Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, has gone out of his way to demean women in the military and block their promotions, and the founder of his religious denomination thinks women with husbands shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Trump attacks the female reporters who ask him tough questions, commenting on or criticizing their looks — just recently he stomped out of an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, telling her, “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.”
But Trump and his cronies aren’t content just to put down actual women. Anyone whose behavior is deemed insufficiently manly is trashed. James Talarico, the mild-mannered seminarian Democrat who is running for a Senate seat in Texas, has been called “James Talafreako” by his opponent, the corrupt Republican Ken Paxton, in part because Talarico has embraced meat alternatives. The Trump henchman Stephen Miller has gone further, repeatedly claiming that Talarico is “transitioning” to female on both Fox News and his X account.
If that weren’t awful enough, some leftists and liberals seem to be aping Republican-style insults, implying that anything outside an old-fashioned vision of masculine behavior is weak, womanly and should be avoided. In response to new revelations about the Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner’s past relationships, prominent progressive Matt Stoller defended him, posting on X that “Graham Platner represents a rejection of Dem HR lady politics.” Which is to say, any objection to Platner’s history is somehow coded as female.
This defense tactic from Platner’s staunchest supporters is not new. Moira Donegan, writing in The Guardian in October, noted that many liberal men loudly defended Platner then, in spite of his Nazi tattoos and his Reddit comments about women and minorities, on the ground that the party had become too feminized. “The idea is that in catering too much to women, and in being insufficiently deferential to domineering, gruff, physically imposing and implicitly white, rural men, the party has come to seem hectoring, inauthentic and whiny, and lost the voters they need to most recruit.”
If I lived in Maine, I would certainly vote for Platner over Susan Collins in a general election, so that Democrats can have a chance to take back the Senate and oppose Trump. I also understand why people are excited about Platner’s progressive stances and his ability to connect in person, and I get the calculus around choosing him as the nominee among the other options.
