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A Michigan congressional candidate backed by former President Donald Trump once suggested that women shouldn't vote or govern, arguing that the U.S. "has suffered as a result of women’s suffrage."
John Gibbs, who won Michigan’s GOP primary against an incumbent who voted to impeach Trump, posted the sexist comments online while he was a student at Stanford University in the early 2000s, according to internet archives obtained by CNN.
Gibbs founded a "think tank" named the Society for the Critique of Feminism, where he argued that patriarchy “is the best model for the continued success of a society" — Voting and governing should be left to the men who can think “without relying upon emotional reasoning,” whereas women should merely focus on raising children, Gibbs asserted.
“Some argue that in a democratic society, it is hypocritical or unjust for women, who are 50% of the population, not to have the vote,” he said on the forum. “This is obviously not true, since the founding fathers, who understood liberty and democracy better than anyone, did not believe so. In addition, all people under age 18 cannot vote, although they too comprise a significant portion of the population. So we cannot say that women should be able to vote simply because they are a large part of the population.”
To conclude his argument, Gibbs wrote, “Thus, we conclude that increasing the size and scope of government is unequivocally bad. And since women’s suffrage has caused this to occur on a larger scale than any other cause in history, we conclude that the United States has suffered as a result of women’s suffrage.”
In another section of the forum, Gibbs claimed the Bible "clearly articulates" that women shouldn't hold positions of power.
“In other words, because women do not possess the characteristics necessary to govern, and since women have a more important task to do, which is to prepare the next generation, they are commanded not to rule,” he wrote.
Another argument written by Gibbs was titled “Why is it that women should be the ones to take care of the children?”
“Be aware, however, that we are not advocating that men have no part whatsoever in raising their children,” he wrote. “On the contrary, we believe that fathers should be an integral part of the upbringing of their children. We simply believe that this is not the father’s primary task, whereas it is the mother’s.”
Anne Marie Schieber, a spokesperson for Gibbs' campaign, told CNN that the GOP candidate penned the arguments in college “to provoke the left on campus and draw attention to the hypocrisy of some modern-day feminists.”
“Of course, John does not believe that women shouldn’t vote or shouldn’t work, and his mother worked for thirty-three years for the Michigan Department of Transportation!” Schieber said.
Gibbs, who previously worked in the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration, will face Democrat Hillary Scholten in Michigan's November election.
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