Mike Pence's Bizarro Rules About Women Have Empowered Man Babies Everywhere

This week, we were treated to a horrifying little factoid about Vice President Mike Pence, courtesy of The Washington Post.

Pence, an evangelical Christian, apparently refuses to eat meals alone with any woman besides his wife, Karen. He also won’t attend an event where alcohol is served without his wife, an adult woman he reportedly calls “Mother” as a term of endearment, at his side.

This raises a lot of questions, particularly about what self-respecting woman in their right mind tried to parlay a round of happy hour appetizers at an Indiana Chili’s into a torrid affair with the curdled glass of skim milk that is Mike Pence.

But the Post‘s resurfacing of Pence’s bizarro rules about women (which, if they still govern his life, could seriously limit the ability of female leaders to, you know, work with the Vice President of the United States) gave man babies the world over license to brag about all the weird gender dynamics that keep their totally normal marriages propped up.

Leading the pack was conservative blogger Matt Walsh, who’s “I’m actually the normal one here” take yielded one of the best Twitter interactions in recent memory with fellow conservative thinkfluencer Erick Erickson.

A good sign that you’re on the right side of any argument is when Gavin McInnes, the Vice co-founder-turned-white supremacist, starts agreeing with you.

Then came this guy, compassionately comparing women to buckets of ice cream.

No Twitter pseudo-controversy would be complete without a [THREAD]. This one came courtesy of Business Insider’s Josh Barro, who took a break from bashing poor people to make….some weird argument about Uber?

As a neither-here-nor-anywhere bonus, here’s video game developer and candidate for Congress Brianna Wu’s since-deleted tweetstorm scolding people for being so “frankly elitist” about the whole thing.

As writer Laura Turner pointed out on Twitter, Pence’s strict moral code of conduct is in line with the “Billy Graham Rule,” the evangelical Christian practice of never meeting with women in private, named for the celebrity evangelist. Although the aim of staying true to your marriage is noble, the result, in practice, as Turner notes, is not: women are dehumanized and reduced to sexually tempting set pieces in the lives of men.

So, what have we learned in all this?

If you, a woman, were thinking about asking any of these men to get a meal, DON’T YOU DARE DO THAT. And for the guys out there: Women are very scary mythological creatures who are best avoided at all costs, lest they draw you in with their siren song and get you to break your marriage vows right there on the counter at Chipotle before you know what hit you.

It also served as an always timely reminder that politics is mostly motivated by sexual pathology. Log off and stay pure, kids.