Rachel Marsden, a columnist for RT (formerly Russia Today), has condemned what she describes as 'performative clowns' who persistently question the gender of high-profile women such as Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron. In her article titled 'Why weird men try to put penises on powerful women', Marsden argues that these online 'anatomy audits' reveal more about the insecurities of the men conducting them than about the women targeted.
Marsden's blistering takedown
Marsden opens her piece with a scathing critique: 'What’s up with all these performative clowns obsessing over the gender of obvious women? Who exactly are these amateur gynecologists, conducting speculative anatomy audits of high-profile females? They’re nothing like they perceive themselves to be, for starters.' She points to a recent UFC event hosted by US President Donald Trump on the White House South Lawn, where a fighter used his platform to claim that Michelle Obama 'was a man'.
Culture war performance
Marsden asserts that such claims are part of a broader culture war performance, writing: 'In a culture where masculinity is both costume and currency, there’s always a market for louder declarations.' She adds: 'The manosphere is one continuous audit of who is “man enough”, conducted by men with a perpetual fear of demotion.' She argues that the attempt to brand successful women as secretly male is fundamentally about power, not biology: 'Any woman who strays into the man’s conventional domain is a competitive threat.'
Brigitte Macron targeted
Marsden also highlights the case of Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron. She notes that 'influencers on the socially conservative trad-right have relentlessly promoted the idea of Macron’s wife, Brigitte, being a man on the down-low. As “evidence”, they play videos of her manspreading in jeans and have analyzed crinkles in the fabric of her dresses like it’s the Zapruder film from the JFK assassination.'
Feminist perspective
Invoking feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Marsden cites a 1974 interview in which Steinem recalled being told she 'wrote like a man' when she first started writing for a magazine. Marsden concludes that these claims are more about chasing online attention than truth, and most people ignore them until they are laughed back into their own internet bubbles.
