‘Weird males attempt to put penises on highly effective ladies’ like Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron
RT columnist Rachel Marsden has hit out at what she calls “performative clowns” who keep questioning the gender of powerful women like Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron
French President’s wife Brigitte Macron(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
A columnist has hit out at what she calls “performative clowns” who obsess over the gender of powerful women, branding their online “anatomy audits” a bizarre status game played by insecure men.
In an article for RT – formerly Russia Today – headlined “Why weird men try to put penises on powerful women”, Rachel Marsden argues the frenzy around figures such as former US First Lady Michelle Obama says “less about women than about men using anatomy to police status and power”.
Marsden, a Canadian political strategist, and talk-show host, opens with a blistering takedown, writing: “What’s up with all these performative clowns obsessing over the gender of obvious women?
“Who exactly are these amateur gynecologists, conducting speculative anatomy audits of high-profile females? They’re nothing like they perceive themselves to be, for starters.”
She then points to the recent UFC event hosted by US President Donald Trump, featuring a large fighting structure erected on the White House South Lawn, where combatants competed in minimal gear. She writes: “A bunch of guys oiled themselves up, slipped into some plum-smuggling tights, and met up on the White House lawn…
“By slapping and kicking each other in a state of quasi-nudity.” During the event, she says one participant used his moment in the spotlight “to blurt out that former First Lady, Michelle Obama, was a man”.
Marsden claims this is all part of a wider culture war performance, writing: “In a culture where masculinity is both costume and currency, there’s always a market for louder declarations.” She adds: “The manosphere is one continuous audit of who is ‘man enough’, conducted by men with a perpetual fear of demotion.”
In one of her most striking lines, she argues that the attempt to brand successful women as secretly male is about power, not biology. “Any woman who strays into the man’s conventional domain is a competitive threat,” she writes.
“Whether conscious or not, attempting to deprive these women of their femininity – up to and including the more recent blatant attempt to pin gratuitous phalluses on them – is less about anatomy than hierarchy.” Marsden also invokes feminist icon Gloria Steinem, citing a 1974 interview in which Steinem said she was told she “wrote like a man” when first allowed to write for a magazine.
She further slams: “Influencers on the socially conservative trad-right have relentlessly promoted the idea of [France President Emmanuel] Macron’s wife, Brigitte, being a man on the down-low. As ‘evidence’, they play videos of her manspreading in jeans and have analyzed crinkles in the fabric of her dresses like it’s the Zapruder film from the JFK assassination.”
Marsden concludes these claims are more about chasing online attention than the truth, and most people ignore them until they get laughed back into their own internet bubbles.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.
