Katharine Luzzatto ’26 is a government major. She serves as assistant music director for the William and Mary Cleftomaniacs, so she’s probably singing if you see her around campus! Contact her at kfluzzatto@wm.edu.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
Jon Miller, a self-reported “moderate” and “fair & balanced political commentator,” wrote in a post on the social media site X: “Women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say.”
This post in incel echo-chamber X comes in the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection as president of the United States.
As reported by Rachel Treisman in an article for NPR, the 4B movement, started in South Korea, has four tenets, one of which involves refraining from having sexual relations with heterosexual men. Treisman says a push for American women to join has been trending on social media, hence the “sex strikes” Miller is referencing.
Miller’s opinion is one shared by too many in right-wing spaces. At best, it’s an assertion that women do not have the agency to decide whether or not to have sex with men. At worst, it’s an assertion that men have the right to rape.
When discussing whether legal measures or social and cultural shifts are more effective in advancing gender equality, one must take a hard look at not only numerical data but also what is being said by male politicians, coworkers, members of their community and loved ones.
And while Miller isn’t representative of all men in America, he still felt comfortable enough to joke about raping women on a public platform. His words are just a symptom of the deep-rooted gender-based discrimination that female-presenting people in America still face. All of the men who liked, shared or silently agreed with the post have women in their lives, even the man who wrote it — Miller presumably has a mother and might know at least one other woman.
If we do not have the social structures set up for gender equality, what’s to say legal measures will last? Positive legal progress and negative social responses are indicative of a need for social change.
“Seeing men as the human default is fundamental to the structure of human society,” says researcher Caroline Criado-Perez in her book “INVISIBLE WOMEN: Data bias in a world designed for men.” Nick Fuentes, the antithesis of a feminist scholar, might share the same perspective (we’ll get to him later). Male candidates are more likely to be suggested and receive a job in the workforce. If I asked you to name an author, who pops into your head? Is it a woman? Criado-Perez says probably not, and I’m inclined to believe her.
Furthermore, while America’s anti-discrimination laws have created a legal backbone for the dissolution of the gender wage gap, it still exists today. The wage gap grows throughout a woman’s 20s and 30s but starts to shrink once they hit their 40s and 50s. Any guesses as to why?
In an article for VOX, Sarah Kliff writes that this may be because of the caregiver role that women have thrust upon them which, in turn, leads them to tend to work fewer hours. This doesn’t necessarily reference children — it could be family members or anyone else. With the traditional nine-to-five work schedule, particular hours are more important than others. In the highest-paying fields, people who work long and inflexible hours are typically rewarded with things like promotions or pay raises, and caregivers may not be able to comply with the hours necessary to build their salaries up to their counterparts.
Diminishing the gender wage gap requires a social shift for whom the onus of caregiving falls upon or a change in the expectation of work hours in these inflexible workplaces, or maybe even both.
“Your body, my choice. Forever,” Nick Fuentes, a guy who posts videos that he probably films alone in his basement, wrote on Twitter, hours before the president-elect of the United States was announced.
Fuentes, who has 114,000 followers on the video platform Rumble, responded to the backlash his initial post received with a follow-up video stating, “And as you guys know, it was sort of a joke. You know, because it’s based on what all these women have been saying, which is ‘My body, my choice.’ And can we just be honest? They are so annoying, so shrill, so annoying.” How articulate. When discussing negative social responses, these quotes are a masterclass of leaning into ideas of male domination and female stereotypes.
The landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which furthered the establishment of reproductive rights by declaring them constitutionally secure under the 9th and 14th Amendments, was overturned on June 24, 2022, giving states the power to enact their own legislation concerning reproduction. Following this, the phrase “My body, my choice,” rose in usage as a slogan in support of reproductive rights.
Fuentes pairs his critique of campaigning for reproductive rights with words such as “annoying” and “shrill” to describe women. This conjures up, for me, and I’m sure, plenty of his (male) audience, an image of the “shrill” nagging housewife, or the “annoying” clingy girlfriend — all stereotypes designed to diminish women who advocate for themselves. These words have a preconceived idea of gender.
Tina Tallon reports in her article published in The New Yorker that the word “shrill” experienced a resurgence in use when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016. These words are used to attenuate women’s power and soften their voices. If women are loud, they are not subservient. A quiet woman cannot be shrill.
And legislation will not solve the use of gendered language.
Institutions themselves, whether it be within media, places of employment, families or education, must establish expectations of equality, but this may not always need to be done with legal measures. If what the people watch, listen to or see every day emphasizes equality, these behaviors will slowly be mimicked. The Jon Millers and Nick Fuenteses of the world will realize that the world does not revolve around whatever vitriol they spout, but only if we stop pretending that they are more than unqualified men hiding behind a screen. We must choose to disengage, which at this moment seems hypocritical to say because I scoured the internet for misogynistic posts, and sat through a 30-minute video in which Fuentes said I shouldn’t have the right to vote, before writing this.
It might be pessimistic, but if the next president of the United States says that he can “grab [women] by the pussy,” then it shows governments fail their people constantly. But it’s up to the people not to fail themselves.