Why Don't Conservative Men Protect Their Own Daughters?

Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno refuses to oppose the congressional campaign of the man accused of scalding his daughter with boiling water and fracturing his granddaughter's collarbone.

Republican Rep. Max Miller is currently running for reelection in Ohio. His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, has just filed another restraining order against him, after, she says, he laid hands on her lawyer — the person she hired to help protect her from him. Moreno also says that Miller threw boiling water at her, held a gun to her head, and broke their baby’s collarbone. “Daddy’s house is scary” and “Daddy kill you,” her daughter allegedly said.

In response, Miller has smeared Moreno crazy, vengeful, and mentally ill.

Emily Moreno’s father, Bernie Moreno, is a powerful Republican senator; you may have seen him this week attacking Anthony Fauci during Fauci’s Senate testimony. Despite a spokesperson telling the New York Times that “Senator Moreno’s top priority is the safety and well-being of his daughter and granddaughter,” Senator Moreno’s actual top priority seems to be the power of his party — he refuses to speak out against Miller or his reelection campaign, because it is in both men’s interests to have more Republicans in Congress.

Re-read that. The father of a woman who says her ex scalded her with boiling water, held a gun to her head, and fractured her baby’s collarbone is functionally politically supporting the man she says abused her.

Conservative traditionalists who defend patriarchal systems tend to do so by leveraging the claim that women need men to protect us — that there are bad men out there, and we need the good ones (our husbands, our fathers) for provision and protection. If women play by the rules, and we’re submissive and supportive, then we’ll be defended and kept safe.

This story, though, is a more accurate encapsulation of patriarchy: Women are pawns and helpmeets, people who men may sometimes choose to protect, but also perfectly expendable.

Another women has also said that Miller abused her: former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham. She, too, saw the reality of patriarchal “protection” when she needed it. She was close with Donald and Melania Trump, telling them that Miller had physically attacked her as they broke up. “I told the president that this ‘great guy’ had anger issues and a violent streak,” she later wrote in the Washington Post. “I was not some stranger making a wild accusation. I hoped that he would take me seriously, that he would do something.”

Spoiler: He did not take her seriously. He did do something, though: He endorsed Miller for congress.

Wrote Grisham: “A White House staffer accused of assault by a woman whom the president knew and trusted? It didn’t even seem to register on the president’s radar screen as a concern. To the contrary, knowing what he knows, Trump has endorsed my ex’s bid for Congress. The takeaway: Dealing with abuse claims is not in his interest, but having someone in office who will be a rubber stamp for his agenda is.”

And the playbook used against her is identical to the one being used against Emily Moreno. “The usual rumors are being spread that I was a leaker, a liar, mentally unstable and things too painful for me to even recount,” she wrote. And it was familiar, because “I did the same thing to others who saw the Trumps up close and came forward with books or interviews or op-eds to tell the truth.”

It is particularly disgusting that many of the same Republicans who continue to rally behind Miller were quick to demand that Democrats boot Graham Platner after credible allegations that he physically assaulted one woman and raped another. To be clear, it was good and necessary that Democrats booked Platner after those allegations. It’s repulsive, though, that Republicans will use the abuse of women as a political pawn against Democratic candidates, while holding their own to no such standards. Miller is, after all, far from the only Republican who has been credibly accused of serious wrongdoing. Rep. Cory Mills of Florida faces abuse allegations from multiple women. Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina faces multiple sexual harassment allegations.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has said that the accusations against Miller are “troubling,” but that voters should decide. Asked why Republicans refused to ditch Miller after these allegations given that Democrats demanded Platner step aside, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said, “the key word there is ‘allegation.’” If any prominent Republicans have said that Miller should resign, I can’t find it.

The lesson is a clear one: Men will not protect you. An ideology that enforces male power and female submission will be one that enforces male power and female submission — and that breaks whatever promises of protection it makes to women the second that protection would require challenging the power of its men. Emily Moreno’s own father won’t protect her. He won’t protect her grandchild. We see iterations of this in ultra-patriarchal practices around the world: The men who kill daughters who tarnish their honor, who sell daughters to protect their interests, who, as is happening here, sell out their daughters to preserve their own power.

This is the conservative “traditional family” patriarchal model in practice. The promise of protection is what women get for compliance — and it’s an empty one.

xx Jill