"The onslaught against [Jane] Doe and her supporters is taken directly from the playbook that established them: Gamergate."

"In 2014, a mostly anonymous digital horde waged a full-scale assault on women working in the gaming industry in an effort to damage their reputations and drive them from their professions. They harassed and doxxed their victims and fabricated and disseminated conspiratorial rumors about them.... Gamergate is a formative origin point for the alt-right, whose members and ideas have been absorbed into what is now called the new right. Once a subset of the broader conservative movement, the intellectuals and policy wonks of the new right, who almost all share atavistic visions of a masculine-obsessed politics, helped pave the way for Mr. Trump’s rise to power.... As a political tactic, resorting to a decade-old strategy of harassment should be evidence that the right’s bag of tricks is painfully meager. It’s also a bit baffling. In the face of a midterm election that could knock Mr. Trump’s presidency down into a posture of feeble lameness, the right’s online surrogates are instead burning crucial bandwidth on a grotesque persecution of a sympathetic woman — all while pushing a scolding grievance message about sexual values that is more likely to scare away new voters than bring them into the tent...."

Writes Nathan Taylor Pemberton, in "I Have Never Seen the Online Right So Happy" (NYT).

"The traditional gender gap is losing ground as a key factor in politics to intragender gaps that have emerged among Republican and Democratic voters along the fault lines of masculinity and femininity."

Asserts Thomas Edsall, in "The Gender Gap Has Taken a Strange Twist" (NYT).

I'm not agreeing (or disagreeing) with this take. I just thought you should know:

Men — specifically white men — who see themselves as extremely masculine tend to support President Trump, while those who are weaker in their assessment of their masculinity — or in how they think about masculinity — are far less likely to support Trump. The gap between the two is just as significant if not more significant than the gender gap.

A similar, but more complex spread has emerged among women....

Are there men who think of themselves as "extremely masculine"? That made me think of this: 

Who is he talking about?!

Pod Save America says if the stakes are high enough, you can use the word 'F*ggot'

"Do I think it's great if a boss calls an employee a 'f*ggot? The stakes are too high.
There's not a gay guy from Austin to underneath the docks in Provincetown who wouldn't be happily called a… pic.twitter.com/gw5289GEoi

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) September 27, 2026

I had to look it up.

The NYT had this: "‘She’s One of Us’: Mary Peltola’s Bumpy Rise to Political Power/Ms. Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska, has complicated politics: She is pro-gun, pro-oil and pro-gas — but also pro-environment and especially pro-fish" (gift link).

And Jonathan Chait wrote this about the NYT piece in: "Another Female Democrat Is Mean, Apparently/A New York Times report on Representative Mary Peltola’s management is revealing—about her younger employees’ self-regard" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

The story does contain one bona fide example of improper behavior—an allegation that she sometimes used the slur faggot. Four former staff members report directly hearing her use the word. If true, it certainly reflects poorly on her. The Peltola campaign denied that she’d used the slur....

So that's the foundation for the crude joking in the podcast. He's talking about Mary Peltola.

"There's something about when [women who don't have kids] get past the reproductive age that they get like very invested in politics."

"It's, like, you don't even have a world to protect. You don't have children. So you don't have a world to make better for the children. And you got maybe 20 years left, right?... You'll be 77/78 years old and you'll probably be basically dead.... So why are you so invested in all the other people's problems of the world when your life is a fucking mess? Because you've infantilized the world. You've turned the culture into your children and that's why they're scolding. That's the scolding aspect that you get... And... from men that don't have children. They get older, they get a there's a scolding political aspect of it. They never had children. Instead of just, like, having opinions on things and being able to debate your opinions of why you think that way, there's a scolding of people who disagree...."

A theory of gender politics, from Joe Rogan.

The idea seems to be that women — not all women, but most — are natural scolds, and if they don't have children to scold, they're going to range freely, looking for adults to scold.

"... Americans love to turn to women when the house is burning down. Social scientists call it the glass cliff — the phenomenon in which women are recruited to lead failing companies."

"President Trump’s businessman brand of governance has many Americans feeling this nation is failing. I suppose the dumpster fire of climate denialism, political corruption and general scamminess of, well, everything would be dire enough circumstances to make a female president possible.  In particular, Democrats — whom you might expect to be wary of placing another female candidate before the American public — are facing a political disaster of their own making.... [A] lot of Democrats are faithful to conventional political wisdom that they cannot win the White House by running from the left. Ocasio-Cortez is made for this moment....  As we learned in 2008, when history says it’s your time, it’s your time."

Writes Tressie McMillan Cottom, in "Is Ocasio-Cortez Ready for the Glass Cliff?" (NYT gift link).

"This is no different from what the Heritage Foundation wants for women in the US. Except maybe instead of burqas..."

"... they want us in milk maid dresses, heavy hideous makeup, plastic surgery and naked. And it's actually worse when I think about their plans for society as a whole with illiteracy, poisoned food, toxic 'health' care, etc. Separation of religion and state must happen to even attempt a free society. This is why this concept exists."

A highly rated contribution to the comments section for "Afghan Women Erased From Public Life in Five Years of Taliban Rule/Decrees restricting the rights of women and girls to study, work, travel and act independently now threaten to damage Afghanistan permanently, experts say" (NYT gift link).

They should have stood by Platner. Now they have to stand by Jackson, the new guy who's being foisted on Mainers.

No sooner did Maine Democrats converge on Troy Jackson as the one to replace the man that won the primary than things like this come out: "Democrat set to replace Platner in Maine led state Senate with a temper/Troy Jackson, the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), yelled and cursed at fellow state lawmakers, interviews reveal" (WaPo)(gift link).

Troy Jackson, a powerful Maine legislator now running for Senate, once angrily threw a water bottle in a meeting after he couldn’t persuade a lawmaker to vote his way. He yelled at another lawmaker, prompting her to post on social media that straight men were “too emotional” to be in politics. And he cursed and shouted in a meeting with the speaker of Maine’s state House, until she kicked him out of her office. During the six years Jackson presided over Maine’s Senate, until he left office in 2024, his temper was a feature of his leadership, and one that Democratic lawmakers discussed among themselves as a problem and even raised with the governor.... [S]ome Democrats fear that Jackson’s history of conflicts with women lawmakers could hurt him in the general election against Republican Sen. Susan Collins, given that she has won past elections in the consistently blue state by appealing to independent and left-leaning women.

He only yells at women. He doesn't rape them.

Top comment over there — guess: 

"Pete Hegseth wants a manly military. And he really, really wants you to know how badly he wants a manly military."

"In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth worried that the military risked becoming 'effeminate, and apologetic'; he insisted that what liberals really want is 'soft men, and a weak military,' and he scolded 'Pentagon pussies' who refuse to stand up for soldiers on the battlefield. As secretary of defense, Hegseth has blocked the promotion of female military officers, removed the first woman to lead the Navy, and ordered a review of women’s 'effectiveness' in ground-combat roles. He has also used the Defense Department’s social-media channels to post a steady stream of tougher-than-thou videos...."

So begins the Atlantic article, "Pete Hegseth Wants YOU to Test Your Testosterone/The secretary of defense has a questionable plan to monitor the hormone levels of every service member over 30" (gift link).

"Platner’s Rise and Fall Revives Old Questions About ‘Bernie Bros’ and Women."

A NYT piece by Patricia Mazzei and Kellen Browning.

I have to stop and remember what "Bernie Bros" were... other than name-calling coming from — if I remember correctly — the Hillary Clinton camp.

I see I have a tag "Bernie Bro," and the main post, quite helpfully, is "Where did it come from — this myth of 'Bernie bros'? It's from February 9, 2016. I wrote:

I'm seeing articles like "Bill Clinton Accuses Bernie Bros of Sexism." But what are "Bernie Bros"?

So this is precisely what I want to read before ingesting that new NYT piece.

"Cory Upton-Cosulich sat in a parked car by a hiking trail in Maine this week, fuming over the implosion of Graham Platner’s Senate campaign."

"Her anger wasn’t directed at him. It was aimed at the powerful people far away from her working-class harbor town who, one after the next, had rescinded their endorsements of a candidate she supported in the Democratic primary last month. The feeling was familiar — watching people in Washington decide who should represent her. She said she believed the woman who had accused Mr. Platner.... She decided to support him anyway, because he had promised to work on her behalf, and she believed him... [S]ome women in this independent-minded slice of the country who powered the progressive upstart’s meteoric rise are angry and grieving.... Several women said they recognized Mr. Platner’s swaggering style from men in their lives who had hurt them. They supported him anyway...."

From "Why Some Women in Maine Are Mourning the End of Graham Platner’s Campaign/They believe the accuser, but they also grieve the demise of a campaign that promised that politics could be different — and they blame those who failed to find a less flawed candidate" (NYT).

"Ms. Upton-Cosulich, 40... a mother, a pottery studio owner and a survivor of abuse... was in the kitchen of the house she cannot afford to buy when she learned that Mr. Platner had suspended his campaign. The feeling reminded her of 2016, when she read reports that officials with the Democratic National Committee had privately derided and mocked her preferred presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont...."

"You said: He's your kind of man."

CNBC host calls out Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Host: "You campaigned with Graham Platner… you said, 'He's your kind of man.' … This is a guy who had a chest tattoo with a N*zi symbol… It's a guy that reportedly wrote 'people concerned about r*pe should take some responsibility… pic.twitter.com/zcy7r7BqnW

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) April 22, 2026

You can see that's from back in April, but it appeared at the top of the feed when I clicked on the "Platner" trend in the sidebar at X.

The timing of all of this matters. What did they know and when did they know it? Did they hold the accuser back and then let her loose? Look at Jake Tapper seeming to want something of an answer:

NEW: Woman who accused Graham Platner of r*ping her says America needs someone with his political stances in office, says his videos fired her up.

Jake Tapper: There are gonna be people who say this is politically motivated. What would you say to that?

Accuser Jenny Racicot:… pic.twitter.com/7jYk2i7oBg

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 6, 2026

I'm less interested in the random oysterman than I am in the Democratic Party leadership, what they were up to, and what they are doing now. It's so much like the story of Joe Biden's candidacy in 2024. They let the primary process occur, propped the guy up while democracy was in play, let the people expend their power to choose, and then and only then a fatal defect got exposed, and the people's choice had to withdraw himself. The Party got to insert their candidate, someone who never had to face the test of the primary. I want to hold the Party responsible for what it did. Was it just idiotically searching around for a "masculine" man and infatuated with his oysters? Did it cynically select him and think the people don't care about sexual misdeeds anymore — the #MeToo era is over and it's time to go for those "manosphere" votes?

ADDED: When I first clicked on this, I thought it was a humor sketch. The creaky voice on this Moraff character is something else: 

Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate by a pair of socialist political operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who determined that another prospective candidate had “a skeleton in the closet.”

The Wall Street Journal published a rare interview with the duo on Sunday… pic.twitter.com/tbmOE5nxJX

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 8, 2026

AND: Scott Jennings puts it well:

Democrats fully vetted Graham Platner, happily signed off on his incredibly disturbing history to win a Senate seat, and are only pretending to be shocked now because they can no longer rationalize the hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/jkp12Gwv16

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) July 7, 2026

"[S]o much of what I see online and so much of what I hear women say is, 'Men are trash.'"

Says Nadja Spiegelman in "America Has a Masculinity Crisis/A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today" (NYT).

She continues: "Sabrina Carpenter said that the key to her songwriting is just to call men stupid in as many ways as you can. I really understand where women’s anger comes from. I have lived it. But I also feel so much tenderness for my brother, for other men I know. And if I were hearing the same kinds of messages in reverse that were just, 'Women are trash,' I wouldn’t know how to begin to approach the world. And so I wonder how — specifically on the left, because I think that there are different answers to this on the right — specifically on the left, which is where I hear men are trashed the most loudly, what effect is this having on boys? Do they hear it? Do they feel it? Is it empowering for women? Is there another way to approach this?"

The women-empowering-women genre of political ad.

This new Spencer Pratt ad may be somewhat innovative in its forthright use of AI:

“You are not alone.” Yoga moms, silent majority, and a preference cascade all in one. Whether or not Angelenos elect @spencerpratt as LA mayor, he and his team are revolutionizing politics. pic.twitter.com/l4pwOSmNUH

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) May 17, 2026

But it reminded me of something else that got plenty of attention not too long ago. I'll bet you remember this Kamala Harris ad:

Both ads depict women as inhibited in expressing their personal political preference but speaking woman-to-woman and conquering that inhibition. 

"And it is a vicious cycle: the more women and non-binary people do the overwhelming majority of resistance work..."

"... the more men take in the wrong-headed message that this work is not for them...."

Writes Saul Austerlitz, author of "How to Assemble an Activist," in "How do we get more men to join the anti-Trump resistance? My activist group is about 80% women. Where did all the men go – and how can we get them back?" (Guardian).

My first thought was: Don't push the "and non-binary people" talk. But anyway isn't it funny that you're so vitally interested in the male/female split and simultaneously hot to insert "and non-binary people"? 

"My unscientific conclusion is that the men who have already drifted away, whatever their reasons, are unlikely to come back. Instead, now is an ideal time to extend an invitation to the men in our circles who hover on the edges, shouting fruitlessly at their TV screen or social-media feed, not knowing yet how much good they can do – or how much better they will feel

"Most striking, Mr. Newsom has drawn on the idiom of the manosphere and online right, communities noted for their unembarrassed racism and misogyny."

"In July, he called Mr. Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller a 'fascist cuck,' the latter being a term used to fault men for lacking sexual power and racial pride. In March, his press account shared a video of Mr. Newsom with the caption 'mog or get mogged.' This term describes a man who shows himself to be physically superior to other men and thus the 'alpha male of the group,' or AMOG, who 'mogs' lesser men.The most startling example of Mr. Newsom’s strategy came last week when he posted an image on social media comparing his looks to those of the immaculately groomed fictional villain Patrick Bateman, as played by Christian Bale in the 2000 film 'American Psycho.' The Bateman character, a serial killer whose hatred of women is rivaled only by his contempt for Black people, has become an object of fascination for the manosphere and online right, with memes coursing across X and TikTok.... The point is not that Mr. Newsom secretly desires the subjugation of women or minorities.... The point is that he is responding to a political and cultural energy that has shifted away from the celebration of feminism and diversity and toward the concerns of alienated, and especially white, men...."

Writes Matthew Schmitz, in "For Democrats, the Era of the Girl Dad and Male Ally Is Over" (NYT).

"For almost the entirety of her married life, she has had to answer questions about her husband’s action."

"She has supported him throughout. There is no reason for her to have to suffer this last indignity. She has nothing to do with it. It is infuriating. She is a global icon, a trailblazer for women. It is heartbreaking that she has to do this."

Said Patti Solis Doyle, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton, quoted in "For Hillary Clinton, an Epstein Deposition Is the Latest ‘Stand by Your Man’ Moment/The former first lady, senator and secretary of state had no dealings with Jeffrey Epstein but is once again under pressure to answer for the actions and relationships of her husband" (NYT).

Should "a trailblazer for women" vouch for a man who has abused women? But maybe what Hillary knows is that no abuse was involved within Bill's relationship to Jeffrey.

Mr. Clinton had a relationship with Mr. Epstein years before Mr. Epstein’s sex crimes conviction. The former president took four trips on Mr. Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003 and appears in photographs in the files released by the Justice Department. But Mrs. Clinton did not. She has said that she “cannot recall ever speaking to Epstein,” and that she met Ghislaine Maxwell, his longtime associate, only a few times. During the period when Mr. Clinton was building the Clinton Global Initiative and interacting with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, Mrs. Clinton “was busy being a U.S. senator,” said Ms. Doyle, who worked for her at the time. “She was not involved.”

I wonder if the members of Congress will be satisfied with the assertion that to be a member of Congress is to be too busy to get into mischief. 

Extremely humbled.

For the very concerned media - yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys- Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth.…

— Kash Patel (@Kash_Patel) February 23, 2026

Background: "FBI Director Kash Patel defends partying with U.S. Olympic ice hockey team/Videos of Patel celebrating in Italy went viral Sunday night, prompting criticism and questions about his judgment during a critical time for the FBI" (WaPo)(gift link).

The video:

A source sent me this video of FBI Director Kash Patel partying with the US Men's Olympic Hockey team. pic.twitter.com/egjmdhOAF6

— William Turton (@WilliamTurton) February 22, 2026

Meanwhile: "U.S. women’s hockey team declines Trump’s State of the Union invitation/The players 'were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgement,' according to a team statement that cited previously scheduled commitments" (WaPo).

That's putting it very politely.

This is also polite, articulate silence:

"Don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you’re competitive."

Said JD Vance, last year, quoted today in "Bench Presses, Pull Ups … Kid Rock? The White House Had a Very Manly Week/President Trump’s top cabinet officials are pumping iron in public" (NYT).

The Vance quote appears near the end of the article, right after: "Mr. Trump’s latest masculinity proclamations sum up this administration’s hard-line approach to maleness, where the most powerful men in the country can just relax and be men who appreciate other men — in a strictly manly way, of course."

Right after the Vance quote, we get: "All of this hints at a powerful political current that politicians like Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump instinctively know how to channel."

The article ends with 2 quotes from law professor Joan C. Williams: "One of the only arrows in [Trump's] quiver is being the man" and "Picking wars all around the world, that’s what’s really going on."

It's not fair to judge the NYT article — by Katie Rogers — without watching this for context:

BawitMAHA https://t.co/npFlS2NxTo

— HHS (@HHSGov) February 17, 2026

ADDED: "Let’s Talk About RFK Jr.’s Workout Pants/Our health secretary is a jeans guy, and he knows it" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

Have you experienced this "Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right" or is the NYT pushing it at us to foment contempt for conservatives?

I'm reading "After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right/Vocal Trump supporters are demonizing Renee Good, her partner and their allies, with some even using an acronym: AWFUL, or Affluent White Female Urban Liberal" by Clyde McGrady.

I hadn't seen this term, and I read all sorts of things every day, so that makes me think this term isn't really a thing... though I've certainly noticed that people of the right are passing around a lot of videos of highly emotional left-wing white women.

But then I asked Meade, and he had heard the term and it seems to be catching on. 

Needless to say, I don't like the term. I don't like expressions of contempt and I don't like commentators  trading on the idea that women are over-emotional. I also don't like freaking out and yelling in public (or at home), but you can say just that, without contributing to sex-based hatred. 

Despite that NYT headline, McGrady's column isn't really about the term AWFUL. It's more about the phenomenon of going after activist liberal white women:

"It wasn’t long ago that casual contempt for white women was the domain of the left, at least that part of the left that took books like 'White Fragility' seriously."

"So it’s striking how easily conservatives, who’ve been stewing over insults to white people for at least five years, have singled out a group of white women as the enemy. But it also makes sense, because everyone hates an apostate. In the right-wing imagination, these women are acting like harpies — an epithet often seen online — when they’re supposed to be helpmeets. Fox News’s Will Cain described a 'weird kind of smugness' in the way 'some of these liberal white women interact with authority.' For MAGA, ICE’s eagerness to put women in their place might be a feature, not a bug."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "The Right Is Furious With Liberal White Women" (NYT).

There's a link on "casual contempt for white women." It goes to a 2020 BBC article about the mythic figure known as Karen — "What exactly is a 'Karen' and where did the meme come from?"

Contempt toward women is pervasive throughout the world and throughout history, but it can also be a special left-or-right problem happening at particular times and in particular places. Social media keeps feeding me videos of women acting hyper-privileged and oblivious of the risk or screaming and losing her mind over practically nothing.