A Turning Point for Conservative Women

If the conservative manosphere is associated with protein powder, pomade, and ancient Rome, then the conservative womanosphere is its aesthetic opposite: a frilly wonderland of gingham tablecloths and Bible verses, as soft as goose down and as cotton-candy pink as Polly Pocket’s Country Cottage. Which is why the cannons were so startling.Before each speaker took the podium at Turning Point USA’s annual Women’s Leadership Summit to advise feminine gentleness in all situations, tall columns of magenta smoke blasted from both ends of the stage, and the music’s bass dropped, rattling the skulls of all 3,000 women in the ballroom of the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter. This year’s event was full of such subtle contradictions.It is difficult to tidily define womanhood, or to attach to the term a set of clear expectations. Yet Turning Point, the conservative organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk, professes to understand womanhood deeply—so deeply, in fact, that it holds a conference every June to elucidate the concept: Womanhood is getting married as soon as you can, and having babies—more “than you can afford,” as Kirk often advised. It is embracing God and renouncing feminism.But the messages from this year’s speakers and attendees were different than in years past: So diverse and inclusive that the summit occasionally felt, dare I say, a little feminist. “Never getting married is not a failure,” Alex Clark, the host of Turning Point’s Culture Apothecary podcast, said on the first day. Some speakers warned against the dreaded girlboss, but others seemed accepting of all types of women. The summit “is all about support and recognizing that everybody’s journey is different,” Alyssa Cromwell, a college junior from California, told me. “It’s just coming together, supporting women, and being a safe space to embrace ourselves.”Ariana Gomez for The AtlanticWhat was this, UC Berkeley? And what would Charlie think of it all? Before he was assassinated last year, Kirk had