There's a terrifying crime spree happening in New York that has most women in that city on edge.
Women, mostly young and mostly pretty, are being punched in the face by anonymous attackers as they walk down the street minding their own business. The attacks happen in broad daylight, and the assailant comes at the woman from the front or the back.
CNN reports that the attacks have been reported all over social media by dozens of women. While one attack is one too many, let's step back and take a breath before we make this the "next big thing" on the internet.
Too late. Slate's Amanda Marcotte has carefully examined all the evidence. After interviewing dozens of witnesses, poring over the forensic evidence, and finally putting her index finger in her mouth and raising it above her head to carefully gauge which way the wind is blowing, Marcotte has determined it's Donald Trump's fault.
These stories resonate, as well, because the nation is having a moment of increasingly unhinged male fury at women for daring to have lives that are centered around something other than catering to a man's every whim. Unleashed by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, there's an upswell of loud male entitlement shouting at us from every corner.
Ms. Marcotte has been a particular burr under my saddle going back to the John Edwards campaign for president in 2006. At that time, she worked as a liaison to liberal blogs for the campaign. But she was fired after posting some extraordinarily insensitive feminist baloney about the Catholic belief in the virgin birth of Christ. As a hack writer for Salon, she could get away with anti-Catholic rants. But working for a presidential candidate, it was a different story.
At the time, I wrote, "Her writing is full of so many half-truths, manufactured criticisms, dead-wrong assumptions, and a child-like ignorance of the emotional universe inhabited by normal men and women that trying to decipher her scribblings (once you can get by the obscenities and work your way through the incoherence) is a task best left to a psychiatrist."
Marcotte has a history of anti-Catholic bigotry. Her personal blog was full of cute, nauseating aphorisms, such as:
Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?
A: You'd have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.
I have taken some pains to give some background on Marcotte because she has always been a prime example of a rage-filled feminist. In the case of the attacks on New York women, that rage has become practiced, studied, measured, and 100% political.
We see it in the male fans of Jordan Peterson, who clamor to his events to hear him croak out a just-so story about how lobsters justify their faith in male dominance. Or the rise of "tradwives" online who make a living pretending they're unemployed and housebound. Or Ben Shapiro setting fire to a Barbie doll because he can't stand that a blockbuster comedy starring a woman is about anything but her quest for male affection. Or MAGA pundits telling lies about birth control, in hopes of tricking women into having babies before they're ready. Or conservatives writing op-eds that blame women for male loneliness, telling women they must self-sacrifice to relieve male pain by marrying Donald Trump voters. Or right-wing men yelling because Taylor Swift has cats or because she dates a hunky, vaccinated NFL player instead of, I dunno, having babies with a guy in ill-fitting cargo shorts.
No need to unpack that screed. Marcotte is so wrong on so many levels that her identification of male troubles as a product of the unrequited sexual tension of MAGA males is par for the course.
"Right-wing men yelling because Taylor Swift has cats or because she dates a hunky, vaccinated NFL player" is, I believe, supposed to be funny. It's not, but it reveals a cloying need from Marcotte that she's always demonstrated; an overwhelming desire for attention.
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Trump is not responsible for the attacks on women in New York City. Whatever MAGA people believe, it has nothing to do with violence toward women. The small male subset of incels is not MAGA for the simple reason there are about 20 times more Trump supporters than incels. There are probably an equal number of liberal men who share frustration with women for the simple reason that interpersonal relationships involve far more than politics.
The modern sexual dynamic between men and women is far more complex than the simple-minded sophistry spouted by Marcotte and her fellow feminist travelers. I'm grateful for that. If it was as simple as Marcotte makes it out to be, life and love wouldn't be worth it.
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