Progressives claim to value women, but they routinely demonize conservative women who refuse to conform to the molds that the left tries to force us into.
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As a conservative woman living in Texas, I often feel like I’m living a dual reality. I’m a mom and a writer, but that’s not all. I go to church, laugh with friends and wave at my neighbors while we are walking our dogs.
At dinner, my kids and I discuss the Beatitudes, the Bill of Rights and the best and worst things that happened that day (we call them highs and lows). I love to cook, hate to clean and probably need to have a better morning routine. My life is similar to millions of other women in America.
But online, in the legacy news media and in my increasingly ugly inbox, I live in a different world. In that world, I’m portrayed − and viewed − through a singular lens: my conservative beliefs. As such, I am easy to hate, mock and scorn.
I am far from the only woman who experiences this abuse. Progressives claim to value women, but they routinely demonize conservative women who refuse to conform to the molds that the left tries to force us into. That’s not only bad for women like me and for our society, but it’s also a poor reflection of reality. Tens of millions of American women embrace traditional values and conservative ideas.
We’re also more than our politics.
Who is Karoline Leavitt the new White House press secretary?
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is the youngest to ever hold the position at 27.
The demonization of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt
The Washington Post provides a recent example of how conservative women are so often demeaned and patronized in the mainstream media. Last Monday’s profile of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, written by reporter Kara Voght, drips with condescension, starting with the headline: “In Karoline Leavitt’s world, Trump’s word is enough.”
Leavitt is a 27-year-old devout Christian and conservative who has been an excellent spokeswoman for President Donald Trump’s agenda.
But The Post tried to smear her faith, personality and confidence from the start of the article: “Trump’s newest press secretary is radiant, blond and apple-cheeked ‒ as if one of Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonnas had been styled for a Fox News hit. Her delivery is righteous, if a bit smug. God gives everyone gifts, Leavitt believes; hers is public speaking. And for roughly a half hour, once or twice a week, she delivers Trump’s word to a room filled with professional skeptics.”
If the trivializing of an accomplished woman wasn’t so disgusting, I’d laugh. Can you imagine The Post smugly diminishing a progressive woman (or man) as “radiant, blond and apple-cheeked”?
Leavitt isn’t the only conservative woman to recently receive The Post’s patronizing treatment. A profile of second lady Usha Vance began with this sentence: “Most of what we know about Usha Vance we know because her husband told us.”
Never mind that Vance is an accomplished lawyer who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts on the U.S. Supreme Court. Ignore that she graduated from Yale University with a law degree and a bachelor’s degree and from Cambridge with a master’s. Brush aside that she has served on the boards of the Washington National Opera and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
We only know, according to The Post, what her husband allows her to tell us.
Another Post news story − a profile of conservative influencer Alex Clark published the day before the elections in November − is laced with opinionated and condescending observations. Clark, for example, is accused of engaging in conspiratorial thinking about the food industry, “consistent with the right’s Trump-inspired paranoia about deep-state master planning.”
Each of those profiles was written or cowritten by Voght, who worked for Mother Jones and Rolling Stone, both ultraliberal publications, before joining The Post as a politics reporter.
The disdain for conservative women isn’t confined to The Post. Recent Salon headlines have been even more pointed in their attacks, including this one: “The misogynist agenda of “MAHA moms.” Conservative aren’t just wrong, you see, they hate women, including presumably themselves.
Salon also gave us this affront to good taste ‒ “From ‘Mar-a-Lago face’ to uncanny AI art: MAGA loves ugly in submission to Trump.” The article, by senior writer Amanda Marcotte, is filled with cruel attacks on the appearance of conservative women in leadership positions, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The article includes this gem: “Drag queens also embrace outlandish gender performance, but it’s to subvert rigid gender roles instead of reinforcing them. That, plus your typical drag queen knows how to make five pounds of make-up look cool instead of gross, but they won’t share their secrets with the ladies of the GOP.”
Drag queens are cool. Conservative women are gross. And that is what passes for journalism in 2025.
Tune in to ABC’s “The View” to see the progressive hosts, all women, rip on the conservative women in the Trump administration. No one is more misogynistic to conservative women than liberal women. Again, the irony would be funny if not so disgusting.
Voght and Marcotte are part of a bevy of legacy media reporters who seem to be liberals first and journalists second. That bias has destroyed the news industry’s credibility but perversely also has hurt more than helped their allies in the Democratic Party.
Conservative women are denigrated for their beliefs
For all their flaws, Democrats used to promote tolerance and inclusivity. They used to at least say they embraced women’s rights.
But tolerance apparently doesn’t extend to the many women who exercise their right to form their own beliefs and to vote for the candidates of their own choosing. In progressives’ eyes, those women, conservative women, deserve to have their accomplishments devalued and their appearance mocked.
I’m tired of being the butt of jokes and scorn because I’m a conservative woman and a mother. I’m sick of legacy media acting like women such as Leavitt, Vance and me are an anomaly.
And I’m done with seeing progressives in politics and journalism spew hate at women for embracing conservative political and social values.
Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here.
