A Job for Men: MAGAReport 2/2/2025

The misogyny coming out of MAGA is stunning. It can't be normalized, and men need to act

The Army released the name of the third soldier to die in the helicopter-plane crash at DCA last week, Cpt. Rebecca M. Lobach. Her family had asked for her name to be withheld, correctly anticipating the attacks that would come given Trump’s baseless claims that “DEI” was to blame for the crash.

And as soon as her name was released, the comments came. They are at least as bad, and maybe worse than you expect. We’re going to look at them but, first, I want to talk about the work men need to do in this moment. It is critical to counter these kinds of comments, and that really needs to come from men. The men saying terrible things will not respect criticism from women. If the commenters are white men, then white men need to respond.

A Brief Training on Responding to Bigotry

I understand this is challenging. You, my white male friend, may not want to argue with strangers on the internet. You may not want to call out a colleague at work. It is unfortunate that you are in this position, but the unpleasantness of this task is outweighed by what your women and minority colleagues are subjected to. Your choices are either (1) step up and counter this kind of talk or (2) endorse it by allowing it to be normalized. Trump supporters are feeling empowered and they are explicitly trying to normalize white nationalism and all the flavors of bigotry that come with it. There must be an opposing force, and you are it. It’s time to take responsibility for your own people and let them know that it’s unacceptable for them to behave this way.

Here is some advice on how to do that from the time I spent training people to intervene:

• If someone makes a comment or does something bigoted in person, take a 2 second pause and let the comment sit there. Take a moment to compose yourself. Come up with a response.

• Prepare scripts for your responses. Practice them. It can be hard in the moment to respond effectively if you’re working from the top of your head. So don’t work from the top of your head! Here are some common scripts that you can start with:

  • If someone makes a sexist joke, like about how women are bad drivers, let it sit for a few seconds. Then try responses like this:

    • “Wow. Do you really think that’s funny?”

    • “I don’t get it - can you explain the joke?” Make them say the sexist part out loud.

    • “Hey man, this isn’t the kind of place where anyone wants to hear sexist jokes like that.”

    • “Wait - did you really just say that?”

    • “Would you like to take that back and try again?”

    • “Seriously unfunny.”

  • If someone calls a woman a demeaning name (like “sweetheart”) or touches her in an unwelcome way (e.g. rubbing her shoulders or touching her hair) and you see it, say something immediately in the moment. Women can feel like they are unable to call out this behavior as it’s happening, especially when someone else is watching and doesn’t speak up. Examples:

    • “Wait did you really just say ‘Sweetheart’??”

    • “Do you call the men on your team ‘sweetheart’, too?”

    • “Sorry, since when did we touch colleagues like that?”

    • “Did you mean to be inappropriate or was that just an accident”

    • “Hey - what’s that about?”

    • “Yikes.”

    • “Oh is this [e.g. touching a woman’s hair] something we do now??”

When you do this, you don’t have to come off as high and mighty. You can say some of these things with a light hearted tone to let the bad guy save face while you’ve still made it clear that the behavior is not welcome.

Online, you have a little more time to respond. Again, come up with a handful of replies that you can basically cut and paste. The goal is not to convince the bad guy that he’s wrong, but rather to show him that he will receive disapproval from a class of people (white men) whose opinion he respects. It can be as simple as “This is really not an okay thing to say.”

I’m writing this in the context of sexism, but obviously these same strategies work for any kind of bigotry. Is it going to change the hearts of these people? Probably not! But it will disempower them. MAGA people are especially susecptible to this. As I’ve written many times in this newsletter, they are terrified of facing consequences for their bad behavior. You can bring those consequences. Research shows that it works. Studies have shown that when someone uses a racial slur on social media, if they receive even a single disapproving online response from someone in a “respected class” (e.g. white men), it reduces their use of hate speech in the long term.

If you are struggling to come up with ways to respond, hit me up on the socials at jengolbeck and I’ll help!

MAGA Comments on Cpt. Lobach

So how bad did the MAGA forums get in responding to the news that one of the soldiers on the helicopter was a woman? The thread about this has over 750 comments, the most I can remember seeing. It’s bad, and instead of trying to quantify the badness, I’ll just show you some of it.

I’ll also drop in here that, as a high-achieving woman in a very male-dominated field, this has been a tough one for me to get through. I think of every man I know who voted for Trump and I know that they voted to endorse this: that I, personally and specifically, did not advance because of my skills, that a white man deserves my job more than I do, and any success I have achieved is probably because I gave sexual favors to men in positions of power. Trump says these things, they knew it and voted for him. There is no justification for carving out space to say “Sure, I voted for Trump, but not for that part. I don’t think that about you.” Trump was not coy about how he thinks about women, and everyone who voted for him co-signed comments like these:

• Army didn't identify, they always knew.

  They decided to finally fucking tell us.

  Now I want to know everything about her. Did she get the job over someone else who was more qualified?

  • Most likely. When it comes to women in the military and fed gov, certain ones climb the ladder with help.

    • Yes, the ones who bring their own knee pads

      • As a former service member, this was what I saw happen.

        • So freaking much! This happened in the non combat units while I was in (woman still were not allowed in my job when I was in)

      • I dated a girl briefly who is now a commander of a ship in the Coast Guard, she was in fact a whore and I gaurentee she either fucked somebody for promotions or at least sucked some dicks.

• Women suck at driving

  • Women suck at everything, even at sucking!

• Why the fuck would ANYBODY allow a woman to fly a million dollar flying attack machine.......?🤔😂

• What a fucking dofus emotional bitch. I bet she was giving BJs on board. Fuck her. She’s a terrorist.

  • She was a dyke who is no different than a tranny. Fuck anyone who thinks otherwise.

    • Amen. All 3 of them flying the helicopter are terrorists and deserve no respect. Fuck your hoo raaa on this one.

      Scum shouldn’t be at 300. Stupid bitch probably bitching creating unbearable conditions because her pussy was itchy. Fuck this stupid cunt.

• She's DEI.
  They had to reverse EVERY SINGLE LABEL
  on the instrument panel because of her dyslexia.

• Women should be in the kitchen!

• I am a female and I feel like any female military pilot is dei

• Women shouldn't be in the military.

  • Women shouldn't be flying Black Hawk Helicopters fer sure!

    • It's bad enough we share the road with them.

      • Which reminds me.

        Why was Helen Keller such a bad driver?

        Because she was a woman.

        • 🤣😂😅

• Women entering in men's spaces automatically fuvks shit up. Just like if men went into women's spaces and demanded they cater to their needs.

To give credit where it is due, there are a couple heavily downvoted counter arguments, and in honor of the rare bit of light on this forum, I want to share them. I’m sure these guys aren’t on the counter-sexist team, but they are doing the work the right way.

• Come on man. Being a woman had nothing to do with this accident. Most deaths in service occur during training. They were training, they died. Enough. The fucking airport shouldn't be there. Or as other people said, it should be for government use only.

• A lot of faggots in this thread. Helo's are dual-piloted. She was an 0-3. Not climbing any fucking ladder. She is a warrior who is dead. And it sounds like it was ATC at fault. Faggots and cunts... stand down.

As I get my footing under me, as I hope most of us are doing, I’m going to be bringing more advice on specific actions we all can take. Some may be too sketchy for this newsletter, but those of you with interest and a few free hours every week know how to find me.