Trump ridiculed trans rights, feeding a young male fear that young women were not just surpassing them, but perhaps trying to become them (a strategy that had the ancillary effect of appealing to mothers and fathers worried about their daughters’ bathrooms and locker rooms being invaded by trans women).
I don’t believe young men are worried that female-bodied persons are going to horn in on maleness and outdo them. No one's been talking about trans men. The focus — as the parenthetical concedes — has always been on trans women and how they might infringe on the interests of non-trans women.
Who's the "You" here? The author fails to specify that she believes that this is something Trump was saying to men. But she's just said "a new generation" and "You." Ironically, the author is channeling male supremacy, assuming men are the subject! And don't say "with a wife" makes it clear we're talking about men. Not only does that phrase arrive too late in the sentence, women often have a wife these days. Who's being heteronormative around here? The fact is Trump did not use "misogynistic rhetoric" that "had an old-fashioned quality." I watched many rallies, and I didn't hear it. And I listen for crap like that.
It was a simple, appealing answer to a generation of men with a lot of questions about what it meant to be a man....
Yeah, or it would have been... if it had happened.
Skipping ahead to the last paragraph of this long dreary piece:
Young men may feel lost. But they are not lost to the Democratic Party, its more optimistic operatives believe—as long as the party focuses its message more effectively and finds a better way to communicate it.
You're hoping to prey upon the lost. You don't care, but you want to use them. Are they even lost? You hope they are. But if they're enjoying Trump and his sidekick Elon, you'll have a hell of a time luring them away with that "message" you think you have and only need to communicate "more effectively."
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53 comments:
"treat men as an interest group.""
Again - the left cannot escape their own.. looped creepiness.
Everything is something to be manipulated and managed.
The left yo yo. 'Only 1%!" then the next statement is - you're all trans-phobes.
Meanwhile - biological men (don't care home many pills you've taken) are allowed in women's private spaces. Males with males parts exposed... right after they beat all the females in the competition.
It's not only unfair- it's insane.
All this from the machine that tells us they care about women.,
The left are liars - nothing left to say.
I think there is something to say that broadly the energy of the Democrats and the Left in general is unappealing to men. The way to fix this is not to double down on identity politics. It is to focus on strength, directness, and not being overly scared of aggression.
No amount of "messaging" is going to make people happy with the Biden years. For Democrats to make a comeback, Republicans will have to stumble or voters will have to forget.
Apparently, for Milligan, if society isn't forever promoting girl power and lady bosses and womansurging it will inevitably fall back into patriarchal patterns. Not to actively oppose "patriarchy" is to support it. That's a depressing vision, and a puzzling one. If you have to keep propping up the latest version of feminism for it to survive, is there something in it that goes against the natural order of things?
Few of us have any questions at all about what it means to be a man. (We're pretty sure it involves getting blamed for everything.) A big part of the reason Trump did well with us is that his opponent's idea of how to get our votes was "How do you do, fellow dudes? If you were a Real Man like us, you'd be working harder to advance the interests of women!"
I don't really think this far-fetched drivel needs the level of analysis you gave it. A simple "What a maroon" suffices. I suppose it is noteworthy, that she just can't bring herself to think that the Democrats should stop being the Party of Cut Your Neighbors' Kids' Balls Off Now! (without telling your neighbors!). Sexually mutilating children can't be wrong-wrong, it just needs to be explained better. She really doesn't understand that normal people don't want people like her anywhere near us. Like, on the surface of the Earth. That's too close. The Moon, Alice.
All the things they don't like, they ascribe to Trump, the embodiment of All Bad Things. How convenient.
A retreat into navel-gazing of the finest quality! This is why I am worried about the future of the Democratic party.
The misogynist just appointed many women to positions of power.
Really - leftists - you need to stop lying. Turn off insane Maddow - and stop deluding yourselves.
btw Ann - Well done.
Wasn't women in men's locker rooms part of feminism? Sports reporters in particular. What's her name on Gutfeld for instance.
"But they are not lost to the Democratic Party... as long as the party focuses its message more effectively and finds a better way to communicate it." So, for the umpteenth time, Dem strategists discern that all they have is a messaging problem. There's nothing wrong or unappetizing about the substance of what they're trying to convey. In the real world, the dogs won't eat the damn dog food.
The dems only ever want to change their messaging. If current dems were serious about moderating their policies, they would be leaving the party and starting something new.
Here's the entire problem with the Democrat Party summarized in one sentence - the last lines of the post above: "...as long as the party focuses its message more effectively and finds a better way to communicate it." No, no, no, no, no.
The problem Dems have is not the communication or focus of their message. Their problem is their message. They have tried every which way to change everything except their core belief, their absolute goal, of collectivist, authoritarian, totalitarian power over everything and everyone. That core belief, that goal, is well understood, and rejected, and no matter how they dress it up, no matter how they try to put lipstick on it, that pig is still a pig.
Yes, in order to appeal to humans suffering from toxic masculinity, the Democrats need to yell louder and harder. Be sure to call us racist, sexist, misogynist, etc. as that will convince us that we need you. Never, ever examine yourselves and ask is it your policies that do not appeal to us.
But wait. Since they cannot define what is a woman, as they are no biologists, then they cannot define what is man, either. So basically the Democrats have boxed themselves into a corner and unless they abandon their current state and rebuilt something new they will remain there. They deserve to go the way of the Whigs.
Two relatively famous actresses come to mind as relevant to the transgender discussion here. One is Ellen (now Elliot) Page, who transitioned to her approximation of a man. But I don't think anyone sees Elliot as either masculine or a threat. Ellen was a cute and engaging actress, Elliot is very lower tier in terms of masculinity, the kind of man one might expect would be thinking about transitioning to a woman.
On the other side is Gina Carano, who got fired from The Mandalorian for supposedly transphobic comments. Pedro Pascal, the title star of that show, supported her firing, and has since then, maybe even because of, become the actor of the season, starring in all sorts of major roles. Had he defended her, he would not have this success. Meanwhile, Carano is a very strong woman, physically and otherwise. A large percentage of real men really like strong women. But I don't think reporters are necessarily around those kinds of men, they tend to be around Brian Williams types. All while also idolizing JFK, who dehumanized women every chance he could get.
What is a woo-man?
Well there was that one Hilary Swank movie “Boys don’t cry” and as I recall the Boys were pretty ticked at the end when they found out they’d been duped.
These Dem thought leaders sound like Paul Ryan in 2009. We just need to hone our message! No. People understand what you want and a majority of men and a near majority of women don’t want it.
Michele Tafoya among others, they would have to climb out of the gorge to be merely clueless,
"female-bodied persons"
Geez Althouse. It's either "female" or "birthing person". We're either erasing females or we are not. Pick one
I stopped watching Mandalorian when Carano was booted.
"A retreat into navel-gazing of the finest quality! This is why I am worried about the future of the Democratic party."
Doesn't worry me. It's future is settled, extinction. The reputation of the Democratic Party is more damaged now than any other time since the Civil War. The DOGE revelations are growing more and more shocking and disgusting. Talented young leftists are strongly motivated to avoid the stigma of the outrages Elon and Company are exposing. In the 2026 election cycle many will seek alternative party identities. Perhaps they'll join Jill Stein's Greens, though I doubt it. By 2026 the economic damage wrought by the EU Greens will be front page news. The specter of starvation will visit Europe like no other time since the winter of 1944-45. (Free investment advice: Sell cryptos. Buy grain futures.) I predict they will largely gravitate to a new left/center left party with a Fabian socialist message. Perhaps they will call it the Labor Party. (There was a doctrinaire Marxist party by that name in the 1880s. That Labor Party fractured, reformed, split, and unified chaotically and finally sank in the 1890s.) If the Labour Party can exile Starmer and his cabinet by next year, an American Labor Party will have a shot. If not the noun itself will become fatally toxic to American voters. Or the rising young leftists will join numerous "progressive" movements and then form coalitions, or try to. As for the Democratic Party itself, the leadership is very aged. Sickness and death will thin them out shortly. The younger ones are not reproducing at a sustainable rate. Their lineages will die out, followed by the institution itself. Ask not for whom the bell tolls...
This video might help Ms. Milligan to gain a better understanding of the mood of America's young men.
Day by day, inch by inch, both TDS and Woke are dying. :-)
His misogynistic rhetoric had an old-fashioned quality that ended up appealing to a new generation: You have a birthright to be in charge, to objectify women, to be head of the household, with a wife at home as full-time housekeeper and child-rearer.
They're going to have trouble appealing to men as long as they keep talking this way. 1) Any attempt by men to articulate their own interests is immediately caricatured as ridiculous extremism. 2) It's not always about you! Men have needs and interests that matter to them for their own reasons, and not just for how they affect women.
When I first saw this headline, I thought of The Daily Woo. He was a vlogger in Southern California who focused on touristy stuff. (and specifically, Disneyland.) He eventually moved to Florida and his YouTube feed became very sporatic. (He did do a good one once where he visited one of the last two remaining Pioneer Take Out chicken restaurants in SoCal. I miss Pioneer chicken and I'm actually wearing a Pioneer Take Out T-shirt right now. They used to have hundreds of locations in Southern California, but Popeyes bought them out and closed all of them down, and that left only two independent franchises operators who decided to keep being Pioneer Take Outs without any kind of corporate support at all. )
Also, when reading the excerpts from this article, I thought, this is not how to "woo" men.
there was an old man that posted here.. I can't remember his name; but it was something like rhhardin..
This guy REPEATEDLY said, that Because of Dobbs, the Republicans would NEVER win another vote.. ANY WHERE in the Entire Country. He'd post this over and over (and over (and over))
Does anyone remember that guy? What ever happened to him?
What ever happened, he sure was proved wrong.
ps- speaking of proved wrong, i (gilbar) was pretty loudly stating that:
a) Biden would not run (proved right)
b) Moochelle O'Bama would run instead (boy did *I* guess the wrong horse)
c) Dems winning with OVER a hundred million votes COUNTED (BOY was i WRONG!)
of course, i've admitted several times that *i* was wrong, never heard anything from that other guy
I read the essay earlier, before this post, and shook my head in awe and wonder at the moronic and self-obsessed obtuseness. We can only hope each and every Democrat candidate accepts and acts on the prescriptions.
Who are these would-be wooers of men? Ever wondered about the etymology of "women"? Wonder no more.
Man as in male sex? Man as in masculine gender? Does a man fear and loath the female sex, their feminine gender? Does a father bath with his daughter? Does a father offer his daughter for hookup, as bait? Would a father characterize his daughter's choice as a "burden"? Would a man have voted for Sarah Palin or would class-disordered ideologues stalk her in word and deed? Would a man appoint Tulsi Gabbard as, not a first, not as a Diversity signature, but as a qualified member? Bondi et al. Time to leave Venus, Mars, and pull your head out of Uranus.
I stopped watching Mandalorian when Carano was booted.
This is the way.
Trump ridiculed trans rights, feeding a young male fear that young women were not just surpassing them, but perhaps trying to become them...
Drop the "fear" shit. I doubt there's anything that young men fear about young women other than asking them out for a date. And that fear is nothing new, it's been around forever.
Transgender rights include homosexual, bisexual, etc. rights in context. Why are people so politically congruent ("=")?
As always The New Republic prints a lot of horse dung.
“Non-trans women.” That’s just women. We’re not a subset of our own sex.
"You have a birthright to be in charge, to objectify women, to be head of the household, with a wife at home as full-time housekeeper and child-rearer."
Well, no, Susan, well-raised young men realize that getting a good young woman to marry you and build a home with you is not your birthright, and may, in fact, be more than you are capable of. It's a heavy lift. But I doubt that many of them are likely to look to the Democrats for assistance. The Democrats program is to steal money from men to pay women not to marry them. Message that.
Feminists used to say that "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." They never accepted the converse, that a bicycle doesn't need a fish, either. After a few decades of Democrats blaming men (especially white men) for all the world's problems, only those doing the blaming are surprised that men choose to cast their votes for someone else. It turns out that "I hate you but vote for me" is an ineffective campaign strategy. Who knew?
This is new brilliant DNC strategy. They'll put Pete Buttagegge on it funded by Bill Gates.
Question. Do trans women get erections when they see their biologically female teammates undressing and showering?
Asking for a friend.
They're gonna woo the young male vote by elevating "man"/child David Hogg to DNC vice-chair? BTW, his first act as vice-chair/grifter was to use DNC donor list to beg for money for his Personal PAC
I seem to recall the reaction to Trump winning was Democrat women promising to withhold sex from men until Trump left office. I think that was the message and I got it.
I think men are happy with Republican women.
This is a pretty interesting panel at the university of Chicago institute of politics, featuring Clay Travis! Surprised he wasn’t deplatformed, but I guess the kids are too depressed. Here’s actually allowed to talk about all the anti-man stuff many of us discuss here, and even got some nods of agreement and polite claps:
https://youtu.be/hXb2KlUMBpI?si=y6Z2F9cZYfPF5Nzh
JSM
Of course, you can never assume Men are smart. But assuming some of them have a few brain cells, they might have noticed the Democrats posted a big "No white men - especially Christians - need apply" sign a long time ago.
Of the last 5 democrat SCOTUS justices, you had 1 Jewish man, and 4 females (2 POCs and 2 Jewish). The D's picked a Female black for their VP, after having a Black POTUS. Currently, of the 47 D Senators, 16 are women. Of the 31 men: 17 are white Christians, the rest are jewish or POC's.
The last time the D's had a white male as House leader was 22 years ago.
Harris was completely unqualified to succeed Joe Biden, but she was a woman and black. Hillary wasn't the best candidate but got nominated in 2016. Obama got the nomination in 2008, because he was black.
You can woo the man vote on a date. Men are known to be partial to the opposite, the fairer sex. Some men may empathize, others sympathize, and beware the Martian and Uranusian for they are not what they appear.
The DNC-MSM attitude toward white christian men has been one of fear and loathing for a long time. Now they realize they need their votes, so we're getting some feeble walk back of their real attitude: "Go away white man, your day is over".
Milligan's deluded summary of Trump's supposedly primitive misogyny is yet another instance of Dems refusing to engage with Trump's populist post- feminist messages. He has appointed many women to positions of power. Trump says many debatable things. Debate those things.
Add Susan Millgan's name to the list of people who will continue to learn nothing.
"They deserve to go the way of the Whigs." The era from 1800 - 1824, with four successive Democratic-Republican presidents (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and JQ Adams) was called the "era of good feelings." It started and ended with House-determined elections of 1800 (this one because VP candidate Burr and President candidate Jefferson each got the same number of EV votes pre-12th Amendment, not because Jefferson and Adams, the presidential candidates, got the same number of EV votes) and1824 (where four candidates got EV votes, but one was the House Speaker, Clay, who allowed the House to elect Adams).
I wonder what the historians would call an era where four Republican presidents were elected in a row?
@John: "what the historians would call an era where four Republican presidents were elected in a row?" Point taken, but my quibble would be with counting John Q. Adams as a Democratic-Republican. Obviously, his father's Federalist Party was long dead and buried, but I doubt Jefferson or Jackson would have considered him a Democrat-Republican. Crypto-Federalist? Proto-Whig?
"“Non-trans women.” That’s just women. We’re not a subset of our own sex."
Yeah. That one jumped out at me too. Should we call whites non-African Americans? I once heard a reporter refer to an black man in Canada as an African-American Canadian. Trying to find a path through the language changes in pursuit of power is alternately silly or frustrating.
Ya wanna "woo the man vote" do ya? First ya gotta grow a pair.
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