I Was Promised a Girlboss War

And all I got was Trump bombing Iran like a dog

In case you missed it, Trump is bombing Iran alongside Israel. For those of us old enough to remember when George W. Bush was President and not just a burgeoning Substacker, another war in the Middle East feels like something nobody wanted. And besides, Trump has lost his touch. After assassinating the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump said, “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” which was terribly disappointing as he failed to use his on-brand slogan, “died like a dog.”

But hold on—this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. In fact, I distinctly recall being told that it was Kamala Harris, not Trump, who would bomb Iran and drag the US into another war in the Middle East. And more specifically, she was going to do it for vague goofy girlboss reasons while cackling and dancing on the graves of the men who died so she could play Woke War Criminal Barbie (she/her) right before installing Lena Dunham as the next Ayatollah. The only memory of Khameni would have been a land acknowledgement on what used to be his house (now a workspace for body-positive slam poetry).

For those of you who are blissfully unfamiliar: during the 2024 election, after Kamala Harris became the nominee, a new reason not to vote blue came out: she was absolutely, definitely going to go to war with Iran—a world war, in fact. Why? Nobody knew. But presumably, she would do it spitefully, in a sort of “male tears mug” Jezebel coded way. It would be Gen Z Boss and an Airstrike, if you will. And not just that—but she was apparently going to reinstate the draft to do it. Per Stephen Miller, “If young men don’t want to be drafted to fight in Kamala’s and Cheney’s 3rd World War they better get out and vote for Trump.”

More bluntly, he said “KAMALA WILL SEND YOUR SONS TO WAR.”

Meanwhile, some conservative pundits didn’t really get the memo, and insisted Kamala was actually in cahoots with Iran.

It’s standard for one political candidate and his allies to make unsubstantiated claims about his or her opponent, but this particular claim—which kind of came out of nowhere—was so sticky, second only to the accusation that Harris would start giving “transgender operations to illegal aliens that are in prison.”

I’m not going to sit here and claim that the accusation that Kamala Harris would send us to war with Iran was 100% misogyny. Trump also accused Obama—noted he/him—of being about to start war with Iran in 2012 and 2013. He somehow didn’t lob this accusation at Biden, possibly because he already had plenty of ammunition in the form of “Biden being barely sentient.” But it stuck for Harris. Perhaps Stephen Miller was just lucky, or perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing, but “cackling girlboss who sends men to die so she can feel powerful” is just a variation on the narrative that many young right-wing men hear all the time. And it resonated—around the time of the 2024 election, I saw a teacher mention that all the teenage boys in her class supported Trump, specifically because they were afraid Kamala Harris would draft them in a world war.

This accusation was so especially potent because it tapped into a narrative about women that has been turbocharged by social media—that the only women who exist are upper middle class, and the only men who exist are lower middle class, and women are therefore an oppressor class in a sort of bizarro SJW victimhood framework where the aforementioned men exist as children of Omelas to enable frivolous girlboss dipshittery. A mondo-girlboss literally sending men to die for her own vanity was the final boss of this fantasy.

What does social media have to do with it? Well, social media algorithms incentivize content from young, attractive women—often relatively affluent ones, or at least ones projecting a false image of affluence. If you are a young man, you will be exposed to countless young women talking about “what they did” on any given day, and mostly just listing all the liquids they consumed, with a curt vocal fried statement like, “And then I worked for a little” juxtaposed with a $17 matcha latte. Some of these women are trying to promote their employer’s office space by highlighting the amenities. Others are just influencers. Some are Onlyfans girls trying out a more subtle angle, lightly dropping clues about all the men sending them gifts and flying them around the world—which is why many people believe hookup culture has spun out of control, when in fact, young people (yes, including young women) are having less sex than ever.

As I’ve said before, the gender wars are class wars. This type of misogyny is driven by fear, anxiety and jealousy more than it’s driven by a sense of superiority. Many young, right-wing men (albeit not all) harbor the subconscious belief that most women are affluent, upper class and essentially pretending to work at the expense of working class men. In this world, there are no upper class men who dick around at their white collar jobs, nor are there working class women who spend a big chunk of their careers cleaning up bodily fluids. No—there are men who work in oil rigs and mines, and women who work in HR and marketing, get bottomless mimosas after work, and have billionaires flying them to Lake Como just to touch their feet. The former is “subsidizing” the latter somehow, even though an affluent woman almost definitely pays more in taxes than a lower-earning man.

This was, in part, why I wrote that DOGE was about sex (God, remember DOGE?! lol.) I don’t think it was necessarily Elon Musk’s intent, but a great deal of the online support of DOGE was predicated on a revenge fantasy wherein a bunch of useless girlbosses are told the party is over and it’s time for the to battle with each other to marry some guy in the trades to survive. Perhaps more baffling, many of the men cheering this on had white collar jobs themselves (some openly!) which is why I called them the Rachel Dolezals of blue collar work.

This was why the viral video, Gen Z Boss and a Mini was supposedly so heinous that multiple men claimed they would prefer to crash the global economy if it meant those women would stop dancing.

Well, we didn’t get the girlboss war with Iran. And the people insisting it was definitely going to happen, attempting to scare young men (and succeeding!) are now doing the war for real. Oh well—at least they’re not doing anything cringe while they’re at it!

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