From writer and comedian Leigh Douglas
As a pre-teen, I moved from an Irish Catholic Convent school to American middle school. Since then, I have watched Ireland become an ever more liberal nation while the United States has swung dramatically to the right. Conservative women are now claiming the American zeitgeist for themselves with the Make America Hot Again movement, the inescapable presence of Karoline Leavitt in news culture, and the rise of the Trad Wife on social media. In my lifetime, I have watched my two nations trade places, and I believe the experiences of Irish women have something to teach America about where they’re headed.
My grandmother is a fiercely conservative Irish woman. When I flew home to vote in the Repeal the 8th referendum in Ireland in 2018, we both knew why I was there. My generation was determined that we would be the ones to finally legalise abortion in Ireland. I was one of the scores of young women who flew home to vote, wearing a Repeal jumper, excited about what a Yes vote could mean for Irish women. My granny and I did not acknowledge why I was home. My granddad, a Catholic Irish man in his eighties, voted yes. My granny, who had herself suffered miscarriages in between giving birth to my dad and his five siblings, and perhaps could have benefited from abortion care while facing the loss of those wanted pregnancies, voted no. This was partly due to her Catholic faith, but there was another reason as well.
My granny has lived most of her life in an Ireland where flirtatious or difficult young women were sent to Magdalene Laundries, sometimes never to return, and unwed mothers were sent to Mother and Baby homes where frightened and isolated young women were forcibly removed from their babies soon after giving birth. The Ireland my Granny grew up in is one in which Irish women lived in a climate of suspicion and were made to view their own sexuality as an existential threat.
One of my granny’s favourite stories is about her own mother. When a woman in her village had a baby out of wedlock, my great-grandmother was the only one to help with a gift of baby clothes. Otherwise, the new mother was ostracized entirely by her community. My granny is rightfully proud of her mother for that kindness. My granny was a strict grandmother; she took away my makeup bag as a teenager, she told me to cover up my body, and she discouraged dating in all forms. I don’t blame her for that. She did it because from the moment I hit puberty, she was deathly afraid for me.
What we are seeing happen in the United States now for American women is reminiscent of 1950s Ireland. When Éamon de Valera came into power in a newly independent Ireland in the 1920s, he consolidated his leadership mandate by shoring up the support of the Catholic church, selling out Irish women in the process. Irish women enjoyed a relative degree of freedom in revolutionary Ireland and then watched their rights be rolled back in the new independent republic. Ireland became like a police state for women; they lived under the constant control and surveillance of the Catholic church. Now, in the United States, the twice divorced, self-confessed playboy, and noted philanderer, Donald Trump, has shored up his own power by aligning himself with the evangelical Christian movement. And thus, the policing of women’s bodies has begun in America. With the fall of Row v. Wade, women in conservative states are being advised to delete their menstrual cycle tracking apps, and like generations of Irish women gone by, are being forced to travel far and wide for abortion care.
For a lefty-liberal lesbian snowflake such as myself, it can be difficult to fathom why women would choose to uphold the conservative power structures which seek to control them. However, it becomes clearer to me when I think about my grandmother and Irish women of her generation. It’s about survival. Women within conservative communities defend patriarchal, misogynistic structures as self-preservation. Anyone who has ever had to come out understands the fear of losing your community. The fear of being ostracized is one of our basest instincts as human beings.
Conservative women’s media is full of Christian influencers assuring us that Girl Boss is out and Trad Wife is in. They’re full of chat about how the ultimate goal of a woman’s life must be to honour her husband and nurture new life as God designed her body to do. It is also the case that many men are being radicalized into the deeply misogynistic views of the manosphere online. Male anger is viscerally present in the most popular podcasts, social media at large, and in the homes of conservative women. In short, men are angry and these women are trying their hardest to follow the rules so as to trigger that anger as little as possible.
When conservative women have spoken up against the current regime they have been exiled from public life more permanently and completely than their male counterparts. Cassidy Hutchinson was forced to writer her memoir, Enough, in hiding after testifying to the January 6th Committee about what she saw on the day of the insurrection. Liz Chaney has lost her political career and place in the Republican Party due to participating in that same congressional investigation. Even Marjorie Taylor-Green is now facing the ridicule of her former friend, Donald Trump. The lesson is clear to everyday Conservative American women, anger the men in power at your peril. The men in power in this case might be the political leaders of the country, or simply your husbands, brothers and fathers.
By complying with fundamentalist Christian concepts of femininity conservative women experience privilege. They are held up as paragons of womanhood, in contrast to deviant women who are non-compliant. There is no doubt that for these women, loyalty and adherence is fulfilling. They are praised by men, earn their protection and are granted access to the resources of their community. We all love to be held up by the people we love and be told we’re doing something right. The difference here is that these women’s goodness is always defined by male power structures in opposition to “selfish” ungodly, single, childless career women who have failed to fulfil their biological destiny. A woman defining her own success by the family she builds is not wrong. No doubt for many of these women, becoming a wife and mother is and was the ultimate dream. There is nothing wrong with that. Fulfilling your dreams should always feel righteous. The problem lies in placing a moral judgement on women who choose differently and not allowing for the possibility that someday a man might do something that makes you angry. Whether that man be your father, your husband, or your president, you deserve to disagree and it is arrogance to assume you will never need to and that you yourself will not live long enough to become a deviant woman.
ROTUS: Receptionist of the United States is at Park Theatre from 20th January – 7th February 2026. Tickets available HERE.
