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COMMENTARY


MEN PUNCHING RANDOM WOMEN IN NYC: A DESPERATE LAST GASP OF THE MALE RAGE FUELING
MAGA


RANDOM NYC ATTACKS ARE AN EXTREME MANIFESTATION OF MEN FEELING ENTITLED TO
WOMEN'S TIME AND ATTENTION


BY AMANDA MARCOTTE

Senior Writer


PUBLISHED APRIL 8, 2024 6:00AM (EDT)


People eat in a restaurant sidewalk shed on Mott Street in Little Italy in New
York City. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
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Men are punching random women on the streets of New York City. As usual with
these kinds of diffuse and chaotic stories, there's much that is unknown,
including how often this is happening, how many people are involved, or whether
it's at all coordinated. But what we do know is already alarming. CNN reports
that dozens of women have discussed being victims on social media, and formally
interviewed six of them. NBC News reports there have been at least 3 arrests.
CBS News reports that NYPD released images last week of a fourth man wanted for
allegedly punching a woman in Union Square. Even reality TV star Bethany Frankel
says she's been victimized. 

Women report being assaulted by men of different races and ages. Still, across
the different stories, a couple of similarities pop out: The alleged victims are
mostly young and pretty, and most of them say they were minding their own
business when they were attacked. Some were on their phones or reading on
tablets. Others were speaking to friends or daydreaming. Whatever they were
doing, they were just living their lives, and that, it seems, is what enraged
their assailants. 

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The alleged victims are mostly young and pretty, and most of them say they were
minding their own business when they were attacked.

Whatever the scale of this problem eventually turns out to be, it's not
surprising that these stories have gone viral and captured the public's
imagination. While it rarely turns to violence, most women who spend much time
walking around in public have experience with men who berate them for paying
attention to something other than the man who is now, often out of nowhere,
spewing invectives. In our modern era, that often manifests with men who are
infuriated at women for looking at their phones. But I'm old enough to remember
when I would get yelled at for reading books in public.

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Whatever the excuse the angry man concocts, the impetus is always the same: The
eyes of a woman are directed at someone or something that is not him, and he is
indignant over it. So he will make sure she has no choice but to look at him,
either by getting in her face or — in these alarming New York cases — punching
her. If he cannot capture her adoring gaze, well, he will make her stare at him
in fear. 

These stories resonate, as well, because the nation is having a moment of
increasingly unhinged male fury at women for daring to have lives that are
centered around something other than catering to a man's every whim. Unleashed
by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, there's an upswell of loud male
entitlement shouting at us from every corner. 

We see it in the male fans of Jordan Peterson, who clamor to his events to hear
him croak out a just-so story about how lobsters justify their faith in male
dominance. Or the rise of "tradwives" online who make a living pretending
they're unemployed and housebound. Or Ben Shapiro setting fire to a Barbie doll
because he can't stand that a blockbuster comedy starring a woman is about
anything but her quest for male affection. Or MAGA pundits telling lies about
birth control, in hopes of tricking women into having babies before they're
ready. Or conservatives writing op-eds that blame women for male loneliness,
telling women they must self-sacrifice to relieve male pain by marrying Donald
Trump voters. Or right-wing men yelling because Taylor Swift has cats or because
she dates a hunky, vaccinated NFL player instead of, I dunno, having babies with
a guy in ill-fitting cargo shorts. 

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The word "backlash," in reference to the famous Susan Faludi book that
chronicled the dramatic recession of women's rights and status in the 80s, which
erased much of what was gained by the second wave of feminism, gets thrown
around a lot. And these things indeed tend to be cyclical. The late 90s/early
2000s was another backlash period, as the rise of Limp Bizkit, George W. Bush,
and trucker caps eclipsed the relatively feminist mid-90s. 

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But there's one big difference between the male tantrum we're experiencing now
and the backlashes of old: This time, women aren't really playing along. A few,
maybe, especially if they can get a piece of that sweet "tradwife" income. But,
in the past, backlashes tended to draw large numbers of women along, or at least
convince them to silence their opinions, lest they be labeled a "man-hater." In
the more conservative parts of the country in the early 2000s, it manifested as
widespread shaming of women for having sex before marriage, from abstinence-only
"education" to purity rings. But it wasn't great in more liberal areas, where
women put up with hipster sexism to get the prize of being called a "cool
girl." 

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Now, there just seems to be much less interest among women in placating men by
silencing ourselves or "compromising" on basic rights. All the male bellyaching
about "Barbie" and Taylor Swift did nothing to dent ticket sales. Roe v. Wade
was overturned and instead of scaling back our claims to our own bodies, women
revolted, organizing ballot initiatives around the country to protect abortion
rights. Polls show that while young men might be backing Trump in large numbers,
young women have not been browbeaten out of voting for Democrats. Just last
week, a women's college basketball game between LSU and Iowa became the
highest-rated college basketball game in ESPN history. 

The rise of MAGA is fueled by misogyny. But it's less a backlash than a tantrum,
a rage explosion by men who want to restore their dominance but fear that, this
time, women won't buckle to their bullying. This rash of men punching women in
New York City captures this moment in a dark way. We don't even need to know
their names or faces to know that men who do this are losers, lashing out
because they've learned that actually, women don't owe them anything just
because they're men. It's also true that women aren't just suffering in silence,
but telling their stories without shame or self-blame. There's something nakedly
pathetic about punching women, as scary as it is for the victims. It's not like
the cat-calling or groping of old, which disguised male aggression as a mere
over-exuberance of lust. This is a last gasp of men who, unable to justify their
sexism in any way, must resort to brute force. Yet even then, they're unable to
shut women up. 

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Read more

about this topic

 * Making sense of the viral street harassment video
 * When street harassment comes from boys, not men
 * Rush loves catcalling: Limbaugh's defense of street harassment shows why
   Donald Trump's political rise was inevitable



BY AMANDA MARCOTTE



Amanda Marcotte is a senior politics writer at Salon and the author of "Troll
Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking
Liberals, America, and Truth Itself." Follow her on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte and
sign up for her biweekly politics newsletter, Standing Room Only.



MORE FROM Amanda Marcotte

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Commentary Feminism Maga Misogyny Nypd Patriarchy Sexism Street Harassment
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