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Why the Left always takes the MAGA bait Each side feeds off the other

Democrat reactions only amplified the Trumpian insensitivity. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Democrat reactions only amplified the Trumpian insensitivity. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images


November 23, 2024   6 mins

The current state of the American political discourse is best understood through the lens of the 1987 movie The Princess Bride — or more specifically, one scene therein. It’s the part where Miracle Max is decompensating over the insistence of his wife, Valerie, on saying the word, “Humperdinck”, the name of the movie’s evil prince, who is also Max’s most loathed nemesis.

“Why would you say that name!” he screams.

“What? Humperdinck!?” she shrieks back, gleefully.

One gets the sense that these two do this a lot — her Humperdincking, him screaming, which only makes her Humperdinck harder. That this problem has two obvious solutions only illuminates its intractability. Valerie could stop saying the name, but then again, Max could also choose not to react to its every utterance as if he’s been electrocuted. That neither of them are making different choices suggests that something about this dynamic serves them both.

I thought of this scene when the first “Your body, my choice” post from a male Trump voter skittered insect-like across my timeline in the wake of the election — closely followed by a handful of “My body, his choice” remixes by savvy OnlyFans models hoping to cash in on the moment. This crude riff on the feminist war cry that once defined the battle for abortion rights was akin to an inaugural shout of “Humperdinck!”, designed explicitly to trigger a meltdown among liberals. And lo: if you do an internet search for the phrase now, around 5% of the results are of people posting it and 95% are critics freaking out in response. “Women need to be kept safe from the ‘your body, my choice’ peddlers,” The Guardian announced, while CNN warned: “Attacks on women surge on social media following election.” And The New Yorker, for whom the phrase is a harbinger of a “coming era of gender regression”, described it as “A New Rallying Cry for the Irony-Poisoned Right.”

The phrase “irony-poisoned” in that last headline — which graces an essay by Jia Tolentino — struck me as an especially savvy bit of rhetoric. It functions as a preemptive strike against the obvious counterpoint to all this panic. Namely: “your body my choice” is a repulsive thing to say, but also the furthest thing from a legitimate threat.

The men behind these posts are not rapists-in-waiting, announcing their intent to commit sexual violence; they are trolls, gleefully trolling away in the hope of making people Mad Online. But if Tolentino knows this is bait (and she clearly does), she nevertheless cannot help taking it, hook, line, and sinker. The piece is imbued with a near-religious sense of horror at seeing the feminist catechism of “my body my choice” twisted by nonbelievers into something unfathomably malignant. This is beyond distasteful; it is heretical. And unlike the provocations in which the millennial Left once delighted, back in the days when one measly crucifix soaked in urine could trigger a weeks-long meltdown among religious conservatives, this little joke (Tolentino argues) is simply not funny.

It is, of course, difficult to have a sense of humour about the topics one takes most seriously, even for those who generally enjoy making hamburgers of other people’s sacred cows. I was recently reminded of the 1999 Onion article titled, “That’s not funny, my brother died that way,” in which an aggrieved writer takes issue with a scene in the Police Academy movie where a motorcyclist gets his head stuck in a horse’s rear end. (“His life-insurance policy didn’t cover equine-anal suffocations. So now you might understand why I don’t think it’s funny to see that sort of thing played for laughs.”) That this essay is, in itself, funny, speaks to the unfortunate truth that also animates the “your body my choice” brand of trolling: the we-are-not-amused disapproval of another person can be pretty funny, especially when that person has been attempting to scold you into compliance with their preferred political agenda for years on end. It is no coincidence that this anti-feminist edgelording comes hard on the heels of a campaign cycle in which one side’s rhetoric was almost pathologically alienating to men: the more shrill the calls for conformity, the more naughty fun there is to be had in refusing to read the room.

This was easy enough for liberals to understand when we were the architects of an intentionally edgy counter-culture, whose pleasures derived in no small part from making self-serious moral authoritarians clutch their pearls and scream. Punk rock and heavy metal, Marilyn Manson and Damien Hirst, Saturday Night Live and South Park: if we loved these things on their own merits, we loved equally as much how they scandalised the prudes. Indeed, the Left’s conception of itself as the scrappy underdog poking fun at The Man was powerful enough that a decisive victory in the culture wars hardly put a dent in it; even after the legalisation of gay marriage, the passage of the Hate Crimes Act, and the annual rainbowification of every American city during Pride Month, there’s just no joy quite as potent as triggering the cons. That memes invariably provoke outraged reactions from people who don’t (or won’t) get the joke is the entire point. What can we say? You’re just so funny when you’re mad.

Alas, we are now discovering the same unfortunate truth as generations of edgelords before us: that you either die a provocateur, or live long enough to see yourself become the Church Lady.

“You either die a provocateur, or live long enough to see yourself become the Church Lady.”

“Posting now creates political reality”, Tolentino writes, by way of insisting on taking dead seriously what the “your body my choice” memesters evidently find hilarious. “There are parents all over social media reporting that their kids are hearing the phrase from boys at school. A therapist at a university in the Midwest told me that a student she works with had gone to a frat party where one man had yelled it, and that the people around him hadn’t called him out.”

Perhaps, needless to say, I remain unconvinced that the inane (and yes, often intentionally offensive) banter of teenage boys represents “political reality”, let alone a material threat — but convincing oneself otherwise is both a hallmark and privilege of middle age, and one you will pry from our cold dead hands. The therapist who openly frets that a frat boy yelled bad words at a party without being called out is clearly resonating at the same emotional pitch as the teacher who, circa 1994, made a panicked call to my parents after I doodled a pentagram in the margin of a biology test. Then, as now, the suggestion that she might be overreacting only exacerbated her outrage. What did they mean, I was probably just joking around? Satanism was no laughing matter!

If there’s one big difference between the moral majoritarians of decades past and the social justice warriors of the digital age, it’s that the former group was unapologetic in their authoritarianism. Today’s progressive scolds don’t like to think of themselves as such; instead, they finger-wag with one hand while still clinging to the mantle of the countercultural cool kid with the other. At one point in the essay, Tolentino describes being unsettled by the appearance of a “VOTE RED… LOL” graffiti in her deep blue Brooklyn neighbourhood; it is, she says, “one more reminder that we are typically closer to people who find us laughable and repulsive than we think”. It’s a new riff on that churlish Pauline Kael quip about the 1972 election — “I don’t know how Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him” — in this case reinforced by years of near-total Left-wing hegemony in America’s culture-making institutions, from media to museums to Hollywood and beyond. Amid a sea of narratives that only ever validate her place among the heroes on the right side of history, of course a Brooklyn-dwelling New Yorker columnist is stunned to realise that some of her neighbours think she’s ridiculous — to the point where she can’t conceive of it without suggesting that their mockery must mean they’ve been literally poisoned. Her Trump-voting neighbours, meanwhile, have surely never not known what she thinks of them.

But for as long as the Left still prefers to think of itself as powerless and persecuted by conservative oppressors, the insouciant trolling of Trumpian youths must be interpreted as something sinister and serious. As the meme goes, are we out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong… or aspiring rapists, as the case may be.

The irony — of the literary rather than poisonous variety — is that “your body my choice”, like any offensive joke, only achieved its current foothold in the discourse through amplification by the people who take it too seriously.

And could this stop? Sure, if somebody just blinks first. But just as with the bickering Max and Valerie, the fact that neither party is making different choices suggests that the current dynamic serves them both. In this case, the peacocking insensitivity of the MAGA bro fuels not just outraged op-eds by feminist media critics, but endless, tearful TikTok videos by the women of Gen Z, which in turn fuels more mockery, and in turn, still more tears. It’s too late, now: “Your body my choice”; has achieved velocity from the viral outrage cycle and into the echelons of the attention economy, where it will live on indefinitely in a toxic, self-sustaining symbiosis with its equally attention-seeking haters… at least until someday, inevitably, it is replaced by something even worse.


Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.

katrosenfield

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Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
29 days ago

”A therapist at a university in the Midwest told me that a student she works with had gone to a frat party where one man had yelled it, and that the people around him hadn’t called him out.”
Must be one of the most ‘woke’ sentences in history

Dorothy More
Dorothy More
28 days ago

And so scary. The contemporary left who think of themselves as liberal and progressive have a totalitarian mindset.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  Dorothy More

Why are you saying “contemporary left”?
Left was always censorious.
Their stupid ideas can not survive debate.

Seb Dakin
Seb Dakin
27 days ago

It says so much in so few words it’s almost a haiku.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago

I think the left just don’t know how to have fun. Nor are they very smart. “Your body my choice” is one of the great lines of this, admittedly early, century. Not only that but it originates from the mouth of a male. That suggests to me that men know how to have fun and they’re smart enough to play with words, and respond very quickly, that send the opposition off chasing their own tales. Of course the line’s aimed at those stupid, humourless women who don’t like or understand a bit of fun. I wouldn’t like to live in a world without women, but neither would I like to live in a world without male humour which is one of the great tools of survival.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

“chasing their own tales”

Sorry Brett, but it’s “chasing their own tails” – unless, of course, you’re referring to a backstory?!

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Yes, my writing, attention, is getting worse.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Hmmm…think about it: chasing one’s own tales is actually profound. The chaser is trapped in their own narrative. In effect looking for the golden nugget of truth they know is hidden in the corner. Except the room is round.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It’s a very interesting accident.

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

Never apologise. It was a brilliant pun. Next time try a catachresis.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

It was a brilliant pen.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

A thoroughly uplifting example of solecistic serendipity.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

How dare anyone disagree with us?

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
1 month ago

“Could all the Political People board Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B, please? Calling all Political People, mandatory departure in ten minutes!”

andy young
andy young
28 days ago

Watch out for that unsanitized telephone though!

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
1 month ago

I’ve witnessed the same.

Nowadays the edgy teenagers are the ones who nonchalantly and laughingly poke at the Left’s most sacred totems, to the incredulous gasps of their more righteous and straight-laced peers.

What’s the motivation?

For one, these ‘wayward’ kids grew up in an age of progressive excess and are, therefore, very familiar with the resulting rise of the Progressive Prude, also known as a ‘Karen.’

Everyone is familiar with at least one Progressive Prude in their life: They find the most creative and unlikeliest of ways to be offended about everything and everyone, whilst setting themselves up as the paragon of progressive virtue. They elevate their virtue signaling into an art form that leaves their incredulous audience slack-jawed at their sheer look-at-me audacity.

For many teenagers, this is the only world they’ve known. And they’ve witnessed the behind-the-scenes self-serving duplicity of such self-righteous prudes.

And so they make jokes.

It’s worth remembering that, in all ages, the powerful in society typically play the part of the self-righteous prude, and the powerless resonate with court jesters who take the piss. Using comedy to speak truth to power is the only form of power some will ever know in this life.

0 0
0 0
29 days ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

“And so they make jokes.”
And so they will…until THEY become the subject of someone else’s self-righteous whining.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
28 days ago
Reply to  0 0

Perhaps … however, the kids who make the jokes are largely already powerless in this current age of progressive excess. They are today’s punks – the edgy and wayward children who ‘will go nowhere in life’ according to their Progressive Prude betters. They aren’t playing the same game on the playground, so they don’t care if a bully tells them they’ve lost the game that they aren’t playing anyway.

But by making the jokes, the nobody punks have nothing to lose and everything to gain, whereas the hypocritical Progressive Prudes have nothing to gain and everything to lose. This is what progressives used to call “speaking truth to power” … until they gained the power.

It has always been thus in a democracy. Witness the 1980s and early 1990s when conservatives were the ascendant prudes in the US, while the independent and progressive ‘punks’ were placing, and applauding, crucifixes in urine. Fast forward to today, when progressives are the prudes, busily bashing in everyone’s heads with their intersectionality bibles and firing people from their jobs for the color of their skin, while a critical mass – a majority even – of independent and conservative punks are making fun of their excesses.

Each psychological side (that’s placed within each of us for a reason known to nature and evolution) seems to gain an obscene amount of supremacy for approximately one generation due to narcissists and psychopaths flocking to whichever side will grant them unchecked power over others, before the other side creates enough comedic jokes about the psychopathic emperor wearing no clothes that the rest of society decides to throw off the shackles of their overbearing oppressors.

The rocking of the boat in the tides is a natural event.

Only outright authoritarianism can lock one position in place.

And that occurs if we tolerate one side for too long, thereby allowing the nonpartisan psychopaths and narcissists to “lock in” their power by removing any conservative or progressive peers who actually care about the wellbeing of their fellow humans. Psychopaths and narcissists inevitably rise to the top of either side because they have no empathy and therefore can proverbially ‘slit the throat’ of friend and foe alike, merely to gain power.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
29 days ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

It’s just too bad that we can’t heat our homes with this stuff.

David Gardner
David Gardner
29 days ago

We need a bonfire of the vanities.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
28 days ago
Reply to  David Gardner

And the inanities.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

I tried to upvote you but it went down from 106 to 8?
No idea who did this.
Probably TTFGS or stupid Rachel from accounts?

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
1 month ago

The present Left are girls. I speak as one who was a Maoist from the age of 15 to 15 and three quarters.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
1 month ago

In a similar spirit, I very much enjoy asking woke types who object to being asked where they are really from, where they are really from.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
1 month ago

I wonder whether Champagne Fascist is going to favour us with they/them’s insights on this question.

Alan Lambert
Alan Lambert
29 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

he has been incredibly quiet hasn’t he 🙂

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
29 days ago
Reply to  Alan Lambert

*They/them has been incredibly quiet hasn’t they/them

Studio Largo
Studio Largo
9 days ago
Reply to  Alan Lambert

He’s been busy crying post-election tears.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
28 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

It’s slowly dawning on him that the posture that he adopted because it was cool suddenly isn’t.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
27 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

*It’s slowly dawning on they/them that the posture that they/them adopted because it was cool suddenly isn’t.

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 month ago

“The rainbowification of every Amrrican city”… except Hamtramck. When Muslims flip back Republican the Left are going to lose their minds.

charlie martell
charlie martell
1 month ago

The only young people who don’t laugh at the religiosity of the Left’s central tenets are those who have been rinsed through university and become programmed by programmed lecturers.

Not all of them of course, but if you don’t think like the left tells you to think, at University you keep your head down.

It is the polar opposite of the case a couple of generations ago, when Universities were crucibles of debate, differing ideas, and ACTUAL diversity, of opinion.

No wonder they can’t see the jokes coming. They have never heard any before that weren’t pointing left.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
1 month ago

People who say ‘Your body, my choice’ are just being brat.
Being ‘brat’ now refers to someone who is:
Confidently rebellious
Unapologetically bold
Playfully defiant

Studio Largo
Studio Largo
9 days ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

And proudly illiterate.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Reminds me of a time I made a web page, exposing my rich neighbours’ otherwise quiet privatisation of a public beach. I posted it only to a private internet domain, so it couldn’t actually be accessed publicly, and leaked it to them, in the hope they might think better,_ given the chance of their actions becoming public. They printed it out and distributed it broadly while launching a heavy suit for damages for libel defamation and slander. It was quite comical. They lost but, given the twelve years long suit, they ensured I suffered for my laughter too.

Harrydog
Harrydog
29 days ago

A great article. I always enjoy reading Ms. Rosenfield.

Victor James
Victor James
29 days ago

Everything becomes stale and stagnant. The regime ‘left’ is a putrid stagnant pond at this point. No new ideas, just the same thing regurgitated over and over again – different blend of stale toxic fumes, but no new ideas.

Embrace change.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
29 days ago

“a panicked call to my parents after I doodled a pentagram in the margin of a biology test”
But you were plainly drawing a connecting line between Satanism and the sin of endorsing evolution.
Kidding.

Robert
Robert
29 days ago

This online meme-fighting has a real female feel about it. In the past, if a guy started to make fun of someone he had better be ready to get punched in the face because this was almost always done in person, usually in a bar or some place like that. Even among friends, reading the room (or not) had important ramifications. Your own friends might tell you, after helping you up off the floor, that you had it coming! It was always the women who were ‘fighting’ behind the scenes as it were, saying nasty things about each other behind their backs. Of course, men did some of that, too. But, you always knew you might be called out physically at some point.

Social media is awesome.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
29 days ago

Good point. A dumb joke is sometimes just that. It should be treated as such.

Delta Chai
Delta Chai
29 days ago

I guess you could say that the dynamic serves “them both”, but I’d say there are more than two parties: The trolls, the people who directly react to them, the media critics who pick up the story of the “viral meme”, the people like Kat Rosenfield who react to the critics, etc.

And of course those who own the media. We live in a media landscape that is increasingly set on maximising attention grabbing because that’s what pays. From big news outlets to individual influencers on social media. Unherd not exempted.

It’s when social media chose algorithms that let memes go viral, and traditional media started to report on minor online spats as if they were newsworthy, that the outrage machine really took off. And we now have a generation of young people who have largely grown up with the idea that getting outraged at all of it is what you’re supposed to do.

I’m not sure this dynamic serves me, but it’s hard to find serious news outlets unpolluted by this outrage industry.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
29 days ago
Reply to  Delta Chai

And when everything is seen as outrageous, what really happens? Nothing is outrageous.

rick stubbs
rick stubbs
29 days ago
Reply to  Delta Chai

You have the best comment here. I would have added that many NGOs will also fund raise off these exchanges. It is possible that in Britain the metro police would be knocking on your door for such a tweet. That won’t happen soon in the U.S..

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
29 days ago

I’ve got one of my own. “Obviously, the Republicans are gonna elect the first female President.”
It works every time!

J 0
J 0
29 days ago

Aren’t the woke just fretting about a joke that their chummies, the Islamo fascists, believe in reality anyway regarding women’s right?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
29 days ago

Re: the body/choice thing, it’s hard to forget that the people who created that phrase did a 180 on it during the Covid era. “It’s not only about you; your refusal to vax can effect others,” prompting the obvious response, “do you understand what a fetus is?”
To the broader piece, yes, both sides need each other, much like the good guys and bad guys in professional wrestling need each other. Increasingly, the mindless kabuki of politics is no different from wrestling; people act as if they have been assigned specific roles and given specific lines to recite.
I am unsympathetic to the hand-wringers and pants-wetters clutching their pearls over a few guys turning the body/choice phrase on its head. The whiners are the very people who demonized men as a species for at least two generations, with results that have not benefitted either sex. The left does not think of itself as “powerless,” not with any claim of legitimacy. It thinks of itself as the only way, with all other viewpoints being illegitimate.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
28 days ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Indeed. They stand on science when it confirms their beliefs and forget science exists when it doesn’t. They wail over every life lost to covid but don’t give a second thought to aborted fetuses, because that would require them to acknowledge that other people might have different beliefs and that that makes them uncomfortable. Progressivism demands conformity because it cannot abide conflict, and it cannot abide conflict because it enshrines emotional and physical comfort. In my view, it is a direct consequence of the bubbles we raise children in, the product of too much Sesame Street and too many Disney movies. It was already bad enough I recognized it growing up and it’s gotten so much worse since. It should go without saying children make poor leaders. The teenage level taunting employed by the right isn’t much better, but it’s still a level above the behavior of progressives in the wake of Trump. I never thought I would see so many physically grown adults throwing tantrums to rival any toddler.

j watson
j watson
29 days ago

I’m sure there’s some looney Identity politics types who can’t see the satire in Trumpism. I suspect those with less of the identity politics twaddle and more of an economic perspective are waiting with considerable interest how a narcissistic Billionaire property developer really intends to help the ‘little guy’ and the ‘left behinds’.
In the meantime though he’s laid on an initial Clown show for the aficionado to enjoy. Smattering of sexual miscreants to go with himself as Cabinet picks a nice first touch. Did his Botox ravaged AG pick last a week or more? And today a modern pick with Treasury lead a beneficiary of same-sex marriage laws. That’ll cheer the MAGA.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
28 days ago
Reply to  j watson

A leftst buffoon is heard from.

Andew 0
Andew 0
28 days ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

Racism and an ad homonym or more trolling?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
28 days ago
Reply to  j watson

This kind of deranged ranty stuff is much more entertaining than the po-faced ‘I’m nicer than you’ posts of old (ie: pre Nov 6th). Keep it up.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  j watson

Still crying into soya latte after Trump won?
You had no problem with useless cow with zero track record as USA president?
You were OK with her committing fraud on American voters by pretending that “shit in my pants when seeing Pope” demented Biden was fit to be president?
You are obviously OK with mass, illegal importation of savages into USA and UK?
Mutilation of children under transgender legislation?
Promotion of morons like Lammy into jobs because they are “non white”?
Pretending that most couples are racially mixed, as per advertising?
Yes, ALL clever black guys I know have white wife.
You wonder why?
Well, as they said “you don’t even touch black girl and she is pregnant”.
But keep living your moronic woke life.
Sooner or later reality will hit you.

Martin Johnson
Martin Johnson
29 days ago

Pauline Karl was not being churlish. In the referenced piece she went on to say that her circle must be very narrow and she needs to get out more.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
29 days ago

“Your body my choice” is utterly distasteful as are so many things young men (in particular) say but do not mean.

“Deplorables”, “racists”, “fascists”, “gammons”, “misogynists” are things that elected politicians, journalists, teachers, academics say about those who don’t agree with them. The difference is that they mean it and having been saying for a decade with little consequence. Is it a surprise that people are fighting back? Especially when the glib slogan “my body, my choice” is deeply distasteful to many.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
29 days ago

I’m glad to see hardcore feminists can take a joke — sorta.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
29 days ago

Experts agree that men have a Culture of Insult, as in “your body my choice” and women have a Culture of Complaint, as in “I can’t believe he said that.”

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
29 days ago

I could take the point of this article if there hadn’t been real world results from the sloganeering of the right. If women with life- threatening pregnancies had not been forced to leave their home states to obtain abortions their doctors recommended, for example. Yes, it may be just right wing trolls doing what trolls do, but it’s a mistake to forget that words have impacts.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
29 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

The USA is a federation of sovereign states. The repeal of Roe vs Wade returned legislative jurisdiction to the states, where it belongs. Regardless of your and my stance on abortion, the fact that women living in states where it is prohibited have to cross state lines in order to abort their foetuses is as it should be. Otherwise the USA lacks the subsidiarity proper to a federation.

j watson
j watson
29 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

The personal views on Pro-Choice vs Pro Life aside the Supreme ct ruling really goes to the core of what are basic universal rights in the US and how much autonomy States have to set different baselines. So for example if hypothetically a State wanted to re-introduce segregation, is this a devolved power? An additional question now more specifically is can a woman be criminalised back in her home state if she crossed a State line to have a termination? This is the next State vs Federal fault-line one suspects.
Your comment implies a rather quaint, simplistic understanding of the US Constitution, how it came about, the debates that spurred it, the fundamentals behind the Civil War, and 250yrs of Supreme ct caselaw precedent. Personally I think it’s much more complex. And I’d add, one of the primary reasons US became the world’s number one power, which for all it’s problems and sometimes mistakes we should be largely grateful, is because it went for a strong Federal settlement. Without which it would have fractured and looked like Central or South America. Worth pondering I think.

El Uro
El Uro
28 days ago
Reply to  j watson

I can’t disagree! Popular vote is a sh.t

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
27 days ago
Reply to  El Uro

Therefore, rule by the experts who KNOW THE TRUTH is the way to go. Eugenics, anyone?

El Uro
El Uro
27 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

Looks like you didn’t read the comment I replied to about the US Constitution. Very smart comment, by the way. I often disagree with j watson, but not in this case
.
Sh.t happens…

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
28 days ago
Reply to  j watson

A thought experiment: suppose it was the other way round, and the Federal Government outlawed abortion. Would you support the right of individual states to legislate for abortion as I would, or would you continue to insist on federal legislative primacy?

j watson
j watson
28 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

That’s of course a constitutional/legal question as opposed to one on the specific issue. Yes I would, although in this example I’d campaign to have it amended. That’s democracy of course.
Slight aside, but to my knowledge abortion was always outlawed after a certain no. of wks. Alot of the abortion debate happens at a v unsophisticated level.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
27 days ago
Reply to  j watson

So what you’re saying is that you assert state sovereignty against federal supremacy when the states prioritise maternal rights over foetal rights, but that you assert federal supremacy over state sovereignty when the states prioritise foetal rights over maternal rights; whereas I simply assert state soverignty against federal supremacy in the question of reproductive rights legislation, no matter who’s on which side. I think my position is more consistent than yours.

j watson
j watson
27 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

No on something like basic rights, I’d assert Federal supremacy as it’s one Nation with precedent that certain rights cannot be devolved to States to decide differently. So if Federal Govt voted to ban abortion I’d defend the constitutional right to do that, even if I disagreed with it. Herein lies the nub of the issue – the balance between Federal & State.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
22 days ago
Reply to  j watson

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the right to life just a teensy bit more basic than the right to disembarrass oneself of an unwanted pregnancy?

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
27 days ago
Reply to  j watson

As an oversimplification, the US constitution doesn’t list, or affirm, basic universal rights as that term is generally used. The first ten amendments to the constitution (the Bill of Rights) largely define areas where the federal government shall not act or intrude. With the passage of the 14th Amendment subsequent to the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights also applied to the separate states. A state cannot reimpose segregation because that violates the equal protection under the law provision of the 14th Amendment. Richard Craven’s comment is essentially correct, in that the court ruled that abortion isn’t an issue governed by the constitution, whatever one’s opinion as to what constitutes a basic human right.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
27 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

Thanks for that!

j watson
j watson
27 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

Not entirely. The Roe vs Wade ruling was based on an interpretation of the ‘logical consequences’ flowing from the 14th amendment. Now one can argue, as Supreme Ct has done recently, that this logical consequence an error and States can decide. The question for some is whether personal views came into the new ruling too much given the known background of recent appointments to the Ct. Slightly separate discussion of course to the original point. Returning to that – it was Federalism that made the US the world’s strongest Nation.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago
Reply to  j watson

Your reply is typical lefty lie.
When judges appointed to US Supreme Court voted the way you prefer, it had nothing to do with their liberal views.
It was somehow “law of nature”.
When current judges take different view, you claim it is against universal human rights.
It is the same with Brexit vote in uk.
When scumbag, war criminal Blair refused to put Lisbon treaty to referendum my lefty friends applauded it.
Somehow democracy was not in danger.
But when people voted for Brexit, then the same people spend 3 years trying to stop it being implemented, calling for another referendum (current PM).
Usual double standards by vile left.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
28 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

What nobody ever says out loud in this cowed society is black women use abortion as their birth control.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
28 days ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

Good point, although I think Charlie Kirk does say it out loud.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
29 days ago

Woke-baiting is the sport of kings.

Russell Sharpe
Russell Sharpe
29 days ago

Perhaps the most delicious aspect of the Democrats’ campaign to lawfare Donald J Trump into political oblivion – and if possible a long term of imprisonment – is that it succeeded only in turning him into the most potent countercultural icon of our age.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
28 days ago
Reply to  Russell Sharpe

He went from “fascist without a position” to “victim of gubmint overreach” during that period. He played the victim with a lot of skill. Say what you like about Trump, he’s good at reframing situations to his advantage.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
27 days ago
Reply to  Russell Sharpe

In my opinion, the Dems elected Trump. Non-stop vilification from 2015, no certain doom unanticipated, and the majority of voters chose to believe their own eyes. Life went on without the federal government imposing more woke bs. The Dems spent four years being stupid. Trump’s awful, but the option?

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
26 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

More importantly to this notion, when Biden came in, he instituted a number of policies which played directly into the hands of Trump in 2024. He opened the border and ended Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy – the tidal wave of illegals scum was Biden’s destruction. He put trillions of dollars into the economy leading to the inflation we have today. He continue the pro-crime dem policies. And he elevated trannies to high positions. Most US voters hate trannies and hate the notion of trannieness. All of this greased the wheels policy-wise of Trump’s success in 2024.

Robert Paul
Robert Paul
28 days ago

Reminds me of the great line from Stripes, ‘Lighten up, Francis!’

Ardath Blauvelt
Ardath Blauvelt
28 days ago

We live among millions of arrested adolescents. It would be endlessly amusing, if it weren’t so annoying.

Chuck Burns
Chuck Burns
28 days ago

Out of the few women on Only Fans, one of them came up with the slogan “My body his choice”. That is a great slogan to sell her erotic wares. Which one should get credit for that?

0 0
0 0
28 days ago

You’re right. The only appropriate response to any such abuse is to ignore it, takes the food and the fun away from would be aggressors. Maybe a yawn would be as effective but not sure that isn’t a little self indulgent.

And one needs to see why things are coming round the way they are. The impoverishment and disempowerment which gave rise to MAGA is massive. There’s no way Trump’s declared policies can significantly reduce the first or would offer more than gestures towards reversing the second. Hence MAGA style culture wars are a sop that’s here to stay.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
28 days ago

Silly women, worrying about their “rights”. Just laugh and go with the flow. Maybe the boys will like you then!

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
28 days ago

The Democrat Party chose to make the untrammelled right to abortion (“my body, my choice”) their closing pitch in the election. But there is something strange and contradictory about this. If a pregnancy ends in miscarriage, it is usually experienced as a tragedy (“I lost the baby!”), If a pregnancy ends in abortion, this is regarded as an action of no more moral signficance than cutting your own nails. Depending on whether the pregnancy is wanted or not, the growing life is either a baby or an insignificant bunch of cells. Surely, it’s one or the other, it can’t be either, dependant on whether wanted or not. Can anyone explain this?

El Uro
El Uro
28 days ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

People here support abort, assisted dying and gay marriage. Nevertheless they consider themselves as anti-progressives.
Live with it.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
28 days ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

“Depending on whether the pregnancy is wanted or not, the growing life is either a baby or an insignificant bunch of cells. ”

Schrodinger’s baby?

Will K
Will K
21 days ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

My own joke about the abortion issue, was to propose that women should have the right to kill any of their children below the age of 18.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
28 days ago

One reason that the Left MUST be victims is that they live in the Culture of Victimhood. Being a victim is what gives meaning to their lives. Victimhood justifies the fact that most are worthless drones who have no skills or abilities.

thomas dreyer
thomas dreyer
28 days ago

lol you body my choice. The kids are alright after all.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
28 days ago

Perhaps an interesting discussion would also be to explore how yesterday’s progressives are today’s reactionaries.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
28 days ago

Great article. Kat has nailed it. The poles have reversed. The edgy challengers of the status quo are now on the right. It’s part of the inevitable cycle. For every action, there is a reaction. If there is a culture, there must be a counterculture. Thus shall it ever be.

Tom Condray
Tom Condray
28 days ago

Well, this essay was interesting.
If only because the author ignores the main issue. To-wit: Everyone gets all excited not because of what someone says, or writes. They get excited because all forms of media business are so hungry for click-on-me revenue (or the equivalent in their genre) that they find and capture any absurd declaration that might offend someone, and broadcast it to the widest audience they think will be offended by it.
Everyone who looks at print and visual media is relentlessly assaulted by someone else’s efforts to get a rise out of someone. Of course everybody is on edge all the time because they’re bombarded by things intended to capture their attention, and they invariably see something that offends them.
Wake Up! There’s always someone somewhere whose opinions you would find offensive. The majesty of today’s media is that people make money finding that person, and then introducing the two of you.
Turn off the TV, close the laptop, put down your smart phone–except to watch really cool films like “Guardians of the Galaxy”, of course–and watch your blood pressure drop twenty points.

Joan Blackwood
Joan Blackwood
27 days ago

I see the boys are happily slinging their bon mots about inside their boy bubble (silo) extolling the virtues of “humour”. Presumably women are somewhere else battling toxic inequality and getting things done.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
27 days ago
Reply to  Joan Blackwood

I bet you say ‘problematic’ a lot too.

Joan Blackwood
Joan Blackwood
27 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Hugh Bryant: Point?

Steven Targett
Steven Targett
27 days ago

Although I would not be so crass as to say “your body, my choice” I am absolutely loving the left wing hysteria being exhibited post Trump winning the election. The never ending smugness of progressives has rather taken a hit.

William Miller
William Miller
27 days ago

So you have narrowed the current political situation in the U.S. to two parties screaming “nu uh!,” at each other? Thanks for the valuable insights.

Andrew F
Andrew F
26 days ago

Yes, these edgy feminists like author of this article.
I am not religious person, but maybe crucifix in urine should only be allowed if next to it is Koran?
But no, we can only joke and make stupid “art” about people who don’t respond with violence.
Followers of ROP should always be appeased, in case they are not law abiding.
Even then Met will ignore their calls to genocide, but arrest people for tweets.