Last night I dreamt about a tiered classroom filled with students dressed in 1940s – ‘50s garb: corduroys, pleated skirts, crew-necked sweaters, and white collars as well as black and white saddle shoes. In in the dream I zeroed in on the shoes because of course I did, and woke remembering how much I loved them, realizing that I still do. I even googled whether they’re being made, present tense, and they are. Hm. Will I? Should I? Can I? Probably not, but oh, those beauties!
Real saddle shoes, in my definition, are flat AF, black and white with a tan bottom, and are all leather other than the rivets, laces and stiching. I wore them as a cheerleader (I might might post photographic proof), and other days with jeans and my own groovy corduroy pants or pleated wool skirts. Yes, my gross and sleazy uncle Norbert wore them, but his weren’t the authentic saddle shoes as I defined them; his were thickly soled, in suede and colors other than beautiful B&W, so that was okay, okay as in his wearing them didn’t taint saddle shoes as a whole.
They could be slippery; scoring the soles with a knife or scissors worked, if you were so inclined. Like all white or partly white shoes, they got dirty easily, which drove me nuts, and the little crease lines were inevitable, where your foot bent to take a step. Still and all, what beauties! They also represented making the cheerleading squad, which I desired and had failed at in my initial try as a rising freshman. The woman who ran the squad disliked my mother heartily, and I could feel her animus toward me during those first tryouts, along with a few other people in the crowd of on-lookers who were willing me to fail and fail I sure did. I guess they thought performing before an audience of the current squad and other auditionees was good as it showed grace under pressure? Yeah, I get that, I do; I just couldn’t do that under those circumstances. It was too much like home.
It was late in the spring of my 8th grade year. I had been elected president of my class after four years of hellish, administratively imposed middle school divisiveness, and for many reasons, whatever those outward successes might’ve indicated, a sizable chunk of both my peers and upper-class students hated my fucking guts. So did my mother, which is one of the many ironies of the woman in charge of the squad hating on me because she hated my mom. Successfully trying out the following year, getting those shoes on my feet, what joy, what relief! Yay! I can scream my fucking head off in public, and no one will question why!! Screaming to support male sporting events? Good. Screaming because boys and men are harassing or assaulting you? Bad. Screaming because life is fucking hard and anger along with screaming is a pretty damn reasonable response? Also not good.
Like so much of my childhood, cheerleading was a nice outward facing cover story for that which was really going on, as in I was depressed and suicidal, but …hey hey, ho ho, Davenport has got to go!! Let’s go boys!!
Still, those shoes are and were glorious. Glorious.
Never heard of him. Not entirely true as mentions of him in the New Yorker this past year did spark my interest, and here he is once more popping up on my radar. But of the many white guys named Patrick Byrne, which one y’talking about, Moj? I’m talking about Patrick M. Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com, and general creepazoid, who has now fled to Dubai to live and breathe free, thus the pop to my radar, escaping justice on several fronts including a suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which successfully sued Faux News for defamation, among others.
Byrne is a real piece of shit, though, born into wealth and educated up the wazoo (Dartmouth, Cambridge, Stanford), he’s been peddling conspiracies theories and the Big Lie for years now, but like the head of the GQP, he’s nowhere to be found when there might be fact-checking and consequences around.
Byrne is also very well known for his relationship with Maria Butina, later revealed as a Russian Agent, and even later known for running for office as a member of Putin’s party in that totalitarian, adversarial (to the U.S.) country. Don’t you wish men would stop thinking and acting with their dicks? I do. Of course, it’s possible Byrne really can’t help himself, as, when he was in his 20s, he suffered from repeated bouts of testicular cancer, which is tragic, and may have led to his inability to form relationships with actual thinking, breathing, non-spy women his own age.
Butina was convicted and sentenced in the U.S. of spying in 2019 but along with Byrne, Butina was cozy with any number of Federal level GQP members of the Senate and congress as well as with the leadership of the NRA because of course she was. Butina spent a total of 16 months in prison, after which she returned (was sent back) to Russia, where she became openly involved in their national politics.
Byrne continued to send Butina financial gifts (did I mention she’s half his age?), which led members of the Russian political opposition (those that are still alive, that is) to object to her running for political office due to her ‘foreign political backer’. These gifts from Byrne were investigated in this country by the Business Insider, and he admitted to making them. Led. By. His. Dick.
Byrne is a libertarian, which is a political philosophy I characterize (Reader’s Digest Condensed Version) as the following: I’ve got mine, fuck you. He is one of many powerful men who loathed Hillary Clinton for reasons I will also sum up: Small Dick Energy Syndrome or Misogyny 101, Period. And because he is filthy rich, he will probably live high on the hog in Dubai, good riddance to bad rubbish, although will Byrne enjoy immigrant status? Who knows and who cares. After the 2020 election he was the lead financier of the many futile recount efforts in Arizona, an important swing state again this year and probably every year moving forward; personally, that fact alone makes me happy he’s out of the country – although in the age of the internet and dark money, will it help? Fingers x’ed.
From his wiki page, which I will not link here because fuck that guy: In 2022, PBS reported that Byrne had been informed that several of the persons he promoted as stating that Trump was defrauded (in the 2020 election) were lying, but that he chose to promote their words anyways. He also told a reporter from PBS that he “could live with” potentially “destroying the country”, referring to the United States.
“I never thought the leopards would eat MY face”, sobs the woman who voted for the Leopard Eating Faces party.
Tim Miller is a former Republican strategist and current Bulwark contributor and podcaster I follow regularly. Several years ago I read his book Why We Did It, an attempt to explain the GOP’s turn toward irresponsibly whacky and yes, the road from whacky to literally being a danger to our democracy, a.k.a. DJT. I admire Miller’s willingness to admit his culpability in the elevation of this vastly unserious narcissist, which has, at this juncture, led to Leopard Eating Faces party winning the White House, Part Two.
Tim addresses what was, for him, a talent for compartmentalization, for denial, for pushing the ugliness of reality away to serve a higher good he realized later wasn’t very good, possibly not even a little. But as a kid and teen, he joined the young Republicans because the cool guys, the ones on the winning side, were Republicans; who doesn’t want to be a part of that?! We all like winning.
He was also very skilled at ignoring the (racist, sexist, homophobic) elephant in the room, because he grew up gay in a very conservative Republican, Catholic family, attending a Jesuit private school in his predominantly white, Republican community in Colorado. Hide much? He had been conditioned to deny his own, authentic self, as well as to being a part of a system that included men and women whose careers he helped promote – fellow Republicans who thought being gay was evil, worthy of punishment or at least worth denying basic human rights, by way of policy and law. In America.
As Miller sees it, the GOP adapted and ultimately accepted DJT because even if he was a monster, he was their monster after all, their leopard – although he uses alligator as a stand in, and for me, they both work. But in 2015 the common GOP wisdom was that the alligator they let into their pond wouldn’t take their arms off!! And then it did, beating all (was it 19? 12?) of his fellow contenders in 2015-’16 despite the quite common belief among many in the GOP that it’d never happen. And now, he’s chewed off quite a few arms, ended a number of careers, led to tens of thousands of deaths during Covid and in the wake of the Capitol riots, and – hold onto your socks – part 2 yet ain’t official for some time. Oops. Ouch. Dang. At least we’ll be prepared? Maybe.
Tim left the party, or the party left him; he’s been jumping up and down screaming on the sidelines – and anywhere else he can – ever since. He has also married and adopted a child with his husband. You’ve come a long way baby, but Tim Miller (no relation, by the way), was always going to be okay. He’s a college educated white man with money in the bank and a high profile politically; once the hypocrisy and cowardice of his fellow Republicans was finally, incrementally, revealed over the course of the last decade (feels like a century), he was done.
Other supporters of the alligator or leopard party (you pick), however, they ain’t gonna be okay, I’m afraid. We’re officially in the FAFO phase of the experiment that is DJT 2, although yes, he’s not in office, yet, just picking weirder and weirder and less and less qualified persons to lead essential agencies. Some believe Dems should let these crazy picks be confirmed, help usher in the chaos and crazy – but I hope we won’t. People actually depend on government services to protect and serve them – particularly the person in charge of the Department of Defense – no, no, no, no, no, no, no – Pete Hesgeth? No. But RFK Jr. is almost as bad.
And as for Matt Gaetz? A prominent conservative commentator might’ve put it best: I realize that we are occasionally given to hyperbole about the untoward nature of politicians, but let me be clear: Matt Gaetz is a sex trafficking drug addicted piece of s**t. He is abhorrent. His eyes are permanently rimmed with the red rings of chemical boosters. In person, he smells like overexposed Axe Body Spray and stale Astroglide.”
“The fact that he boasted on the floor to multiple colleagues in the House of Representatives of his methods of crushing Viagra and high test Red Bull to maintain his erection through his orgiastic evenings is perhaps the least offensive of his many crimes against womanhood and Christian faith. The man has less principles than your average fentanyl addicted hobo.”
“He is a walking genital, warts included as a bonus. If I was merely attempting to count the number of women I know who have had bad experiences with Matt Gaetz, I would run out of fingers and toes.”
There’s more – all from Ben Domenach. Look it up on sub stack. I don’t think that particular Florida alligator – Matt-A-Gator? – is gonna fly. Or whatever.
Deep breaths. I, too, will be okay. I am a white lady in her 60s who has money in the bank and elsewhere. Yet, as a non-compartmentalizer, I fear for my Latinx friends, and family. I fear for women everywhere but especially in states that don’t allow for abortion-care access, and all those who may have dangled their arms in the pond thinking the water had to be better than Biden’s water.
Come January 21st – we’re all gonna find out, after one of the worst electoral fuck ups, ever.
*stolen, borrowed whatever from Mother Jones, written by Clara Jeffrey, and I couldn’t agree more. and, for once, I am actually happy with boomers – who as a group voted in the majority for Harris, unlike almost every other age group. the white vote share of the vote was up, however, from 67% in 2020 to 71% this year. maybe it’s the voter suppression tactics all over the damned place? y’think? maybe it’s the racism (same thing, different angle?) but more than anything, what the trmp campaign did was weaponize sexism, appealing to men of all ages, where he saw vote share gains across the board. ugh. we’ll be hearing all about it for years, but this article certainly gets to the heart of the male grievance propaganda machine, and how it is weaponized, as well as how some, not all, women feel about it. ggrrrrr……
***Clara Jeffery is Editor-in-Chief of Mother Jones and recipient of a PEN America award for editing.
In the days before the election, when too many stories about deadlocked polls and undecided voters and the MAGAfication of young men began to wear on my soul, I turned to TikTok to see what women were thinking. Soon enough I was swimming in a sea of female excitement and angst. I watched videos of ordinary women of all ages and races—in deep blue districts and deep red ones—describing what this election meant to them. Women who had just voted, sitting in their cars and sobbing about what it would mean to elect the first female president, what it would mean to defeat a vitriolically sexist candidate who’s been found liable for sexually assaulting one woman and who stands accused by dozens more, whose campaign gleefully demeaned women as “trash” and “childless cat ladies.” What it would mean to elect someone who’d spent the last three months, and the two years before that, connecting reproductive freedom to economic concerns. What it would mean to elect someone taking the stress of caring for both kids and parents seriously, who recognizes the housing crisis is hurting all but the richest, who has more than a concept of a plan for how to address such problems.
I watched one young woman driving 10 hours to her home state because her absentee ballot never arrived, muttering “10 and 2, 10 and 2” as she stared out at the road ahead. I watched women flying across the country to vote. I watched women take part in the “They both reached for the gun” Chicago meme as they talked about canceling out the vote of their Trump-supporting father, brother, or husband. Or bragging on husbands or dads whose vote they didn’t have to cancel. One who said she wouldn’t have to cancel out her husband’s vote because he’d forget to do it if she didn’t remind him.
One woman told of breaking off her engagement when she found out her fiancé was for Trump. (“I can’t share my life with someone who is going to vote in that direction…Ladies, we need to stick together.”) I watched as young woman after young woman testified that they’d never, ever consider dating anyone who voted for Trump. I watched as women who were in middle or high school in 2016 reacted in horror at seeing, for the first time, Trump bragging on an Access Hollywood bus about grabbing women by the pussy and moving on them “like a bitch,” or stalking Hillary Clinton around a debate stage, or seeing the testimonies of the more than 25 women who have reported being sexually assaulted by him. “Dads voted for this?” read one incredulous caption.
I was well aware that algorithmic offerings are not reality, particularly on TikTok, which serves you things akin to the things you’ve engaged with. But the videos seemed to be representative of a record gender divide, clocked by pollsters at at about 30 points nationally at the time and even higher in key districts and among certain demographics. Would women, horrified by Trump’s and Vance’s statements and actions, furious that their reproductive rights were rolled back, foreclose another Trump term? Would enough white women finally cleave from white men, and vote for a woman who was also Black and Asian?
We know the answer now, and while conclusive demographic data will take months to emerge, exit polls in 10 historic battleground states indicate that women there favored Harris by 8 points overall—less than the margin for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020—resulting in an 11 point gender gap. (The exit polls’ ongoing inclusion of Florida, Ohio, and Texas might being warping our conclusions, but we don’t yet know.) Black women, Democrats’ most loyal constituency, voted for her in those states at a rate of 91 percent. Latinas, 60 percent. Young women, 61 percent. Other age groups, 49–54 percent. Harris won 57 percent of women with college degrees and 66 percent of women with even more education. But she lost white women with little or no college education by a mile. Only 35 percent of them supported her, and since those women constitute about one-fifth of the total electorate, they drove down her margins with women overall.
The questions that feel most burning right now—like what is up with those who voted against abortion bans but also for Trump, and which part of his gains can be attributed mostly to racism and/or sexism—are complex and will take more data and analysis to really understand. But it’s safe to say Trump’s margin of victory was powered by men, who, those same polls found, voted for him by 55 percent—a few points more than went for him in 2020. Trump looks to have made gains with almost every type of man, especially younger men and Latino men. (Despite a lot of pre-election angst, Black men overwhelmingly backed Harris, though Trump increased his margins there, too.) White men of all education levels went for Trump, but white men who didn’t go to college overwhelmingly so.
The Trump campaign knew that men were his ticket back to power, and it targeted them—pointedly young men, and men of color—with a sophisticated campaign of grievance and disinformation. And in that, they were massively aided by the manosphere and its billionaire mascot: Elon Musk.
Since he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk has been on a mission to turn it into an amplifier of toxicity. He allowed hate-mongers—including virulent misogynists such as Andrew Tate—back on the platform, now called X, and dismantled tools to help users fight harassment while making sure everyone was far more likely to see posts and replies from MAGA fans, foremost himself. He personally promoted disinformation of all kinds—about voting, about transgender kids (despite, or because of, having one), about Harris (his PAC literally called her a “c-word”), about science—to his more than 204 million followers. Who can forget his promise to impregnate Taylor Swift after she announced her support for Harris? His misleading election posts, including ones falsely claiming Democrats were “importing” millions of migrants to vote for Harris, were viewed 2 billion times according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which estimated his posts were worth $24 million to the Trump campaign. (Musk, who likes to claim he’s a defender of free speech, sued the center in 2023; a federal judge tossed the case, ruling it was an obvious attempt to both stifle criticism of X and bankrupt the organization.)
Musk gave, directly and through super-PACs, about $200 million to help Trump’s campaign in the final months, and mounted a parallel ground game in Pennsylvania, which Trump carried. He stumped for Trump, made the “brocast” rounds for Trump, and urged other tech billionaires to support Trump. He gave millions—possibly tens of millions—to Building America’s Future, a group focused on dividing communities of color and wooing Black men to vote for Trump.
Musk’s efforts are both part of and indicative of the fact that more and more men are cocooned in a YouTube/podcast/Twitch information ecosystem that connects sports, gaming, and other male-dominated hobbies to politics. And in that space, algorithmic forces and concerted efforts by far-right influencers and adjacent grifters are normalizing disdain or hate for women, part of a conveyor belt of extremism. A good example of that came immediately after the election, when neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes (who famously dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago) posted “Your body, my choice”. Soon that slogan was screamed at high school girls all over the country by their male classmates, many of whom had likely never heard of Fuentes himself. (Similarly, Black people, including kids at my son’s school, were subjected to a decentralized but nationwide campaign of racist texts.)
There can be no doubt that there is fertile ground for those who find prominence and profit in nurturing resentment of women. For decades, men have been losing ground relative to women, be it in education or job opportunities. Women are increasingly likely to be a household’s primary breadwinner or raise families by themselves. The MeToo movement was a massively needed corrective for sexual harassment and abuse, but the ferocity of it (and some occasional overreach) did destabilize many men.
This has all happened before. Women in the 1940s were sent to the factories and back to the kitchen. The feminist movement of the 1970s led to big gains— we finally got those credit cards, ladies! we —and then to a backlash, as Susan Faludi famously chronicled. An “anti-PC” movement arose too. But eventually the pendulum swung back, and new waves of female empowerment began to swell. Hopefully this election will do the same, and figuring out how to reach young men before they calcify into hardened misogyny needs to be a big part of that.
After the 2016 election, I wrote that Trump’s victory was a “brutal affront to women” and “all who value kindness and tolerance.” His administration plumbed new depths of chaos, corruption, and cruelty, and while some voters are too young to fully remember, his 2024 campaign made sure that no one could say they didn’t get what he stands for.
The women who voted for Harris know that—and they are not okay. About one-third of women now live in states with abortion bans, and anybody who believed that Trump won’t try for a national ban, or revive the Comstock Act to stop distribution of mifepristone or even contraception, is likely to be bitterly disappointed. Even if nationwide prohibitions don’t come to pass, women in red states, and their doctors, will be further surveilled to prevent abortions, and women trying to have children will continue to die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid to provide lifesaving care. What else do the “pro-natalist” policies that JD Vance and Elon Musk have been so eager to enact hold for women?
When I went back to TikTok after the election, I saw sorrow and disbelief and terror, but also incandescent rage. Women are furious—in a Greek mythology sort of way. Black women are especially flattened and yet unsurprised that white women didn’t break for Harris. Some young women began shaving their heads and embracing the South Korean feminist 4B movement, in which women swear off dating, sex, and childrearing. (“The good news is that men hate us, so there’s no point in catering to them,” posted one.) Not many are likely to go that far, but it was clear even before the outcome that this election could have far-reaching impacts on dating and marriage and divorce. Certainly sex: If women can’t get abortions and are prevented from obtaining contraception, young men will awake to a very different world, soon enough. “If his ballot was red, his balls stay blue,” posted one woman. (And guys? Project 2025 wants to come after porn, too.)
Will the backlash, once the election’s consequences become fully apparent, help power a reckoning with misogyny and racism once more? Perhaps. But right now, so many of us fear for ourselves, fear for our daughters, fear for women whom we’ve never met, and all others with a target on their backs, and we are walking around, suspicious and guarded and apoplectic, knowing that some in our families or neighborhoods voted us back into second-class status, and wondering what else they’re ready to go along with.
*it feels important in these times to reiterate that human biology is fcking complicated, and to counter knee-jerk reactions to questions of gender that attempt to simplify that which is not simplify-able. human sexuality is complex, even without a question of gender, let’s be kind, eh? eh. from the end of this article, just in case you’re in a rush: You can’t have a binary classification system (male or female) with more than two configurations even if two of those configurations are more common than others. can you hear me now?! 🙂
Rebecca Helm, a biologist and an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Asheville US writes:
“Friendly neighborhood biologist here. I see a lot of people are talking about biological sexes and gender right now. Lots of folks make biological sex sex seem really simple. Well, since it’s so simple, let’s find the biological roots, shall we? Let’s talk about sex…[a thread]
If you know a bit about biology you will probably say that biological sex is caused by chromosomes, XX and you’re female, XY and you’re male. This is “chromosomal sex” but is it “biological sex”? Well…
Turns out there is only ONE GENE on the Y chromosome that really matters to sex. It’s called the SRY gene. During human embryonic development the SRY protein turns on male-associated genes. Having an SRY gene makes you “genetically male”. But is this “biological sex”?
Sometimes that SRY gene pops off the Y chromosome and over to an X chromosome. Surprise! So now you’ve got an X with an SRY and a Y without an SRY. What does this mean?
A Y with no SRY means physically you’re female, chromosomally you’re male (XY) and genetically you’re female (no SRY). An X with an SRY means you’re physically male, chromsomally female (XX) and genetically male (SRY). But biological sex is simple! There must be another answer…
Sex-related genes ultimately turn on hormones in specifics areas on the body, and reception of those hormones by cells throughout the body. Is this the root of “biological sex”??
“Hormonal male” means you produce ‘normal’ levels of male-associated hormones. Except some percentage of females will have higher levels of ‘male’ hormones than some percentage of males. Ditto ditto ‘female’ hormones. And…
…if you’re developing, your body may not produce enough hormones for your genetic sex. Leading you to be genetically male or female, chromosomally male or female, hormonally non-binary, and physically non-binary. Well, except cells have something to say about this…
Maybe cells are the answer to “biological sex”?? Right?? Cells have receptors that “hear” the signal from sex hormones. But sometimes those receptors don’t work. Like a mobile phone that’s on “do not disturb’. Call and cell, they will not answer.
What does this all mean?
It means you may be genetically male or female, chromosomally male or female, hormonally male/female/non-binary, with cells that may or may not hear the male/female/non-binary call, and all this leading to a body that can be male/non-binary/female.
Try out some combinations for yourself. Notice how confusing it gets? Can you point to what the absolute cause of biological sex is? Is it fair to judge people by it?
Of course you could try appealing to the numbers. “Most people are either male or female” you say. Except that as a biologist professor I will tell you…
The reason I don’t have my students look at their own chromosome in class is because people could learn that their chromosomal sex doesn’t match their physical sex, and learning that in the middle of a 10-point assignment is JUST NOT THE TIME.
Biological sex is complicated. Before you discriminate against someone on the basis of “biological sex” & identity, ask yourself: have you seen YOUR chromosomes? Do you know the genes of the people you love? The hormones of the people you work with? The state of their cells?
Since the answer will obviously be no, please be kind, respect people’s right to tell you who they are, and remember that you don’t have all the answers. Again: biology is complicated. Kindness and respect don’t have to be.’
Note: Biological classifications exist. XX, XY, XXY XXYY and all manner of variation which is why sex isn’t classified as binary. You can’t have a binary classification system with more than two configurations even if two of those configurations are more common than others.
