I noticed it when I was much younger, long before I was even remotely interested in the well-being of my country, and what forces affected it.
How I discovered it on my own was by reading the history of the events surrounding the proposal of the Equal Rights Amendment. It dawned on me that no one who was human would want to stand against the ERA, as it represented and promoted fairness for human beings, and who could possibly be against that?
And yet many people were not only against the ERA, but felt it was evil somehow. The reasons these people gave were bullshit: "Oh, women would lose their RIGHT to be housewives." Excuse me??? What??? Where in the ERA did it say that?
After giving this some thought, it dawned on me that the people who hated the ERA were only able to come up with bullshit excuses against it, because it was basically a good idea that they were against, and why would they be against it, if their motive was not to keep women as second class citizens?
What I discovered last was that the people that hated the ERA, held similar OTHER ideas. They were a group. Later, I found out these were right wingers. Even the females against the ERA were right wing.
Phyllis Schlafly, a female, was one of the most vocal of anti-ERA characters. What was interesting about this female is that she was against the very things she was: independent, a non-housewife, no wimp. Why would she be against the very things she was? Was she not a female? Was she perhaps (pardon me for saying this), trangendered somehow, and at the time the ERA would not apply to her, so she didn't care? What was it about this woman that made her hate rights for women?
It's basically that right wingers hold to a certain philosophy, and part of that philosophy is an admiration of men and an underlying despising and lack of respect for women, and she wanted to make sure women were never protected well by the Constitution.
And that's how, as a very young woman, I discovered that right wingnuts are fundamentally woman-haters.
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