Pedro Pascal’s Inclusive Masculinity

Right-wing media wants you to believe that toxic aggression is attractive. The Internet's Daddy has a different idea.

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Our culture is at a crossroads on a certain subject that’s permeated throughout the history of mankind. Donald Trump’s second term began with many of the broligarchs urging a return to “masculine energy.” What does that mean? All these months later, we don’t really have an answer.

Fitting for the Trump Administration, we have concepts of an answer. Last December, MAGA “influencer” Josiah Moody appeared on a YouTube show with his wife Isabella, where he stated that he wouldn’t have sex with his wife while she was on birth control, likening the act to gay sex. According to MAGA, any sex between a man and a woman that is not explicitly for the sake of procreation falls under the category of gay sex.

This man who looks like he’s 12 years old is apparently one of MAGA’s leading authorities on the subject of masculinity.

You may be scratching your head a bit, wondering why this little pipsqueak with a beard that looks like he glued some pubes to his face matters in the broader scheme of things. It might be a stretch to say that Josiah Moody represents all of MAGA, but he’s hardly alone in his crusade against the female orgasm. Who could forget Ben Shapiro’s famous 2020 meltdown over Cardi B’s hit song WAP, where massively popular conservative commentator and father of four apparently learned about female pleasure for the first time.

The idea that pleasuring a woman is gay has permeated MAGA for years. It’s not hard to see why. Look no further than the Fanta Fuhrer. When was the last time he pleased anyone who wasn’t himself?

Right-wing masculinity

MAGA men can’t even please their own wives. We mentioned last week how Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, left the White House to work full time for Elon Musk. Coincidentally, Musk is sporting a brand new black eye, while Miller rage tweets about him. At least Stephen Miller has all of his mass deportations to dull the pain from his growing horns of cuckoldry.

The GOP has spent years pushing for people to have more babies. Their push continues even as they seek to severely restrain child tax credits in their “Big, Beautiful Bill,” making it even less affordable to have a family than it already is. Our government has provided child tax credits for decades.

We all know the cost of childcare is ridiculously absurd. The GOP’s solution to that? More mothers should stay home. In 2022, as he was running for Senate for the first time, our Bloated Care Bear VP JD Vance wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that children are happier when a parent stays at home. This year, Republican Senator Jim Banks of Indiana introduced a bill that would provide vouchers that could be used to pay family members for child care. These vouchers, along with Trump’s pledge to offer five thousand dollars for people to have more babies, cover mere fractions of the actual cost of child care.

All of this fits with a poll that suggested a majority of GOP voters long for the 1950s. That’s the real drive behind their anti-DEI initiatives, their rollbacks of LGBTQ rights, and their efforts to take women out of the workforce. Mark Zuckerberg talks of wanting more “male aggression” in the office. What he’s really talking about is female submission.

There have been a lot of think pieces lately about how the Democratic Party needs to cater to the “manosphere.” It’s somewhat true, 54% of men voted for Trump in 2024, a modest bump from his 2020 numbers. Aside from a few, such as Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, prominent Democrats have long shunned non-traditional media.

To some extent, this is an issue without a clear solution. There is no comparable figure on the left to a Joe Rogan or a Theo Von. The people who get their medical advice from Joe Rogan aren’t exactly going to abandon conspiracy theories because they’re hearing them from a left-leaning podcast host.

Many columnists have pointed the finger at LGBTQ rights for Democrats’ erosion of support from the kind of working-class men who make up Joe Rogan’s base. While it’s true that Trump spent hundreds of millions on anti-trans ads, it’s quite a stretch to say that Kamala Harris made support of LGBTQ a cornerstone of her campaign. In 2020, CNN partnered with the Human Rights Campaign to hold an unprecedented LGBTQ Town Hall. We saw no such open support in the 2024 election. The 2024 Democratic National Convention barely even mentioned LGBTQ people.

Democrats don’t really have a man problem. They have a problem amongst the sector of the population, women included, who support Make America 1950 Again. There’s something inherently wrong with the mindset of believing that elevating women or LGBTQ people comes at the expense of anyone else. Tens of millions of men didn’t fall for the GOP’s regressive nonsense.

There’s something also fundamentally batshit about the idea that all of these so-called “masculine” men are flocking to the likes of Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Pete Hegseth, all of whom were far more makeup than any woman I know (granted I don’t spend much time at Mar-a-Lago, where many women opt for the Laura Loomer Botox/Pennywise approach). Donald Trump very well may be the least masculine president in American history, and Mr. Eyeliner is certainly a strong contender for most effeminate VP. Last time I checked, blind subservience is not a masculine trait. I hate to be the first one to tell them this, but sycophancy is not particularly manly.

I know what you’re thinking. What does a transgender woman have to say about masculinity? I spent two decades pretending to be a man. As a bisexual, I’ve (sometimes sadly) been attracted to men for my entire life. For all the talk of trans women possessing an advantage in sports, gender is one field where we actually do have a unique perspective from our cis family.