Sister Punishers

Amanda Marcotte describes the right wing fascination with sister punishers like Priscilla Owen.

"In the Republican pantheon, there are Good Women and Bad Women, both very easy to catalogue, at least in theory. The prime example of a Good Woman of late is poor Terri Schiavo, brainless, wordless, unable to rebel against her parents or even say something snotty. In her state, she was the kind of woman that makes sexist men feel like saviors--they'll draw their swords and fight off all the villians to get a drink of water to that poor woman who would then give what appears to be a smile of gratitude. Who's to say that is was anything but that, anyway?

On the other side of the coin is the Bad Woman, for instance, an insolent teenage girl who ran around with boys and got pregnant and now wants to get an abortion without notifying her father...all just to avoid the beating that she has coming to her for her willfulness. Bad Women are disobedient and despicable and so low that often dealing with them is a task beneath a man. Enter the Sister Punisher, a woman whose willingness to turn on other women to curry the favor of sexist men knows no bounds. "