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TAP Online is featuring a long essay by Francis Wilkinson called Who’s Your Daddy Party? In it Wilkinson frames the political situation as one in which:

"Through conscious, concerted, disciplined, and relentless effort, Bush and his party have succeeded in cowing critics and defeating Democrats by advancing images of, and insinuations about, manliness in the public sphere. In the Republican political schemata, this is a man’s world. Men have made it dangerous. And only men -- real Republican men -- can make it safe again."

But fear not, he says, as the Democrats are ramping up their own manliness:

"Now, rising out of the broken-back shamble of Republican machismo, is a veritable platoon of Democratic men. They have exceptionally macho profiles and an appetite for power. They are politically diverse but united in their contempt for the bully in the pulpit. They are fed up with schoolyard put-downs. They are disgusted by incompetence and callousness. And they are running for Congress."

And after assorted mediatations about manliness, society, politics, and the "weakness" of the Bush administatrion, he says:

"Into this void marches the Democrats’ “Band of Brothers.” It falls on them to resuscitate a more honorable, less bullying style of masculine politics -- and to make it a winner. To be honest, they don’t look much different from Al Gore, Max Cleland, or John Kerry -- three capital losers. They are battle-hardened but essentially decent. Skeptical of the boasts of war, but mindful of the present dangers. Many are political newcomers, sniffing opportunity in the shifting winds, subject equally to the neophyte’s fatal mistake and to the beginner’s blind luck.

"Go get ’em boys. I hope every one of those guys -- even those in races that are positively unwinnable -- wrestles his Republican opponent to the ground and roars, asserting his Democratic manhood. We need the catharsis."

Where exactly does this leave the majority of Democratic voters, the women? It's hard to read these exhortations to manliness as anything but a call to jettison women's issues, female candidates, and anything "feminizing." Women are supposed to let the men do the fighting while we admire and support them. Rhetoric like this is supposed to convince us to stay out of the men's way, for our own good, because after they win, they will take care of us. This is a very convenient political meme for those who favor the continued subordination of women.