This mystery has MAGA women punching themselves hard in the face

Two very different demos have recently risen to social media prominence: GenX women and our polar opposites, the MAGA Trad Wives. The starkly opposed messaging is making a real case for the “nurture” part of the “nature vs. nurture” argument during a time when women’s rights are constantly in flux.

GenX Women — aka the “Forgotten Generation”— have emerged as a hugely influential group thanks to being the (better) half of the last fully analog generation on the planet. Too many GenX men are MAGA, which is why liberal GenX women have found our collectively loud social media voice amid our current AI garbage fire of MAGA fakery. We are rightfully raging as we refuse to remain silent during our menopause, from the peri- to the post-menopausal years. Black women in particular are leading the female GenX trends, and rightly so.

It took us forever to get here, and we’re going to make sure everybody knows it.

Call it Middle Rage instead of Middle Age. Our mothers and grandmothers may have suffered through the “change of life” in silence, but we’re absolutely not going gently into our golden years. Several celebs in their 50s now have menopause wellness lines and are very vocal about how it’s changed literally everything. The Portland-based Menopunks podcast/documentary project has grown exponentially over the last year.

We have plenty of wisdom to impart on the younger generations, because we’re made of the toughest stuff. Raised on hose water, Twinkies, and frozen pizza we made in the toaster oven in our empty house after walking home from school by ourselves, the latchkey GenX kids are better prepared to take over this country than you might think. We stood on kitchen chairs to cook our own breakfasts on the stove by the age of 5 or 6. None of used a bike helmet or a seat belt until the government mandated them. Our parents had no idea where we were most of the time during the summers, and we all had jobs by the time we were 15.

Plus, with all of our tattoos and other body modifications, we’re also poised to be the coolest old people ever! We’ve already made going naturally gray both hot and cool, and we’re also using fewer facial fillers than our moms.

But it’s our collective political voice that’s emerged as our strongest asset, because we’ve lived through decades of sexism and misogynist microaggressions, and we aren’t having any of what the MAGA Mean Girls and the Trumpy Trad Wives are putting out there.

If you’re not familiar (and oh, how I envy you!), the Trad Wife is young, Christian, white, and obedient to her husband, who’s often much older. Not at all Epstein-y. Anyway, they embrace a “Little House on the Prairie” lifestyle of doing all of the housework and child-rearing while the menfolk make — and therefore, control — the money. They call it “spousal submission.” I call it domestic abuse.

I’m oddly fascinated by women who vote for Republicans. There are multiple memes for it, but the best one is probably any that shows someone punching themselves in the face. Or just pointing out that it will never make sense.

There really isn’t enough internet space to delve into the subjugation of women since the dawn of time, so we’ll just fast-forward to the last few decades of watching Republican women hand over their bodily autonomy to men for *checks notes* reasons I don’t get.

But they’ve been immersed in a groupthink cult experiment for their whole lives, mostly due to the patriarchy of Christianity. Religion is a choice, and once you’re an adult, you have a duty to yourself to question everything you’ve been told when you’ve never been given any proof.

Thinking for yourself isn’t hard and should always be encouraged. However, the cult-like atmosphere in which most conservatives are raised clearly doesn’t lend itself to individuality. No one is born hating anyone or believing anything; our parents are our first teachers, and whether or not they’re aware of it, they’re imprinting us with their belief systems instead of letting us create our own.

But MAGA women are still women, and I’m not letting them distract me with that stupid “what is a woman” question they use as a distraction from the cult stuff they’re doing.

I want to know why they’re okay with giving up their bodies, brains, and basic human rights to men. They’ll say they’d be fine with the abolishment of the 19th Amendment. They believe that getting married young and having a huge family is all they’re meant for. They don’t question any of the GOP’s tactics or the evils of Project 2025/2026, they just repeat whatever they’ve been told.

A recent viral example of this is the helium-voiced, non-blinking Julia Kate, who doesn’t use her last name and speaks in the overly cheerful cadence of a cult member, even when she’s defending Donald Trump’s horrific track record. She just got a whole bunch of negative attention thanks to a debate on Jubliee Media, which seems to exist solely to create ragebait videos. Julia Kate claims that all women need to marry young and get into their Birthing Vessel Era by having no less than 10 children as fast as possible.

GenX women would like a few moments with Julia Kate and her ilk to set them straight. MAGA women will also go through childbirth, menopause, and other things that their men won’t like. We can see how ill-equipped they are to handle real life and wonder how they manage to even dress themselves (which is mostly like a human version of a Holly Hobbie doll, yet another GenX reference).

But it’s so much more than just making viral videos. It’s making sure women achieve full equality. It’s electing more Democratic women to be louder than the weak Republican men who fear our power. And it’s setting the example for those coming up behind us.