On October 23, 2019, I sat in a room with Charlie Kirk in the Iowa Student Memorial Union.

I told him I was going to record the conversation. He directed his assistant in the room to start recording. “That way, you can’t misquote me,” he said. He smiled, like he’d already won an argument we hadn’t yet had.

Kirk was in Iowa to do what he did for years — hold town halls and debate college students to prove to them how indoctrinated and woke they all were. The town halls turned into video clips that went viral, showing Kirk getting the last word on issues like Palestinian rights, healthcare, Christianity, and the Second Amendment.

I wanted to interview Kirk because I’d spent the past two years writing profiles of men in the conservative movement — Tucker Carlson and Richard Spencer. I suppose I was also there because I was looking for answers. My own marriage to a man who had been mostly moderate and libertarian in the way a lot of white men were in the early ‘00s had fallen apart in 2016 when he became a Trump supporter. And the raw, unnamed rage of the political era leaked into my life.

In those past three years, my work had become a target of male rage online as neo-Nazis doxxed and harassed me, sending me photoshopped pictures of Pepe the frog raping my avatar and a target over my head. In my personal life, my ex was sending emails telling me I was ungodly for leaving him, that I was ruining everything. That I wasn’t a good mother, and I should just leave him to raise the kids.

Between the two, I preferred the online harassment. It hurt less.

If I could know what had happened, if I could know what had made these men play at hate like a game of Uno, I could offer a better explanation for this vituperative rage that was throbbing like an infection just beneath the skin of America.

Kirk was then 26, and already his organization, Turning Point USA, was giving a voice to something within politics. TPSUSA had been established as the conservative counterpart to MoveOn.org. But it was more than that; it was an organization that existed to bring down those bastions of liberalism — universities. And here was Kirk, a living, breathing, fuck-you to higher education. He hadn’t needed college, and look at him now, bringing down those smug elites, one at a time. Like shooting cans off a log.

TPSUA was under scrutiny for its funding and its tactics, which seemed to be playing fast and loose with campaign finance laws. And there were already allegations of racism that reached the core of the organization.

To understand conservative men, I needed to understand what created them. So there I was.

I was working for my local newspaper when I asked for an interview. I’d be given a few moments with Kirk, they said, right before the event. So I showed up. Showed my credentials and was escorted to the conference room, along with a photographer, to where Kirk was waiting.

I’d watched a lot of videos of Kirk to prepare, and it hadn’t seemed like he was particularly charismatic or skilled; he was simply normal in a way that made other young men feel they could be like him. What interested me more was the machine that made him; that was propping him up and using him as an avatar for what a young man should be. Not just independent of liberal institutions but caustic toward them. Self-made. White. A conservative David fighting the Goliath of liberalism, one viral video at a time.

He looked like he’d been made in the mold of Tucker Carlson — a conservative pundit, normal enough to wear jeans, professional enough to add a suit jacket. He seemed ready to fight. I asked him about how he got started and why he did this work. His answers were boring and practiced. He talked about his Iowa roots. He claimed to have family from Marshalltown. They’d lived there since the 1700s, he said. (White settlers didn’t come to the land until 1838.)

Then I asked about who was funding him. That’s when he leaned over the table and launched into a rant about the lies of liberal media.

The recording has been lost. My notes from the day just say, “Mad at me with questions about funding. Denies any wrongdoing on Trump campaign. Pivots to Biden’s crimes.” A man named Andrew, who worked in communications for TPUSA, pulled Kirk from the room.

I walked out feeling like I’d wasted my time. I’d learned nothing. I’d seen nothing more than a young man irritated by questions about his organization. If I wrote he got mad at me, then I’d just be another triggered lib. If I wrote about his defensiveness, then I’d just be another lying media elite.

The rage bait machine needs an endless stream of takers. And Kirk was already good at saying things that would irritate and inflame his audience of too-online 20-somethings looking for the cheat codes to prove their superiority. Write what happened, and they’d be there trying to take me down and take my job. Write anything else, and I’d be Facetuning the project of mainstreaming racism and misogyny. It was a rhetorical trap, and I was so tired of trying to get free.

The Memorial Union was already filling with spectators. Some were curious students. Others were there to protest. A handful supported Kirk. But there were far more people there to gawk and to be entertained. Rage gets clicks and gets people to attend events on a school night.

And it wasn’t just students. There were rows of Republican party donors and local politicians, like state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann and former US Rep. Bobby Schilling. All adults who wanted the jouissance of watching those smug liberals get owned.

And that’s what they saw.

Kirk mocked the protesters but claimed to be an “ambassador of decency.” He called college a cartel and insisted students just needed to be taught how to do jobs, not taught how to think. When a student asked him how he could believe Jesus rose from the dead, Kirk stated that math proved there was a higher power. When someone asked about him being called a racist, he said the term “white privilege” was racist.

He answered questions without answering. Won debates without really engaging. And he didn’t lose his cool the rest of the night, maintaining always the tailored appearance of hate. The calm demeanor of racism. The appropriateness of illogic.

I walked out of the hall thinking to interview some protesters. Maybe I’d learn something. But when I walked over to where they stood silently outside the doors, holding signs and linking arms, I saw a group of people yelling at them.

“How many genders do you think there are?” I heard an older man yell in the face of someone who appeared to be in high school. Other people stood around him, laughing, smiling, while the protesters were stoic, silent.

I tapped the older man on the arm and asked him for an interview.

I didn’t really want to talk to another shouting man that day, but I was worried something violent would happen. I was worried something would erupt and someone or something would get hurt. That all these words would manifest into something more ugly, more vile. Something no video edit could turn into an “lol pwn” or post with a #winning.

His name was Bill Montgomery. He’d spotted Kirk as a young conservative activist, and together, the two of them had founded Turning Point in 2012.

“Why? Why did you want to found this group?”

Montgomery told me about his daughter, who had gone to college and come back questioning everything that he believed in. These colleges were turning children against their parents and their country, he told me. His daughter barely spoke to him. He blamed her professors. “But isn’t she an adult?” I asked. “Isn’t she capable of thinking for herself?”

I recently chatted with the newspaper photographer who was there that night, following me around. He remembered me talking to Montgomery, and he also remembered that at one point, I asked Montgomery a question, and he turned to the photographer and said something to the effect of, “Can you believe these women?” But the exact question was lost to time. I do remember him thinking the photographer was my boss and saying they should get better reporters.

I don’t remember being mad at Montgomery. He seemed a little broken. He’d seen a world he didn’t like, and he was going to fix it, and fix it, until the next child of some other lost man went to college, but this time they wouldn’t come back with uncomfortable questions that demanded answers. This time, they’d fall in line.

Further reading:

• Ta-Nehisi Coates on Charlie Kirk.

• on rewriting Kirk’s legacy

• In 2017, Jane Mayer took an investigative look into TPUSA for The New Yorker.

Below the paywall are some thoughts about an Iowa feminist writer whose work has been forgotten, except by Iowans, and what it means to write from the Midwest. There are also a lot of links to interesting stories from me and my assistant editor, Isabella. As always, thank you for subscribing. Your subscriptions support me, Isabella, our editor, and the launch of a new podcast, which will drop in October.

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This week, America is mourning yet another instance of political violence. Another maniac caused widespread terror. And in the wake of that violence, Americans are asking themselves, “What has this country come to?”

Of course, I am talking about another school shooting in Colorado, where two students are in the hospital after a teenager with a gun opened fire and then took his own life.

Of course, I am talking about Putin launching drones over Poland, pushing the world closer to wider wars.

Of course, I am talking about the ICE raids.

And of course, I am talking about Charlie Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University.

Pundits have been decrying the political violence. The plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer; the storming of the Capitol; the attack on Paul Pelosi; the assassination attempts against Donald Trump; the assassination of Melissa Hortman and shooting of John Hoffman; the arson attack against Josh Shapiro.

But every day, the very same people decrying the political violence are enacting political violence: taking away trans rights and reproductive rights, violently arresting immigrants in the streets, and threatening all-out war on US cities. America was founded by and on political violence.

This violent country is made only more brutal by the violence that hides under the guise of “just asking questions,” and those questions are often about the right of Black, brown, and trans people to live. And guns. Always the guns.

And Now, the Dingus of the Week: Twin Towers Teas

If you identify as a human, this has been a hard week. Also a bad week for moderately sentient robots, because kids don’t use them to cheat in school over the summer, which must be a terrible feeling. Kind of like Henry VIII once the gout hit, or Al Capone once the syphilis hit.

So out of respect for everyone, I found a low-stakes dingus that I think we can all agree was working hard for America.

A store (whose name I will not reveal, because we don’t need to doxx these patriots), that this week was selling “Twin Towers Teas.”1

The teas were a special to commemorate 9/11. Nothing says the “strength of our nation, America” like tea — a beverage we famously tossed into the sea as part of our nation’s founding.

Yes, these absolute patriots created a drink so that we will never forget how awful that day was. Because these so-called teas sound worse than a terrorist attack in your mouth. Pomegranate and coconut, two of the key ingredients in these drinks, are not native to the United States, but that’s okay, because I am sure that the store selling these drinks loves immigrants. So, nothing to worry about here.

Still, we must ask: What do these drinks actually taste like? Freedom? Tariffs? That quintessentially American metallic flavor of back-of-the-throat panic over not being able to pay your medical bills?

The really good news is that these drinks are named after Tower A and Tower B. So any real American has to buy both. But you only get to buy Tower B after the toxic collapse of the first tower has imploded your guts and your tastebuds.

One can only assume that once you drink both teas you automatically grow a pair of wraparound sunglasses, don a Blue Lives Matter t-shirt, and get a divorce.

But in true patriot spirit, here is a list of other 9/11-themed foods (beyond Freedom Fries, of course) I’d love to see:2

Dirty Bomb Martini

Terrorist Taco – You cannot eat it; you can only shoot it.

Wontons of Mass Destruction – These tiny delicious pockets of flavor will give you diarrhea more explosive than your uncle on the Fourth of July after seven beers. Just kidding; they actually don’t exist.

Lasagna bin Laden – He’s hiding in there!

Flight 93 – 93 shots of beer. Domestic, of course.

Fried Valerie Plamtations

Rudy Giuligazpacho – Show America your love by drinking a soup colder than the heart of NYC’s fifth-worst mayor. If you spill it on yourself, you can kind of look like you have Giuliani’s melting face.

Spanikopatriot Act – Layers of flaky FOIA dough, filled with cheese and spinach.

TSAlfredo – This is a normal dish, but before you can eat it, the restaurant gropes you and rifles through your valuables. Also, you’re only served 3.4 ounces of liquid.

WARdorf salad – Again, this is normal food, but you cannot stop eating it, it goes on forever and ever, and it costs $911 trillion.

Lady Liberty Fingers – She’s pointing at you and accusing you of not loving America ENOUGH.

Condoleeza Rice

Dingus runner-up:

Also, as part of my very deep and serious joke-making process, I Googled “Foods that start with A” and was given this result.

And now for something good

I really appreciated this thoughtful response to the week’s news by , who wrote in his newsletter:

“Life is not precious in our world. If it were, we would not disappear human beings and pretend that doing so solves social problems. If it were, we would not rest until everybody was fed and clothed and housed and loved. If it were, we would not be so skittish at naming the patterns of caste and exclusion that still define our lives. If it were, we would not coronate the people we do, reward the behavior we reward, applaud any work that draws us further away rather than closer together.”

There is no great way to transition from that thoughtful and insightful essay and into the next good thing, so I am just going to say, DRUNK RACCOON!

A couple exchanged vows over a Chili’s Triple Dipper, and I have new relationship goals now.

Trans teens sued the state of Iowa and won.

Also, science says it’s actually great to let your kids just watch Bluey, so if you need to do that this weekend, you have my permission and science’s permission. It’s good for them. Now, go take a little nap.

New Mexico becomes the first state to offer free childcare.

Octopuses are ambidextrous but tend to use their tentacles like we use our arms, favoring one side over another. And I know the world is bad, but it’s also filled with weirdness and wonder.

Something I am enjoying

For almost three years, I have been on the board of the Iowa Abortion Access Fund. I joined after Roe was overturned because I felt like if I was going to write about the Iowa I wanted to exist, then I needed to do the work to make that happen.

I no longer go to church, but I was raised Baptist, and part of me still believes that faith without works is dead. And if we want the world to be a better place, we have to do the grassroots, uncomfortable, unglamorous work to make it better.

And this summer, I got to live that in a very real way.

In the spring, the executive director of the fund had to step down for personal reasons. As a result, I spent the summer running the Iowa Abortion Access Fund. It has been laborious, time-consuming work — all the unexciting things, like making sure bills get paid, emails get sent, job postings are written and posted, meetings attended, rules followed, interviews are held, everything is put to a vote, we document, we take notes, people’s ideas are heard, frustrations aired, and conflicts resolved. The work of making the world better is often boring, repetitive, drudgery, and so, so necessary.

I have never run a hiring process, but I kept telling the rest of the board, if Pete Hegseth can run the Department of War, then I can do this, with their help. And they did help. It was a team effort.

More than once, I cried from being so tired and burned out. My laundry is in shambles. So are the floors of my house. I haven’t cooked many real meals this year. We’ve been living off pasta and takeout.

On September 8, our new executive director, Beaufield Berry, started her job. She’s incredible. She’s a mother, an artist, an activist, and someone I am so proud to have run our organization.

Thus ends the summer I ran an abortion fund. What did I learn? I think I learned that the work of community requires putting ego aside. It requires listening and kindness when you want to rage, and it requires putting your foot down and making decisions when you’d rather not be in charge at all. It requires research and collaboration. And it requires showing up when you’d rather hide in bed. At some point, I resolved that even my 40 percent was better than no one’s 0 percent.

Everyone in America right now is despairing. We are afraid and worried. And we should be. It’s very worrying out there. But finding something you believe in and doing that work even when it is annoying and exhausting is the only way I know to make this place better.

To celebrate, this evening I will be toasting with a drink of brandy, apple cider, lemon, and ginger beer.

In a TV ad for lagging Republican NYC mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, his wife, Nancy, states, “They tell us New York is safe, but women know better.”

The ad shows black and white footage of women on the subway, as Nancy Sliwa, a lawyer, says, “Rapes are up by 40 percent. Felony assaults are at an all-time high… Every day women risk harassment and assault just going to school, to work, just living our lives.”

Nancy Sliwa then appears beside her husband. “Curtis and I have always fought for women,” she says. “And we will keep defending them, because no one has to choose between supporting their family and protecting their life.”

Nancy Sliwa is blond and white, and her invocation of the specter of violence that haunts the good white women of America is a tried and true political tactic.

There is an insidious logic to the ad. Life for women certainly feels more dangerous than it did before. As I write this, the right-wing media cycle has been dominated by the murder last month of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, in Charlotte, North Carolina. (This is during a week that has otherwise featured the publication of several quite grim economic reports; the release of more Epstein documents; an Israeli strike in Qatar, a U.S. ally — oh, and Politico ran a story about the Treasury secretary threatening to punch out the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. But I digress.)

The ad sort of has a point. Reports of rape are on the rise in NYC, but not by 40 percent. The real number is closer to 20 percent, and this is primarily because last year, New York passed a law expanding its definition of rape. A CBS report notes that, even accounting for that change, there is a small percentage increase in reported rapes, but this could be because more people are reporting them.

In any case, you should look hard at any crime statistics coming from a man who faked crimes in the 1990s to make himself look like a hero.

But the Sliwas’ ad feels effective because it can, in fact, be quite scary to be a woman in America. The raw pain of gendered grievance oozes out of every social platform — TikTok videos where people describe awful dates and Facebook groups where women ask, “Are We Dating the Same Man?” Even the few conservative influencers I follow post memes about men being bad. It is bad.

But the violence that women have to fear is rarely coming from unhoused people or immigrants. The bulk of it is coming from the people in charge. Women have fewer rights, and they’re being forced from their jobs. Rising prices, the reduction of the Child Care Tax Credit, stagnant wages and never-ending cuts to the social safety net make it harder to support a family now than it was even five years ago. Women and mothers are being violently yanked off the street, not by immigrants, but because they are immigrants. (Or because they look like maybe they might be immigrants. The Supreme Court said that was fine.)

This week, the president made comments suggesting he doesn’t think domestic violence is a crime. The newly rebranded Department of War is run by a man who may or may not believe women should be allowed to vote.

The actions of the GOP are branded as protecting women. (As was the Clinton-era crime bill.) Even the logic of depriving married women of the vote is pitched as a sort of benevolent protectorship.

But that protectorship is coming at the loss of our rights; the scapegoating of trans people; violence toward immigrants and the unhoused. In this world, only white women get to feel protected — and only then if it’s not their husbands they need protecting from.

And despite the PR campaigns of trad wife influencers, this bargain is never what it says it is. Give me public transportation and a weird boss over an overbearing husband any day. At least with the boss, I have money, and with that money, some freedom.

Yes, there is violence being done to women. But despite a handful of cherry-picked and well-publicized stories, the threat to cis women is not from trans people or immigrants. It’s the state-sanctioned violence that strips us of our right to a safe and legal abortion. It’s the destruction of the social safety net. It’s the violence of the National Guard patrolling our streets and ICE deporting people without due process.

Patriarchy and power rely on stoking the flames of our fears of the other. Fear is intended to make us compliant. But what we should fear the most is the men who use our bodies as a cover for their violence.

🔗Further reading

✍️Moira Donegan wrote about Trump’s comments about domestic violence.

📖 My friend Sarah Weinman has an incredible book about the history of marital rape in America that will be published in November. You can hear us chat about the book on my This American Ex-Wife podcast.

✍️Also, as points out with this story about the Epstein files, the real violence against women is being done by the men who are claiming to protect them.

📈 300,000 Black women losing their jobs is also a kind of violence.

Before we begin, if you haven’t yet taken the reader survey, please do. I know the link was broken in the Friday email. So if you clicked and saw that it was disabled, I am very sorry. BUT PLEASE TAKE MY READER SURVEY. I promise you, I am listening.

After the paywall is a little essay on what I think the point of telling the truth is and why I refuse to modulate my voice. There is also a cornucopia of links from me and Isabella, who helps me with the newsletter.

This week, as I was casually scrolling the internet in the morning while reading my morning dose of newsletters, I saw a post on Substack notes chiding newsletter writers for their tone when talking about masculinity in America.

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This newsletter cannot exist without subscribers. If you love the Dingus and look forward to it every week, become a paying subscriber. If you can’t afford to subscribe, then like this, share it, and forward it to your richest friends. Except probably not Malcolm Gladwell.

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This week, Malcolm Gladwell, the very wealthy bestselling author and staff writer for the New Yorker, said he’d been forced to say trans women belonged in women’s sports.

And wow, poor little baby. Malcolm, are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital? Should we call your mom to come pick you up?

What did the bullying look like, Malcolm? Is the bullying in the room with us right now?

Gladwell, whose work has been repeatedly debunked by legions of exhausted social scientists, but who somehow still gets heralded as a genius, went on “The Real Science of Sport” podcast with host Ross Tucker and sports journalist Mike Finch.

In the interview, Gladwell talked about being on a panel about trans women in sports hosted by Tucker in 2022. Tucker, who is a vocal opponent of trans women competing in women’s sports, voiced his opinion at the event, but Gladwell said that he felt too “cowed” and “ashamed” at the time to say he agreed with Tucker.

This explanation, much like The Tipping Point, is a bunch of gilded word turds — crack the shiny surface and it’s just a bunch of shit.

Gladwell already tipped his hand in 2019 by retweeting Tucker’s long-winded analysis of the issue, calling it “smart.”

Then, three years later, Tucker had Gladwell on a panel to talk about the issue, and Gladwell, a wealthy man who has yet to suffer any sort of consequence for churning out takes with the intellectual rigor of a conversation at RFK Jr.’s dinner table, felt “cowed” into silence?

The man wrote a whole book praising military tactics that target civilians. He glorified military atrocities! No one asked him to. Everyone was just minding their own business, and Malcolm Gladwell, Kool-Aid Man, burst through the wall and was like, “Hey! Here is a book about how I think bombing cities is genius!”

If you are ashamed of something, my guy, be ashamed of yourself.

A major part of Gladwell’s career has come from convincing legions of dinguses that they could overcome any lack of talent by simply spending 10,000 hours doing something and becoming an expert. Repeated studies have debunked all of this.

Also, Gladwell’s latest opinion really undercuts his own theory, because even if he spent 20,000 hours studying this issue, he’s still wrong. Nevertheless, he persists.

I have written about this topic before, so I won’t bother repeating myself. There is no threat posed by trans women competing in sports. But you know what does threaten women? The fact that I have fewer rights in 2025 than I did five years ago.

It’s truly distressing that in 2025, as our cities are invaded by a tyrannical despot who is actively rotting in front of our eyes, the purported great minds of our era are too busy rotting in a stew of transphobia to do anything about it. Who convinced these absolute losers that targeting less than 1 percent of the population with unfounded hate made them interesting and anti-orthodox?

Kids are dying of gun violence at school and these absolute TED Talk-pilled poster boys for Dunning Kruger are like, “Well, actually, it makes me interesting and not a total creep to talk about a stranger's hypothetical hormone levels on a podcast.”

Also, how is this dingus’s tipping point common decency? Like, people said to him, “Hey, this is a complex issue that doesn’t really affect many people at all. Let’s let trans women play and not spread transphobic rhetoric?” And one of the wealthiest writers in the world responded by curling into a ball and crying, “Help, help! I’m being repressed!”

There are truly no bounds to the desperation of the planet’s most fortunate people. So hungry are they to experience one actual minor inconvenience so they can crow about being victimized that they’re forced to pull fake problems out of the ether. Yes, the wealth enjoyed by certain prominent authors would surely buy a lot of therapy. And yet! Here we are.

I can’t wait to explain this period of history to my grandchildren as we sit around a campfire, armed to the teeth, fearful of the roving hordes of sentient AI-bots coming for our potable water. “Yes, sweeties, women were dying of sepsis in hospital parking lots, but Gavin Newsom and Malcolm Gladwell really hated trans women, so we had to talk about how one swimmer got a fifth-place win over some blond girl while they passed laws taking away our vaccines, and we died from the measles. But hey, at least a subpar college athlete got to take fourth place.”

Dingus Runner-Up: The People Who Emailed to Explain Burning Man to Me

Last week, after I wrote an incredible (if I do say so myself) newsletter roasting the attendees of Burning Man — or as I like to call them, “All my friends’ ex-husbands” — I got no fewer than three very long emails explaining Burning Man to me. All the emails were basically, like, “Burning Man is about inclusion and acceptance, you stupid slut!” Even more people reached out on Substack notes to call me humorless and boring.

Which, yes, definitely, ranting at a stranger online makes you the fun one. That’s right. No, no, keep explaining in 900+ word emails about how Burning Man attendees aren’t the most exhausting chuds on the planet. This all makes perfect sense, you absolute haboobs.

To quote Coldby in the Discord, what we have here is infinite nesting dingii.

And now for something good

Another day, another lawsuit.

Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming is “deeply concerned” about RFK Jr.’s handling of the CDC. And yeah, my man, it’s very concerning. Maybe stop clutching your pearls and do something?

Women should not have to talk about the worst things that happened to them to make everyone care. That said, I am always so grateful when survivors tell their truths.

A court ruled that Trump’s tariffs were illegal. Now, the actively decaying president is asking the Supreme Court to intervene.

Let’s all bully our politicians a little more.

Dinosaur body armor? DINOSAUR BODY ARMOR!

Remember to take my reader survey

Please don’t make me beg. I mean, I will beg, but don’t make me! Just take the survey.

Something I am enjoying

This week, I got very sick and spent a lot of time sitting in bed, high on cold medicine, watching Department Q, which is a dark British crime drama full of a lot of mean people. And I loved it.

I also made this potato soup recipe, and it received rave reviews from my kids, which is the highest of praise.

Also, despite feeling like my throat had been stuffed with flaming pieces of straw, I am enjoying that it is shorts and sweater season.

Five years ago, I was fired from my newspaper job for telling the editor not to publish an op-ed that argued unarmed Black people deserved to be shot by the police. They never published the op-ed, but I was fired for “insubordination.”

As a single mom living in Iowa — where there are not a lot of jobs for writers — with no backup income, I was terrified of losing my house, my livelihood, and my voice.

I started this newsletter, and in five years it has grown from just a couple of hundred readers into a community of more than 72,000 readers.

Take the reader survey

We made a fiery, feminist manifesto a bestseller; we launched a podcast with over 100,000 downloads; we’ve raised thousands of dollars for abortion access in Iowa and for trans mutual aid.

And as I get ready to make some very exciting new changes to this space, I want to hear from you.

That’s right. This time, men, it’s okay to yell at me (and women and they/thems, you can yell, too!)

So, please fill out my survey. I promise I am listening.

Take the survey

No, really, take the survey 😭

On Wednesday, I got a text message from my brother telling me about a school shooting two blocks from my niece’s school.

“She’s okay,” he wrote.

But she’s not. Not really. None of us are.

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Today’s Dingus of the Week was handpicked by newsletter reader Tom. Tom has been a longtime reader of MYAM, a supporter of Team Corn Sweat, a Democrat in Iowa, and an active member of the Flyover Discord, and has been lobbying me for years to make Burning Man the Dingus of the Week. In sum: Tom is out here doing the work. Tom’s persistence paid off, because I’m exhausted and I simply cannot fight another man this week. Also, it’s a good pick. Tom is a paying subscriber to this newsletter, and if you, too, want to wear me down and lobby me to take on your own personal grudges (Stefany from HR?) in an email that is blasted out to nearly 72,000 people, become a paying subscriber.

Also, be it known: I do listen to men, sometimes. And it might take four years. BUT I DO LISTEN.1

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Have you ever wanted to do MDMA with a bunch of tech bros in an outdoor stewpot of mud and piss, with the vibe set by the worst electronica imaginable, and some guy named Trey is demanding to take you to the consensual Orgy Dome while a totem pole of precariously stacked vehicles looms above you? Well, get your ass to Burning Man.

Burning Man is Fyre Festival for people on ketamine.

Burning Man is like a trade show for DJs, where men who have nicknamed themselves “Lampshade” and “Cheeze” will tell you that The Matrix is a good idea, actually.

Burning Man began in 1986 and was initially conceived of as a weeklong countercultural festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, at a spot that Burners call the Playa, that centered art and free expression. Now, it’s basically glamping for every man who was behind the 2008 market crash and their third wives.

To be fair to Burning Man, the Orgy Dome, which was destroyed this year by a massive dust storm called a haboob (I know — you can’t make this shit up), is still more stable than the housing market these men built.

But at Burning Man, these men are not concerned with consequences or what evil AI robots they’ve currently unleashed upon humanity, squaring our electricity bills, sucking up our water and convincing the worst person you know that ChatGPT is Jesus and they should definitely become a prophet. No, they’re too busy shirtcocking.

Don’t know what that is? It’s walking around with a shirt but no pants on.

This is Disneyland for fucksticks.

Back to the Orgy Dome, which is a real thing. You can have an orgy on a bunch of mattresses floating on a mud swamp* with a bunch of strangers who think #MeToo went a little too far. (*Actually, given the haboob situation this year, it may have been more like a pack of horny chinchillas writhing around in their dust bath.)

If that doesn’t sound sexy, then wow, are you contributing to the male loneliness crisis? Treyvis Williamford McMuffin III (his playa name is Panty Dropper) has to vote for Trump now because you’re so uptight.

Don’t worry, though, the Orgy Dome organizers vow to rebuild. And I for one find that to be an inspiring testament to the strength, resiliency and potency of their will. And their dicks.

Burning Man is the EPCOT of Trump’s deregulatory agenda. And if your dream is to be mansplained to about the paleo diet and have a 56-year-old man contemplate the nature of reality while he grabs your ass, then it can be your EPCOT, too.

Young people at Burning Man? A bunch of nepo babies cosplaying as Marxists. Their family money comes from strip-mining Appalachia, but they’re going to go on shrooms and tell you about how they’ve found strength and inner peace in these trying times by going offline, eating organic food, connecting with nature, and drinking raw milk.

Also, Burning Man is dangerous. People die there. And injuries are so common SFGate reports that attendees can come out with piles of medical debt. And like, imagine your name is Pepper McFadden and you have to create a GoFundMe because you broke your arm falling from the top of a 70-foot-tall Labubu made from Poppi cans while high on nitrous, wearing a My Little Pony backpack and no pants.

I know all of us are God’s children and we all deserve lifesaving medical care, but this does make it challenging to stand on principle.

While researching Burning Man, I discovered that in 2023, Diplo and Chris Rock evacuated (along with many others) because of heavy rainfall. The two said they walked for six miles before hitching a ride out in someone’s truck. Apparently, that was a very controversial move! Let me quote from Zapper Jones, your Reddit guide to Burning Man:

Last year, when someone had turned on a lightning effect at the Fluffy Cloud stage, Diplo stopped the music, dropped his headphones and started running away like Forrest Gump into the darkness of Deep Playa. The Reason was that apparently he is terrified of rain and has massive cloud cover anxiety. Look, anyone who Bailed out early because of the rains of 2023 should have never been allowed back. I have ZERO respect for anyone who turned their backs on the community and ran away. There was no valid reason for anyone to leave. Work is not a valid reason for leaving. If you got fired from your job because you went to Burning Man, then you need to get a different fucking Job. Did you need to leave early because you brought kids? If your kids can't spend a few extra days in the rain then you should have never fucking brought them along in the first place. Or maybe you just need to get new kids. Either way, None of Ya'll should ever be welcomed back.

Petition to give Zapper a Pulitzer. Because that is the funniest paragraph I have ever read in my entire life. The whole post is absolutely incredible.

Don’t Diplo out, fucksticks. Not even for your kids.

And now for something good

In Iowa, Catelin Drey, a Democrat, won a special election for a House seat, breaking the Republican supermajority. They still have a majority. But Drey’s win, I think, is a model of what an outspoken woman can do with a social media platform, an incredible ground game, and an actual strong liberal stance. People want to vote for people who stand for something.

Kari Lake has been barred from removing the head of Voice of America.

Whoever is heckling Susan Collins, keep it up.

Tina Smith.

What I am enjoying

This week, I got to do a lot of exciting behind-the-scenes MYAM work that I will talk about very soon. In the meantime, I got to scream my head off at my daughter’s first high school swim meet and watch her win every single one of her events.

My god, the adrenaline rush. I totally understand Tonya Harding’s mom now.

Also, I haven’t had much to drink lately. But on Tuesday night, I did break open a bottle of Bødalen Whiskey, which is made in Minnesota, and had a small glass on my back porch and enjoyed the cooler weather.

Also, this review was one hell of a way to learn that Elizabeth Gilbert was the inspiration behind the most perfect movie ever made.

Diplo, out.

Nearly 72,000 people subscribe to this newsletter. But under 10 percent are paying subscribers. If you like this newsletter and support it, become a paying subscriber. I promise, this is the only time I’ve written about Taylor Swift and will most likely be the last time. (Unless you’d like me to write about her more. In which case, let’s talk.)

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Where were you when you heard the news that one of the most talented and wealthy single women in America was getting married? Me? I was trying to read a book, just 24 hours after getting dumped by a guy who was uncomfortable with my career.

The deluge of posts, hot takes, videos, and memes already beginning to flood the internet have little to do with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce themselves. Grown women posted that they were crying. The Wendy’s account on Threads posted, “I can’t believe we got Travis Swift before we got gta6.” The New York Times did a push alert; so did ESPN. The president wished the couple “a lot of luck” during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

From the wedding of Isabella and Ferdinand to the union of Mr. and Mrs. Swift, every highly publicized union is idealized because it makes a fairy tale feel like it’s within reach. Sometimes that fantasy is wealth, beauty, glamour, or a distraction from poverty. In this case, what resonates for many women — who will undoubtedly be scolded for fawning over this royal American wedding — is that this fairy tale features an ambitious and successful woman actually finding a supportive partner.

I don’t know either of these people. And I am not convinced this isn’t some sort of very successful business deal. But who cares? Taylor Swift writes great songs about shitty men and profits from it; good for her!

Also, most of our parents married for worse reasons than record sales.

I am also not trying to project into the interiority of the lives of these celebrities. But the image they are projecting to us is that a successful woman has found a supportive partner, one who eagerly fawns over her new album cover while interviewing her for his own podcast.

This reality is far from reality for most American women.

Since January, 212,000 women have left the workforce, while 44,000 men have joined it. Women’s participation in the workforce peaked as flexible work-from-home policies allowed them more readily to juggle career and family. But under the Trump administration, those policies are being rescinded. Meanwhile, laws that gut reproductive rights and narrow access to childcare, healthcare, and SNAP benefits will do more to push ambitious, educated women out of the workforce and limit their economic power and personal freedom. And a spiritual leader who opposes women having the right to vote has the ear of the president’s Cabinet.

Women who do succeed are often punished for it. Studies show that women who out-earn their husbands are 33 percent more likely to be victims of domestic violence and 22 percent more likely to be victims of emotional abuse.

Women who out-earn their husbands still do more childcare and domestic labor. And overwhelmingly, studies show that male partners, no matter how much they earn or how little they earn, how much they work, or no matter how flexible or inflexible their jobs are, are still not doing much domestic labor or childcare.

These are all passive forms of punishment for women who seek career success and financial security. Women who speak out are often met with outright misogyny or cutting remarks.

And all of this is happening as social media posts and think pieces declare the end of ambition, from #girlboss to #girlmoss. Author Stefanie O’Connell, who has a new book about ambition coming out in 2026, observed in her newsletter:

As a millennial woman reckoning with my own disillusionment with the 2010s girlboss era, its obsession with hustle culture, and the broken promise that getting what you want is as easy as asking for it, I too became obsessed with this reevaluation of ambition. During the five years I spent researching and writing my own book about it (out in 2026), I watched as these anti-ambition trends took hold… and evolved — from the #softlife to #feminineenergy to the #tradwife (short for “traditional” wife) — each promising to unlock a new layer of leisure, satisfaction and meaning as it limited women’s ambitions to a smaller and smaller window.

I, too, have struggled with ambition. I have a lot of it and it isn’t going away. But I am also exhausted. I’m so sick of succeeding in spite of everything around me. I’m tired of having a job and still doing the majority of the emotional and domestic labor for my kids while my ex, who is remarried, complains about how I maintain the shared calendar.

Every time I succeed, there’s a downside. The hate mail gets worse. The man I am dating backs away. A tabloid publishes a scathing story about me. I’m so, so tired.

The fantasy that Swift and Kelce are selling isn’t romance; it’s not even equality. It’s a fantasy world where a woman can be successful and her partner won’t be mad about it.

This Tuesday, my daughter will start high school.

This is a huge milestone for us for all the normal reasons. Somehow, the baby that had to be vacuumed from me is making jokes about the Epstein list and giving me the finger. She’s almost as tall as me.

She’s exchanged pull-up diapers for pull-ups on the bar. She’s just two months away from getting her school permit. And already her days are filled with practices and activities that have nothing to do with me. So much of her life these days is not for me to write about. It’s her life and her journey, and I am so lucky I get to tag along.

In so many ways, I became a writer because of my kids. I had been writing for years before they were born. I’d been working for different websites for years and went to graduate school all in the years before she was born. But I found my voice when I had my kids. I am not saying this is necessary for all writers. I am saying, for me, having my daughter fundamentally changed something in me. I think it made me hungrier and sharpened my sense of purpose.

Read more

There isn’t much bipartisan consensus in Texas these days. Still, both parties can agree that the Dallas Cowboys have a snowball’s chance in Laredo of winning the Super Bowl, and Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives Dustin Burrows is a little weasel.

Burrows became speaker after winning more Democrats over to his side than Republicans — 49 Democrats and 36 Republicans.

According to the Texas Tribune, “In his acceptance speech after winning the gavel, Burrows promised to protect the House as an independent institution, where lawmakers could disagree with each other without fear of repercussions and get a fair shake, even if they’d opposed him.”

*whomp whoooomp*

Let’s see how that promise is working out.

As speaker, Burrows has pushed through every item on the GOP-led agenda; is overseeing the incredibly gerrymandered redistricting process; and imprisoned a Texas representative inside the Capitol building.

This week, Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier wasn’t allowed to exit the Capitol after she refused to be shadowed by an armed escort. Collier and other Democrats fled the state to delay a vote on the redistricting process in Texas. This is a time-honored protest tactic in Texas.

And it was deployed this time to draw attention to the craven power grab happening in the state.

According to the Texas Tribune, “...the map dismantles Democratic strongholds around Austin, Dallas, and Houston and makes Democrat-held seats in South Texas redder — all without seriously jeopardizing any of the 25 districts Republicans already control. The proposed map also would push a handful of Democratic members of Congress into seats already represented by other Democrats, setting up possible primary battles between long-serving members of the Texas delegation and younger newcomers.”

Collier and other Democrats fled the state and delayed the vote for two weeks. They returned after lawmakers in California vowed to do the legislative equivalent of “I’m rubber, you’re glue” in their state and gerrymander right back — this time for the Democrats.

When Collier returned, Burrows insisted that she and other lawmakers could only leave the Capitol building if they were followed by a 24-hour police escort. Tell me more about the party of small government, will you? Collier refused those terms and was imprisoned on the Capitol floor until the vote happened on Wednesday.

Remember what Burrows said about being fair and letting people disagree with him? Turns out what he meant was, “Fall in line or I’ll detain you and violate your constitutional rights.”

It’s arguable that Burrows’ actions are not supported by law.

But what is not arguable is that he’s a smarmy bottom-feeder with the moral integrity of dog vomit.

I’ve seen mollusks with more spine than Dustin Burrows.

And listen, I wasn’t present in the back-door negotiations that led to Burrows being elected speaker. Perhaps there was the idea that a Burrows-brand House would hurt less than one led by a more hard-line Republican.

But if 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that there is no negotiation with terrorists, or the whiny little cave-dwellers who promise they are reasonable and then just go about treating habeas corpus like a roll of Charmin. There isn’t a softer, gentler, more sane Republicanism that you can deal with. When your choices are being smothered to death with the flag or choked out on the Constitution, does it really matter? If your murderer says sorry at the end, does that make you any less dead?

Dingus runner-up:

In a normal week, trying to bribe a reporter by putting $160 in a chip bag would make you the top-tier dingus. But in 2025, that level of crispy, idiotic corruption barely ranks. My favorite is the lawyer essentially saying, “Let’s just forget this all happened. Friends just give each other money in chip bags. It’s normal. No worries!”

And now for something good:

This week, James Dobson joined Hulk Hogan in the league of dinguses who died before they could be properly roasted here on Earth. But that’s okay, because I know he’s roasting in hell. Where Lyz fails, the devil prevails.

Dobson was the head of Focus on the Family, an Evangelical nonprofit that is responsible for at least 65% of what is wrong with most American adults. Turns out, we needed him to focus a little less on the family.

Dobson, a homophobic misogynist with a face like God turned it in at 11:59 on the sixth day of creation, spent his one wild and precious life arguing that parents should beat their children and their dogs. And I know, because it was his books that led to my being terrorized by a wooden spoon that had “Spare the rod, spoil the child. Proverbs 13:14” written on the bowl, which over the years became cracked and broken from being used to hit me and my siblings.

But that’s not his only contribution to America’s evils; Dobson did everything he could to make the lives of gay people worse. Sir, the only thing threatening about the gay agenda is that you might have to use some moisturizer.

He lived 89 years too long. And I hope he’s found a home in that great gender-neutral bathroom in the sky.

I do not know this woman, but she is innocent.

The Onion is bringing print back.

Every day Alex Jones gets closer to losing his empire, we all get closer to returning to the warm light of God’s love.

Maryland is rejecting the Trump administration’s efforts to censor what schools can teach.

And Gavin Newsom is working really hard to shake those dingus allegations. I am not retracting his title, as he is the No. 1 winner of the Rahm Emanuel Award for Politicians With Heads of Hair and Hearts of Craven Ambition, but I am appreciating the memes.

And a judge ruled that Florida needs to shut down Alligator Alcatraz.

Something I am enjoying

It’s the week before school starts, and I’ve spent the summer running an abortion fund.

And I am exhausted. I took most of the week off to parent my kids — back-to-school shopping, endless appointments for eyes and teeth and, well, everything else. Then, next week, I begin working on some VERY exciting changes at this newsletter.

Which I hope to be able to tell you all about soon. In the meantime, I took Wednesday off to do laundry, fold clothes, drink red wine and scream-sing Celine Dion.

My favorite fair food is the spicy pickle dog from the Pickle Dawg truck. It’s a dill pickle covered in spicy cream cheese, wrapped in pastrami, covered in batter, and deep-fried.

The first bite is crisp, warm, and crunchy with a little bit of peppery heat. I look forward to it every year.

When we talk about the foods of American fairs, we talk about excess and quantity. It’s novelty, nostalgia, and class, all deep-fried and put on a stick for our collective consumption.

So many of the foods are designed to make us laugh, to invert expectations, like deep-fried butter, fried beer, and fried jelly beans. They also seem to mock us by deep-frying cultural stereotypes. In 2022, a vendor at the Iowa state fair was selling the Iowa Twinkie, which was a jalapeno filled with pulled pork, corn, and cream cheese, wrapped in bacon, smoked with sweet and sticky BBQ, then finished with ranch

And while these foods can seem indulgent and exciting, they may also elicit disgust and disdain. I think that is on purpose. Fair foods bait you to try them with novelty, mocking you if you hate them. The foods almost invite you to moralize about nutritional value, fats and carbs and caloric consumption and in response, these foods laugh at you with their fried profligacy. They are not real foods in the sense that you would eat them every day. They are surreal foods — excessive, bizarre, and delightful, existing only in one world: the world of the fair.

Fair foods find their origins in the celebration of abundance that drove attendance to fairs around the turn of the 20th century. In her article “Eat Me at the Fair,” historian Francine Kirsch describes how food installations at fairs were in part an advertisement for a state to attract people to move there. Look at us, Iowa could declare with an attention-getting palace of corn. We are a land of growth. A land where you can harvest enough corn to build a kingdom.

Historically, it has been through food exhibitions that new foods have captured the American imagination. Fairs are sites of cultural exchange and cultural flattening, a place where, through humor, we negotiate who and what we are through what we eat.

Kirsch writes, “If the food exhibits at later fairs were particularly lavish, their genesis can be seen in drawings made at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial.” Here in the Agricultural Building, Mary Todd Lincoln’s favorite confectioner Henry Maillard displayed a 15-foot-tall sugar spire covered with edible historical figures. At one booth, a mammoth grape vine from California grew toward the ceiling. The New Hampshire booth displayed stuffed hogs that when they were alive had weighed 1,307 and 1,253 pounds. And this was the same fair that launched the butter sculpture trend when Caroline Shawk Brooks delicately carved Iolanthe.

Taken together, these food exhibits “reflected America’s exuberance at its coming of age best,” Kirsch writes. “And that desire to have and be the biggest would truly take hold in more ways than food in the century to come.”

But were they only about size, scale, and excess, I don’t think state fair foods would have nearly the grip they do on our culture. They are also about humor and desire.

Mikhail Bakhtin, in his writings on the carnival, described it as a space outside the everyday, one that is both temporary and freeing for lower classes often oppressed by the usual social order. Here, laughter is a key element, and is built on the subversions of expectations. Whereas in the outside world, we are expected and cautioned to eat more salads, in the world of the fair, that salad is on a stick. Cows are made of their own butter. It’s silly. It’s fun. It’s dark. It’s complicated. Who cares? It’s the fair. And how often is food allowed to be fun? How often are we just allowed to eat and enjoy it and eat some more?

In the oppressive superego of keto, Weight Watchers, protein goals, carb-free, and Noom, state-fair food is our culinary id — a grotesquely joyous display of all that is forbidden and still desired. Waffles and Snickers, battered and fried and put on a stick. Bacon dipped in chocolate. It’s fried and sugary and, unless it’s corn or coleslaw, there is rarely a vegetable to be found.

While fair foods reinforce American identity, they also reveal that our identity is changing.

Because beyond the smorgasbord of deep-fried consumption, fair foods are also the space in which our cultural identity is mediated, processed, put on a stick, and sold back to us.

In Trump’s America 2.0, where DEI is under attack and masked ICE agents are rounding up immigrants, food is both a negotiation of identity and exploitative capitalism.

And, like the food, these conversations can feel a little gross. Last year, at the fair, I went to find a hyped-up Korean BBQ vendor, only to find it was run by a very white couple. I made assumptions. They profited. And I wondered at the people who would take a culture’s food, sell it, and then vote for a president who vowed to deport the same immigrants who brought that food to America in the first place.

Are people more likely to try new foods at a fair? Will it make them more open to other cultures and foods? It’s hard to know. But despite the moralizing, it won’t go away. Egg rolls with bacon and ranch are here to stay. Fiesta wontons. Korean corn dogs.

I can’t tell you if this is good or if it’s bad, only that this is America.

In this world already turned on its head, it’s easy to introduce new foods and change the narrative about who and what America is. The safe space of the familiar fair, combined with the gleeful embrace of novelty foods, creates an environment rich for experimentation.

Every year, new foods are introduced to the fair. This year, at the Iowa State fair, amid all the usual fried concoctions, there are also bacon chicken ranch egg rolls, potato half & half Korean corn dog, and a Saigon lobster dog. The Minnesota State Fair offers a variety of foods that fuse cultures and traditions, like a steamed bun with lutefisk and hoisin sauce, hot honey cheese sticks, and a dill pickle cheese curd taco.¹ Other state fairs, too, are embracing and selling more diverse ranges of food, offering a safe environment for people to try new things and experience new flavors.

Fair food is America inverted, a mirror image reflected back to itself in its greasy plenty, mass-produced and served up hot.

This essay is an edited and updated version of a newsletter that I wrote in 2023.

Deep-fried food takes:

"Toward a Theory of American Festival Cuisine” (Eater)

“Fried, Fatty, and Fanciful: State Fair Foods” (Modern Farmer)

“Eating While Politicking Is Harder Than It’s Ever Been. Here’s Why.” (Politico)

This week, one of the world’s greatest television shows ended.

And Just Like That was over-the-top, bizarre, goofy, and wonderful. And people would not stop criticizing it.

Read more

Kim Davis, that Duggar family reject with hair so dry it has its own red flag warning, is back.

If you don’t remember Davis, lucky you and I’m sorry. Davis was the Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk elected in 2014. In 2015, after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She was sued and ordered to issue the licenses. She continued to refuse and spent five days in jail for contempt of court; a judge and jury later ordered her to pay a total of $360,000 in fees and damages.

Davis lost her 2018 reelection bid and has clearly spent the past decade or so doing what Jesus would do — stewing in the juices of her own hate-filled heart. Now she’s bursting back into the American political consciousness like a poorly dressed Kool-Aid man.

Davis recently petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell (and also, separately, to overturn an appeals court ruling earlier this year that she really does have to pay that money). While it’s unlikely that the Supreme Court will rehear the case, the fact that this homophobic bridge troll who cosplays as a Christian freedom fighter is rearing her brittle head of hair again is truly a recession indicator. Don’t we deserve a new set of villains — not just the run-through ghouls of the past?

Not to mention gay people and their allies deserve a better enemy than a woman still sporting a Bumpit and a missionary’s reject-pile jean jumpers.

Kim Davis claims she was fighting for her religious freedom, but if that was the case, she should have just resigned from the job. If your job is to dig holes, and then you convert to an anti-hole religion, you don’t get to insist on being paid for not digging holes and then compare yourself to Jesus Christ himself.

Sorry, Kim, you aren’t a freedom fighter. You are using your religion as a tool of oppression rather than a tool of liberation.

As Larry Wilmore pointed out nine years ago, “Going to jail for what you believe in does not necessarily put you on par with Martin Luther King. Jeffrey Dahmer was in jail because he believes in eating people. That doesn’t make him a freedom fighter!”

I am not the first to point out all this sanctity of marriage business is a bit ironic coming from a woman who has been married four times to three different men. I’m not against divorce! I am very pro-divorce. But if you have such a literal interpretation of the Bible, Kim, your divorces count as multiple sins. I mean, per Evangelical math, three divorces? That’s like a butt sex and a little manslaughter.

Also, as Andrew L. Seidel writes in his book American Crusade, Davis also got her job in the first place from a healthy dose of nepotism.

So to recap, the woman who got a nepo baby government job and has had more spouses than Father Abraham is still out here acting like some paragon of holiness. And in the entire decade, she hasn’t bought one bottle of conditioner. I’m honestly not sure which is more offensive.

Anyway, my religion says that I can discriminate against raggedy bitches named Kim Davis, and if you say I cannot, then you are oppressing me and I will take it all the way to the court of Christ himself.

Runner-up: Owen Shroyer

The Vikings have two male cheerleaders. And that’s great.

blaize_shiek

A post shared by @blaize_shiek

But what’s really amazing is how mad it’s making some Vikings fans.

Listen, male cheerleaders have been around for a long time. My little brother was one and the guy is in the Army. He is not what anyone would call “woke.” And he hates when I write about him, so I will stop because he’s better with weapons than anyone else in the family. Except, for me, weirdly, which is a long story that goes back to growing up in Texas and winning a lifetime membership to the NRA at the age of 10 because I won a shooting competition. ANYWAY.

George W. Bush was also a cheerleader! And last season, according to Outsports, seven NFL teams had a total of 18 different male cheerleaders — some gay, some bi, some straight. Additionally, the Panthers had a trans cheerleader.

None of these things has stopped Owen Shroyer, a radio guy who I refuse to learn any more about, from being so mad that he’s spitting. And honestly, I love it. Are you made that your game with the men in tight tights where they pass balls back and forth and between each other's legs might be a little gay? Are you worried that a male cheerleader is going to ruin your view of the scrum of heaving, sweaty bodies of men?

You — a man who cheers for men in sports — are mad that other men are cheering for men in sports, but they have better hair and pom-poms? Are you just furious they have such nice skin? What’s going on?

Actually, I don’t really care. Don’t tell me. Just hire the gayest, cuntiest boys, and put them on the squad. And then let me bask in the impotent outrage of these men. Inject it straight into my veins.

And now for something good

Taylor Swift announced a new album. And she did it on the Kelce brothers’ podcast, which I think is a sign that the patriarchy comes for us all. A new album means that the Swifties now have a new little project and I love that for them. I think Swifties could find and release the Epstein files if they thought Taylor left an Easter egg in there.

Gen Z is making my eye bags trendy.

A special gift just for readers of this newsletter

Last week, I wrote about my newfound love of Trail Mixers, a powdered form of low-dose CBD and THC that my dear friend Megan and her husband created through their company Yonderbound. It combines three of my favorite things — supporting friends, Iowa businesses, and a little THC. And apparently you all loved the idea of them so much that last Friday, Trail Mixers had their biggest sale day ever.

As a “thank you” to the MYAM readers, Trail Mixers is giving us a little deal. Use the code DINGUS10, and it's good for 10% off their entire order. Right now, it'll combine with the free shipping code GETRADICAL for a limited time, so double whammy. Megan says she doesn’t know when the free shipping will end, so order now.

Get Trail Mixers

Something I am enjoying

Summer is always rough as a single mom with no summer childcare. This summer has been even more overwhelming as I have been managing the Iowa Abortion Access fund, hiring a new executive director, starting work on a new book project, and doing some very exciting behind-the-scenes stuff with this newsletter that I think you will all be very pleased to hear about.

This week, my kids asked to make some tea and sit on the couch and talk. This was a tradition that started in 2020 as a way for us to wind down together. We don’t do it every night, but whenever we need some deep heart-to-hearts, the signal is, “I’m going to make some tea, do you want some?”

So, they made tea and we sat on the couch. My daughter asked her brother if he was worried about starting sixth grade and she listened to him and gave him advice on the teachers he will have. And they laughed and talked some serious shit about their school, commiserating together, and there was only a light amount of physical violence.

And despite everything, I just felt so lucky – like I was the richest woman in the world to have these two people and my two dogs, my work, our community, and our little house.

I could use a nap, though.

If you forward this email and look forward to it every week, consider becoming a paying subscriber. I cannot write this newsletter without support from readers. And independent voices don’t survive without your help.

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For over a year, the Planned Parenthood clinic in my city has been closed. At first, it was closed for renovations, the doors and windows covered with wood panels. Now, it’s closed permanently. A casualty of Iowa’s extreme abortion ban, cuts to Medicaid, Title IX funding, the attacks on Planned Parenthood, and, of course, Planned Parenthood’s own dysfunction.

Iowans are getting abortions, but they are going out of state or self-managing them at home. And anecdotally, I hear a growing number of young women are choosing to sterilize, using Reddit to find sympathetic doctors and clinics.

Iowa has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation.

And yet, once a week, as I drive by the clinic on my way to kid pick-ups or the grocery store, I see a group of older white men and women standing in front of the clinic, praying and holding signs demanding an end to abortion. Their stoic Midwestern faces are grim as if they alone are waging a holy war — and the whole world is against them.

On Monday, Donald Trump announced he was calling in the National Guard to patrol the streets of Washington, DC. The claim from the White House was that the country’s capital city is mired in crime and “total lawlessness.” In reality, despite some high-profile incidents, crime in DC is on the decline. Trump’s act of martial law and abuse of power, reporting suggests, was sparked by the attempted carjacking of a former DOGE staffer, Edward Coristine, best known for going by the nickname “Big Balls” online. Coristine is also the nepo baby son of the snack brand Lesser Evil. Everyone has to suffer; the rights of the poor to exist are curtailed, all because a rich man felt victimized once.

In the middle of the press conference about the made-up problem Trump claims to be solving, he went on a rant about people being transgender. At first he was talking about tax cuts; then he nonsensically went on, “That's why they want men playing in women's sports, that's why they want transgender for everybody. Everybody, transgender. And they just got walloped in an election, in a landslide and they haven't changed one thing. I saw the other day, a certain gentleman who is a very well-known politician, Democrat, was fighting like hell that men should be allowed to play in women's sports. They just don't get it.”

Of course, none of this makes any sense. It was just another moment of free association from an addled brain. But it’s also another moment when a person in power claimed to be the victim of a made-up problem. There are maybe 10 trans athletes in women’s sports in the NCAA. And trans people are more likely to face discrimination and violence than any white man walking to his car in Washington, DC.

It’s an invented narrative to keep the winners claiming grievance, while others lose their rights.

In the pages of the Washington Post, Shadi Hamid wrote once again that men are lonely. He blamed politics and #MeToo. He claimed there is “data” to back this up, but the reality is that men are not lonelier than women. There is no male loneliness crisis. And while we’re at it, the educational crisis among boys is severely overblown.

And while highly male opinion columnists like Hamid, David Brooks and Ross Douthat — and even prominent Democrats like Gavin Newsom — claim men are in crisis, the maternal mortality rate is soaring; Black women are being forced out of the workforce; and women and LGBTQ people are losing their rights to healthcare. Young girls are experiencing a huge mental health crisis.

But so much more ink is spilled over how sad men think they are. It’s a make-believe problem that ignores life-and-death crises for women in favor of the perceived victimhood of men.

These are the fantasy problems of a fictional world. One where the billionaire's fears of being taxed are more terrifying than people going hungry. Where affordable housing is more terrifying than a sexual predator in office. Where 10 trans people competing in women’s sports is scarier than thousands of women dying in childbirth. And one where not getting a date or never marrying is far, far worse somehow than dying septic in a hospital parking lot.

An entire cultural and political movement has been predicated on a mythical narrative of victimhood, loneliness, and disenfranchisement. And we are buying into it even as it kills us.

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• Spencer Ackerman wrote about the cultural hysteria around Mamdani’s candidacy.

• And, in case you missed it, this weekend, I wrote about yet another piece of pro-marriage drivel from Brad Wilcox.

• And in this newsletter, a few years ago, I wrote about why we seem to be trapped in the same discourse cycles.

Last week, Brad Wilcox wrote in The Atlantic that marriage in America is back, baby! By which of course he means heterosexual marriage.

He points to trends that indicate that marriage rates are up, or at least divorce rates are down. This has been true for years. It was a pattern I pointed out in my book This American Ex-Wife. And I noted that the moral panic over divorce was highly exaggerated.

Studies continue to show that societies that pay women and have liberal divorce laws actually have higher rates of marital longevity and birth rates. Because, when women are given economic independence and not coerced into marriage or coerced into staying, they have fewer reasons to leave. It would make sense then that American millennials, who waited longer to marry and who entered the workforce with more gender parity than past generations, would have lower divorce rates.

The problem is that Wilcox, who is conservative and part of an organization whose stated goal is reversing same-sex marriage, doesn’t see these advancements as pro-marriage and pro-family. He blithely ignores that a lot of the stabilization of marriage rates is happening because of women’s improved economic empowerment and most states’ relatively liberal divorce laws.

Also, the increase in same-sex marriages and the number of individuals identifying as LGBTQ points to partnership trends that affirm people’s identities, rather than shoving them into miserable heteronormative boxes. Of course, “married homes” seem statistically better for children; that’s because they tend to have more financial resources. But instead of arguing for giving families health care, child care, and a social safety net, Wilcox continuously pushes the line that marriage is good for the kids.

I am beginning to think that people who argue for marriage as the solution to our social ills don’t really care about our social ills all that much. They just care about enforcing regressive gender roles.

Marriage and society as Wilcox think of them — shaped by a more regressive view of gender and with a focus on male economic empowerment — are actually detrimental the actual rates of marriage. You want higher marriage rates? Let women have choices. But no, that’s never the answer.

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This week, that sentient Froot by the Foot, the man who looks like roadkill got turned into beef jerky with a voice that sounds like a haunted wooden gate, RFK Jr., defunded mRNA vaccine research.

This is really good news if you are longing for the sweet release of death. But for everyone else, including those of us who are a little ambivalent, this is bad.

You know it’s bad when the people who are actually experts in the field are screaming, crying and throwing up. Which is my translation of this NPR headline, “Public health experts dismayed by RFK Jr.'s defunding of mRNA vaccine research.”

NPR is not sensationalist. Twenty rabid toddlers armed with knives could take over a daycare in the San Fernando Valley and the headline would be, “Daycare troubles have some California parents concerned.”

NPR is so responsible.1 They will not worry you at all. They’re like the journalistic equivalent of your Midwestern mom breaking bad news to you.

“Oh yeah, no, your aunt won’t be on vacation with us. Oh, why? Well, she died in a car accident last week. No, I was going to tell you, but the authorities were still picking up pieces of her off Highway 151. Make sure you pack sunscreen, sweetie.”

In fact, let’s just do a quick NPR headline translator:

Headline: Federal records contradict what FEMA leader told Congress about Texas flood response

Translation: FEMA is more dysfunctional than your uncle’s third marriage and everyone in charge is gaslighting you and we have the receipts!

Headline: Trump's broad tariffs go into effect, just as economic pain is surfacing

Translation: The economy is sinking faster than your son Aiden's chances of making the major leagues. Hope you like being poor, you dumb sluts.

Headline: Trump cuts threaten access to birth control for millions of women

Translation: THE ONLY BIRTH CONTROL JD VANCE WANTS YOU TO HAVE IS THE HOLY SPIRIT. BETTER START STANDING IN FRONT OF SOME MICROWAVES .

But honestly, sex with a straight man? IN THIS ECONOMY? Who can afford it?

Now, back to RFK, that termite-eaten human fence post who clearly wants us all to die. Because why else would he defund life-saving technology?

That worm-addled Habsburgian prince of the collapsing American empire is out here canceling vital scientific research because he thinks it’s dangerous. Which is the equivalent of getting rid of all the elevators because of that one scene in Final Destination. You are trying to solve a fictional problem.

I’ll never forgive that brain worm for not finishing the job.

And now for something good

The Las Vegas strip is being unionized.

You can’t have health care but you can have golden sriracha Doritos.

I love that Texas lawmakers literally fled the state rather than be part of the GOP’s extremely corrupt redistricting scheme.

*puts finger to ear* Sir, I’m hearing that Fox News actually told the truth.

Elizabeth Warren continues to be right.

And funny.

What I am enjoying

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Megan sent me some Trail Mixers – THC-infused dissolvable powder that can go inside any beverage. They are single-serve, low-dose, and really tiny; they fit inside my purse, which is now small because my kids don’t need diapers anymore and carry their own snacks or just beg me to buy them some Starbies.

Megan has been my internet friend for years and she and her husband are the brains behind Trail Mixers. This week, as I continue to do a lot of work with the Iowa Abortion Access Fund, start working on my next book, plan for the school year, get kids to their various camps, and somehow feed them and myself, I had a very small meltdown.

The meltdown looked something like me sobbing on my bed in the middle of a pile of printed-out school calendars, my laptop, and a phone with 27,000 school apps all buzzing at me.

Which led to me taking part of Wednesday off and going paddleboarding. I started paddleboarding in 2021 as a thing to do on weekend mornings when my kids were with their dad. It’s an easy way for me to put my phone away and get out on the water and just stare placidly at the trees and water, and angrily at the McMansions that line the lake shore.

This week, it was made all the more chill with the Trail Mixers. I just mixed a little into my water bottle. Paddled around for an hour and then came home and took a little nap.

So, if you want to support an Iowa-based company and bring some THC into the next Kesha concert, I highly recommend them.

And also paddleboarding.

And also, I recommend a little meltdown, as a treat.

This week, I learned that I need to wrap my face in shapewear. I already need to be taping my mouth shut; eating more protein; taking more supplements; wearing a weighted vest on my walks; lifting more; doing Pilates; running less; putting spring water on my face in the mornings, running faster; using lasers on my face; getting Botox, lip filler, chemical peels, hydrafacials and wellness shots. And my dentist thinks I need braces. Every woman on my Instagram is trying to sell me on lymphatic drainage and hip bones. They tell me that to look like them, I need to give up booze, give up THC, give up carbs, give up cheese. The Washington Post says I’m peeing incorrectly, so I need to fix that.

According to the internet, everyone seems to be self-optimizing, looksmaxxing, doing thought work, getting into therapy, doing self-help, journaling, taking up needlework or gardening, churning butter, and making candles.

It’s enough to make a woman want to start smoking cigarettes.

It’s not that I don’t engage in self-improvement or beauty standards. I get a little Botox, I buy mascara, and I love a new face cream that promises to change my life. It’s not perfect. It’s a system I see and grapple with every day, but one that still crushes me with ageism and the expectation of the performance of femininity.

This capitalistic deluge of tools and products to help women look hotter and more desirable is occurring as our government is taking away the right to abortion, birth control, SNAP benefits, Medicaid, and the free expression of our gender and sexuality. All the things that would actually keep us healthy. But instead, we have uncompounded GLP-1s and TikTok influencers endorsing protein matcha powder.

According to one 2019 study, “American women spend an average of 45 minutes grooming each day and make up 80-90% of the $115 billion industry for beauty products, affecting both their time and financial resources.”

This gendered issue is getting more expensive and impacting younger people. The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reported in 2022 that nearly 75% of facial plastic surgeons had seen an increase in the number of patients under 30 requesting cosmetic surgery or injectables. The American Med Spa Association made a similar observation in 2024, adding that Gen Z and millennials are the generations most interested in injectables. And comparatively, “...adults 55+ are the least interested in non-surgical cosmetic treatments.”

Right now, beauty is marketed as “wellness,” and “wellness” is marketed as morality. The Venn diagram between the three feels like one big circle. And this is because these are things marketed to women.

We are not a society that trusts women. This is evidenced by the fact that our health care rights are being stripped away, along with our right to fully participate in society. Our country is run by men and women who are telling women to stay out of the workforce and replacing our autonomy with policing our bathrooms, which no one was asking for. Even the hang-wringing discourse over Gen Z’s Botox or asking how Nicole Kidman could do that to her face is implicitly assigning moral value to women’s choices. Expecting any one woman to perfectly navigate the cultures of consumption, beauty, and wellness while still having a career shows again that women cannot win in this system.

And we deserve empathy, not concern-trolling for how imperfectly we navigate this world. It feels like every day, our culture is unearthing some past crime of criticism committed against a woman in the public eye, with no thought about the crimes being committed now.

Anyway, I certainly don’t remember any moral panics about men taking creatine and testosterone.

Also, our cultural criticism always seems to focus on the individuals, rather than the companies and individuals who profit from our lack of healthcare and childcare. And no, childcare isn’t a different issue, because I would have fewer bags under my eyes if I had childcare during the summer and wasn’t working on this newsletter at 9 p.m.

We’ve been here before. Products for women soared in the post-WWII era, as women were forced out of work and back into the home. Looking beautiful and feminine and running a household became not just a full-time job, but a kind of science. Sociologists like Willard Waller believed women had gotten out of hand during the war, and society needed to reset. Waller claimed it was a woman's new patriotic duty to be "blissfully domestic" in her new office, the home.

These arguments sound like they could have come out of the mouth of the current vice president or any trad wife with blond children and a couple thousand followers on Instagram.

Products that promise to constrain, restrict, refine, contort, and shape us into more desirable versions of ourselves are not self-care — they’re promising us beauty and with that beauty an easier and healthier life. They’re also draining time and financial resources. And I am not here to argue that the time and resources should go to something better. I’m saying it's our time and our resources, and we should be allowed to be frivolous and waste them in irresponsible ways. Not all of our choices should have to carry the moral weight of the world.

Also, these products don’t work. Because there is no amount of hot you can be that will protect you from misogyny. Taking supplements will not prevent you from getting cancer or dying alone.

And yet, we persist, slathering in creams, wrapping our faces like ninjas, covering ourselves in red lights, like evil Christmas trees, just for a chance to hold on to beauty and life and a little longer, in a world determined to take both away.

Other links

• Tressie McMillan Cottom on the modern temperance movement.

• answers the question about “giving up” vs. accepting your face.

• writes that the Disney story about love and marriage that the internet is selling is a hell that women fought for generations to escape.

• And reminds us that beauty standards won’t save us.

When I moved to Cedar Rapids in 2005, I got a job in marketing at a website called NewspaperArchives.com, which used to be owned by a company called Heritage Microfilm and was headquartered in Cedar Rapids. The site was like the Hotel California: It was easy to sign up, but impossible to leave. As a result, the company was eventually the target of a federal investigation.

I worked there for a few months. My job was to write a marketing blog about the great things people could find in the archives. In “other duties as assigned,” I sometimes had to pretend to be the customer service manager (there was none), when people called screaming about their cards being billed for a service they thought they had canceled. We had one customer service representative, Natalie, who was a temp. And everyone in the office had to take turns pretending to be the manager. My co-worker was three years older than I was and thought that there was definitely a JFK cover-up, and when I teased her about it, she cried. We were both married to engineers and bought homes at the same time, but when I moved, I went dumpster diving for boxes. When she moved, she packed all her belongings in plastic totes because she believed her things were too precious to risk in cardboard.

When people called yelling because they were legitimately being conned by bad business practices, our real boss was completely unavailable, sitting in his office across the hall, occasionally having meetings where he’d tell us to “think big and bold!” But it was a website that archived newspapers in Cedar Rapids. The only thing they seemed to be innovating was how to dodge angry customers.

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