An Emblem for the Manosphere

I snapped it at the Met.

John Ganz of Unpopular Front gave me the hook I’d been waiting for to post this photo.

In his newest post he writes of Trumpism’s repudiation of the Green mindset, “It represents a kind of reconciliation with the Earth that seems feminine.”

Bingo. Look at that severed head Perseus is holding high. Factually, it’s the monster Medusa. Visually, viscerally, it’s a woman. It’s Woman.

That “reconciliation with the Earth … seems feminine” illuminates a whole lot more than just MAGA’s objectively debatable scorn for climate alarmism and renewables reverence. It accounts for MAGA’s gleeful all-out assault on environmental protections (which makes no rational sense in an administration also vowing to “make America healthy again”) and its unleashing of “drill baby drill,” urging on the rape of the Earth with macho heavy machinery—much as armies since day one have been encouraged to rape the enemy’s women (and men) and pillage his wealth as rewards for braving danger.

Deep down, though, the enemy IS women. Our current ideological and culture war has roots in an age-old war between the sexes. Just read all the sneering about the “longhouse,” code for the communal mindset that prioritizes nurture and the family (a realm ruled by matriarchs) and in so doing, domesticates, feminizes, and may as well castrate its young warriors, though it needs their protection. Communism or socialism is the longhouse; it is emasculating. Masculine fascism wrests the warrior from its clutches.

The repetition compulsion around this pattern shows that isn’t just political, it’s archetypal. If you’ve read anything at all at the intersection of mythology, anthropology, and psychology, you’ve met the idea that in the murky depths of the psyche, death is women’s fault. To be born out of a woman—out of the Earth—is to be made of flesh and doomed to die: out of her womb and into her tomb. (In between, a warrior hardens himself homeopathically by risking reentry, surviving a little death every time.) Does this comport with the tech bros’ quest to live forever, to gestate babies in machines, and to upload their spotless minds out of mucky mortal brains and into machines? As well as to depart mucky Earth in a phallic rocket for an austere and aseptic Mars?

Whether you believe this modern version of an age-old quest is a) tech-enabled to succeed at last; b) futile but noble, fueling heroism for the good of all (believing this makes you a “good” woman); or c) destructively deluded probably hints at where you stand on the spectrum of the culture and gender war.