Tucker Carlson and MAGA Masculinity

MAGA masculinity is codependent upon the sadistic subjugation of women and the Christian sanctification of male private for profit ownership of women as social order

I’m sure, by now, you’ve encountered clips of Tucker Carlson’s wack psychosexual rant from last week’s Trump Rally in Duluth, GA.  You know, the one where Carlson described the American public as “a hormone-addled 15-year-old girl slamming the door and giving you the finger.”

Yeah - it got real weird, real fast.  Even by Carlson’s standards as a fired Fox News host and hateful heir who gets drunk on conspiracy theories through his desperate search for attention and adulation.  I cannot imagine the flaccid derangement necessary to speak the following - let alone apocalyptically rage it before a cheering crowd.  

After rallying against VP Kamala Harris as incapable and incompetent to lead the nation by accusing her of being unable to change a tire or drive a car (?), Carlson advocated for silencing all Democratic voices because their opinions were intolerable and must be stopped to prevent any further erosion to his preferred social order where white straight men matter and everyone else exists in their servitude.

Carlson, ostensibly speaking to the nation as a metaphorical family with former President Trump as some sort of father figure, proposed the solution for the existence of people who protest selective sadism and policies of cruelty against women, non-white folk, gay, trans, and queer people.  

“There has to be a point at which Dad comes home,” he fumed, his round cherub from hell face flushed with dramatic emotionality, ruddy from his spiking blood pressure.  

“Dad comes home and he’s pissed. He’s not vengeful, he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them, because they’re his children. … And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.”

Whoa, there is a lot to unpack there.  First, let’s acknowledge that the weakest and most unstable substance in the known universe is a man who can only feel strong and real in his own existence when he’s dominating, controlling, sexually threatening and harvesting forced obedience from girls, women, and populations made politically vulnerable by their minority status.  

But, let’s be clear - his vitriol against VP Harris communicates his obvious hatred towards women (especially successful women of color).  His attacks are clearly gendered - that’s why his metaphorical solution focused on spanking a teenage daughter (and not a son).

Carlson is laser focused on forcing girls and women back in line - under the authority of the straight men who feel entitled to own, use, and profit from feminine existences. 

This MAGA style of patriarchal masculinity cannot maintain any form without constantly, forcibly leeching energy from the existence of femininity.  Incapable of creating or sustaining its own self independently, this type of malformed masculinity functions within a fantasy that requires a life of captivity - of being artificially nourished, spoiled, and pleasured by girls and women like a wild animal that’s become gluttonous on consuming garbage and lost the ability to provide for its own self.  

Being confronted with competent, successful, powerful women is the greatest threat to their existence because they can only feel real and worthy and masculine when artificially preventing women from participating in power, politics, and society.  

The parasitic nature of this masculinity is not ordained, required, mandated, or insurmountable.  It is a chosen state of pitiful being through the active refusal to exert the effort and intentional concentration necessary to mature into wholeness and generate self-esteem and purpose within an individual existence.  

MAGA masculinity codependently demands to be fed, coddled, pleasured, and obeyed by a surrogate mother teet.  Without this suckling - the draining of life, purpose, individuality, energy, and potential from girls and women - this deformity of masculinity collapses into a violent fit of desolation, fear, and rage.

It demands to feel needed, without cultivating the ability to meet any needs.  It demands to feel ennobled with the power of authority without developing the knowledge, skills, or capacities of care required to lead.  It demands to feel like a protector while leveraging threats and violence to extort its desires.

When women refuse to play out the fantasy of inferiority, helplessness, and deference to grant these men these feelings of unearned and undemonstrated superiority, authority, and power, they viciously lash out.  

Because even in their physically adult form, existing off the teat is too damning a burden for these men to confront.  So they viciously seek to contain women under male ownership to continuously siphon care, attention, and feelings of unearned worthiness generated through the violent suppression and degradation of women.

Obedience and Consumption

The demands for unquestioning obedience is core to the fantasy.  Obedience masks the truth of male incompetence and allows them to cosplay strength through inflicting harm, neglect, and destruction.  

This mangled sense of masculinity is desperate to consume feeling like a man without accomplishing the internal evolution, skill development, and discipline necessary to mature into an adult - let alone someone whose judgment should be trusted as a leader.

To prop up the fantasy of manhood without doing the work to become a man, this fraudulent masculinity requires a sexualized surrogate mother to perform inferiority and submission.  This allows that man to pretend he isn’t seeking to be mothered, but is actually leading through his refusal to acknowledge the full humanity and autonomy of women.

This is the truth of authoritarian strongman rhetoric like this.  And the sexual threats in Carlson’s dialogue are very much purposeful and intentional.  

Christianity, and Supremacy Through Violence

As we’ve discussed previously, patriarchy is a fantasy of innate male supremacy.  This fantasy assumes that the only purpose for girls, women, and femininity writ large is to perform inferiority and servitude for men and masculinity to consume. There are no standards to be a man - only the requirement to consume and degrade women.

As we always say, all orientations of supremacy are narcissistic orientations.  Men - and women - who subscribe to patriarchal fantasies believe that men are real human beings and women exist to perform service and desire for the real men - the real humans - to own and consume.

Violations to this fantasy of supremacy are met with violence and sabotage.  This is how all supremacy worldviews respond to challenges to their fantasies of hate and entitlement.  The fantasy is a projection of desired power they refuse to work to realize within their own selves through disciplined cultivation and personal development.

Fantasy of Supremacy: A Sadism Kink

Let’s break this down in respect to Carlson’s gross Christian incest kink adjacent tirade.  Listen - I’m not here to kink shame adults consensually engaging in whatever activities they willingly, knowingly, and safely seek to co-create and enjoy.  

We’re talking about a much darker kink here - the sadistic fantasy of supremacy that requires violent physical punishment and violation to force others to play out their assigned fantasy role of subhuman inferiority for the “superior” to use, consume, harm, and violate at will.  

Consuming the labor and degradation of the othered - women and girls in patriarchy, POC in white supremacy, etc. - is necessary to shore up the broken sense of self these worldviews generate.  This is all done to cosplay a role of power and authority that they refuse to genuinely earn, create, and embody.

It is sadistic.  Sadism is the process of deriving joy, confidence, satisfaction, and a positive sense of self from consuming the infliction of pain onto others.  It does not create - it consumes.  

It hates anything that is strong enough to create for its own self because it refuses to engage with that type of work and development.  It consumes inflicting pain upon others to compensate for its own unwillingness to commit to processes of creation that yield joy, connection, purpose, and balance for its own self.

This is at the heart of Carlson’s MAGA style masculinity - a deep hatred for women whose capacities to create and cultivate illustrate the poverty and helplessness of these men who only consume.  It is a self selected state - and women have nothing to do with it.

MAGA Father - An Abusive Force of Consumption and Violence

Let’s look at Carlson’s weird rant line by line.

“Dad comes home and he’s pissed. He’s not vengeful, he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them, because they’re his children.”

Dad comes home and he’s pissed - because in this worldview of domination and consumption, men do not participate in their own households, families, and relationships - they consume them as absentee factory owners consume the profits from the laborers in the facility. 

As we always say, patriarchy is the system of male private for profit ownership of women.  

The wife/mother is the machine of meeting human needs under the man’s unquestionable authority - he is the boss who may not be openly challenged or burdened with the emotional demands of personal accountability, stewardship, or parenting. 

The woman is not tolerated to have human needs of her own - she exists to manufacture life without compensation or reciprocity for the man to consume, enjoy, and critique from a seat of ignorance and malice.

That’s why MAGA Daddy is pissed - the property he owns - his family and household - are not performing for his enjoyment and profit.  The machinery is malfunctioning and the laborers are demanding fair wages of attention and investment and he’s angry.  Such bids for accountability and participation impede his consumption and profiteering for his individual status and pleasure.

“He’s not vengeful, he loves his children.  Disobedient as they may be, he loves them, because they’re his children.” 

In this worldview, children are property that must obey their owner.  This is their idea of love - the brutality of forced conformity and neglect of self to please the MAGA Daddy owner.  

This also speaks to our systemic subhuman treatment of children.  There is no recognition that children have needs distinct from adult needs and expectations - needs that match their current phase of development.  Children need to be comforted, children need to feel unconditionally valued by their parents and unconditionally safe within their homes.  This stability and unconditional investment of presence and care by both parents is crucial to the hard work of developing as children.

“And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie.”

When Carlson advocates for spanking a teen daughter - a sexualized form of violence and domination that borders on incestuous fantasies - he is advocating to beat the defiance of individuation out of her.  He’s not speaking about sons, only daughters.  

He is saying that a girl must be physically violated by her father to sabotage normal processes of teen rebellion that assert independence from parental control.  Normal processes of individuation must be sabotaged in teen girls to ensure they remain compliant as the objects of production and sexual gratification for men to own and use.

No, she may not have boundaries or express the emotional intensity and distress she is experiencing - all heightened by her age-appropriate hormonal fluctuations.  

No, she may not slam her door and assert a physical boundary of privacy.  

No - her body is still the property of her father and he will overpower her and sexually humiliate and physically harm her to ensure she associates asserting herself with pain and sexual degradation by her father’s hand.

That’s why Carlson emphasizes how he knows it will hurt her - not him.  That is the point.  He derives value from hurting her and sabotaging her ability to individuate into an adult woman.  This is necessary to condition her to fear independence and expression and revert to submission to male authority instead.

Her body does not belong to her and she is not entitled to expression, privacy, or personal space.  She is being groomed for future male ownership and sexual domestic servitude by her father’s spanking in this metaphor.

Since the Daddy has no standards for knowledge or respect or care towards his children or household, he responds to the genuine and real developmental needs of his children with violence and sabotage.  They are subhuman to him - only men are real human beings in patriarchal narcissism - so he beats them into submission rather than engage with the hard, patient, daily work of being a parent.

Christian Sanctification of Male Private For Profit Ownership of Women

The false disclaimer that this position isn’t vengeful speaks to the Christian fundamentalist audience he’s representing.  Carlson is advocating for grown men to reign down Old Testament style brutality and destruction on their babies and children while claiming it’s love and not the ignorant and emotionally lazy savagery of their narcissistically dysfunctional worldview.

This great article by Talia Lavin explains how Carlson is directly speaking to this evangelical worldview that openly celebrates the power of corporal punishment - encouraging parents to physically beat and spank helpless babies and children from age 18 months to enforce submission and compliance into performing their assigned social roles to satisfy Daddy - and thus God.  

Lavin tracks the history of Christian parenting books and philosophy over the past 50 years and clearly demonstrates how brutality towards children is encouraged as a mandate from God to ensure they perform their social role of total obedience in order to survive their own parents and community.  The lesson is, appeasement to the cruelest and most violent is required to ensure survival.

Despite being the strong authority of this worldview, the father is incapable of tolerating any emotional distress or discomfort himself.  This is why he wields violence - to enforce his entitlement to not feel frustration, distress, or discomfort by inflicting it upon others to control their behavior for his benefit and comfort.  

Violence is a form of self-soothing by exerting control over another’s behavior.  This way, the narcissistic male doesn’t have to exert control over his own self, emotionality, and disposition.

They call it respect, but it’s just submission to protecting the man from experiencing discomfort, emotional labor, and the demands of individual accountability and responsibility of care in relationships and parenting at all costs.

Supremacy Social Order

This all tracks with how supremacy systems function together.  I always say, patriarchy is the foundational inequality - it is the first system of supremacy and exploitation that renders men as real, full humans and women as the inferior, as the machine designed to perform for male benefit and pleasure exclusively.  Women are the original means of production meant to be owned by a man for his profit.

Children are subhuman property - owned by the man and administered by the woman.  The mother/wife in this dynamic is like the head servant who must keep the children in line to maintain a closer and more privileged access to the man - the center of power as the owner and only real human in this structure.

Christianity is then used to sanctify this social order.  Jesus Christ would never preach that an adult should beat their children into docile submission, into performing a social role of servitude to avoid being exiled, beat, and disowned by the family.  But these conservative Christian churches do.

These conservative Christian churches rally against immigrants as a code for only white people are Americans.  These conservative churches refuse to hold their own male leadership to account for sexual violence and the violation of their puritanical expectations.  These conservative churches demonize the sexuality of women and non-straight people while providing cover for male church leaders who commit sex crimes against women, girls, and boys - CHILDREN - in their institutions.  

“It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.”

When Carlson says it has to be this way, he’s speaking to the violence required to maintain this social order of brutality.  It has to be this way because Christianity is about the sanctification of the social order of supremacy that requires the dehumanization and abuse of the exploited to ensure the salvation of the abusers.

It’s not about a relationship with God, it’s about abandoning self to enable men to perpetuate exploitation, violence, sexual abuse, and extort profit from the labor of others without fair compensation or dignity to the exploited.

As we spoke about previously, Christianity promotes a worldview where martyrs must be manufactured through assigned social roles - these martyrs must sacrifice self to labor for the salvation of those who exploit them.  

Women must martyr themselves to provide salvation for men - salvation from the labor of life, salvation from the discomfort of processes of emotional maturation, salvation from participating in the work of life in cooperative faith towards mutual benefit.  

Salvation to ensure men are able to consume without participation.  Salvation to ensure that men may revel in ignorance, deceit, and immaturity without consequence or discomfort.  Salvation to ensure men are empowered to harm and kill to protect this rampant entitlement to consume until the martyr is drained dry and dead - and then maintain access to find a new martyr to fill the role.

The martyr doesn’t matter - the role of the martyr is necessary to provide the salvation of consumption without restraint, reciprocity, care, or love.

White supremacy functions the same - POC across the globe must be martyred to provide cheap salvation to white power structures.  They must be martyred through indentured servitude to work in factories receiving below poverty wages to create cheap consumables to save white, capitalistic, patriarchal countries structures from having to reckon with the results of their own policies and philosophies.  

It’s all about protecting the comfortable and artificially elevated social roles from mandates of equity, care, and stewardship.

Supremacy systems and social orders have no higher purpose or goal than expanding their ability to dominate and consume.  It is consumption and violence for the sake of consumption and violence.  It is the easiest path of destruction and ignorance is its greatest comfort. 

These malicious worldviews must be called out at every expression - every mask must be exposed, every lie rejected, and every advocate mocked and disowned.

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xoxo, Coco + Maude