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Photo by Shelby Lum / Richmond Times-Dispatch

He also said in 2002. “If there’s alcohol being served and people are being loose, I want to have the best-looking brunette in the room standing next to me,” referring to his wife.

The Post piece implies Pence still abstains from solo cocktail hours and têtes-à-têtes with female aides, but we don’t know for sure.

Pence is an evangelical Christian and his faith is being used to both defend and excoriate his no-ladies-for-lunch policy. The aforementioned Atlantic piece calls it the “Billy Graham rule, named for the famous evangelist who established similar guidelines for the pastors working in his ministry.”

The religious origins of Pence’s self-restriction don’t make it any less sexist. If anything, they exacerbate it. The notion that men are unable to contain themselves sexually around women is born of the Biblical fallen and lascivious woman; Until the late 18th century it was actually thought women were the over-sexed gender, and would prey on men, then the Romantic and Victorian eras flipped the script, but to much the same result. Centuries later, we still live in a culture that produces vice-presidents who ardently believe women are a wellspring of possible sin.

The explicit reasons for Pence’s restriction are religion and family, but the implicit reason is that he must avoid alone-time with women lest his stringent religious moral code fall apart in the presence of a little lipstick and décolletage

At its core, Pence’s self-imposed ban is rape culture.

Nor is that a label I assign lightly. “Rape culture” is a phrase so overused it’s become almost meaningless, like calling someone a Nazi on the internet. But it has a very clear meaning: the notion, whether conscious or unconscious, that men can’t control themselves around women because “boys will be boys.”