Portions of this blog appeared on the Progress Texas Daily Dispatch, delivered every weekday by Progress Texas Communications Director Chris Mosser. Rapid response on the breaking news stories Texas progressives need to know—all in less than 10 minutes! Click here to listen along!

What is the right version of a woman leader? How does that compare to the right’s version as presented by Erika Kirk?

Look no further for answers to both questions than the upcoming Turning Point USA TPUSA) Women’s Leadership Summit in San Antonio, pitched as an event bringing women together to embrace their femininity and higher calling. What might that calling be? Very unclear based on the website’s language buried in Christian Nationalist dogwhistles. Take your pick on the far-right, fearmongering issues, and you’ll find a soft, glowing synonym embracing Holistic wellness, Empowerment, and Redemption for HER! 

However, investigate slightly, and you’ll discover a speaker lineup (all-white or white passing) that covers a wide range of conservative issue areas targeting those who might follow trad-wife influencers and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement online. Feel-good buzzwords like “confidence” take you down a far-right pipeline confident in the domination of one type of woman, the submissive, white, cisgender model; while “self-care” translates to mythologizing and propagandadizing about health and wellness. Shoutout to the anti-vax moms and raw-milk, beef-tallow truthers, this is the safe space for you! 

In all seriousness, this Turning Point USA event uplifts conservative white women, exploiting and twisting the rhetoric and access that the feminist movement has provided, while leaving the system and praxis (and women of color at all) behind. The summit’s speaker lineup consists of pageant queen and TPUSAA co-founder and CEO, Erika Kirk; Olympic loser and poster child for transphobia in sports, Riley Gaines; ex-The View-host Savannah Crisley, whose parents were pardoned by President Trump; and the not-so-Relatable podcasters Allie Beth Stuckey and Alex Clark (host of TPUSA’s Culture Apothecary pod), “a major figure of the (MAHA) movement.” Stellar models of leadership here for one purpose: to sell some Christian Nationalism and patriarchy spoon-fed by grifting girlbosses. 

Commodifying Feminism for Conservative Causes

Trinity University professor Sarah E. Erickson points to the summit as a prime example of what’s known as “commodity feminism,” the strategic appropriation of feminist language to sell a product that actually reinforces traditional patriarchal structures, not the advancement of the freedom and opportunity of women. Dr. Erickson says that under the veneer of female confidence and leadership, this event markets a “commoditized version of feminism” centered on capitalism, and very much targeted towards white women. The speaker lineup presents itself as controversial, countercultural, and courageous, all for platforming propaganda. It’s twisted, and with that powerful narrative trick, they lure in unassuming women who might buy into wellness myths, rhetoric that defines womanhood as in opposition to trans experiences, and especially aligns Christianity and faith with the Conservative movement. 

While the Summit uses “femvertising” to promote leadership for women, the facade quickly disappears to reveal that the event, its speakers and their messages actually uphold the very systems that feminism traditionally seeks to overcome (strict gender roles embedded in sexist, transphobic, racist, homophobic, classist, patriarchal systems of power). This event is catered toward white conservative women, to be sure, but what it’s promoting is founded in the patriarchal system of values that put their party’s leader in power. A leader who is an alleged pedophile, known abuser and sexist among many other faults. 

The Erika Kirk of it all

Erika Kirk has not been shy in her public rejection of feminism in favor of biblical (and political) submission, telling women: “Don’t listen to the Lie. Let God bring into your life a very Godly man who’s going to be running alongside you.” Ironic, considering her public support for “Ephesians 5” marriages, in which women must submit to their husband’s authority, relegating a woman’s primary sphere of influence to the sacred spaces of the home, the family, and the church.  Good luck if you like going anywhere else. Good luck if you like being any other type of woman than subservient. But it does beg the question of what women’s leadership should stand for, and what does it mean to be a leader for this group of women?

How Conservative Women in America Act

Influencer Druski recently showcased it in perfect form, parodying Erika Kirk in an online skit that laid her performances and the motives behind them bare. The question of whether her media presences are a grift, or grief, is on display for the viewer to decide: watching Druski in drag featuring blue-eyed-dead-stares into the camera, adorned in blonde wigs doing pilates, pant suits masked by sparklers (mimicking her first public appearance at a political rally, after husband Charlie Kirk’s assassination), and through it all, almost no hyperbole.

In fact, a good portion of the footage consists of him shot-for-shot, pulling from real videos and remarks from Erika Kirk. He puts her performance of womanhood and leadership on display, allowing the off-putting absurdity of her remarks to stand for themselves. Remarks including “protect all young, white men in America” and telling young women in the same room just to “rise up.” It all boils down to that facade of empowerment, only possible because of decades of advocacy and organizing by feminist movements—grounded in multiracial, collectivist thought that stands in direct opposition to the style of leadership Miss Arizona 2012 is showcasing at the Summit. 

I don’t figure that we’ll have many takers in our audience, but ladies: if you’re looking to trade in the hard-won legal and economic autonomy for American women that’s been steadily built over the last 100 years in this country for a theocratic Handmaid’s Tale scenario of domestic submission and dependency on men, this event in San Antonio in June would appear to be the one you’ve been waiting for. And not to worry, those fireworks Druski so perfectly parodied might have fizzled out, but the upcoming summit will have opportunities to view more pageantry: warning potential attendees with a Strobe and Effects Disclaimer. So if you go, expect more flashy lights and fanfare from Erika Kirk and others, to distract from the utter lack of feminism and freedom present in the Women’s Leadership Summit.

What’s next?

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