Politics
MAGA men unleash torrent of misogynistic hate following Trump’s election win
A surge of misogynistic social media posts featuring men laying claim to women’s bodies has coincided with President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory last week, according to a new report.
Trump ran a campaign that included denying women their free will. He vowed to be women’s protector “whether the women like it or not,” and he repeatedly praised the chaos that has ensued after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn women’s federal right to abortion as “beautiful.” His victory has some in the MAGA movement eager to subjugate women, and their remarks all but affirm some people’s fears that a Trump win would unleash misogyny akin to that in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
The nonpartisan Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks the spread of disinformation and propaganda online, released a report Friday that found an initial spike in blatantly misogynistic statements — including men telling women “your body, my choice” and calling for women’s voting rights to be repealed — following Trump’s victory.
I’d been keeping track of such misogyny in the lead-up to Election Day. But the ISD report explains how this kind of bigoted bile exploded online after Trump’s win.
According to the report:
In a national election heavily focused on women and reproductive rights, women in the United States have faced an onslaught of online abuse, harassment, and denigration following Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss. This is more than just a continuation of misogynist trends that ISD documented in both the run-up to this election and in the aftermath of previous cycles including 2020 and 2022. As an emboldened group of ‘manosphere’ influencers, extremist ideologues and politicians exploit Donald Trump’s election as a rebuke of both reproductive rights and women’s rights, the impact on women could extend into the next presidential election and beyond.
The “manosphere” is an online, multiplatform community of angst-ridden men who believe feminism — and women’s independence, more broadly — is a key source of society’s problems. The report quotes a widely shared post-election tweet from far-right manosphere podcaster Andrew Tatewho suggested he hit the gas pedal in his car when he saw a woman at a crosswalk because “you no longer have rights.” It also quotes a social media post from Nick Fuentes, Trump’s white nationalist dinner date from 2022who tweeted, “Your body, my choice. Forever,” and garnered tens of millions of impressions.
In just a 24-hour span after the election, researchers reportedly found a “4,600% increase in mentions of the terms ‘your body, my choice’ and ‘get back in the kitchen’ on X.” The report refers to multiple social media users who said they or their children were told “your body, my choice” in class. The researchers found tens of thousands of accounts using the phrase “dumb c–t” to refer to Vice President Kamala Harris and other women on Election Day itself, using an insult Elon Musk’s super PAC referred to in a suggestive anti-Harris ad. And the researchers also found calls for “rape” and “rape squads” garnered thousands of views on social media after last week’s election.
This research aligns with research from other experts who’ve talked about invective targeting women in politics. Disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, for example, wrote for BLN that the vicious attacks Harris has received are incomparable to those any woman in politics before her has faced.And this fits a troubling global trend. Around the world, many of the repressive, authoritarian-like figures Trump and his movement idolize have all been bolstered by movements of petulant men who harass and threaten women. They include Salvadoran President Nayib BukeleArgentinian President Javier Milei and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
All have learned how to use the misogynistic angst of their country’s men to their political advantage, and Donald Trump is no different.
The topic of “MAGA masculinity” is one I’ve been covering closely over the past several months, and I’m going to stay on this beat. To read some of my previous coverage, check the links herehereherehere and here.
Ja’han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He’s a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”
VANCOUVER — Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber joined Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday to watch Canada’s thrashing of Qatar. Garber probably did not want Carney to enjoy the stadium experience too much.
BC Place is Major League Soccer’s most troublesome facility. The arena is old, was not designed with soccer in mind, and is owned by a government agency — the BC Pavilion Corporation, which also controls the Vancouver Convention Center — that forces the Vancouver Whitecaps to fight for dates on the calendar against concerts and other events.
“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” Garber told reporters Friday in Seattle.
The Whitecaps are now up for sale, and Garber is actively pushing British Columbia’s political establishment — including Premier David Eby and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim — to find a solution can keep the team from decamping to Las Vegas. While the government has been willing to renegotiate its financial relationship with the team, a proposed new stadium would take “four-plus years” in construction, which Garber said was untenable.
“It unimaginable how long we’re going to be out of the stadium,” he told reporters Friday in Seattle. “They are very relevant club that doesn’t have a good business model, and you can’t be sustainable.”
Garber recounted he met with Eby while in Vancouver, and sat with Carney and Victor Montagliani — the head of regional soccer confederation CONCACAF and a close ally of the prime minister — during the match itself. Garber said he has placed a league official in Vancouver full-time to manage the negotiations with local officials over the Whitecaps’s future.
“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” said Garber. “It’s easier for business people to make decisions, a little harder for politicians.”
In 2001, airline employees stopped a seven-months pregnant Florence Balogun from traveling home to London, deeming her too pregnant to fly. She stayed in New York, where she was visiting, eventually giving birth to a son, Folarin, before returning to London.
Twenty-five years later, Folarin Balogun has attracted global notice as a rising soccer star. Despite training in Arsenal’s youth academy and spending much of his career playing for England’s youth teams, Balogun — legally an American citizen, thanks to his Brooklyn birth — has emerged as a key contributor to the U.S. team’s attack at this year’s World Cup. The striker scored two goals in America’s opener against Paraguay last Friday, hoisting his team to a record-breaking 4-1 victory, the most goals the U.S. men’s team has ever scored in a World Cup game.
While Balogun’s performance has fueled fresh hopes about America’s World Cup prospects, he’s also found himself in the middle of America’s ongoing birthright citizenship debate.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order overturning the country’s long-standing birthright citizenship practice. The American Civil Liberties Union then sued to block the move, taking their legal battle to the Supreme Court. The court is expected to issue a final ruling soon — though it seems“broadly skeptical” of Trump’s effort.
“The executive order itself doesn’t claim to strip away [Balogun’s] citizenship or or the citizenship of other people born before [Feb. 19, 2025],” Cody Wofsy, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s case, told Blue Light News. “But the constitutional theory that the government is asking the Supreme Court to adopt casts a shadow over the citizenship of millions and millions of people who were born in this country and have lived their entire lives as citizens.”
Examples of high-profile birthright citizens — like Balogun, but also politicians such as Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio — help illustrate the reality of banning birthright citizenship, Wofsy said.
“We don’t know what the justices are thinking,” he said, “but I would hope that they understand just how grave an action the government’s asking them for.”
SEATTLE — Some American fans walking toward Lumen Field on Friday morning were playfully jeering their Australian peers whenever they spotted a telltale yellow jersey. But a major driver of the local economy offered a kinder greeting to the visiting team.
Cranes in view of the stadium gates have been outfitted with the Australian flag and a WELCOME message from the Northwest Seaport Alliance, which manages the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, along with dockworkers’ union ILWU Local 19.
The seaport alliance and the labor union representing its workforce are mounting a similar display throughout the World Cup, rotating flags out to reflect the pair of teams that will face off next in Seattle. But keeping the Australians happy is a more urgent cause for Seattle harbor interests than, say, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Qatar.
Australia is one of the ports’ top trading partners, with the 14th largest source of container volume at the Port of Seattle, but ranks much higher when it comes to the dollar value of goods that come from there. (New Zealand, for example, sends more volume to Seattle than Australia but it’s worth only half as much.)
Meat, including beef and lamb, and minerals comprise the biggest categories of goods that Australia ships to the United States, although some of the most valuable exports — gold and pharmaceuticals — are more likely to land at Sea-Tac airport than via the harbor.
The U.S. and Australia have had a free-trade pact since 2005, although President Donald Trump’s tariff regime threatens to disrupt some trade flows. Australia is currently pushing back on its inclusion on an American list of countries alleged to use forced labor in its supply chains, which the U.S. Trade Representative is using as the basis to impose a 12.5 percent tariff.
- The soccer boss in Mark Carney’s ear
- Vance says US allows more than dozen ships through to Iranian ports
- Regulators back Trump plan to speed power to energy-hungry AI data centers
- The accidental American
- The Americans who want to see Australia do well
- Steil pushes bill to ban lawmakers from political prediction markets
- Australian media are launching a MAGA counterpress
- The clock is ticking on an Iran talks. Here’s what still has to get done.
- New York mayor, other leaders push to ban horse-drawn carriage rides after Indian teen’s death
- Sen. Duckworth urges FAA to reject pressure to approve Trump’s triumphal arch
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship9 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words