Reflections on politics, media, and the struggle against hate.
Contains spoilers for American Horror Story Season 6: Cult and the 2024 presidential election.
I spent election night this year watching American Horror Story: Cult. There was something cathartic about the climax where on the debate stage our cult leader, Kai Anderson (played by Evan Peters) is bested and executed by the women he victimized. Beverly Hope (Adina Porter) and Ally Mayfair-Richards (Sarah Paulson), who have thus far been terrified into submission, finally rise up and reclaim their power with a bullet through the brain.
Violence. Blood. There’s something cleansing about it in the canon of American media. The events of the season are kicked off by the last remaining member of a violent feminist cult (Frances Conroy). Her goal is to release womens’ rage into the world after millennia spent in repression and finally, finally burn the patriarchy to the ground. She says Donald Trump is her favorite president, because he represents the last straw. Women will not be able to help themselves but to rise up and fight. In her mind, there’s no way women will be able to take this blatant injustice lying down.
I went to bed early on election night. I didn’t bother watching the results pour in. I knew deep in my heart what the outcome would be. Earlier that day I saw a post that said something like, “American women deserve a first woman president of quality, and Kamala Harris is not!” I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of woman would finally be good enough. We’ve had 46 men so far. All brilliant and flawed in their own crude, human ways. In fact, I thought Trump’s followers loved him for his crudeness. “He tells it like it is.” “He’s just like me.” Meanwhile, the women he has run against have never been holy enough. Always somehow too dramatic and too demure. Too motherly and too fuckable. Too haughty and too vapid. To be a woman is to live eternally as a paradox.
In American Horror Story, our violent feminist’s dreams come true. The women rise up in glory and drown the patriarchy in their rage. Reality is not so simple. For the last eight years, women have done their best, but violence has not become part of the strategy. We continue to pour our rage into art, activism, “calling-in,” and “giving grace.” We exercise patience and self-restraint. Why?
For myself, I’m not interested in picking up where misogyny left off. I hear gunshots ringing in the back of my mind. I feel hot blood on my hands. The rage courses through me, threatening to take over. But violence is men’s currency. Women are living in the world they want to build, like a pantomime of hope. A world where emotional intelligence matters and the community reigns. Where we travel in groups and compliment each other’s make-up in the bathroom. Where your best friends help you carry your deepest secrets, and there are shoulders to cry on in vast supply.
Even men admit that it’s better. Reddit is filled with threads of men bemoaning the inherent loneliness of manhood. Why can’t they talk openly about their emotions with their friends? Why can’t they develop deep bonds fortified with trust and vulnerability? Why is being a man so goddamn lonely all the time?
No one offers an answer. I believe that’s because the answer forces them to recognize that they are constantly choosing between maintaining their power or feeling connected to other humans. Power rooted in violence is lonely. Kai Anderson over the second half of the season murders almost all of his original supporters. He guts his most loyal supporter, Gary (Chaz Bono), outside of a Planned Parenthood in an attempt to frame left-wing activists for the crime. Gary deeply loves Kai, but Kai can never return Gary’s loyalty. To do that would be to let go of power, and Kai would rather be the ruler of an empty Earth than sacrifice even an ounce of his power to keep one friend.
At the same time, Kai is obsessed with betrayal. He murders both of his siblings for perceived disloyalty, piling their bodies in a locked room in his house so he can visit them. In the end he’s only confiding in himself. “Are you proud of me?” He asks the corpse of his mother, “I’m going to make you proud.”
Within every man there is a Kai. He is not born that way. He learns to be that way to keep himself safe from other men. He sacrifices his most basic human need for kinship and connection in a vain effort to never be betrayed. He talks to himself and pretends he has friends. He teaches his sons to do the same.
I went to bed early on election night because I am not afraid. I know what is right and I live it. I will always have something that men and women trapped in the vortex of misogyny can never have. Family. Community. Reciprocity. Radical compassion and far-reaching love.
I predict that someday, those men on Reddit or their sons and daughters will finally be capable of choosing connection over power. In one of the season’s final scenes, Ally kisses her son (Cooper Dodson) goodnight and expresses the hope that he will grow up to be better than the current generation of men. He promises he will. We know he already has.