Butker’s viral speech against working women is exactly what conservatives want
Their own document proves it
My phone shook with disgust as notifications poured in from friends sharing Harrison Butker’s viral commencement speech.
Butker, a Kansas City Chiefs kicker, told women graduating from Benedictine College that they have been told a “diabolical lie” about their achievements. They wouldn’t truly know their purpose until they became wives and mothers, he said.
“I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation, as a wife, and as a mother. I’m on this stage today and able to be the man I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.”
As my text messages filled with shock and outrage from my friends, I shook my head. The only thing that surprised me about Butker’s speech was that it was surprising. Maybe I feel that way because I graduated from a religious university — where the pressure for women to attain our “MRS degree” was almost as acute as finals week.
The ensuing backlash against Butker wasn’t because women didn’t think some men felt this way, but because Butker had the audacity to say it out loud. From a stage. Where he knew he was being recorded.
What people don’t understand is that conservatives have been saying the quiet part out loud for a while now. And we either aren’t listening or don’t notice as our rights are stripped away.
Take the right-wing extremists’ presidential wish list, Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership, which details the 180-day transition plan if Trump is re-elected. Project 2025 is rife with the same language in Butker’s speech. It promises a number of attacks on women, like a federal ban on abortion (so much for letting the states choose) and eliminating the Office of Women’s Empowerment.
In a second Trump presidency, conservatives vow to erase every reference to “sexual orientation, gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights” from every federal document.
Authors of Project 2025 demand the FDA reverse approval of abortion-related drugs and want a registry of every woman who has been prescribed anything that could cause an abortion. It wants the US to invest in research regarding the perceived harm abortion has caused to women “and girls.”
It’s terrifying, isn’t it, that Project 2025 acknowledges that girls can get pregnant but doesn’t believe they should be allowed to have an abortion. Nowhere in the 920-page document does it say anything about rape or incest, yet, it’s explicit about prohibiting abortion under any circumstances.
The document guides Health and Human Services to defund child welfare and instead invest in high school courses about “healthy marriages, sexual risk avoidance, and healthy relationships.” It requires marriage and family resources to be placed at every family planning clinic in the country. I wonder who visits family planning clinics?
It provides resources for “mother–child relationship in child well-being” but rarely mentions fathers except to deride single-parent households. It is clear that the authors of Project 2025 — like Butker — see women as the caretakers and nurturers of children and men as the protector and paycheck. Emphasis on strengthening relationships between fathers and children isn’t even secondary — it’s non-existent.
These details aren’t hidden. They are explicit on the website Project2025.org.
Yet most of the people you know haven’t even heard of it.
Mark my words, if we don’t do everything in our power to educate the people around us, Butker’s speech won’t just be the fever dream of a man who has spent too much time in a locker room and not enough time in the real world. It will be our reality.
Onward, Democracy Defenders!
I too wrote about the connection between project 2025 and his disgusting speech
I hope that all the outrage over the speech will start to direct peoples attention to PR2025