I witnessed the masculinity crisis at the Trump rally

And got my chair stolen

Writing like this newsletter is only possible because of paying subscribers. My hot socialist summer sale ends this weekend, so now is the time to subscribe. This fall, I will be launching a new podcast, and paying subscribers will get early access to bonus episodes and so much more.

It was hot at the Trump rally. Ninety-three degrees bouncing up from the pavement at the Iowa State Fairgrounds with no shade. I arrived at 4:30 p.m. The president wasn’t scheduled to speak for three more hours. There were a couple hundred chairs set up between the podium and the press area. The seats were mostly taken, but I figured I could find one. I smiled and wheedled my way through the crowd. Seat taken. Seat taken.

I was there to observe, so I wanted to blend in. I wore a patriotic red, white, and blue checked cap with a shirt that read, “Beer, BBQ, and Freedom.” Things we can all agree are good. It felt like a compromise. I was reaching across the aisle. Trying to fit in, but not trying to be something I am not.

But when I parked, the woman who got out of the SUV next to me was wearing a shirt that showed Donald Trump in American-flag glasses and holding up two middle fingers. Beneath the image, the shirt read, “Haters gonna hate.” As I walked the merch tables outside the event, I saw shirts bearing the image of Trump onstage at Butler, his fist raised defiantly in the air, emblazoned with the word “Fight!” Another shirt showed Trump with the White House in the background, with text reading “Daddy’s Home.”

My pathetic attempt at compromise and American unity was no match for the sea of red hats, Constitutions, and the shirt on the man next to me that read “Liberalism: Find a cure.” There was no subtext, just text, and the text was fuck you.

With my “Beers, BBQ and Freedom” shirt, I’d brought a pillow to an AK-47 fight.

I was there to attend the kickoff to the yearlong celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. Billed as a nonpartisan event, the rally was advertised on the America 250 website as an “opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation's past, honor the contributions of all Americans.” And what better place to begin that celebration than in the heart of the heartland: Iowa?

As I searched for a seat, the screens displayed famous paintings of George Washington, interspersed with the logos of Amazon, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and Coinbase. The birth of American democracy, sponsored by Lockheed Martin.

It wasn’t just that I couldn’t find a seat; it was that as a single woman, with the gentle jingoism of my shirt, I was immediately suspect. One man asked why I was there alone and when I lied and said my friend would be joining me, he said, “Is she hot?” and winked. Another woman dismissively looked at my empty ring finger and made a point of saying she was saving a seat for her husband.

I saw a group of 20-something men in “Gulf of America” shirts carrying chairs and setting them up. When I asked if I could snag one, one of the men said, “Get one yourself,” pointing in the direction of a section near the port-a-potties, where a stack of chairs sat. As I walked over, a security guard approached. “You can’t set up more chairs!” he yelled to the men.

It wasn’t that I felt more entitled to a chair than anyone else. But I was going to be there for over four hours. I was dripping with sweat, my sciatica was flaring up, and a man in a “Fuck the libs” hat was glaring at me. I just wanted to sit. I texted my friend Molly to tell her that the male loneliness crisis would be solved by one Nazi boy sharing a chair. Just one.

Men are not okay. No one is in America. But men are making it everyone’s problem. A recent study by Equimundo: Centers for Masculinities and Social Justice reported that 69 percent of young men agree that “no one cares if men are okay.”

I’d read that study right before I left for the rally. And I wondered, as I looked for a chair, how many people in the crowd felt that way.

It took me 45 minutes of hovering and searching, but I eventually found a seat near a family of three, around when the third-place finalist on the 8th season of American Idol began singing about how much he loved America. By the time I’d been sitting 20 minutes, I felt guilty. Around me were women in their 60s and 70s; surely they deserved this seat more. I looked up to offer the woman near me a chair, but her shirt said, “If you don’t like Trump, then you won’t like me.” And I should be better than that, but I wasn’t. So I turned back to listen to Sen. Chuck Grassley.

After another hour, the family near me asked me to watch their seats while they got corn dogs. I agreed and fended off other chair-seekers by lying and saying my aging grandmother, aunt, and mom had simply gone to the bathroom and would be back. When the family returned, I told them how I’d lied that we were family, just to protect their spots. Then I asked if they’d watch my one chair while I, too, got a corn dog.

When I returned 20 minutes later, my chair was gone. “What happened?” I asked. The husband shrugged. “Some guy took it, I didn’t even notice.”

Maybe it was the heat, or maybe I’d worked so hard just to sit, but I was furious. I could feel the rage in my chest. That was my chair. I’d worked hard for it, and some guy had just stolen it! MY CHAIR!

“I find that hard to believe,” I said. “I watched three seats for you and you all couldn’t watch one.”

The husband shrugged and sipped his lemonade. The wife turned to the screen. “Well, I hope you don’t have to pee,” I said. No one laughed, which was good, because I wasn’t kidding.

Ten minutes later, when a single man three rows ahead laid his jacket across the two chairs he had been hoarding and left, I walked over, grabbed one, and sat down again. My pretend family smiled. “Glad you got a seat back,” the husband said. I glared.

I didn’t want to make up. This was war. Sweat was running down my leg and I still had an hour and a half left to be there. Fuck them, I texted my friend.

In a 2016 essay on Trump rallies, Stassa Edwards observed in Jezebel that a certain amount of overwrought white male journalism about the events was designed to evoke moral outrage. Edwards wrote,

[The] sole purpose seems to be the belatedly obvious conclusions of the reporter. It is, in short, an affirmation to both the writer and a particular kind of reader that they are good and moral and correct. That they both, by the very nature of taste and comportment and liberal consciousness, have nothing in common with the otherworldly inhabitants of a Trump rally.

I would like to tell you I shared my chair. But I was not good, moral, or correct at this rally. I was just another sweaty asshole, demanding my space at the expense of others around me. And still, despite my efforts, I couldn’t win. I was trying to be part of something that wasn’t for me, lost in a sea of male rage.

Those studies. The millions of think pieces and books on how we have to reach men, help men. The men in my email chiding me to be gentler, kinder to men, as if I weren’t losing so much. Male rage is being coddled, voiced, and shown on TV, but what of my rage? My loss of rights? My own stupid chair.

When had my freedom become such a threat? This economic anxiety, this masculine fear, is a story I keep hearing. But what of the Black women most impacted by the economy? Men, even the man next to me, even when they are socioeconomically disadvantaged and unable to provide for their families, still benefit from the unpaid labor of women.

---

---

Community, care, and support don’t happen in a vacuum. Love and friendship aren’t something we are entitled to. To be cared for, you must also show care. To have a community, you have to be part of it. To have people care if you live or die, you have to start caring about the life and death of others around you.

Trump got up to speak, and everyone stood. Our chairs were almost meaningless now. I found myself pushed from behind by an older man who told me to “watch it” when I stumbled.

Trump bragged about Iran bending to his will. He joked about fireworks being like gunshots. He used an antisemitic slur; he bragged about passing his big, beautiful bill. He said people hated him, but he hated them back. This wasn’t the nonpartisan rally it had been billed as — not that I expected anything different. And when he called Zohran Mamdani dangerous, the crowd around me erupted with cries to “deport him!” At some point, Trump boasted about “protecting women” and making sure there were only two genders. All the people around me cheered. I turned around and saw my seat had been taken again.