A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right

00:00:00.000 The left doesn't want you to spit on that thing.

00:00:08.480 Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity, the podcast where my philosophy on sex has always

00:00:16.720 been the same. You should have as much of it as you want, especially if it's gay. Earlier this 1.00

00:00:22.660 month, a 26-year-old semi-successful right-wing social media influencer named Ashley St. Clair

00:00:29.980 made an announcement. Ashley is perhaps best known for her anti-trans children's book

00:00:37.300 called Elephants Are Not Birds, which, you guessed it, is about a young elephant who is tricked into

00:00:45.160 thinking he can become a bird. Elephants Are Not Birds is published by Brave Books, a right-wing

00:00:52.240 book publisher that, quote, partners with people of moral integrity to teach complex Christian and

00:00:59.280 conservative values. And so on Valentine's Day, just a few days ago, Ashley St. Clair's announcement

00:01:07.120 to the world was this. Maura, would you like to read it so we can get like a woman? The feminine

00:01:12.240 touch. Yeah. Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father. 0.78

00:01:19.540 I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child's privacy and safety. But in recent days,

00:01:25.120 it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so regardless of the harm it will cause.

00:01:30.900 I intend to allow our child to grow in a normal and safe environment. For that reason, I ask that

00:01:36.320 the media honor our child's privacy and refrain from invasive reporting. And at the bottom, it

00:01:41.360 says, media, Brian Gilclitch, Digital Strategy Limited, brian at digitalstrategylimited.com.

00:01:48.380 That was really good. That was good. You're ready to play the Ashley St. Clair

00:01:54.480 biopic. Yes, absolutely. I'm gunning for that role. This would be Elon Musk's 13th child with

00:02:01.940 a total of four different women. Since the announcement, Ashley's become the subject of

00:02:07.180 enormous waves of every possible reaction, from congratulations to just about everything you'd

00:02:13.960 imagine the internet would have to say about a relatively obscure young woman who births a famous

00:02:18.960 man's child out of wedlock. And to be clear, I am no fan nor friend of Ashley St. Clair. But,

00:02:26.620 you know, she seems to be going through a lot. And Elon has been quiet. Elon's only public

00:02:32.220 acknowledgement of any of this so far has been in response to a tweet from longtime gay neo-Nazi

00:02:37.800 Milo Yiannopoulos, who tweeted that Ashley, a 26-year-old, I'm 26. I'm 26. What am I doing?

00:02:45.260 I could be having Elon Musk's child. I played my cards right. Myler Yiannopoulos tweeted that

00:02:50.220 Ashley, a 26-year-old, has been scheming for, quote, over half a decade to trap Elon into

00:02:56.760 having a child with her. To which Elon responded, one word, whoa. I haven't been around that long,

00:03:04.600 but even when I was a kid, a story like this would have been the only thing that anyone in

00:03:10.080 america talks about for months yet now it feels anodyne like you probably haven't even heard about

00:03:17.060 it in a time when some of the biggest brands associated with the new right are barstool and

00:03:22.760 ufc fighting and when half of the president's cabinet is actively fighting against their own

00:03:27.960 sexual assault allegations and of course when the president himself is a decades-long serial 0.55

00:03:33.360 cheater and sexual predator this story broke and it's kind of just like you know happy valentine's 0.74

00:03:39.800 I often make jokes online about the erosion of traditional conservative values within the party

00:03:46.300 that's for decades branded itself as the party of traditional conservative values.

00:03:51.500 But it's all starting to feel like that erosion is a feature, not a bug, of the party.

00:03:56.660 And that's what I want to talk about in today's episode.

00:03:58.860 To do that today, I have invited two friends and fellow podcasters,

00:04:02.960 Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub are hosts of In Bed with the Right,

00:04:07.500 a podcast about the rights ideas on gender and sex and sexuality, which I've actually been on.

00:04:13.460 So for some reason, you want to hear more of me, you can go listen to my episode over there.

00:04:18.920 And I am so excited to have you here. You guys are experts on whatever is going on here. So

00:04:25.240 thank you for joining. Thank you so much for having us.

00:04:28.320 It's so nice to be here, Matt.

00:04:29.720 Moira, before we started recording, you said that you have been

00:04:32.380 following this Ashley St. Clair-Elon new child debacle ravenously? Would you like to share any

00:04:39.420 insights? Yes, I think my metaphor was that I was like rubbernecking on the highway when you

00:04:44.560 slow down to look at a hideous car wreck because you can't look away. Yeah, I think that Ashley

00:04:50.100 St. Clair is kind of a tragic figure, although I definitely agree with you, Matt, that you don't

00:04:56.660 have to hand it to or sympathize with her. But I think her position right now represents really

00:05:03.360 clearly what the right sexual politics offers to women, what women think they can get out of 0.66

00:05:10.460 manipulating a right-wing code of sexuality and adopting a right-wing persona. And then it also 0.97

00:05:18.280 shows how the right does not live up to those promises, right? So Ashley St. Clair made what

00:05:25.820 some feminist sociologists have termed like a patriarchal bargain, right? Which is that she 1.00

00:05:31.540 thought, you know, I'm attributing some motivation to her. We know relatively little about Ashley

00:05:38.980 and her relationship with Elon Musk beyond like what she told, say, the New York Post,

00:05:44.460 which I did read every word of twice. But, you know, let's give all these parties the benefit

00:05:50.220 the doubt here and say we don't really quite know much, but we can sort of assume that somebody in

00:05:56.680 Ashley St. Clair's position thought that being with Elon Musk and by extension having a child

00:06:03.300 with Elon Musk, you know, which we know that he very much wants, would grant her a degree of

00:06:08.700 security and status, right? She thought that by providing this man with her sexual favors and

00:06:17.960 reproductive labor that she would earn his protection. She thought that he would support 0.75

00:06:24.680 the child that they had together. She thought that she would benefit personally from his largesse,

00:06:30.760 either in the form of monetary support or in the form of employment or in the form of, you know,

00:06:37.620 promotion of her projects. You know, she thought that she was making a deal, right? I will have

00:06:45.320 this relationship with you. I will have this baby with you in exchange for these other goods,

00:06:52.140 these other protections. And I think this is like a very common sort of assumption or logic among

00:06:58.620 right-wing women, right? They think they're buying into a degree of being protected and being 0.99

00:07:05.140 provided for. And what we see with Elon Musk is that he immediately did not hold up his end of

00:07:11.440 the bargain, right? So I think there's like a couple of critiques you can make of this patriarchal

00:07:16.160 bargain that actually say Claire made. One is that it's immoral, right? It trades on bad values for

00:07:23.180 the sake of personal gain, right? This is somebody who was, you know, very willing to target, say,

00:07:30.940 transgender children, and I'm guessing also transgender adults, right? This is somebody who,

00:07:35.560 as a writer for the Babylon Bee, was willing to be really kind of mocking and cruel towards

00:07:42.160 particularly LGBT efforts for like dignity and equality, right? So like, again, you don't have 0.78

00:07:47.060 to hand it to her. But this is also somebody who thought that by allying with the right,

00:07:52.120 that she could get something for herself, right? So that's self-interest at the expense of other

00:07:56.760 people. But the other critique that you can make is not really a moral one so much as a pragmatic

00:08:02.540 one, which is that it didn't even work for her. Right. Like she sold her soul and didn't get paid

00:08:07.900 for it. And this is, I think, something that a lot of right wing women find is that the transaction 1.00

00:08:15.160 that is offered to them by this emerging right wing sexual politics is one in which they don't 1.00

00:08:20.560 actually get their end of the deal. Like if you think about it, it's such a pervasive trope on,

00:08:27.720 You know, you mentioned the sort of the barstool rite, which is it's out of pickup artist culture, where basically it's not just about control over women.

00:08:36.320 It's not just control over their bodies.

00:08:38.340 It is also not really even entering into a bargain with them.

00:08:42.520 Right. Like any any demands on you that might arise from it actually show that you've lost.

00:08:48.220 Right. And and I think tweet exchange that you you cited in Caesar of Yiannopoulos and Musk sort of play the ball to each other.

00:08:57.080 like that's it right there they're sort of trying to figure out a way to negate this feeling that

00:09:03.100 maybe they might owe or that at least musk might owe this lady something uh on on account of you

00:09:08.080 know the child no you got to get away from that because that would be a form of weakness that

00:09:12.420 would be a form of of dependency that would be holding back sort of his bizarre kind of version

00:09:19.760 of masculinity yeah you know i think that's an interesting note adrian because transactional

00:09:25.660 sexual arrangements, like the one that we're attributing to Elon Musk and Ashley St. Clair.

00:09:31.920 You know, there's all kinds of ways in which, you know, feminists have critiqued these 1.00

00:09:35.580 transactions as dehumanizing, etc. But when you're paying somebody for a service, 1.00

00:09:41.280 that implies that they have a claim on you, right? And I think that Elon Musk's vision

00:09:47.020 of masculinity and of sexuality can't brook any claims by women on him, right? Like making a

00:09:53.760 transactional deal with another person implies that they can expect something that you might

00:09:59.560 owe something to them. And that itself might be seen by somebody like Musk as a degradation or

00:10:05.120 an erosion of his masculinity. Yeah. When Elon made that sole contribution to the conversation

00:10:11.660 around his alleged 13th child when he just wrote, whoa, Ashley St. Clair, did you guys see what she

00:10:18.600 responded in a tweet morris saw this i want you to i want you to tell us okay wait do a dramatic

00:10:24.060 reading please elon we have been trying to communicate for the past several days and you

00:10:28.120 have not responded when are you going to reply to us instead of publicly responding to smears

00:10:32.940 from an individual who just posted photos of me in underwear at 15 years old notably after like

00:10:39.000 i don't even think a day this tweet was deleted and so i think what you can infer from that was

00:10:44.500 that there was some sort of back-channel agreement between Elon Musk's team and whoever was

00:10:50.760 representing Ashley St. Clair to have her take this down. Would you say that's probable?

00:10:55.720 It seems totally plausible. You know, it could have been that she was offered something in

00:11:01.520 exchange for this. It could have been that she was threatened. It could have been that she just

00:11:06.040 got scared. Moira, what you said is true. She's tragic.

00:11:09.280 Can we talk about that children's book? I haven't been able to get a hold of it yet,

00:11:12.280 but i'm i'm kind of interested because i've been i've had occasion to read a lot of children's

00:11:16.260 books recently a children's book should set the it's like open up your imagination it should like

00:11:21.140 set the world alight with meaning and possibility not be like well this isn't that so you know get

00:11:27.340 it in your heads kids right it's like it's you know hella transphobic but it's also just like 0.82

00:11:32.720 an absolute failure as a as a children's book what's next you can't fly fairies aren't real 0.99

00:11:38.320 you know like i mean like who the fuck buys this for their kids like yeah i gotta crush their 0.97

00:11:42.900 spirit when they're young well the whole i mean you did you see that uh julianne moore's book 0.99

00:11:48.080 julianne moore the actress she co-authored a children's book about a seven-year-old girl

00:11:53.720 with freckles who hates her freckles and then learns that because they make her different and

00:11:59.400 unique they make her special and good and this is currently under review and in the process of being

00:12:06.580 taken out of libraries in military schools by the Department of Defense, they want to replace that

00:12:14.200 with books like this that just tell you like, actually, you can't achieve your dreams. It's

00:12:17.980 not even about being transgender. It's like you cannot imagine. You cannot imagine a world of 1.00

00:12:23.900 difference. You can't aspire to anything because it's all in service of trying to create this

00:12:28.420 monoculture and it's just so fascist. But there is a whole industry of these

00:12:33.440 right-wing children's books telling children not to dream big, not to be themselves, not to

00:12:39.620 think differently. You know, it is kind of a militant intellectual foreclosure, right,

00:12:46.440 that is extending even to these most anodyne and innocent realms as like literal children's books.

00:12:54.600 Yeah, it's just beating young people into submission, which like, I don't know, 0.92

00:12:59.220 like we're all gay here right Maury you're gay yeah yeah we're all gay we're all gay here like I 0.97

00:13:04.500 feel like growing up as a gay kid you know exactly what it's like to be beat into submission and they 0.97

00:13:08.720 just want to do that to the you know most extreme level it's not even enough to be straight you have 0.99

00:13:13.180 to be like a million other things as well this is something that we come back to on the pod all the

00:13:17.100 time that like it's heterosexuality as the eternally moving goalpost right like oh you're 0.97

00:13:21.980 straight in the basic sense that you want to have sex with someone of a different gender congratulations 0.99

00:13:27.380 anyway it's not enough you got to be like you're right now you're a beta cuck so now you got to do 0.99

00:13:32.600 this oh like did you buy her flowers you can't do that uh right and like eventually like even 0.99

00:13:37.400 paying her child support is like basically a sign that you're not masculine enough you're gay

00:13:42.080 yeah right i mean like think of all these we we love this is like a sort of side line we have on 0.99

00:13:48.300 the podcast of just like foregrounding tweets of like fellas is it gay to have sex with taylor 0.99

00:13:53.480 swift fellas is it gay to have sex with your wife fellas is it gay to right and like and you're like 0.99

00:13:59.000 at this point all this is is that like it's these grifters online that basically tell mostly young 0.99

00:14:06.600 men i think that like however you're doing masculinity is not really masculinity and now 0.96

00:14:13.280 i'm inventing this like insane thing where i eat like a raw fucking liver or whatever on on youtube 0.85

00:14:18.700 like it's not a goal to be reached it's not a standard to be attained it's just about the 0.93

00:14:25.900 moving of the goalposts i think and it's it's always a process the goalposts are moved so as 0.98

00:14:33.360 to eliminate joy right it's not just like fellas is it gay to have sex with your wife it's andrew 0.93

00:14:39.720 tate's admonition that you know sex should not last more than i think it was three minutes he 0.99

00:14:45.880 said wait if sex lasts longer than three minutes then it's gay yes this is something enter tate 0.90

00:14:50.780 tweeted which is you know paradigmatic of this attitude that to be truly straight to be truly 0.94

00:14:58.060 aspirational in this like emerging right-wing sexual politics needs to be purged of affection

00:15:06.280 or even or like playfulness or even just like like pleasure itself that pleasure can't come 0.94

00:15:12.820 from anything other than the domination and the exercise of a superior status over women

00:15:20.340 for the straight man. I think Adrienne is right that it's a continually receding horizon, 0.97

00:15:26.280 but the recession of that horizon is about making this bleaker and bleaker and bleaker and more and

00:15:31.700 more angry. If I've had gay sex that is shorter than three minutes because it's like wild and 0.99

00:15:36.720 spontaneous. Is that straight? That's actually straight. Congratulations. Nice. Nice. I should 0.99

00:15:44.000 say Claire would be so proud of you. I did it. I did it, Ashley. I did it, Ashley.

00:15:50.560 So I wanted to make this episode in tandem with other recent episodes I've made about

00:15:55.920 the sort of cultural rebrand of the Republican Party, I think especially as it's become the

00:16:01.820 Trump party. You know, political parties aren't static in policy or cultural branding. They're

00:16:08.620 amorphous. This has been my take, at least. You know, Republicans were famously the party that

00:16:14.260 ended slavery, as they so often love to tout as a party accomplishment. Even though the political

00:16:19.840 parties have realigned across so many different lines since then, that that's just basically

00:16:25.680 meaningless posturing at this point. Obviously, Republicans have become the white nationalist

00:16:30.580 Party. Democrats, on the other hand, have gone from just, you know, eight to 10 years ago,

00:16:36.360 having the slogan, no human being is illegal, to we are tougher on the border than Republicans are.

00:16:42.960 These are all just groups of people trying to accrue power and willing to rebrand as they see

00:16:48.600 fit. And I don't know, I felt like I wanted to start this episode with that premise, because

00:16:54.500 it makes it easier to understand how the cultural approach from Republicans towards sex as this 0.57

00:17:02.080 white Christian purity thing to this wild reproductive race. We love Hawk Tua. These 0.84

00:17:09.620 are all just ploys at drawing as many people into the fold with whatever's popular in any given

00:17:14.940 moment, I feel like. Do you think that's a fair place to start? Yeah, I think you're right,

00:17:19.560 matt we're undergoing this like really broad realignment in uh american politics where both

00:17:27.440 parties are shifting to the right the republican party shifting very dramatically to the right and

00:17:32.600 the republican parties or the democratic party rather rather sort of like limping behind them

00:17:37.240 like you know injured and bleeding yeah like wait up like i kid brother but like then you also get

00:17:43.320 the specific sort of schizophrenic realignment of sexual politics and like sexual and family

00:17:51.080 aspiration on the right, where I think there's a lot of like competing and sometimes conflicting

00:17:57.280 sexual ideas emerging on the right wing right now. And it's not totally making sense, but it's all

00:18:05.880 like very gross, right? And there's a lot of different visions of what sex and the family

00:18:11.720 can and should be emerging in the MAGA right and what we might call like the doge right or the tech

00:18:18.260 right that don't necessarily look like what we might think of as a traditionally like Reaganite

00:18:23.960 James Dobson kind of Christian family values model. Following the right wing, especially the

00:18:31.040 right wing culture warriors lately, it's like, okay, they want to bring back, you know, hot 0.98

00:18:37.860 sexual women but they are against contraception and recreational sex they want to repopulate the 0.99

00:18:45.600 world with as many of elon musk's children as possible but they're against having children 1.00

00:18:50.880 outside of wedlock you need to be modest but you need to be sexy and it's just like what are we

00:18:57.320 doing here yeah i think the whole narrative of a capture of the republican party can be overstated

00:19:02.620 but you know there is still kind of a professional party out there or if you think of like a senator

00:19:07.760 like if you think of like i don't know like a marco rubio um who are trying to sort of triangulate

00:19:12.800 against this online right that they clearly share a lot in common with but whose language they don't

00:19:17.900 fully speak right like if you think of like the weird way marco rubio tried to sort of get into

00:19:22.980 like masculinity contests with donald trump and you're like oh my god buddy this is clearly a 0.85

00:19:28.140 foreign language to you don't don't even try this is pathetic um but what i think you're getting 0.92

00:19:34.000 as more and more of the beating heart of the right wing really is the online right. And I think 0.97

00:19:40.540 in the case of J.D. Vance, you can sort of tell what happens when that just straight up enters

00:19:45.280 the White House, is a kind of sexual politics that's far more reactive or that can identify

00:19:52.080 itself or understand itself only as a reaction, right? Now, obviously, like Moira will tell you

00:19:58.560 that, you know, all of sort of 70s social conservatism was a response to the feminist

00:20:04.160 movement and the civil rights movement. But this is a response, I think, in a different way in that

00:20:09.100 it can feel joy. It can take enjoyment in its own positions only if it thinks it's offending you,

00:20:15.500 right? I think that's what Hawk Tua is all about, right? Like, full disclosure, I hope I can speak

00:20:20.220 for you, Moira. Like, we thought that was delightful. I know. I thought she was kind

00:20:24.420 of cute and now i like that she's a crypto scammer although but but they needed to imagine that we 0.99

00:20:32.180 would be like how dare you spit on that thing yeah don't spit on that thing betty friedan 0.99

00:20:38.860 didn't die so that you could spit on that thing yeah the left doesn't want you to spit on that 0.89

00:20:44.400 thang. I would like to take a quick break from the show to thank NordVPN for sponsoring today's 0.71

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00:21:29.760 Networks that are comparatively less secure than the one that I have at home while I'm using the Internet just as personally.

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00:22:40.880 And now, let's get back to it.

00:22:43.240 I think there's a way in which, you know, in the 1960s and 70s, the new left had the mantle of sexual liberation. Right. And then that led us, you know, I'm abbreviating a lot of history and like conflicted internal movement politics.

00:23:00.480 But that led us nicely into the 1980s when the AIDS crisis combined with the like sort of post-sexual revolution sort of backlash to the new left made the perfect storm for a very particular and very historically contingent kind of right-wing sexual politics, right?

00:23:22.100 We had a Christian version of conservatism claiming to be defending a traditional family, which was in fact the invention of like two generations before. Right. Against what were perceived as these new and dangerous and excessive cultural trends on the left. Right. 0.61

00:23:41.860 And that found its purchase in a really like kind of sadistic sexual prohibitionism, both in terms of like federal non-response to the AIDS crisis as a punishment for the perceived sexual excess of the gay male community.

00:23:56.820 And then also in terms of like a really sexually repressive and and sadistically so anti-abortion movement, which sort of rose at the same time in the 1980s and then the 1990s to great prominence.

00:24:11.320 And that's where that's where we all kind of grew up. I mean, there's like a decent span of age between us. But that's what was the no, I'm right in the middle. So I get to say this. But like, as the as the median podcast hosts of this, you know, I came to political consciousness during Bush one, when the major sexual politics of the right, you know, their preoccupations were absence only education and

00:24:41.000 opposition to same-sex marriage right and those were both a pretty strictly prohibitionist move

00:24:46.860 and then something changed like like a few things have changed since 2004 but one thing that changed

00:24:53.200 was that you had an emergence of a right-wing like sexual excess right and of a model of

00:25:02.140 conservative masculinity that went beyond this one-time sort of role of exerting sexual control

00:25:12.120 by prohibiting sexual expression and into this different model where sexual control was exerted

00:25:18.380 with sexual force, right? Including with like sexual assault and rape. And that was a long

00:25:25.160 standing model that I think a lot of conservative men were taking part in, even when the primary

00:25:34.780 mode of like political sexual politics on the right was more prohibitionist. But the model of

00:25:41.140 sexual force as an expression of domination was one that has existed for a long time and has been 0.99

00:25:47.500 critiqued by feminists, even when it was sort of out of style with the leaders of the Republican 1.00

00:25:53.040 Party, right? It was, you know, Larry

00:25:54.940 Flint. It was

00:25:56.740 Hugh Hefner. It was a kind

00:25:59.100 of like lewd, like pornographer 0.98

00:26:01.320 masculinity. 1980s 0.87

00:26:03.020 Donald Trump, right? 1980s Donald

00:26:04.960 Trump, right? And this was something

00:26:06.960 that, you know, at times

00:26:08.820 had provisional alliances 1.00

00:26:10.720 with like feminist movements, right? Like 1.00

00:26:12.940 Hugh Hefner was a

00:26:14.760 huge donor to Planned Parenthood.

00:26:17.080 Not because he believed in like

00:26:18.860 women's dignity and rights to control their own bodies, 1.00

00:26:21.040 right? But because he saw the 0.99

00:26:22.980 feminist movement, or at least one version of the feminist movement, as a shortcut to continuing

00:26:27.400 men's sexual access. And now you have Dave Portnoy, president of Barstool Sports, who in many ways is

00:26:34.180 a successor to Heffner, right? And he is, like Heffner, pretty avowedly pro-choice for the same

00:26:41.880 reasons of continued sexual access, right? And he's also a Trump supporter, because the mantle

00:26:48.560 of maximum sexual access as a marker of men's domination, as a marker of masculinity, as a

00:26:57.640 marker of status and control. That has become something the Republican Party is willing to

00:27:04.340 avow. So I think there's been a real stylistic change, right? I think we can critique underlying

00:27:10.300 ideological similarities or continuities in terms of these being forms of sexual expression,

00:27:16.220 both like what we on In Bed with the Right call like the preacher model and the pervert model.

00:27:21.820 These are both forms of sexual expression that like value ownership and control over women and

00:27:27.720 over their sexuality, right? But what it does with that control is a real stylistic difference,

00:27:32.720 whether it prohibits sex or enforces it. Now, I want to underline what Moira just said about

00:27:37.820 this was there as an undercurrent, even in the most censorious moments of the,

00:27:43.360 yeah, Reagan Bush years, let's say. I mean, one example, you know, I, one of the things I work on

00:27:49.940 is the history of the term political correctness. And that was, of course, a way for conservatives

00:27:55.580 to sort of say like, well, you don't know how to have fun anymore. We know how to have fun. And

00:27:59.440 part of that was always being sexually belligerent towards women, right? Like every freaking 90s 0.96

00:28:06.640 stand-up special that had that title. I was like, well, I'm a man's man. I slapped my wife's ass 0.55

00:28:14.060 and whatever. And you're like, okay, great. Wonderful. So even at a time when the institutional 1.00

00:28:18.700 Republican Party sort of, they would play footsie with this, but they wouldn't necessarily put that

00:28:24.060 in their actual political programs, right? One thing I think that you can use to measure this

00:28:30.760 is whether or not Republicans resign from office. Well, I think Republicans have stopped resigning

00:28:35.480 from office for anything at this point to be honest kind of everybody stopped resigning from

00:28:39.300 office people are dying in office like nobody's leaving for any reason anymore but to me like

00:28:44.460 the paradigmatic case of a republican politician falling over the kind of sexual politics of his

00:28:51.900 party in the early aughts was larry craig y'all remember larry craig um this was before some of

00:28:58.320 you were born probably before some of us before me this is before i was born i'm actually i'm

00:29:05.460 honestly unsure when it was it might have been 2005 2006 oh okay no i was born i'm 26 i'm you

00:29:12.280 you're you're in the zoom with someone who is mind you the same age as ashley st claire so

00:29:18.980 so pay respect yeah have some respect but you have you read have you written a uh a children's

00:29:27.920 book that's just gonna crush kids dreams no but i am about to have elon musk's 14th child so just

00:29:33.060 don't expect any money no i just did it for the sex oh i'm just kidding i can't even make that joke

00:29:37.940 the amount of money in the world neither exists nor is even possessed by elon musk

00:29:46.720 sorry i veered you off topic you were saying larry craig so larry craig right like a republican

00:29:51.300 senator from i want to say idaho big kind of values conservative gets tripped up in a bust

00:29:57.220 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul

00:29:58.860 airport, I want to say, by his

00:30:01.220 wide stance, in the sense that he slid

00:30:03.300 one of his shoes over

00:30:05.480 to the other stall.

00:30:07.680 He was cruising in an airport

00:30:09.460 bathroom. With men?

00:30:11.180 Oh, yeah. 0.99

00:30:12.140 I guess, does heterosexual mall

00:30:15.180 cruising exist?

00:30:17.500 No, the implication

00:30:19.180 was he made contact

00:30:21.080 with an undercover officer.

00:30:23.280 And also, I have to say that, frankly,

00:30:25.280 the fact that the that there was a police department staking out an airport bathroom like

00:30:29.840 yeah ridiculous they used to do that yeah and he resigned and it's this kind of classic case of like 0.93

00:30:34.980 he was a homophobe there was a clear implication he was gay um everyone in the community was like 0.85

00:30:40.580 well yeah like that's why you would slide your your foot over to someone else's stall like really 0.80

00:30:46.080 nothing else and and he would come up with all these excuses that like i suppose would make sense

00:30:51.080 to like the church lady audience 0.94

00:30:52.620 that like had never cruised for sex 1.00

00:30:55.360 in a public restroom.

00:30:56.720 But it was a clear case of them

00:31:00.140 kind of taking their own values,

00:31:02.180 I mean, seriously,

00:31:03.260 but like they were ensnared in the logic

00:31:05.900 that they were applying to other people, right?

00:31:09.140 And I think that is the big difference to today, 0.73

00:31:11.740 that the gendered logics 1.00

00:31:13.620 that they impose on other people

00:31:15.460 only apply to them to a very, very limited extent.

00:31:19.040 They themselves,

00:31:19.660 part of what masculinity is is not being fettered in this way that was not true of larry craig

00:31:25.020 should we talk about classically abby she's so crazy your bread and butter is like oh you guys

00:31:31.180 are so academic you guys are so smart with all this like sexual political feminist theory stuff

00:31:36.860 i love talking about influencers i want to bring my specialty to the table do it do it let's get

00:31:43.280 you are the alert leonardo da vinci of talking about influencers i i i have learned uh you know

00:31:49.520 the reason why Tati Westbrook means anything to me is just all thanks to you.

00:31:55.240 I'm so happy I could have that impact on people.

00:31:58.920 So, you know, you, the listener, you talking to you, if you listen to this podcast, you know that

00:32:06.140 I often tell stories about culture and politics through stories about online influencers. This

00:32:13.120 episode will be no different. And I want to talk about someone who I have spent years

00:32:19.120 paying attention to. And that is a one classically Abby. Hello beautiful ladies and welcome to

00:32:26.920 today's video where we're going to be talking about how to dress modestly and still look 1.00

00:32:31.220 smoking hot. Hello beautiful ladies and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking

00:32:36.400 about seven ways to be an incredibly classic woman. Hello classic crew and welcome to today's 1.00

00:32:42.800 video where we're going to be talking about five femininity mistakes I've made. 1.00

00:32:49.120 what do you know about classically abby classically abby is a far right highly religious 0.99

00:33:01.140 i believe she's jewish influencer who is she's kind of like some of her content is what i would

00:33:08.880 consider like mostly like straight influencer content you know like a lot of what i would call 1.00

00:33:14.400 like women in the trad wife space. She has crossover appeal where she gets the viewers in 1.00

00:33:23.160 with something very mainstream, right? Like this is a recipe. This is my makeup look. This is,

00:33:29.760 you know, a way that I like to spend the evening with my family, you know, and then comes in with

00:33:37.220 this kind of insane like ideological justification for why she does her makeup this way or why she

00:33:46.800 spends her like like why she makes the recipe this way or why she spends her time with her

00:33:52.600 family in this particular like sequence of activities or styles and it's it's like oh

00:33:58.880 you really didn't have to go there like insane in the sense that she's like you know space lasers

00:34:05.840 or like mind control or like is it more like seed oils like what like there's so many flavors of

00:34:11.540 crazy what which flavor of crazy do we get allow me adrian allow me walk walk with me here you're

00:34:17.320 totally right mora like she'll make just like relatively it's like you know it's like okay

00:34:21.160 like and now i'm putting on brown eyeshadow and mascara and it's like okay we all put on brown

00:34:25.400 eyeshadow mascara whatever and just be like but i'd never wear you know pink eyeshadow and false 1.00

00:34:30.600 lashes like these crazy promiscuous women of today it's like whoa so i put classically abby in here 1.00

00:34:39.500 because she is to me the early 2020s example of a truly conservative like republican influencer 0.98

00:34:49.220 she is like let me explain oh i'm so happy i can finally talk about this it's like

00:34:55.080 it's like standing up after six years of sitting down in 2019 classically abby joins youtube as

00:35:03.740 someone who's clearly trying to just be like a makeup influencer like a tati westbrook type

00:35:08.320 i have these screenshots of some of her first videos and they're all they're like classic

00:35:13.040 winter look winged eyeliner high-end makeup try on you know anastasia beverly hills eyeshadow

00:35:19.960 palette review and these videos view wise weren't really getting much traction 6.2k views why are

00:35:26.820 we talking about this lady well i'm so glad you asked after a year or two of trying to no avail 0.96

00:35:35.360 to be just like a makeup youtuber classically abby releases a two minute and 48 second long

00:35:42.200 banger of a video called conservative women it's our time let's take the culture back this is one

00:35:51.540 of my favorite youtube videos and i thought we could just watch it together if that's okay

00:35:56.140 please okay social media celebrities influencers and youtubers so much of the time it feels like

00:36:04.240 one worldview one position is tolerated many of them don't say outright what their politics are

00:36:10.800 Many of them do. None of them need to. And none of them will say what I'm about to.

00:36:15.800 I'm a conservative influencer.

00:36:17.800 Being a conservative woman in today's day and age is not easy. 0.87

00:36:21.800 You'll be told that you have internalized misogyny. 0.93

00:36:24.800 You'll be told that you don't care about other women's well-being.

00:36:27.800 You'll be told that you aren't a real woman. But none of that is true.

00:36:31.800 Conservative women are the backbone of American society. 1.00

00:36:34.800 We prioritize marriage and children, support our husbands, and support ourselves. 0.99

00:36:39.800 ourselves. We help our husbands grow, not by obeying their every word, but by

00:36:44.420 bolstering their strengths and tamping down their weaknesses. We fight for what's

00:36:48.440 right, even when the world tells us that everyone should do what they want,

00:36:51.620 regardless of consequences. We stand hand-in-hand with men, not against them.

00:36:57.040 And we shouldn't have to remain silent about our views, like I did, for years.

00:37:01.700 You've been forgotten and left behind, as magazines and movies decided you're

00:37:06.800 outdated. You've been told that the best way to be a woman is to act more like a 1.00

00:37:11.300 man. You've been told that you don't care about women because you care about a

00:37:15.480 child in her womb. You've been told that sleeping around is empowering, but waiting

00:37:20.320 till marriage is ridiculous. You've been told that believing in God is passé. 0.95

00:37:24.980 You've been silenced about your views, but not anymore. Let's take back the

00:37:30.020 culture so women can be women. Let's talk about how to dress fashionably and 1.00

00:37:34.480 and conservatively let's talk about how to do your makeup for a night at the opera not a night

00:37:39.100 at the club let's talk about life from a conservative perspective and let's not be

00:37:44.120 afraid to do it did she say a night at the opera not at the club yeah it's so self-serious she's

00:37:51.320 like i've been censored no more with the like with the like dramatic like celine dion piano going

00:37:57.900 yeah it's like it's a masterpiece she's so fascinating to me immediately after this video

00:38:05.780 comes out and it goes like pretty viral it has like a million views yeah she she immediately

00:38:10.960 turns into what i wrote in my notes as if phyllis schlafly was a youtuber i mean here are some of

00:38:17.100 her video titles why you should dress modestly get the attention you deserve why wop is degrading to

00:38:24.680 women dear ladies it's good to act like a lady ladies sex before marriage is ruining your life

00:38:32.220 these videos got like actually kind of a lot of views for a while but if you were there at the 0.95

00:38:38.340 time you would remember that it was basically just because everyone was clowning on this lady 0.98

00:38:43.120 like i don't think she ever accrued much of a serious audience and when she was getting the 0.97

00:38:48.780 most views was basically when people were turning all of her videos into memes because like you said

00:38:54.540 moira it's so self-serious it's hard to see her as someone you would like genuinely enjoy

00:38:59.980 watching and consuming content from even if you are actually a conservative well i think like one

00:39:05.080 of the things that is characteristic of the new conservatism's online style is like a lot of

00:39:12.160 irreverence a lot of like joking and like that's not really her vibe right she's very righteous

00:39:19.100 in this way that's like almost an inverse of like the self-righteous woke scold she's like

00:39:23.900 trying to antagonize right she's taking on the same stylistic mode of like i'm a brave truth

00:39:31.700 teller with my point of view which is not where the online right has been deriving a lot of its 0.99

00:39:36.760 power i also think it's really like hard particularly for women uh maybe in general

00:39:42.640 but i'm thinking specifically on the right right now to like be a figure of authority like moral

00:39:47.820 and intellectual authority which is clearly how she sees herself right she's not seeing herself

00:39:52.500 as like an imp who's like there to gussy up your pieties in the way that like a lot of 1.00

00:39:59.400 conservative influencers want to be you know if she was a little meaner I think it might have 0.93

00:40:04.000 worked out better for her but she was like she took herself too seriously I mean I think the

00:40:08.620 Phil Schlafly comparisons app but I think that's where it breaks down she's not particularly campy

00:40:13.380 right like she's not a vamp I mean like oh you think WAP might be degrading to women like so did

00:40:18.920 Like, every right-wing influencer on YouTube, like, you're never going to attain the dizzy heights of, like, their insane outpourings.

00:40:28.700 So why do you even bother, right?

00:40:30.480 Like, there is a real button-up quality to this set that I think Moira's right, like, really just doesn't play so well, either on YouTube or, frankly, in modern conservative circles today.

00:40:41.720 Right. And part of why I followed Classically Abby from afar for so long was that her views steadily declined to virtually nothing by the end of 2024, which is when a few months ago she retired from YouTube.

00:40:57.300 She was like, I'm done. She was only getting a couple thousand views a video. And in that video where she retires, she talks about how she's become a mother and she wants to focus on that. 0.89

00:41:09.400 and obviously that's a completely valid reason first of all you don't need a valid reason to

00:41:14.160 stop posting on youtube in fact we should all probably stop posting on youtube so good for her

00:41:18.560 but it's way easier to leave something when it isn't really much of a thing at all and it was

00:41:25.060 clear by the end if at any point that she was not really making much money from this like i think

00:41:31.120 the long and short of it is just that this wasn't really a successful venture for her in the end

00:41:36.020 do you know who she is like what's her background like why is she what brought her like well she's

00:41:41.680 ben shapiro's sister what we've been talking for how long sorry what the oh you can tell

00:41:52.700 she looks exactly like now i'm seeing it oh my god i can really see it the eyebrows i will say

00:41:57.880 this last night when i was getting ready to record today i was watching some of her videos and to do

00:42:03.160 that faster i was listening to them in two times speed and when you listen to her in two times

00:42:06.960 speed she on like her brother can i can i show an example today we're talking about five pieces

00:42:12.600 of clothing that will catch a man's eye for all the right oh yeah that's him that's him all right 0.72

00:42:16.200 you know there's ben there's ben every time i saw classically abby it was people commenting on her 1.00

00:42:22.760 being sexually attractive though and like particularly on like the size of her chest 1.00

00:42:27.640 which is like very exaggerated right yeah people were pretty gross about her and it was like

00:42:32.820 clearly what she was aggressively not trying to do right and it seemed like they were trying to

00:42:37.960 take this woman who had gotten the conservative heterosexuality sort of wrong and trying to take

00:42:43.300 her against her will back into that model in in a way that was clearly like meant to antagonize 1.00

00:42:48.600 and degrade her right and it was like if she had wanted to do this because she's trying to go for

00:42:54.020 kind of a she's not a christian but like a conservative religious conservative modesty

00:42:59.540 censorious model of sexuality, right? And that's not really what right-wing women are doing right 1.00

00:43:04.420 now. They've got their tits out. Every tradwife has herself in a little corset where her tits 1.00

00:43:09.840 are out like they're on a platter. It's this vocabulary or talking points about the primacy 1.00

00:43:19.260 of marriage and motherhood and abandoning your birth control paired with this kind of vulgar

00:43:28.500 imagery that is clearly like very sexually suggestive borrowing from the pornographic

00:43:33.480 you know there's um maybe it's mixed messages or conflicting some signals or maybe it's the

00:43:38.680 emergence of a synthesis between like an emphasis on particularly like reproduction

00:43:44.820 child rearing the home on the one hand and like an aggressive mandate of like sexual like

00:43:54.340 ostentatious sexuality on the other moira and i did an episode on the real lives of mormon wives

00:44:01.180 and uh that was a kind of connection that we really noticed in that show after six hours of

00:44:07.580 of research that basically yeah it combined traditional locations for women with like yeah

00:44:16.040 this very porny imagination overall right like just like the way they dress the way they talked

00:44:21.120 very much sort of seeming to exist for a male gaze at the same time, right? Like it was still

00:44:28.000 largely within the confines of the LDS church. I just remember seeing classically Abby's views

00:44:33.380 dwindle. And the very naive conclusion that I came to was like, you know, the internet and

00:44:38.840 social media is just full of young progressive people. And there just isn't room for a right

00:44:44.020 wing influencer like her, because nobody wants to hear this shit about dressing modestly. 0.99

00:44:48.120 And I think I was right that mostly nobody wants to hear this shit about dressing modestly. But I was very, very wrong about the young internet not having room for right wing influencers. Obviously, now the biggest influencers on social media helped Trump get elected. But it's just it's not a Phyllis Schlafly type. They're not anti sex. And the thing is, a lot of them are grifters. 0.99

00:45:11.080 now you know the biggest stars in in right-wing social media are willing to adapt to whatever the 0.93

00:45:17.900 thing is that they have to say whether that be about trans people or elon musk or immigrants

00:45:23.720 or pronouns or whatever whereas like classically abby just like it seems like very earnestly

00:45:29.360 believes in like the value of like wearing like maxi dresses or whatever i think i think you're

00:45:35.040 onto something here Matt I think she has a set of values that I think are wrong but they exist for

00:45:41.620 her whether or not I'm offended right whereas a lot of these right-wing influencers now they seem

00:45:48.580 to be just trying to trigger the libs and sort of taking on whatever position will get them that

00:45:55.040 reaction and there's no like there's no there there there's no foundational value system beyond

00:46:00.920 like you know kind of an admiration for domination that they're like really going to try and promote

00:46:06.280 into the world they're like i'm trying to get people mad at me online i'm trying to make a

00:46:11.140 woman with an asymmetrical haircut angry and that is their goal more than like advancing something

00:46:17.600 they actually believe in is their goal we've been talking a lot about trad wives i've been talking a

00:46:21.640 lot about trad wives on this podcast lately and the thing is abby shapiro i think was making like

00:46:27.840 actual trad wife content like she was actually talking earnestly about like wearing sweaters

00:46:32.800 and staying home and raising children in a way that didn't have the flair and style and honestly

00:46:39.700 like oftentimes campiness that we see from a lot of successful trad wife influencers now which 0.61

00:46:45.940 speaking of this sort of trad wife content in contrast with classically abby i want to send

00:46:51.280 you guys a tweet and get your reaction to it so this is a tweet from a right-wing influencer called

00:46:56.920 elijah shaffer who tweeted this video of a woman with the caption this type of content awakens in

00:47:02.440 a man something so primal not even an only fans model in lingerie could compete and then it is

00:47:09.020 as far as i can tell an only fans model but in an apron 0.92

00:47:12.380 yeah it is a i'm gonna just describe what i see it is a very young looking white woman in an apron 0.99

00:47:24.380 and a headscarf that is sort of like tied around her very long blonde hair and she's got a little 0.80

00:47:31.620 ceramic dish full of eggs and she's like looking behind her at a dirty yard full of chickens 1.00

00:47:39.760 and sort of like giggling uh and it is a trad wife fantasy of a i gotta say like maximum 12

00:47:48.960 14 year old girl this is a very young girl you know living this kind of like little house on

00:47:54.200 the prairie cosplay but he is like specifically trying to prioritize or like create a hierarchy

00:48:02.120 of womanhood right like the trad wife uh is above the only fans model even though we see both of 0.88

00:48:09.060 these kinds of like positions of femininity being like taken up by right-wing women these are the 1.00

00:48:14.840 two things women are allowed to be you can be madonna or whore and there's like really nothing 1.00

00:48:19.820 in between yeah you ever interact with like a barista like you have you got you got siblings 0.99

00:48:25.060 do you got any friends like nope uh it's just only fan models and uh and egg lady to me it's

00:48:31.880 like classically abby was like the actual trad wife and no one actually cares about that because 0.90

00:48:37.520 it's not fun or interesting to watch and then this is like the pornified trad wife this almost 0.99

00:48:43.440 like reminds me like brings me back to like ashley st claire right who clearly thought that 0.99

00:48:48.140 there would be some like after compensation uh in her deal with elon musk right like she thought 1.00

00:48:55.480 she was going to have a happy ending right but there's no real ending for right-wing women in 1.00

00:49:00.260 this vision of conservative sexual politics right there's like no way for them to get old there's 1.00

00:49:06.400 no way for them to like live a life that is esteemed as honorable and dignified in the minds

00:49:14.580 of right-wing men. There's no option for them to be anything beyond a fantasy gratification

00:49:23.660 tool, which is ultimately a very short-term proposition. Living day-to-day as a traditionalist

00:49:31.120 housewife is, I think, as you mentioned, Matt, kind of boring. This is not something that people

00:49:36.320 really want to spend a lot of time looking at, right? What they are much more interested in are

00:49:41.240 these like snapshots that evoke a fantasy and provide like a degree of gratification which they

00:49:47.800 can like retroactively build an ideology around but they're not actually going to reward the people

00:49:53.300 who try to live that way quick break from the show to thank longtime partner and friend of this show

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00:51:39.180 slash fruity. Thank you as always to Blueland for making these episodes possible. And now

00:51:45.120 let's get back to the show. So classically, Abby kind of fizzled out and for whatever it's worth, 1.00

00:51:53.160 I hope she's having fun being a mother and wearing her beige sweaters. Good for her. But

00:51:58.340 the biggest right-wing influencer women today they resemble hawk tua a lot more than they do 1.00

00:52:05.780 classically abby in their approach to sexual politics because they aren't really conservative 1.00

00:52:12.700 at least not in the way that abby was you guys remember how hawk tua became kind of like a

00:52:17.920 right-wing thing yeah and and that that seemed like a particular moment to me because when i

00:52:24.960 first encounter talked to it like adrian and i we talked about like oh this is kind of delightful

00:52:28.480 like she's silly she's got this beautiful tennessee accent you know there's like something

00:52:33.820 kind of wholesome about her enthusiasm which seems like you know playful in this way like in 0.69

00:52:39.940 the clip itself like i didn't really see political content aside from like like you know irreverent

00:52:46.520 sexual joy right or like playful sexual joy but that that expression of heterosexual enthusiasm

00:52:54.220 by like a blonde white girl with a Southern accent was understood by the far right. And I think

00:53:02.360 you're, you're right, Matt, that there's something about these people that makes them

00:53:05.700 like far right and right wing without being conservative. And it was understood by that

00:53:10.900 group of people as being coextensive with their values. Like, yes, a white girl spitting on a

00:53:16.960 is our american dream you know like that was a really interesting moment uh because they seem

00:53:24.580 to be taking not all of sexuality i would say like they're clearly not this enthusiastic about

00:53:31.860 like i think the kind of sex like people like us have you know but like um yeah i can say that

00:53:39.540 they're not though they kind of are because i will say not sorry not to cut you off but it's 0.83

00:53:45.100 Like, they do think about gay sex a lot because they're always yelling at me about it. 0.99

00:53:49.560 Like, anytime I say something they find disagreeable about anything, I always get a million tweet mentions that are like, yeah, well, how does it feel going home and sucking cock at night? 0.99

00:53:59.660 And I'm like, first of all, fine. 0.99

00:54:02.180 Thanks for asking.

00:54:03.960 Second of all, why are you thinking about it?

00:54:07.200 But continue.

00:54:07.700 There's like a way in which like white heterosexuality of this like particular genre, where in the eroticization of domination and the like proud vulgarity of like public sexuality, those have become right wing coded.

00:54:26.680 And I think it is like a pretty narrow vision of what sex is that they are enthusiastic about, but they understand it as the most like mainstream, normative, and in some sense, like most true form of sex that they're trying to like appropriate for their own ends. 0.77

00:54:42.620 But part of it is also that they have to imagine a left that hates sex, right? I think this is a generation that has been reared on conservative caricatures of feminists, right? And this idea that the woke left hates you. This is the Sydney Sweeney's boobs are somehow a sign that woke died, right? And you're like, they can't admit to liking anything anymore. All they wanted to say was, I find this attractive. I find this woman attractive. Fine, good for you.

00:55:09.560 um but it can't be just that it has to be a political state but it has to be part of the

00:55:14.500 civilizational battle against wokeness and it's like could it be that this hawk to a girl is just

00:55:20.300 kind of infectious giggly drunks are just like a kind of a wonderful thing anyway they have a they 0.99

00:55:25.940 have a certain charm yeah yeah and like and we were all kind of charmed by it the fucking end 0.97

00:55:31.320 you know is that is that possible or does it have to be about the great civilizational struggle 0.85

00:55:36.440 again but like they need to tell themselves that it is about this other thing and i think part of

00:55:41.720 it is that the people who are purveying a lot of this are not actually having all that much sex

00:55:47.540 frankly right yeah wow clock that adrian no one who is having who is engaging in a healthy sex

00:55:56.660 life just gonna go out and say it talks about sex the way that these like especially right

00:56:01.440 right influencers talk about sex on twitter i will say i might i might be like you know a hammer to

00:56:06.960 whom everything looks like a nail but i do think adrian is right that to some extent this is about

00:56:11.740 like anti-me too backlash right like there was for like a very brief moment a resurgence of the

00:56:19.080 kind of like anti-rape and anti-sexual harassment feminism that the like dave portnois and hugh

00:56:24.580 hefner's of the world have found least easily assimilatable to their own ends right and there

00:56:30.460 was a moment where those conversations about sexual violence sort of verged on like a broader

00:56:37.200 critique of heterosexuality itself, right? Like, well, it kind of seems like a lot of guys just

00:56:41.260 sort of presume access to our bodies without really thinking about like what we want or what

00:56:47.040 might be fun for us. You know, those conversations were starting to happen. And I think the right

00:56:52.880 wing embrace of like an ostentatious, vulgar, like exaggerated heterosexuality is partly like

00:57:01.160 a rebuke to the feminism of Me Too that wanted to like look at the ways that sex itself can be 0.99

00:57:08.040 weaponized against women. I also wanted to flag like their weird insistence on like exaggerated 1.00

00:57:16.160 secondary sexual characteristics. Like the like visual eradication of androgyny is something I've

00:57:22.860 noticed on in right wing influencers like the women have really long hair and really big boobs 1.00

00:57:28.900 and like dramatic makeup that makes them look um strange and and and you know a very specific kind 1.00

00:57:35.680 of plastic surgery you know they all look like kimberly gulf oil now yes yeah and then the men

00:57:40.320 are also doing weird stuff to their bodies right like they are taking steroids to get really

00:57:45.580 muscular like you cannot find a right wing account that has not face tuned that one picture of jd

00:57:52.800 Vance to make it look like more masculine and like a little more angular. And so I think part

00:57:57.460 of what they're doing is they're trying to like create also a visual vocabulary in which the

00:58:02.740 sexes look different on their screens, more different on their screens than they tend to

00:58:07.860 in real life. Like in real life, secondary sexual characteristics or sexed bodies are a lot more

00:58:13.360 like there's just a way more variation than there is in this like visual vocabulary and not

00:58:18.360 everybody's sectionary sex characteristics are that exaggerated. And also there's a bunch of

00:58:23.040 like queer and trans people who don't exactly look like they fit very firmly into one sex box or the

00:58:29.640 other, you know, and that's completely disallowed, right? It's this insistence on embodied sexual 1.00

00:58:36.280 difference that then goes on to inform like the social sexual difference that is very, very

00:58:42.640 important. And that's what transvestigation is all about, right? Like anybody that doesn't have

00:58:47.000 that insane Fox News blowout

00:58:49.460 and it doesn't have, you know,

00:58:51.000 highly exaggerated boobage.

00:58:53.540 It's basically like,

00:58:54.580 could this be a man, right?

00:58:56.020 And you're like, no, no,

00:58:57.100 it could just be, you know,

00:58:58.300 there are 8 billion people on this planet

00:58:59.860 and people look all kinds of ways.

00:59:02.380 And it takes so much money and effort 0.90

00:59:05.180 for like a regular cis human woman 1.00

00:59:07.220 to look like the right-wing women look. 0.82

00:59:09.860 Like it is like a very labor-intensive process 1.00

00:59:12.660 to look like Kimberly Goldfile

00:59:15.020 or Melania Trump

00:59:16.160 for any of these ladies 100 000 and that's why actually at the top of my outline here 0.99

00:59:21.260 i i put a picture of phyllis schlafly who you listeners unaware she was like this second wave 1.00

00:59:28.480 anti-feminist like she was all about like we don't need the equal rights amendment women can 1.00

00:59:33.000 be liberated through work in the home and she dressed exactly like how you think she would

00:59:37.840 dress she dressed like how classically abby aspires to dress she's wearing these like 1.00

00:59:41.840 buttoned up coats to the top and she honestly just looks like a you know well put together like 1.00

00:59:47.460 dowdy old white lady similar to like nancy reagan or any of the sort of like models of conservative 1.00

00:59:53.720 femininity of that era and it's in stark contrast to like you said the kimberly gulfoils and the 0.99

00:59:59.920 melania trumps who are distinctly almost like pornified yeah yeah it's highly artificial in

01:00:06.800 look yeah and like you've placed her in the outline that we're all like stealing glances 0.93

01:00:12.140 at as we chat like next to this contemporary right wing like the kind of thought woman who's 1.00

01:00:18.020 got like yeah very low cut top sorry oh you know who she is she's an only fans model named ava 1.00

01:00:23.800 louise famously went to a trump rally and like flashed her tits and i think was escorted out 1.00

01:00:28.340 or something yeah you can see that kind of happening it's like a very low cut white top 0.96

01:00:32.540 very long hair like a really heavily made up and like surgically altered face you know it's a um

01:00:39.620 it is a real night and day look in just terms of like like i don't think that phyllis schlafly was

01:00:44.440 especially low maintenance like i'm looking at this helmet hair she's got from the 70s and it's

01:00:49.020 like like there was work being put in oh yeah but the style is different and the extent and the

01:00:54.560 character of the work is different as well 100 and i feel like a lot of what we're saying ties

01:00:59.880 into wow this entire podcast is just held together by bad tweets thank you ian miles chong

01:01:06.620 my life like you were saying adrian it's like so much of this like sexual aggression that i feel

01:01:16.660 like we're now seeing on the right is framed as like a backlash to like i guess the woke

01:01:21.860 puritanical anti-sex left which is such a weird perversion of everybody's beliefs it's also

01:01:29.020 weren't we supposed to be groomers or whatever like i mean like like over sexed under sex like 0.98

01:01:33.360 just make up your fucking mind what you what lie you want to tell about us we don't have time today 0.98

01:01:37.840 to explain who ian miles chong is that is a different episode let me know if you want it 0.99

01:01:42.900 but honestly i don't even know if i do but ian miles chong this like right-wing twitter influencer

01:01:49.540 friend of elon musk tweeted this a video of like a of like a football cheerleader it looks like 1.00

01:01:56.400 dallas cowboys okay work moira come on the lesbian has to has to bring the understanding of sports 1.00

01:02:04.820 yeah um she's in like she's got she's blonde she's like a tan white girl she's got her back 1.00

01:02:12.460 kind of arched in these like little white booty shorts and like white cowboy boots and a like a 1.00

01:02:19.220 top that doesn't make logistical sense to me uh but she's in a cheerleading uniform you know the 1.00

01:02:24.060 caption from Ian Miles Chong, our favorite Malaysian, is this is everything the hideous 0.67

01:02:30.300 left hates. And then it's just like a video of a cheerleader. This is kind of weird thing about

01:02:35.920 antibody positivity that they've all gotten into. Michael Hobbs, I think, has pointed this out a

01:02:41.100 couple of times that they've sort of talked themselves into pointing out that they find

01:02:46.020 certain women hot in order to point out that some people are hot and others are not, which apparently

01:02:51.360 is like a huge newsflash to the woke left or whatever um but it is ultimately like make trying

01:02:57.580 to make some kind of shitty point about body positivity but i think it gives you kind of a

01:03:01.660 sense that like you have to reconstitute you have to like sort of like understanding a chess match

01:03:05.700 after you've walked in halfway through like i don't even how did any of these pieces get where

01:03:09.500 they are like what is what is actually going on yeah the the sense that like male heterosexual

01:03:14.300 desire itself is now a position of like defiance and has like yeah like the moral authority of the

01:03:23.940 underdog to be hot for a cheerleader and i'm like i don't know this strikes me as kind of hegemonic

01:03:27.780 i'm just gonna like i'm just gonna put it out there have you like have you like watched a movie

01:03:31.560 in the last 70 years yeah or like encountered another human being and i think this goes back

01:03:36.320 to the point that you guys were making that it seems like to get the conclusions about the world

01:03:40.840 and how it works their actual real life social lives must be so like warped and impoverished

01:03:47.260 like what kind of life are you living if you think that like you're a brave truth teller for saying

01:03:52.460 that a cheerleader is hot like i just don't understand it well i think it's pretty clear

01:03:56.140 that ian miles chong does not necessarily have a rich life outside of twitter but it is interesting

01:04:01.780 that these um these ideas that these kind of like terminally online weird right-wing internet

01:04:07.600 gremlins make about like oh yeah i'm actually the underdog for thinking that a dallas cowboys 0.99

01:04:13.300 cheerleader is sexy how that trickles into like mainstream attitudes within the right today it's

01:04:20.080 like they won everything like you won you control the government the cultural institutions are all

01:04:25.880 capitulating to your agenda like you've got all the trends you've got all the money you've got

01:04:31.840 all the power and you still want to be the underdog you're still being oppressed by that

01:04:36.360 one dylan mulvaney instagram bud light video they'll never get over the fact that she drank 0.68

01:04:42.900 a beer isn't that an onion headline recently new star in the conservative movement now just a guy

01:04:49.260 doing hitler suit and crying at the same time that's what it is it's like it's like i rule

01:04:55.580 everything why why am i still a victim and like i don't know like you're it feels like you're

01:04:59.820 addicted to both of these positions what they're addicted to i think is is twofold right one if

01:05:05.540 they ever became fully cognizant of the degree of their own power and dominance in the society

01:05:10.740 and we're back with elon musk there might be certain responsibilities that come with it

01:05:15.440 right they don't want that can't have that uh therefore if you're always the contrarian if 0.96

01:05:21.540 you're the shit poster if you're just right i mean elon musk is the richest man in the world 0.98

01:05:25.800 and still seems to think he's somehow the underdog he still seems to somehow think he's just like an 1.00

01:05:31.700 online shit poster and it's like no dude you own the fucking company they want the power they are 0.99

01:05:37.260 not okay then having to have any kind of responsibility something that i put in here 0.99

01:05:43.940 under this ian miles chong tweet about the cheerleader being hot is it's just like between

01:05:48.240 this the hawk to a thing this uh i think what you said about dave portnoy being the uh successor to

01:05:55.360 the hugh hefner throne which is true you have this idea that on the right now there is this like

01:06:01.400 sexual politic of domination but simultaneously like they still are the party policy wise of

01:06:08.660 you know being anti-contraception anti-abortion by virtue of these things anti-recreational sex

01:06:16.520 and it's like how can you be the party of sex and fun and young beautiful people and also

01:06:21.920 have all of those policies like i i guess for me i'm like are people not seeing the

01:06:28.080 contradictions here? Are people just buying into the vibes and not looking at what the policies

01:06:33.560 are? Where does that shake out? As Maura sort of started out saying, I think there's a promise

01:06:39.460 being made. Here's a contractual offer being made. And I think that for young men, this is a pretty

01:06:45.820 tempting offer, right? The fun without the responsibility, right? The children without

01:06:52.380 having to raise them. The family as a kind of emanation of your own success, rather than

01:06:59.020 something that, as someone who has a family himself, takes a lot of work, but you don't

01:07:04.140 have to have any of that. Now, what the women get out of it, I think is a little bit more 1.00

01:07:07.720 complicated, but it is this patriarchal compact. It is essentially the promise that you can have 0.96

01:07:15.380 a location, a very firmly established location in their world, as long as you do your part.

01:07:22.380 And that if you deviate from that location, society will rain untold violence on your head. I think that's the right. Mara, would you say that that's the that's the offer that's being made here that you can this is a protection racket is essentially this is this is sexuality as a protection racket.

01:07:40.300 Yeah, this is like when the mob says, you know, you've got a lovely place here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it, right? Like, this is sexual compliance demanded from women as a condition of their continued presence in the social world, as a condition of their exemption from violence, as a condition of their material provision, and personal security.

01:08:05.120 and i think what i would like to say to the abby st claire's of the world and to the you know those 0.86

01:08:10.820 ashley oh god you're mixing you're mixing up you are mixing up our conservative influencers

01:08:18.260 classically ashley st claire what i would say to the ashley st claire's of the world is that like

01:08:25.120 the guy who's threatening you with compliance or with humiliation or with degradation is not

01:08:31.480 also going to hold up his end of the bargain to be nice to you if only you cooperate right like

01:08:37.200 this is not a trustworthy set of actors here can we also pause on the fact i feel like we kind of 0.82

01:08:43.040 yada yada this part like why is fucking miley annopoulos back yeah didn't he have like a

01:08:47.860 pederasty scandal yeah and get sort of shoo shooed but like i mean now there's a there's a like large 0.92

01:08:53.940 scale embrace of you know like child marriage and anything like age of consent laws on the right at

01:08:59.880 least for straight people right so it seems like there would be some extension of that grace or

01:09:05.680 that logic of domination to a gay man also just like you can just claim that like anything you've

01:09:12.060 been accused of as insofar as like sexual predation or anything like that you could just 0.96

01:09:16.520 claim that there's a witch hunt against you and that the media is out to get you and that you're

01:09:19.760 a martyr for the right-wing cause and cancel culture and like they'll rescue you out of the 0.99

01:09:23.560 trenches with a podcasting deal also i i believe he's straight now or he was oh shit oh thank god

01:09:30.820 yes big win for the community there so i have a couple of wrap-up questions here that will

01:09:37.000 maybe help us tie this up with a bow maybe not we'll see but what i wrote is if republicans are

01:09:43.060 no longer the party of traditional family values which i think anybody would be very hard-pressed

01:09:49.680 to say that they are, then socially and culturally speaking, like, what are they the party of?

01:09:55.300 And also, was the family values thing always a smokescreen? And now they've just given up on it?

01:10:02.900 I think like the simplest answer is the Republicans are and have long been the party of like

01:10:08.440 domination, right? And of like sexual ownership and control. And it's just that the style of that 0.90

01:10:14.700 ownership and control, the style of that domination has changed. So when we look at the

01:10:20.140 censorious family values conservatism that seemed to be anti-sex and contrast it with this aggressively

01:10:29.280 pro-sex, vulgar, wounded heterosexuality of the contemporary right, I think what we see is that

01:10:37.560 both of these are about the control of women, the use of women's bodies as a site upon which 0.79

01:10:43.720 men can prove their own virility and domination. And that is actually something that's been really

01:10:49.460 constant. I think asking whether the right is pro or anti-sex can kind of miss the mark and keep us

01:10:57.680 from seeing that what they are is very pro-sex as a means of like domination and control and anti

01:11:04.200 any kind of sexuality that might like elude or subvert those mechanisms of control. So it's not

01:11:09.680 really like, are they for or against sex? It's like, what do they want sexuality to do? And that

01:11:14.760 I think it's pretty clear. I want to make my last little follow up here is just that in the 2024

01:11:22.940 election, so many groups shifted more to the right with how they voted and women by and large were

01:11:29.380 among those groups. You described that the politics of sexual domination, you know, used to be

01:11:36.020 stylized through this purity culture where it's now being stylized through this like we must have 0.86

01:11:41.620 as much sex as men want and how maybe now that the purity culture has been stripped away that women

01:11:49.200 might feel more freed by that style change but i always like to add this podcast on like a here's

01:11:56.460 what you should take away and like perhaps to a voting booth with you i i think you would argue

01:12:00.600 that women have not been freed by this change. And perhaps Ashley St. Clair could be the tragic

01:12:05.940 mascot of that. She's a really tragic case. The core lesson I take from this shift is that

01:12:13.300 neither prohibited sex nor mandated sex are the source of freedom for women. What we actually

01:12:21.280 have to do is imagine sexuality as something that somebody else doesn't get to control for you

01:12:28.780 or impose on you or forbid for you. It has to be a more personal and more autonomous

01:12:36.000 journey, for lack of a better word. And so what I would encourage people to do is start thinking

01:12:42.080 about what truly free sexual expression would look like for women and really for all of us,

01:12:47.980 one where we're not trying to comply with the demands of any kind of patriarchal or sexually

01:12:55.800 repricious masculinity, one where we're not trying to like avoid violence by like giving or abstaining

01:13:04.540 from sex, but one where we have a real genuine freedom to both say yes and to say no, or to say

01:13:11.480 what about something else? You know, that's, that's kind of an unsatisfying, like, I hate it

01:13:15.620 when like left nonfiction ends this way. It's like, well, we have to imagine differently, but like we

01:13:20.240 do um because like we don't have a model for sexuality outside these paradigms that hurt

01:13:25.500 people no 100 i mean it's like i have a joke that's gonna cheapen this so much oh my god go

01:13:31.660 for it but i always have to end on a chuckle but it's like you literally no one is being freed by

01:13:37.180 the insistence that you spit on that thing it's we need to imagine a world where we have the choice

01:13:42.800 to spit on that thing or not spit on that thing and be liberated by that choice and you know like 0.98

01:13:48.620 you can have you can have sex with people that you like and you don't have to like prove your 0.89

01:13:54.880 masculinity by only doing it for you know two and a half minutes i would encourage men also 0.99

01:14:00.360 to think a little outside the box you might like it i mean it'll be a little gay but uh 1.00

01:14:06.760 you might like it i had sex for three and a half minutes and all i got was the stupid t-shirt 0.99

01:14:12.320 thank you so much for having us Matt this was really fun I feel like I learned a lot 0.99

01:14:19.900 thank you learned a lot oh my god the two of you are so brilliant thank you thank you thank you

01:14:26.540 for being here I choose these episode topics by just you know my little cultural fixations that

01:14:33.020 oftentimes I feel like I can't answer and so I go looking for people who have a better handle

01:14:38.780 on at least how to think about answering those questions than I do.

01:14:41.600 And the two of you are just brilliant.

01:14:43.540 If you who are listening to this want more of Moira and Adrian,

01:14:48.640 you should definitely go listen to their podcast, In Bed with the Right.

01:14:53.000 It'll be linked in the description.

01:14:55.620 And I'm so happy that you chose to listen to this podcast today.

01:14:59.840 I hope that you are doing whatever you need to do to take care of yourself

01:15:04.500 because we all need to see each other make it to the other side.

01:15:08.780 of this. And we will. I love you so much. And until next time, stay fruity.

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - February 21, 2025

The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right

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