Empress Delfina, the dominatrix who de-radicalizes MAGAs and got them to vote Biden–whom I interviewed for the Daily Beast–gave me answers that happen to explain this bizarre tweet from Roosh V perfectly.
Roosh was the king of the red pill manosphere, then literally had a “come to Jesus” moment and converted to a fundamentalist member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Empress Delfina told me she tells these guys to “vote with your pussy,” and I asked her what she means by that:
EMPRESS DELFINA: The guys who call me are either totally submissive, or have a submissive side, which is not something they get a lot of support or validation for in their culture of machismo. My theory is that a lot of Trump supporters are secretly submissive, but feel ashamed about it and must therefore keep it a secret. With Trump, they have an excuse to be subservient, hand over their brain to the leader, and outsource their thinking and control to him. They hide their submission publicly by acting macho. But in the end, they’re still on their knees, sucking Trump’s dick. So I make them suck a dildo, or put it in their butts, pretending it’s Trump. As they do it, I make them yell, “I love getting railed by Trump!”I point out these contradictions to them, and they start to get it. I put them in touch with their inner feminine, which they have no access to in their culture. I see it like all the homophobes on the right who are secretly gay. Many of these outwardly-macho Trump guys have a secret inner feminine side, but they don’t know how to deal with it. They don’t have an outlet for it. I give them that outlet.
ELLSBERG: Do you think this dynamic is related to why so many Trump supporters seem to be obsessed with cuckolding? The last election cycle was, to my knowledge, the first time a specific BDSM fetish became common parlance in political discourse: they were always insulting liberal men as “cucks.” Do the Trump guys who call you have cuckold fantasies?
EMPRESS DELFINA: Absolutely. I’d say more than the Democratic guys who hire me. Despite the conservatives always calling them “beta cucks,” liberal guys who call me are typically more comfortable in their sexuality and their own sense of masculinity. Liberal guys don’t have as much of a reason to be so ashamed about any submissive fantasies they may have, because they don’t have as much of an obsession with toxic machismo. They don’t need to go around questioning other guys’ masculinity and trying to show off.
The convervatives are the ones always going on and on about how liberal guys are cuckolds. But to me, it’s like, “whoever smelt it dealt it.” Many of them are deeply insecure about their manliness, and that’s why they’re obsessed with other men’s manliness, and worried they don’t stack up. The cuckold fantasy sessions I do with them are a safe space where they can be honest with themselves and with me and explore what they’re so ashamed and secretive about.
*****
NOTE: there is obviously NOTHING wrong with sexual submissiveness, wanting to suck cock, putting dildos up your butt, cuckold fantasies, etc. The problem arises, as Empress Delfina points out, when these fantasies and desires are held by men within a culture of extreme toxic machismo, sexual shame and secrecy, and homophobia. In such a context, these perfectly normal desires/fantasies get sublimated into toxic and hypocritical homophobia, macho posturing, pointing fingers, then projected as judgment onto the “beta cuck libs.” Along with a strange combination of being obsessed with submitting to male military/religious authority while at the same time shaming other men for being low on the status/power hierarchy (“beta”) or submitting to women.
Another thing that needs to be explained is how Roosh converted from a toxic womanizer to a rigid fundamentalist Christian advocating “traditional family values,” sexual “purity,” and abstinence before marriage (something he probably violated hundreds of times in his red pill days).
This is actually less contradictory or difficult to explain than it might seem on its surface. Simply put, it’s not that difficult to convert from one form of cultish, misogynistic rigidity, to another. Same psychology, different garb.
I think these dynamics also explain the otherwise seemingly-inexplicable fact that so many fundamentalist Christians view Trump, the serial womanizer and “pussy grabber” as their Christian political leader. Of course, Trump’s devotion to Christ is as substantial as his devotion to democracy. But in this case, it’s not Trump’s (non-existent) devotion to Christ that the fundamentalists are relating to, it’s his unabashed commitment to and self-claimed position at the top of rigid misogynistic and homophobic dominance hierarchies. Fundamentalists see this manliness as unapologetically embodying their interpretation of the warlike God of the Old Testament plus the kick-ass take-no-prisoners version of Jesus they’re obsessed with from the Book of Revelation.
