{"id":161329,"date":"2026-03-12T12:53:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T12:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/161329\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T12:53:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T12:53:22","slug":"the-young-women-leaving-the-new-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/161329\/","title":{"rendered":"The Young Women Leaving the New Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/246bb00b9760941060a1c81a5b3eafa59c-why-women-are-leaving-the-right.rvertical.w570.jpg\" class=\"lede-image\" data-content-img=\"\" width=\"570\" height=\"712\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/> <\/p>\n<p>\n                  Illustration: Brandon Celi\n              <\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph_drop-cap\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmm7coeh000i0iec1803tcph@published\" data-word-count=\"104\">This is embarrassing to admit, but I think I fell in with the right wing as an aesthetic choice initially,\u201d says Anna. For several years a celebrated pundit of the New Right \u2014 a movement of young conservatives at war with the old GOP Establishment \u2014 Anna has requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. A religious Catholic, she had grown up the token liberal in her conservative town, owing, in part, to a durable contrarian streak. (Her father, she says, was a typical \u201cFox News guy.\u201d) But during college in the mid-2010s, she was exposed to the overweening, haughty moralism of Peak Woke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6pzj004u3b7c36jhqqj0@published\" data-word-count=\"29\">\u201cI\u2019m somebody, dispositionally, who likes to have a good time,\u201d she tells me. She found the humorlessness of the contemporary left more alienating than the conservatism of her youth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6q0v004v3b7cp1ina1im@published\" data-word-count=\"81\">She wasn\u2019t attracted to the right by the romanticized aesthetic of \u201ctraditional\u00a0America\u201d \u2014 big beautiful houses and bread-making and families with half a dozen children. Rather, she says, \u201cI was in love with the frisson of transgression.\u201d The online right had begun to engage more explicitly with forbidden subjects: nativism, race science, and gender essentialism drawn from evolutionary psychology. \u201cThere was an element of gnosticism to it,\u201d she says, \u201cthe sense that you know secret things that other people don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6q2e004w3b7cad3mu9rm@published\" data-word-count=\"116\">After college, in the waning years of Trump\u2019s first term, Anna wrote for popular right-wing outlets, worked for conservative institutions, and attended movement conferences. She fell in socially with the young firebrands of the New Right; she remembers it as partially happenstance. \u201cYou kind of meet people and proceed on and then suddenly you find yourself being a part of this thing,\u201d she tells me. A portion of her early writing was about feminism and gender: \u201cI was doing the typical right-wing female thing where all these men will kind of pat you on your head for saying the edgy thing \u2014 about women, as a woman \u2014 and they need you to be their mouthpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6q3o004x3b7c7gziruee@published\" data-word-count=\"101\">Her work tapped a rich vein of 2020s discourse: the notion that women are mentally disturbed. \u201cThey\u2019re more crazy and upset and unwell than they\u2019ve ever been before,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAnd it\u2019s because they\u2019re not having babies, and it\u2019s because they\u2019re working too hard.\u201d In Anna\u2019s essays, women were unhappy because they were tyrannized by choice and alienated from their God-given purpose. It was easy to see things this way for a time; she herself was lost and a little depressed. But gradually, over a few years, it became tiresome. Women, it seemed, were always to blame for the world\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6q59004y3b7cj7i42tig@published\" data-word-count=\"55\">Anna believed \u2014 and still believes \u2014 that \u201chomemaking is a dignified and beautiful thing to do\u201d; she has a \u201cfundamentally high view of \u2018women\u2019s work,\u2019 or care work.\u201d But increasingly, the men around her were demanding that women stay home and, from an entirely different perspective, seeing care work, and women, as beneath them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6q6x004z3b7c28reqjyo@published\" data-word-count=\"189\">Anna\u2019s discomfort with the right\u2019s sexism grew throughout the early 2020s, especially after Elon Musk purchased Twitter and began rewarding the most outrageous and offensive posters. \u201cOver time, the language of New Right misogyny got way more tuned in to red-pill-type stuff,\u201d she says. Among young MAGA men, there ceased to be a huge difference between self-understood trads \u2014 Christians who tend to (patronizingly) venerate women\u2019s special contributions to family and religious life \u2014 and rageful incels, who see women as conspirators in a plot to deprive them of sex and status. Both groups, Anna says, came to see women as \u201cthese objects you can use at will. So if you want a marriage, if you want a lifelong \u2018bang maid,\u2019 then you can pursue that. And if you want to just have endless hookups, you can pursue that by using these dating tactics within the red-pill sphere.\u201d Men in the movement who rejected these ideas were nonetheless hesitant to criticize others. \u201cThe principle was \u2018No enemies to the right,\u2019\u201d Anna says.\u00a0\u201cSo normal conservative men \u2014 the good husbands and self-understood nice guys \u2014 refused to police the vanguard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6q8200503b7c57ilrsrf@published\" data-word-count=\"140\">Anna\u2019s career and income depended heavily on conservative patronage, and by then, she and her husband had several children to support. For a while, she experienced the ramped-up misogyny as primarily an online phenomenon. But sometime during the Biden administration, young men began repeating repulsive manosphere talking points in her presence \u2014 that women are irrational and manipulative, good for little but sex and childbearing. They assumed, she says, \u201cbecause of how I presented myself\u201d \u2014 as anti-feminist, as \u201cbased\u201d and unbothered \u2014 \u201cthat I was not like the other girls.\u201d They demonstrated their fealty to MAGA by enthusing about repealing no-fault divorce, gender-discrimination laws, and even the 19th Amendment, which gave\u00a0women\u00a0the vote. Often enough, women in the movement would agree. \u201cThat was your ticket, your entry point,\u201d Anna says. \u201cIt\u2019s a \u2018Leave your dignity at the door\u2019 type thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6q9600513b7cf7zoe7mx@published\" data-word-count=\"108\">Usually, she silently endured her peers\u2019 soliloquies on women\u2019s deviance and the urgent need to curtail their rights. When she did manage a retort, it was not well received. On one occasion, at a professional dinner, a male acquaintance spewed out some \u201creally gross\u201d things about women (she declines to share details for fear of being identified), and she gently pushed back. \u201cHe freaked out,\u201d she says. \u201cHe was banging on the table, screaming at me, saying, \u2018Nobody cares what you think, woman\u2019 \u2014 using the word woman as an invective.\u201d She worried\u00a0he would become violent. No one at the table came to her defense, men or women.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qaf00523b7cwxvi5eto@published\" data-word-count=\"34\">\u201cYou almost don\u2019t realize what\u2019s happening until five years later,\u201d Anna says, \u201cwhen you look back and you\u2019re like, Oh gosh, I was being used.\u201d\u00a0She also blames herself: \u201cI was too frivolous with ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph_drop-cap\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qef00543b7c1689jnu6@published\" data-word-count=\"173\">Anna is not alone in this revelation. In the Trump era, many young women \u2014 like the giddily foulmouthed MAGA influencers and inauguration attendees depicted in this magazine at the start of Trump\u2019s second term (see: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/inauguration-trump-supporters-conservative-movement-post-maga.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Cruel Kids Table<\/a>\u201d) \u2014 were attracted to the New Right because it felt less constrained, stuffy, and dogmatic than the left. Perhaps it was. A little sexism was a small price to pay for entry to a party without woke scolds policing the playlist. For women especially, contempt for feminist pieties, if deftly channeled, could be one\u2019s ticket to stardom. And what had feminism done for them recently, except tell them to work harder and feel bad for wanting to be skinny? Or worse: trick them into waiting too long to have babies? Now, a growing group of right-wing women \u2014 both prominent personalities and loyal foot soldiers \u2014 are waking up to find their inclusion in the MAGA movement was contingent. Sexism wasn\u2019t merely the price of entry; it was the theme of the party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qfx00553b7csqm47nt8@published\" data-word-count=\"194\">Young women drawn to the cause in recent years for more traditional reasons \u2014 religious convictions, pro-life politics, a preference for conventional gender roles \u2014 are having a rude awakening of their own, finding that MAGA sexism is not the same as the old patriarchy. On the New Right, male licentiousness, violence, and domination are not only acceptable but valorized. \u201cWhen Andrea Dworkin wrote about the draw of conservatism for women in the 1970s and \u201980s,\u201d says Katya Ungerman, who writes about online culture under the pseudonym Katherine Dee, \u201cthere was a certain plausibility to the pitch.\u201d Ungerman has never been a conservative, but many of her friends are young MAGA and she has observed the milieu closely. Dworkin wrote that right-wing women were not deluded: \u201cThey see the world they live in, and they are not wrong.\u201d In exchange for female submission, the conservative men of Dworkin\u2019s era offered a refuge from the physical danger and chaos of modern life \u2014 or so they said. The right, she wrote, \u201ctells women the rules of the game on\u00a0which their lives depend\u201d and \u201cpromises that despite their absolute sovereignty, men too will follow specified rules.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qh600563b7coz1tsgyc@published\" data-word-count=\"39\">\u201cThat part is gone,\u201d says Ungerman, at least in the segments of the movement with real momentum. The men of the New Right not only fail to be protectors, she says, \u201cthey\u2019re not even symbolically protective. They\u2019re very hostile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qie00573b7c3ljpagn8@published\" data-word-count=\"71\">According to the conservative women I\u2019ve spoken to over the past several months \u2014 all at one point active in MAGA, some active still \u2014 anxiety and disgust over sexism have been steadily growing since the beginning of Trump\u2019s second term. It has spiked since last fall, they say, when the movement began openly embracing Nick Fuentes, whose visceral hatred of women makes the male chauvinists of the past seem enlightened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qqx00583b7ctysjnoou@published\" data-word-count=\"83\">Some women have dropped out publicly. They include BASEDPolitics co-founder Hannah Cox (\u201cAs someone who used to think \u2018feminism\u2019 was a dirty word,\u201d she tweeted last year, \u201cnothing depresses me more than the rise of true misogyny we\u2019re seeing on the right\u201d); the former trad-wife influencer Alice Llani; and Ashley St. Clair, the former Turning Point USA brand ambassador who had a child with Elon Musk, who is fighting her for custody. St. Clair is now an advocate for women facing online abuse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qs700593b7cmth5yust@published\" data-word-count=\"68\">But others are keeping their heads down. They vent and seek counsel in private group chats and among trusted friends and fret about whether to leave their red-pilled boyfriends. Many of those with large followings are hesitant to antagonize their fans, or jeopardize their income, by going public, so they carry on; others, without as much skin in the game, are simply drifting away and doing something else.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qtj005a3b7c9su556vl@published\" data-word-count=\"129\">Anna has stopped working for right-wing outlets, changed careers, and begun, fitfully, to make her criticisms known in some public venues under her real name,\u00a0hoping to provide a lifeline for others. But she requested anonymity in our conversations out of fear for her physical safety. \u201cFrankly, I am worried that somebody is going to physically harm me or my children,\u201d she says. There has been \u201cspillover\u201d from violent internet rhetoric and rage into real violence.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve seen it happen,\u201d she tells me. \u201cThese men have made it very, very clear that they will \u2018rape, kill, and die\u2019 for Nick Fuentes.\u201d She is referencing a common refrain among Fuentes fans. \u201cReally, it just comes down to my own personal bravery about it, and I just don\u2019t know if I\u2019m ready yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qut005b3b7cxdbu4elq@published\" data-word-count=\"61\">Anna hears frequently from women who have dedicated years to conservative media who feel \u201cpolitically homeless\u201d but can\u2019t decide whether to quit. When I ask if there is a way to estimate how significant the problem is for right-wing women, she says,\u00a0\u201cEvery single woman in conservative politics knows exactly what I\u2019m talking about. And if she says she doesn\u2019t, she\u2019s lying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph_drop-cap\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6qyo005d3b7cljef7dev@published\" data-word-count=\"60\">Since late last year, the conservative movement has pulsed with debate over how to draw acceptable moral lines for its febrile coalition: How much antisemitism is too much? How racist is too racist? And are limits even feasible without transgressing a central MAGA shibboleth \u2014 that the First Amendment protects, first and foremost, one\u2019s right to be a loathsome asshole?<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6r0v005e3b7cn47mqxrv@published\" data-word-count=\"43\">But to the chagrin of the women I\u2019ve spoken to in recent months, almost no one involved in this dispute is talking about sexism or contemplating its electoral, much less moral, downsides. Rather, the MAGA misogynists, commentators and politicians alike, have barreled ahead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6r29005f3b7c1b0xugo2@published\" data-word-count=\"120\">The most powerful people in Washington are embracing policy ideas that would have scandalized previous generations of conservatives, reopening arguments that were settled a half a century ago or more. In August, Pete Hegseth shared a video in which Christian-nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson advocates repealing women\u2019s suffrage. Over the past two years, conservative lawmakers in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas have considered restrictions on no-fault divorce, entertaining the idea of forcibly keeping women in unwanted marriages. Trump\u2019s White House has proposed dismantling the Department of Labor\u2019s Women\u2019s Bureau, rescinded Biden-era guidance for employers about workplace harassment, and eliminated a 60-year-old measure designed to ensure federal contractors abide by anti-discrimination laws \u2014 all enabling a return to more hostile workplaces for women.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6r4p005g3b7cqaxw576n@published\" data-word-count=\"106\">When you look for it, at the center of every problem diagnosed by the MAGA right there is a woman with too much power. Fuentes, previously at the far fringes of acceptability, increasingly seems to distill \u2014 in his shameless, bombastic manner \u2014 the essence of what men in the MAGA movement believe. \u201cThe man is the fucking man of the house, and the man should be the man of the conservative movement, too,\u201d he said on his America First show in December. \u201cI know I\u2019m the fucking incel loser, but we need to put women in their place, and it starts with our political movement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6r9c005h3b7ctvxyasks@published\" data-word-count=\"50\">In February, Fuentes went further: \u201cWomen are made to be fucked \u2026 Women are either mothers, whores, or nuns \u2026 There are no female philosophers. There are no female inventors. There are no female generals or billionaires. They are mothers, whores, nuns. End of list. That\u2019s what you can be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rai005i3b7ciuoh5vv2@published\" data-word-count=\"95\">The conservative blogger Rod Dreher has estimated that around \u201c30 to 40 percent of D.C. GOP staffers under the age of 30\u201d are Fuentes fans, and while those numbers are impossible to verify, the self-proclaimed king of the incels is undoubtedly among the most popular right-wing podcasters. Since his X account was reinstated by Musk in May 2024, his followers have grown from 168,000 to 1.2 million; his nightly broadcasts on Rumble often earn more than a million views. A former Trump-administration official told me, \u201cA lot of junior staff most certainly are Fuentes listeners.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rbz005j3b7c7brfcw6l@published\" data-word-count=\"127\">Fuentes has said he\u2019s never had sex, but like his alleged sex-trafficking friends Andrew and Tristan Tate (whose flight from house arrest in Romania was facilitated by the Trump administration), he advocates for the reassertion of male dominion by force. \u201cThe No. 1 political enemy in America is women,\u201d he said on a recent stream. \u201cThey are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They\u2019re the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people \u2026 They attack every man as a rapist and a pedophile, and they\u2019re henpecking and controlling all the men.\u201d He went on: \u201cHitler imprisoned Gypsies, Jews, communists, all of his political rivals. We have to do the same thing with women \u2026 they go to the breeding gulags.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rdd005k3b7cpvpuejyk@published\" data-word-count=\"50\">Fuentes\u2019s most shocking statements have the curious effect of providing cover for his sincere commitments \u2014 as Leo Strauss wrote of Machiavelli, his \u201cmost outrageous statements \u2026 are amusing and meant to amuse\u201d \u2014 allowing certain members of his audience to ironically enjoy his excesses while imbibing his core message.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6res005l3b7cfud4w8ug@published\" data-word-count=\"78\">\u201cEverybody is clutching their pearls about Fuentes\u2019s antisemitism, and rightfully so,\u201d says Anna. \u201cBut no one seems to give a single shit about the fact that this guy hates women.\u201d Young women on the right increasingly encounter his ideas among their professional peers, for whom the notion that women are garrulous, instinct-driven creatures incapable of higher-order thought is self-evident. \u201cThe consensus is essentially that women are subhuman,\u201d says Anna, \u201cand I mean that quite literally: subrational, non-agentic, cattle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rg7005m3b7cwt7b1ele@published\" data-word-count=\"153\">Whether they explicitly condone Fuentes or not, the leading lights of the right are moving in his direction. Tucker Carlson, indisputably one of the most influential people in the MAGA coalition, who gave Fuentes a friendly interview last fall, takes pains to distinguish himself from Fuentes\u2019s hatred \u2014 Carlson says he loves women \u2014 but he has recently taken to blaming feminism for the country\u2019s woes in explicit terms. In a recent episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, he identified \u201cencouraging women to work outside the home\u201d as one of the key drivers of the \u201cgreat replacement\u201d of white Americans with minorities. (\u201cWomen who work during childbearing years,\u201d he said, \u201care much less likely to have lots of children.\u201d) He calls himself \u201ca little sexist.\u201d Last summer, when a guest on his show asked rhetorically why people would want women to vote and added that he was \u201chalf joking,\u201d Carlson responded, \u201cI\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rhs005n3b7caf4b7mwb@published\" data-word-count=\"184\">\u201cThe feminization of public life \u2014 that is something that every young guy I know on the right is very angry about, very incensed about,\u201d a male GOP staffer recently told me. Colloquially, the New Right refers to this idea \u2014 that women constrain male virility, virtue, and self-actualization \u2014 as \u201cthe longhouse,\u201d a term referring to the communal dwellings of some North American matrilineal tribes, popularized on the right by the pagan, ultranationalist internet personality Costin Alamariu, a.k.a. Bronze Age Pervert. In October, Helen Andrews, a highly regarded right-wing author, articulated the longhouse thesis in an elevated register, arguing in Compact magazine that western civilization is endangered by the numerical dominance of women in institutions such as law, academia, and journalism, where the womanly instinct toward \u201cempathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition\u201d has generated an epidemic of \u201cwokeness\u201d and \u201ccancel culture.\u201d Like Fuentes, though far more subtly, she suggests women are congenitally liberal even if they identify as right wing. Andrews\u2019s piece was a blockbuster, and she was welcomed on Ross Douthat\u2019s New York Times podcast to defend her thesis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6riz005o3b7codfvr0qx@published\" data-word-count=\"152\">Not to be outdone, the Heritage Foundation \u2014 which maintains an air of moderation and propriety despite its increasingly radical agenda (see: Project 2025) \u2014 late last year hired Scott Yenor, a family-policy scholar who advocates a suite of measures to keep\u00a0women\u00a0from public life and reshackle them to husband, hearth, and home. Professional women, Yenor has written, are \u201cmedicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome.\u201d He has called women\u2019s suffrage and property ownership \u201ca feat of social engineering.\u201d And he advocates for the repeal of civil-rights law to allow employers to prioritize male breadwinners and cease emasculating the workplace with anti-harassment litigation. Not all conservative standard-bearers embrace Yenor\u2019s push for coverture 2.0 \u2014 a Heritage official told The Atlantic, \u201cHeritage does not, and does not believe employers should, discriminate on the basis of sex in matters of employment and remuneration\u201d \u2014 but it\u2019s clear Yenor\u2019s perspective is in the vanguard of reasonable debate among conservatives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rk6005p3b7cpm3on8yc@published\" data-word-count=\"96\">When Henry Olsen, a\u00a0senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and an ardent Trump supporter, criticized Yenor\u2019s hire in The Atlantic under the headline \u201cDoes Heritage Support Discrimination Against Women?,\u201d Olsen was heaped with scorn by his MAGA allies. \u201cThere is nothing \u2018conservative\u2019 about using a left-wing magazine to smear Scott Yenor for not upholding the principles of human-resources feminism,\u201d Christopher Rufo tweeted. Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham posted that young women \u201cARE, as Yenor has said, medicated, miserable, and quarrelsome \u2026 There is no true restoration of conservatism without raising these conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rle005q3b7cxhz80dzd@published\" data-word-count=\"91\">The Fuentes and Yenor messages reinforce each other. The New Right\u2019s approach to women is a pincer movement: On one side are reactionary traditionalists attempting to reestablish women\u2019s abject dependence on men and marriage; on the other are champions of male sexual license and domination, encouraging young men to see women as subhuman playthings. Taken together, Anna says, the MAGA movement is \u201cinsisting that women subject themselves entirely to male authority, while advertising that male authority will be cruel and vicious and fickle.\u201d In reality, they\u2019re all on the same team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph_drop-cap\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6ro5005s3b7cidd9g8jx@published\" data-word-count=\"58\">Alex Kaschuta, an influential writer and former host of the prominent New Right podcast Subversive, publicly split with the movement in 2025, in part over her disgust with its misogyny. She tells me, \u201cProbably a majority of women I engage with who are associated with the right are worried about this or have left on account of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rpk005t3b7c3fp8mmvt@published\" data-word-count=\"141\">Kaschuta, like Anna, says she was initially attracted to the New Right out of curiosity, contempt for woke pieties, and a taste for transgression. \u201cI\u2019ve always liked edgy stuff, unfortunately \u2014 that\u2019s one of my problems,\u201d she says, laughing. Where Anna evinces a more personal and affronted reaction to the right\u2019s increasing depravity, Kaschuta is more wry and abstract. She was born in Romania and studied in London, where she lived for a few years, she says, in a \u201creally, really tough neighborhood.\u201d That was part of what sent her \u201ccareening towards the right-wing,\u201d she says. \u201cI saw a lot of crime, and I saw a lot of things that were really not addressed by the police: stabbings, drugs, and so on. Fear politics works well for women because women have an alertness to danger just from being the weaker sex.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rtk005u3b7c3obbjbye@published\" data-word-count=\"132\">Kaschuta moved back to Romania during COVID and started her podcast in January 2021, interviewing right-wing dissident intellectuals, eugenicists, COVID truthers, and neo-reactionary celebrities like Curtis Yarvin and Darryl Cooper, the revisionist-history podcaster. Many episodes dealt with dating (a.k.a. \u201cthe sex wars\u201d), declining birth rates, and the perils of modern womanhood: as she puts it, \u201cthe classic \u2018Liberal feminism is anti-family and, taken undiluted, leads to a meaningless existence.\u2019\u201d \u201cThat was a big part of my shtick,\u201d she says, \u201cthis insider perspective on the dark side of female nature from one of them \u2014 from the rare self-aware member of the female sex.\u201d By 2022, Kaschuta was hosting Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters (a Peter Thiel prot\u00e9g\u00e9) and sharing billing with Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio at the same National Conservatism Conference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rv1005v3b7c6bmy4fr6@published\" data-word-count=\"177\">Over time, Kaschuta says, her audience became \u201cmuch more rabid,\u201d more racist, and more antisemitic. When she pushed back or invited, as she puts it, \u201cout and out Jewish\u201d (!) and insufficiently \u201cbased\u201d guests on her show, she encountered what she now believes was the immutable core of her audience\u2019s ideology: woman hatred. \u201cI became another data point for the fact that women are too emotional to do politics,\u201d she says. The more she defected, the more severe the sexist vitriol she received from listeners and onetime allies. Many attacked her looks (Kaschuta is blond and conventionally attractive) and then attributed her defection to those same insults. Charles Cornish-Dale, a New Right figurehead who goes by the name Raw Egg Nationalist and appeared several times on Subversive, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Babygravy9\/status\/1912176789155107231?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">posted<\/a> on X, \u201cThe truth about the whole saga \u2026 is that people (i.e., men) started calling Alex fat and telling her they didn\u2019t want to be browbeaten and tone-policed by a woman.\u201d This, he said, was the real reason she had turned against the right, \u201cnot principles or ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6rwf005w3b7cnk8dfgdj@published\" data-word-count=\"87\">\u201cThe right wing has a Madonna-whore complex about its female voices,\u201d Kaschuta says. \u201cIf you\u2019re a good woman and if you stick with the program and tell us what we want to hear, then you\u2019re very much with us and we\u2019ll praise you and we\u2019ll tell you you\u2019re a beautiful angel and a credit to our movement. But the second you veer off script or say something that treads on their pieties,\u201d she says, \u201cyou are suddenly pressed into the \u2018whore category,\u2019 and all bets are off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6ryz005x3b7cq9rnnlf0@published\" data-word-count=\"105\">Kaschuta experienced a similar shifting awareness in her personal life. When she and her now-husband got together, she was entranced by the idea of traditional gender roles. But \u201conce you have children,\u201d she says, \u201cit kicks the trad out of you real fast.\u201d She also realized she had adopted \u201ca very male-centric perspective on life. I was very averse to anything explicitly female-coded; it seemed low status.\u201d That too changed with motherhood: \u201cThe material reality of womanhood, the fragility and the immense responsibility, become much clearer. I became a woman in a social, cultural, and emotional way, almost by force, once I crossed that threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6s11005y3b7cerbmn83r@published\" data-word-count=\"51\">Kaschuta says she often hears from women in trad marriages that are imploding, with husbands who are unwilling \u2014 on principle \u2014 to do any housework or refuse to bathe or change the kids. \u201cI\u2019m very, very happy that I didn\u2019t tie the knot with someone who\u2019s very ideological,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6s2n005z3b7c8pbn0eec@published\" data-word-count=\"39\">Of course, many anti-feminist female influencers are still active. \u201cThere are significant numbers of women still doing this stuff,\u201d Kaschuta told me, \u201cbut I know so many that have just kind of peeled off who\u2019ve had the same revelation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6s3y00603b7cckyb5atd@published\" data-word-count=\"134\">Kaschuta describes the New Right as a sort of \u201cmasculine cargo cult\u201d: Masculinity is in abeyance in the broader culture, but, the movement believes, if they all say the right things, adopt the right postures and politics, the manliness and status that are their birthright will return and life will be good again. Within this fantasy, Kaschuta says, misogyny has the structure of antisemitism. Like the Jewish person, the modern woman is simultaneously wretched and all-powerful, feeble and defective and responsible for everything wrong in the world. \u201cThere is this feeling,\u201d she says, \u201cthat women are inferior and intellectually incapable, that they should be relegated to care work but, at the same time, that they have this horrible, total agency over the world and that they work in mysterious ways to warp the culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6s7600613b7cpplg15hi@published\" data-word-count=\"113\">\u201cA lot of these people on the right have never had a positive or negative interaction with a Jew,\u201d she went on, \u201cbut they\u2019ve all had negative interactions with female caretakers who told them to brush their teeth,\u201d or with desirable women who rejected them, or \u201cHR harpies\u201d who interrogated them about their tweets. These indelible experiences of humiliation, of being subject to female authority, Kaschuta says, are \u201cscarring and shameful\u201d for right-wing men. \u201cAnd they take that shame, carry it with them, and externalize it into politics.\u201d Eventually, she says, \u201cit comes out as: \u2018It\u2019s good that they shot that woman in the face because she reminds me of my primary-school teacher.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph_drop-cap\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6s9s00633b7chqy9fl05@published\" data-word-count=\"119\">In the hours and days after it was revealed that Jonathan Ross had killed Renee Good in the streets of Minneapolis \u2014 and called her a \u201cfucking bitch\u201d \u2014 press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Good a \u201clunatic woman.\u201d \u201cThis is the rogue momma bear instinct,\u201d tweeted a popular MAGA influencer. \u201cLeftist liberal white women were poisoned with guilt and the family order was destroyed. They\u2019re lost now and acting out.\u201d In a press conference a few days after the killing, J.D. Vance implied that if Good had been more dedicated to her children, she wouldn\u2019t be dead: \u201cWhat young mother shows up and decides they\u2019re gonna throw their car in front of ICE officers who are enforcing legitimate law?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6sbb00643b7cjk43xmcu@published\" data-word-count=\"9\">In other words, she was being a fucking bitch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6scp00653b7ckmrhsjns@published\" data-word-count=\"61\">To explain Good\u2019s death \u2014 to enlist the MAGA faithful in justifying or even relishing it \u2014 the New Right, including the White House and its propagandists, treated her as a synecdoche for everything they believe to be wrong with modern women: that they are dismissive of male authority, liberal and smug, delinquent as mothers, and, as a corollary, mentally unstable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6sdt00663b7c9lcwysbj@published\" data-word-count=\"15\">The message, Anna says, was this: \u201cShe deserved it. She deserved it. She deserved it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6si700673b7c1xvi6v5q@published\" data-word-count=\"32\">For the movement, says Kaschuta, Good\u2019s transgression was her failure to know her place. From their perspective, she says, \u201cshe was foolishly trying to embody masculinity\u201d by engaging in politics, being assertive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6sjq00683b7cii7rcnyg@published\" data-word-count=\"74\">Pedro Gonzalez, another recent apostate from the New Right, who in 2021 received the prestigious Lincoln Fellowship from the Claremont Institute in the same class as Charlie Kirk, agrees with Anna and Kaschuta that, as he puts it, \u201cmisogyny is baked into the movement itself.\u201d He went on: \u201cThey\u2019ve adopted a caricature of traditional values where, if women don\u2019t stay at home, if women don\u2019t stay out of politics, well, they might get shot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6sld00693b7cqmr0uj2c@published\" data-word-count=\"73\">One would hope such rank cruelty would harm the MAGA cause. It\u2019s not obvious that it will. Polls found a majority of Republicans have said Good\u2019s shooting was justified. As for a broader reckoning over sexism on the right, there are occasional glimmers of hope: In December, the Times reported a handful of conservative congresswomen were unhappy with Speaker Mike Johnson\u2019s patriarchal leadership, and a few led a revolt over the Epstein files.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6sms006a3b7cpipqdnpu@published\" data-word-count=\"117\">Anna foresees a bigger political problem for the right if it continues on this path. \u201cThey see women as subhuman,\u201d she tells me for the second time in our conversations. \u201cAnd they expect women to behave as if they are subhuman. It\u2019s a deeply human desire to let your light shine, as cheesy as this sounds. I\u2019m sorry, but I think God gives everybody a spark.\u201d A political movement that promises, first and foremost, to extinguish that spark in half the population, she says, is not built to last: \u201cThe project is going to fail because it does not bear any relation to reality. They\u2019ll drive themselves into the ground.\u201d (I wish I could be so sure.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6so7006b3b7cle0wp276@published\" data-word-count=\"39\">Although Anna has been less decisive than Kaschuta in public, both feel a certain amount of regret over their complicity. \u201c\u200b\u200bShame and guilt and just embarrassment,\u201d says Anna, \u201cjust like, How could I tolerate this and participate in this?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6sq3006c3b7c0mstjr4e@published\" data-word-count=\"105\">Kaschuta tells me, \u201cThe idea was that we were responding as a movement to the excesses of this blunt cult of egalitarianism where women and men had to be equal, and if they weren\u2019t, it was just because men were deviating from the moral norm.\u201d She still thinks that\u2019s the wrong way to look at things. \u201cBut the way we compensated for it \u2014 the way I compensated for it \u2014 was to pile on to the list of what I perceived as typically female sins.\u201d For that, she takes responsibility: \u201cI am just as much of a producer of this environment as anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6srd006d3b7c4sjva7g9@published\" data-word-count=\"80\">Anna, who maintains her religious commitments and isn\u2019t ready to call herself a liberal, is too disgusted with the conservative movement overall to hope for its renewal. \u201cI\u2019m just not a conservative \u2014 or I don\u2019t know if I identify that way anymore,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I have hope, it\u2019s in a better future for families. It\u2019s not hope in the conservative movement or that the conservative movement can thrive or survive or find a new iteration that isn\u2019t sexist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/cmmmf6ssi006e3b7cgoa7555e@published\" data-word-count=\"121\">Kaschuta feels freer to be blunt without risking her safety. \u201cI don\u2019t live close to anyone in these subcultures,\u201d she says. She understands why the new sexism has held so far. \u201cIf I was a guy, maybe I\u2019d still be on the right,\u201d she tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier if you\u2019re a white guy not to feel any of this pain. There\u2019s no one planning to disenfranchise you. It\u2019s all upside. It\u2019s all this big program for how you should live a better life and be surrounded by nubile women.\u201d She believed it was human to enjoy being on top. \u201cI don\u2019t want to punish anyone,\u201d she says. \u201cBut the reality is: It is stupid, it\u2019s impractical, it has to end.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>  Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Illustration: Brandon Celi This is embarrassing to admit, but I think I fell in with the right wing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[66528,66529,9,11,10,47679,22202],"class_list":["post-161329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-free-country","tag-maga-women","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-nick-fuentes","tag-tucker-carlson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}