It’s called “Calendargate,” and it’s raising the question of what — and whom — the right-wing war on “wokeness” is really for.
While most people were enjoying the holidays, extremely online conservatives were fighting about a pinup calendar.
Last month, Ultra Right Beer — a company founded as a conservative alternative to allegedly woke Bud Light — released a 2024 calendar titled “Conservative Dad’s Real Women of America 2024 Calendar.” The calendar contains photos of “the most beautiful conservative women in America” in various sexy poses. Some, like anti-trans swimmer Riley Gaines and writer Ashley St. Clair, are wearing revealing outfits; others, like former House candidate Kim Klacik, are fully clothed. No one is naked.
But this mild sexiness was just a bit too much for some prominent social conservatives, who started decrying the calendar in late December as (among other things) “demonic.” The basic complaint is that the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust, debasing conservative women, and making conservatives seem like hypocrites when they complain about leftist immorality.
No, that is not what liberal means - even though that is how most people think of liberal, it isn’t really what it is. We need to stop using liberal/conservative as a label, it isn’t helpful to any discussion on politics where details matter.
Liberal means that you agree to live with someone you find offensive. While conservative means you find someone offensive enough that you try to kill them (you may not have opportunity but you want to and cheer when someone does). It comes from protestant and Catholics realizing that going to war was just getting each other’s children killed and not convincing anyone to switch religion - it was better to just let God sort it out and in the mean time work nicely with each other on earth.
That these people find pron not offensive means they are not liberal, at least not on this subject (they can be on other subjects). They may be aligned with others on the “right wing” who find Pron offensive but are at least somewhat liberal about it, but they are not liberal, at least not on this subject, there are many different aspects of being a human and they probably are liberal on some, and conservative on others - just like everyone else.