud Boys militia group and loudly advocating for unrestricted gun rights in her home state of Colorado. She used a bizarre mix of sex appeal, religion, and fringe rhetoric to upset the long-term incumbent and win a seat in the US House of Representatives.

In more recent news, she’s made headlines for her outlandish behavior, including sexual groping inside a theater showing a children’s musical.

A woman whose career is apparently no more important to her than any of her other short-lived and random professional trysts, Representative Boebert would have been a far more disposable mouthpiece for the Republican party than the accomplished and decorated Senator they chose.

Which begs the question… why? It’s almost like there was an intentionality to the decision; a subtle but unmistakable message from GOP leadership.

It doesn’t matter what you accomplish, how smart you are, how hard you work, how high you rise in your career — to us, you’re just a woman, best placed in the kitchen.

WOW.

If they would treat their own this way, what does this say about the potentialities of the Republican Party’s plans for women?

It is chilling.

A woman’s place

The GOP has had no problem attacking women of ‘the left,’ their favorite targets being outspoken, strong women like “AOC” [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, US Representative for the state of New York] and Hillary [Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, Senator, and First Lady].

In fact, the more power a woman yields, the stronger their aversion to her and the more aggressive and humiliating their rhetoric becomes.

Their attacks on these women vary a great deal in tone and nature than attacks on their male peers in the political sphere.

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is frequently referred to as merely a ‘former bartender’ when she was actually a cum laude college graduate from Boston University who moved back home and bartended to help her mother make ends meet and fight foreclosure on their family home after the death of her father, and while doing so, worked for the National Hispanic Institute.

Here is how she is portrayed by Republicans (among these is a meme — yes, the most offensive one — that was shared in a private Facebook group comprised entirely of federal border agents).

Hillary Clinton has literally been hung in effigy, not just once but countless times throughout the years.

Republican men really, really don’t like women. If you’re not on ‘their side,’ they’ll not-so-subtly threaten sexual assault and death.

If you are on ‘their side,’ they’ll simply stick your ass in the kitchen and sweep the leg on your political career.

Women can’t win in a Republican world.

Our votes better represent our collective disdain at the treatment of women, on either side of the aisle, lest we all be forced back into kitchens, back into back-alley abortions, back into abusive domestic relationships, back, back, back into the past we fought so hard to be freed from.

Vote for yourself, vote for the women in your life, and vote for freedom and progress.

They’ve shown you exactly how they feel. Show them your response to that.

Show them that women win.

Make sure you are registered to vote this fall! Click here to register, and please use your right to make your voice heard and to fight back against the outright attack on women. Your vote matters!

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you like my content, please consider subscribing… click here and follow along as I explore the themes of parenting, political ideologies, religious deconstruction, life as an adoptee, and LGBT allyship and family. Also, check out my two publications, adoptēre- to uplift the voices of adoptees, and Served- to uplift the voices of veterans of the US military.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee? Or further, become a member for exclusive content and more!