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Republican Senate candidate on feminism: 'I want to come home to a home-cooked dinner at six every night'

Courtland Sykes criticises 'mean-spirited radical feminists', and claims millennial women don’t respect Hillary Clinton because of her personal life

Emily Shugerman
New York
Thursday 25 January 2018 14:24 EST
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Republican Senate candidate Courtland Sykes says he wants to come home to a home-cooked dinner at six every night
Republican Senate candidate Courtland Sykes says he wants to come home to a home-cooked dinner at six every night (Facebook/Courtland Sykes)

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A conservative US Senate candidate from Missouri has sparked outcry after bashing feminists and saying he expects his wife to cook him dinner by 6pm every night.

Republican Courtland Sykes posted a statement to Facebook in response to questions about his stance on women’s rights. In the post, he said his wife had “ordered” him to respect women’s rights, but she knows that “I want to come home to a home-cooked dinner at six every night – one that she fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix after they become traditional homemakers and family wives”.

The candidate expanded on what he expected of his daughters, saying he didn't want them to grow up into "career obsessed banshees who forego home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic[sic] hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the tops of a thousand tall buildings they think they could have leaped over in a single bound – had men not ‘suppressing them’."

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Mr Sykes criticised what he called “mean-spirited radical feminists”, and claimed millennial women don’t respect former First Lady and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton because of her “personal life’s wreckage”.

“I don’t buy into radical feminists’ crazed definition of modern womanhood and I never did,” he wrote.

Mr Sykes is one of four Republican candidates jockeying for the chance to challenge two-term Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in the November general election. The candidate previously drew condemnation for posting a photo comparing Ms McCaskill and other Democratic women to Disney villains.

Critics descended on Mr Syke’s latest Facebook post, which he shared days after the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Tens of thousands of people participated in women’s rights marches across the country to mark the anniversary.

“You, sir, are ridiculous,” the Women’s March of Missouri Facebook page commented on Mr Sykes's post. “Go back to the stone age.”

Mr Sykes currently works as Managing Director of Talosorion, a company he described to local news station Fox 2 as “a consulting and education firm, frankly; specifically designed for military and special forces intelligence guys”.

He told the station the hopes to run his campaign in the model of Mr Trump, advocating for a border wall with Mexico and pushing his pro-gun, anti-abortion stances.

“We’re going to be wrecking shop, cleaning house, and reconstructing,” Mr Sykes said. “That’s our goal.”

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