The Alexandria Obsession
An analysis of the Right’s obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 2019
This right-wing obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has more to do with gynophobia then it has to do with misogyny. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the right-wing reactionaries bête noire, the monster under the bed, their worst nightmare, a woman, a Latina woman, who poses a threat to their White Western European social order, she has become the symbol, the embodiment of their gynophobia and their patriarchal fantasies. They fear her to the point of obsession, they obsess over the fact that she was the cool girl in school they all wanted but could never have, they obsess over the fact that she’s smarter then they are, but the worst, the most emasculating is just how adept she is at slapping them down and putting them in their place, as evidenced by her Twitter feed. After CPAC, where she was the de facto star of the show, she was asked if she had expected the level of attack she had received, her response “Yes, I expected it, but I didn’t expect that they were going to make such fools of themselves.”
Sebastian Gorka speaking at CPAP desperately tried to get the crowd riled up at the very mention of Ocasio-Cortez’s name but a group of prep school boys sitting in the crowd were visibly titillated by the sound of her name. Like lovesick schoolboys they talk tough when not in her presence, but when faced with having to confront her face-to-face they cower and hide. When confronted at a committee hearing by Rep. Andy Barr (R) from Kentucky challenging her to come to his district and explain to coal miners the Green New Deal, she readily accepted, but Barr the frightened little schoolboy, fearful he was going to get poned by her, quickly weaseled out of the invitation. And before anyone accuses me of projecting, that analysis of Barr comes from his fellow Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer. There’s video tape of all this, the Committee hearing, Barr’s weasley excuse, and Comer’s comments.
Then there was a segment on NRA-TV were a group of men joked about “dating” her, one of them saying “I’d like to ‘date’ her one or two times.” Like lovesick rejected schoolboys they must sexualize her, belittle her, demean her, accuse her of being dumb, lie and misrepresent her, then maybe, just maybe, they might be able to regain the lost dignity, the manliness, the dominance in the social order that her existence threatens to deprived them of. Like the gynophobic Gamergate boys sitting in their rooms obsessing over the sculpted CGI fantasy girl who unconditionally does what they tell her to do, who doesn’t talk back and doesn’t ever voice an opinion, unlike the rest of those “feminist bullies”. This gynophobia is the root of the alt-right’s anti-feminism and to some extent their racialized worldview, it is the basis of their obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.