Internet Schooled a Conservative Blogger Who Tweeted About Gender Roles During Hurricane Harvey

ByHeather Spohr

The images coming out of Texas after the wrath of Hurricane Harvey have been nothing short of horrific. But amidst the devastation, photos of heroism have shown us the best of humanity. For some reason, Internet douchebag Matt Walsh decided to turn an amazing image of a woman and child being rescued into a misguided proclamation on gender roles.

The photo, pictured above, shows SWAT team officer Daryl Hudeck carrying a woman and her young child to safety. It’s a gripping, moving photo that was captured by photographer David Phillip.  “I was just keeping an eye out and as soon as I saw the SWAT team member carrying her and then seeing the baby, I just couldn’t believe that baby was wrapped up in there and not crying,” Phillip told the Associated Press.

Normal people react to this image with awe and appreciation for first responders. But not Matt Walsh!

Nope, he had to go and be an asshole.

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“Woman cradles and protects child. Man carries and protects both. This is how it ought to be, despite what your gender studies professor says,” he wrote in his tweet.

The decent people on Twitter were not here for this kind of sexist bullshit.

The tweet on gender roles also spawned a pretty hilarious meme.

https://twitter.com/BNick/status/902555013662179328

But the best response was from Christina Wolbrecht, a gender studies professor at the University of Notre Dame. She absolutely destroyed Walsh in an epic Twitter thread.

Saying she just couldn’t help herself, Wolbrecht went in hard over a series of tweets.

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“Care work (for children, infirm, elderly) is necessary for human flourishing & has been traditionally performed by women for free, which contributes to women’s lesser financial & politics power. As care work has moved into the market, it remains poorly paid & overwhelmingly female, which again makes women more vulnerable. We love to laud a woman “cradling her child” but don’t provide paid maternity leave or support quality childcare & good pay/benefits for childcare workers (women, immigrants).”

oh snap at these gender roles

Wolbrecht continued, “As budgets for care work (mental health, health care) have been cut, a lot of that work has shifted to agencies like police & fire, who often lack training & capacity, and result in troubling outcomes. At the same time, economists note that a central challenge to male workers is skills mismatch – men reluctant to take jobs in expanding care sector, partly bc jobs are “female”, partly bc they are low paying, low prestige (bc their “women’s jobs”). IN SUM your rigid and illogical sexual division of labor, & related hierarchy of value, hurts both women & men, the US economy, & the flourishing of society as a whole. The value of work – holding the baby or carrying the mother should be recognized & rewarded, no matter who performs it. Given how much care is needed, all hands on deck.”

Did you hear the bell ring? Because someone just got schooled.

Wolbrecht’s lesson on gender roles has been retweeted by over 52,000 Twitter users. Unsurprisingly, Walsh is not one of them.

Also read:

(Image: Twitter / @matt walsh)

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