A few days ago, Donald Trump pulled off the world’s greatest Chris Christie burn, announcing that Indiana governor Mike Pence would be his running mate in this increasingly exhausting and baffling presidential campaign. Also, the logo Trump unveiled featured two letters having weirdly graphic sex, so maybe Christie dodged a bullet with this whole thing. Anyway, internet people have spent the last few days looking into this Pence guy, and now Buzzfeed has dug up an interesting artifact from his past.
Apparently, back in 1999, Pence was so shocked by the Disney movie Mulan that he felt compelled to write a review of sorts that unpacks the film’s insidious propagandist message. For those who don’t recall, Mulan is about a young woman in ancient China who rejects her destiny and disguises herself as a man so she can help defend her homeland from the invading Huns. To Pence, the movie was a not-so-carefully disguised scheme by “some mischievous liberal” at Disney who wanted to convince young girls that they could do the same things as a man, noting that this awful Disney employee probably wanted to “cause a quiet change in the next generation’s attitude about women in combat.” (He’s presumably ignoring the fact that Mulan is based on an actual Chinese legend and isn’t really the creation of anyone at Disney, mischievous liberal or otherwise.)
Pence also takes issue with the fact that, in the movie, Mulan falls in love with one of her fellow soldiers, explaining that this is his real problem with women in the military. As he says in the piece, “put [young men and young women] together, in close quarters, for long periods of time, and things will get interesting. Just like they eventually did for young Mulan.” He sums up that point by saying, simply: “Women in military, bad idea.”
You can see the full text of Pence’s Mulan op-ed below, and hopefully we’ll get to hear a lot more of his thoughts on Disney movies (and gender equality) as the campaign continues.