Moira Donegan
Appearances
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
yeah i think you're right matt that we're undergoing this like really broad realignment in uh american politics where both parties are shifting to the right the republican party shifting very dramatically to the right and the republican party or the democratic party rather rather sort of like limping behind them like you know injured and bleeding yeah like wait up like my kid brother but like then you also get the specific sort of schizophrenic realignment of
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
sexual politics and like sexual and family aspiration on the right, where I think there's a lot of like competing and sometimes conflicting sexual ideas emerging on the right wing right now. And it's not always, totally making sense, but it's all like very gross, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And there's a lot of different visions of what sex and the family can and should be emerging in the MAGA right and what we might call like the Doge right or the tech right that don't necessarily look like what we might think of as a traditionally like Reaganite, James Dobson kind of Christian family values model.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yes, absolutely. I'm gunning for that role.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
I know. I thought she was kind of cute. And now I like that she's a crypto scammer, although... But they needed to imagine that we would be like... How dare you spit on that thing?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
I think there is 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, but that led us nicely into history.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
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. We had a Christian version of conservatism claiming to be defending a traditional right which was in fact the invention of like two generations before, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Against what were perceived as these new and dangerous and excessive cultural trends on the left, right? 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 for the perceived sexual excess of the gay male community.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And then also in terms of a really sexually repressive and sadistically so anti-abortion movement, which sort of rose at the same time in the 1980s and then the 1990s to great prominence, right? And 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...
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
no i'm right in the middle so i get to say this but like as the as the median podcast hosts of this uh you know i came to political consciousness during bush one when the major uh sexual politics of the right you know their preoccupations were absence only education and opposition to same-sex marriage right and those were both a pretty strictly prohibitionist move.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And then something changed, like a few things have changed since 2004. But one thing that changed was that you had an emergence of a right wing, like sexual excess, right? And of a model of conservative masculinity that went beyond this one time sort of role of exerting sexual control by prohibiting sexual expression.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And into this different model where sexual control was exerted with sexual force, right, including with like sexual assault and rape. And that was a long standing model that I think a lot of conservative men were taking part in, even when the primary mode of like political sexual politics on the right was more prohibitionist.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
But the model of sexual force as an expression of domination was one that has existed for a long time and has been critiqued by feminists, even when it was sort of out of style with the leaders of the Republican Party. Right. It was, you know, Larry Flint. It was Hugh Hefner. It was a kind of like lewd, like pornographer masculinity.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
1980s Donald Trump. Right. And this was something that, you know, at times had provisional alliances with like feminist movements. Right. Like Hugh Hefner was a huge donor to Planned Parenthood, not because he believed in like women's dignity and rights to control their own bodies. Right.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
But because he saw the feminist movement or at least one version of the feminist movement as a shortcut to continuing men's sexual access. Right. And now you have Dave Portnoy, president of Barstool Sports, who in many ways is a successor to Hefner. Right. And he is like Hefner, pretty avowedly pro-choice for the same reasons of like continued sexual access. Right. And he's also a Trump supporter.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Right. Because the mantle of maximum sexual access as a marker of men's domination, as a marker of masculinity, as a marker of status and control, that has become something the Republican Party is willing to avow. So I think there's been a real stylistic change, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Do it. Do it. Let's get into it.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Classically, Abby is a far-right, highly religious – I believe she's Jewish – influencer who is – she's kind of – like, some of her content is what I would consider, like, mostly, like, straight influencer content. You know, like a lot of what I would call, like, women in the trad wife space are. She has crossover appeal where she gets the viewers in with something very mainstream, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Like, this is a recipe. This is my makeup look. This is a way that I like to spend the evening with my family. And then comes in with this kind of insane ideological justification for why she does her makeup this way. Yeah. Why she makes the recipe this way or why she spends her time with her family in this particular sequence of activities or styles.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And it's like, oh, you really didn't have to go there.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It's so self-serious. She's like, I've been censored. No more. With the dramatic Celine Dion piano going.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Well, I think like one of the things that is characteristic of the new conservatism's online style is like a lot of irreverence, a lot of like joking. And like that's not really her vibe, right? She's very righteous in this way that's like almost an inverse of like the self-righteous woke scold. She's like... trying to antagonize, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
She's taking on the same stylistic mode of like, I'm a brave truth teller with my point of view, which is not where the online right has been deriving a lot of its power. I also think it's really like hard, particularly for women, maybe in general, but I'm thinking specifically on the right right now to like,
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
be a figure of authority like moral and intellectual authority which is clearly how she sees herself right she's not seeing herself as like an imp who's like there to gussy up your pieties in the way that like a lot of conservative influencers want to be you know if she was a little meaner i think it might have worked out better for her but she was like she took herself too seriously
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Every time I saw classically Abby, it was people commenting on her being sexually attractive, though. And like particularly on like the size of her chest, which is like very exaggerated. Right.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And it was like clearly what she was aggressively not trying to do. Right. And it seemed like they were trying to take this woman who had gotten the conservative heterosexuality sort of wrong and trying to take her against her will back into that model in a way that was clearly like meant to antagonize and degrade her. Right.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And it was like if she had wanted to do this because she's trying to go for kind of a she's not a Christian, but like a conservative religious conservative role. modesty, censorious model of sexuality, right? And that's not really what right-wing women are doing right now. They've got their tits out. Every trad wife has herself in a little corset where her tits are out like they're on a platter.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It's this vocabulary or talking points about the primacy of marriage and motherhood and abandoning your birth control paired with this kind of vulgar imagery that is clearly very sexually suggestive, borrowing from the pornographic.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Maybe it's mixed messages or conflicting signals, or maybe it's the emergence of a synthesis between an emphasis on particularly reproduction, child-rearing, the home on the one hand, and an aggressive... mandate of like sexual like ostentatious sexuality on the other
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It's so nice to be here, Matt.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
I think you're onto something here, Matt. I think she has a set of values that I think are wrong, but they exist for her whether or not I'm offended, right? Whereas a lot of these right-wing influencers now, they seem to be just trying to trigger the libs and sort of taking on whatever position will get them that reaction. And there's no like there's no there there.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
There's no foundational value system beyond like, you know, kind of an admiration for domination that they're like really going to try and promote into the world. They're like, I'm trying to get people mad at me online. I'm trying to make a woman with an asymmetrical haircut angry. And that is their goal more than like advancing something they actually believe in is their goal.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yes, I think my metaphor was that I was like rubbernecking on the highway when you slow down to look at a hideous car wreck because you can't look away. Yeah, I think that Ashley St. Clair is kind of a tragic figure, although I definitely agree with you, Matt, that you don't have to hand it to or sympathize with her. But I think her position right now...
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It is a, I'm going to just describe what I see. It is a very young looking white woman in an apron and a headscarf that is sort of like tied around her very long blonde hair. And she's got a little ceramic dish full of eggs. Yes.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
and she's like looking behind her at a dirty yard full of chickens and sort of like giggling uh and it is a trad wife fantasy of a i gotta say like maximum 12 14 year old girl this is a very young girl you know living this kind of like little house on the prairie cosplay But he is like specifically trying to prioritize or like create a hierarchy of womanhood, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Like the trad wife is above the OnlyFans model, even though we see both of these kinds of like positions of femininity being like taken up by right wing women. these are the two things women are allowed to be. You can be Madonna or whore. And there's like really nothing in between.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yeah. This almost like reminds me, like brings me back to like Ashley St. Clair, right? Who clearly thought that there would be some like after compensation in her deal with Elon Musk, right? Like she thought she was going to have a happy ending, right? But there's no real ending for right-wing women in this vision of conservative sexual politics, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
There's like no way for them to get old, right? There's no way for them to live a life that is esteemed as honorable and dignified in the minds of right-wing men. There's no option for them to
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
be anything beyond like a fantasy gratification tool which is ultimately like a very short term proposition right like living day to day as a traditionalist housewife is i think as you mentioned matt like kind of boring this is not something that people really want to spend a lot of time looking at right what they are much more interested in are these like snapshots that evoke a fantasy
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
and provide like a degree of gratification, which they can like retroactively build an ideology around, but they're not actually going to reward the people who try to live that way.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
represents really clearly what the right sexual politics offers to women, what women think they can get out of manipulating a right wing code of sexuality and adopting a right wing persona. And then it also shows how the right does not live up to those promises, right? So Ashley St. Clair Made what some feminist sociologists have termed like a patriarchal bargain, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yeah. And that seems like a particular moment to me because when I first encountered Hoctua, like Adrian and I, we talked about like, oh, this is kind of delightful. Like she's silly. She's got this beautiful Tennessee accent.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
you know, there's like something kind of wholesome about her enthusiasm, which seems like, you know, playful in this way, like in the clip itself, like I didn't really see political content aside from like, like, you know, irreverent sexual joy, right. Or like playful sexual joy. But that, that expression of heterosexual enthusiasm by like a blonde white girl with a Southern accent was,
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
was understood by the far right. And I think you're right, Matt, that there's something about these people that makes them far right and right wing without being conservative. And it was understood by that group of people as being coextensive with their values. Like, yes,
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
a white girl spitting on a dick is our american dream you know like that was a really interesting moment uh because they seem to be taking not all of sexuality i would say like they're clearly not this enthusiastic about like i think the kind of sex like people like us have you know but like um
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
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. And I think I think it is like a pretty narrow vision of what sex is that they are and that they're enthusiastic about.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
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.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Which is that she thought, you know, I'm attributing some motivation to her. We know relatively little about Ashley and her relationship with Elon Musk beyond like what she told, say, the New York Post. which I did read every word of twice.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
They have a certain charm. Yeah.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
I will say, I might, I might be like, you know, a hammer to whom everything looks like a nail, but I do think Adrian is right. That, To some extent, this is about anti-MeToo backlash, right? There was, for a very brief moment, a resurgence of the kind of anti-rape and anti-sexual harassment feminism that Dave Portnoy and Hugh Hefner of The World have found
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
least easily assimilatable to their own ends, right? And there was a moment where those conversations about sexual violence sort of verged on a broader critique of heterosexuality itself, right? Well, it kind of seems like a lot of guys just sort of presume access to our bodies without really thinking about what we want or what might be fun for us. Those conversations were starting to happen.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And I think the right-wing embrace of an ostentatious, vulgar, exaggerated heterosexuality is partly a rebuke to the feminism of Me Too that wanted to look at the ways that sex itself can be weaponized against women. I also wanted to flag their weird insistence on exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics. The visual eradication of androgyny is something I've noticed in right-wing influencers.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
The women have really long hair. and really big boobs and like dramatic makeup that makes them look um strange and and and you know a very specific kind of plastic surgery you know they all look like kimberly gulf oil now yes yeah and then the men are also doing weird stuff to their bodies right like they are
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
taking steroids to get really muscular like you cannot find a right wing account that has not facetuned that one picture of JD Vance to make it look like more masculine and like a little more angular and so I think part of what they're doing is they're trying to like create also a visual vocabulary
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
But, you know, let's give all these parties the benefit of the doubt here and say we don't really quite know much, but we can sort of assume that somebody in Ashley St. Clair's position thought that being with Elon Musk and by extension having a child with Elon Musk, you know, which we know that he very much was, wants would grant her a degree of security and status, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
in which the sexes look different on their screens, more different on their screens than they tend to in real life. Like in real life, secondary sexual characteristics or sexed bodies are a lot more like, there's just a way more variation than there is in this like visual vocabulary and not everybody's sectionary sex characteristics are that exaggerated.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And also there's a bunch of like queer and trans people who don't exactly look like they fit very firmly into one sex box or the other, you know, and that's, Completely disallowed, right? It's this insistence on embodied sexual difference that then goes on to inform like the social sexual difference that is very, very important.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And it takes it takes so much money and effort for like a regular cis human woman to look like the right wing women look like it is like a very labor intensive process to look like Kimberly Guilfoyle or Melania Trump or any of these ladies.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
yeah yeah it's highly artificial in the look yeah and like you've placed her in the outline that we're all like stealing glances at as we chat like next to this contemporary right wing like the kind of thought woman who's got like yeah very low-cut top sorry oh you know who she is she's an OnlyFans model named Ava Louise famously went to a Trump rally and like flashed her tits and I think was escorted out or something
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yeah, you can see that kind of happening. It's like a very low cut white top, very long hair, like a really heavily made up and like surgically altered face. You know, it's a it is a real night and day look in just terms of like, like, I don't think that Phyllis Schlafly was especially low maintenance. Like I'm looking at this helmet hair she's got from the 70s.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
But the style is different. And the extent and the character of the work is different as well.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
She thought that by providing this man with her sexual favors and reproductive labor, that she would earn his protection. She thought that he would support the child that they had together. She thought that she would benefit personally from his largesse, either in the form of monetary support or in the form of employment
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It looks like Dallas Cowboys.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
The lesbian has to bring the understanding of sports. Yeah. Thank you. She's blonde. She's like a tan white girl. She's got her back kind of arched in these little white booty shorts. And like white cowboy boots and like a top that doesn't make logistical sense to me. But she's in a cheerleading uniform.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yeah, the sense that like male heterosexual desire itself is now a position of like defiance and has like... Yeah, like the moral authority of the underdog to be hot for a cheerleader. And I'm like, I don't know, this strikes me as kind of hegemonic.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yeah, or like encountered another human being. And I think this goes back to the point that you guys were making that it seems like to get the conclusions about the world and how it works, their actual real life social lives. Yeah. must be so like warped and impoverished. Like what kind of life are you living?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
If you think that like, you're a brave truth teller for saying that a cheerleader is hot. Like, I just don't understand it.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It's like they won everything. You won. You control the government. The cultural institutions are all capitulating to your agenda. You've got all the trends. You've got all the money. You've got all the power. And you still want to be the underdog.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
They'll never get over the fact that she drank a beer.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
or in the form of promotion of her projects, she thought that she was making a deal, right? I will have this relationship with you. I will have this baby with you in exchange for these other goods, these other protections. And I think this is like a very common sort of assumption or logic among right wing women, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
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.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And I think what I would like to say is to the Abby St. Clair's of the world and to the, you know, those.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Oh God. You're mixing up.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
What I would say to the Ashley St. Clairs of the world is that like the guy who's threatening you with compliance or with humiliation or with degradation is not also going to hold up his end of the bargain to be nice to you if only you cooperate, right? Like this is not a trustworthy set of actors here.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yeah. Didn't he have like a pederasty scandal?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And get sort of shoo shooed. But like, I mean, now there's a there's a like large scale embrace of, you know, like child marriage and anything like age of consent laws on the right, at least for straight people. Right. So it seems like there would be some extension of that grace or that logic of domination to a gay man.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Also, I believe he's straight now, or he was.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
They think they're buying into a degree of being protected and being provided for. And what we see with Elon Musk is that he immediately did not hold up his end of the bargain, right? So I think there's like a couple of critiques you can make of this patriarchal bargain that Ashley St. Clair made. One is that It's immoral, right? It trades on bad values for the sake of personal gain, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
I think the simplest answer is the Republicans are and have long been the party of domination and of sexual ownership and control. And it's just that the style of that ownership and control, the style of that domination has changed. So when we look at the censorious family values conservatism that seemed to be anti-sex and
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And contrast it with this aggressively pro-sex, vulgar, wounded heterosexuality of the contemporary right. I think what we see is that both of these are about the control of women, the use of women's bodies as a site upon which men can prove their own virility and domination. And that is actually something that's been really constant.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
I think asking whether the right is pro or anti-sex can kind of miss the mark and keep us from seeing that what they are is very pro-sex as a means of domination and control and anti any kind of sexuality that might elude or subvert those mechanisms of control. So it's not really like, are they for or against sex? It's like, what do they want sexuality to do? And that I think it's pretty clear.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
She's a really tragic case. The core lesson I take from this shift is that neither prohibited sex nor mandated sex are the source of freedom for women. What we actually have to do is imagine sexuality as something that somebody else doesn't get to control for you. or impose on you or forbid for you, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It has to be a more personal and more autonomous journey, for lack of a better word, you know? And so what I would encourage people to do is like start thinking about what like real, like truly free sexual expression would look like for women and really for all of us, right? One where we're not trying to comply with the demands of
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
any kind of like patriarchal or like sexually rapacious uh masculinity one where we're not trying to like avoid violence by like giving or abstaining from sex but one where we have a real genuine freedom to both say yes and to say no or to say what about something else That's kind of an unsatisfying, I hate it when left nonfiction ends this way.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It's like, well, we have to imagine differently, but we do. Because we don't have a model for sexuality outside these paradigms that hurt people.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
You know, like, you can have sex with people that you like, and you don't have to, like, prove your masculinity by only doing it for, you know, two and a half minutes. I would encourage men also to think a little outside the box.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
This is somebody who was, you know, very willing to target, say, transgender children and I'm guessing also transgender adults, right? This is somebody who, as a writer for the Babylon Bee, was willing to be really kind of mocking and cruel towards particularly LGBT efforts for like dignity and equality. Right. So, like, again, you don't have to hand it to her.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Thank you so much for having us, Matt. This was really fun. I feel like I learned a lot.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
But this is also somebody who thought that by allying with the right that she could get something for herself. Right. So that's self-interest at the expense of other people. Right. But the other critique that you can make is not really a moral one so much as a pragmatic one, which is that it didn't even work for her. Right. Like she sold her soul and didn't get paid for it.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And this is, I think, something that a lot of right wing women find is that the transaction that is offered to them by this emerging right wing sexual politics is one in which they don't actually get their end of the deal.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yeah, you know, I think that's an interesting note, Adrian, because transactional sexual arrangements like the one that we're attributing to Elon Musk and Ashley St. Clair, you know, there's all kinds of ways in which, you know, feminists have critiqued these transactions as dehumanizing, etc. But when you're paying somebody for a service. that implies that they have a claim on you, right?
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And I think that Elon Musk's vision of masculinity and of sexuality can't brook any claims by women on him, right? Like making a transactional deal with another person implies that they can expect something, that you might owe something to them. And that itself might be seen by somebody like Musk as a degradation or an erosion of his masculinity.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
It seems totally plausible. You know, it could have been that she was offered something in exchange for this. It could have been that she was threatened. It could have been that she just got scared.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
The feminine touch. Yeah. Yeah. Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father. I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child's privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause. I intend to allow our child to grow in a normal and safe environment.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
But there is a whole industry of these right wing children's books telling children not to dream big, not to be themselves, not to think differently. You know, it is kind of a militant intellectual foreclosure, right, that is extending even to these most anodyne and innocent realms as like literal children's books.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
And it's always a process. The goalposts are moved so as to eliminate joy, right? It's not just like, fellas, is it gay to have sex with your wife? It's Andrew Tate's admonition that, you know, sex should not last more than I think it was three minutes, he said.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
Yes, this is something Andrew Tate tweeted, which is paradigmatic of this attitude that to be truly straight, to be truly aspirational in this emerging right-wing sexual politics needs to be purged of affection or playfulness or even just pleasure itself. That pleasure can't come from anything other than the domination and the exercise of a superior status.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
over women for the straight man it's i think i think adrian is right that it's a continually receding horizon but the recession of that horizon is about making this bleaker and bleaker and bleaker and more and more angry if i've had gay sex that is shorter than three minutes because it's like wild and spontaneous is that
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
That's actually straight. Congratulations.
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein
The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right
For that reason, I ask that the media honor our child's privacy and refrain from invasive reporting. And at the bottom it says... Media, Brian Gilclitch, Digital Strategy Limited. Brian at digitalstrategylimited.com.