BREAKING: MAHA Exposed as Misogynist Cult
And regulating painkillers is sexism. Really.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all—you know, like stripey skies are perfectly normal, seed oils are good for you, and Ed McMahon never worked for Publisher’s Clearing House—you get gobsmacked by the latest liberal truth-twister.
This time—and I hope you are sitting down—the theory is that the entire MAHA movement was created to… shame women.
Yup. Wanting the drugs we inject into our kids to be thoroughly safety-tested and questioning whether our babies should be bathing in and brushing with and guzzling a known neurotoxin and not wanting glyphosate sprinkled on our Cheerios is now considered [by brain-damaged DEI freaks] peak mom-shaming.
The first argument (?) Salon author Amanda Marcotte makes for her gigantic leap of logic is that because RFK (accurately) points out that hepatitis B is something typically contracted via IV drug use or unprotected sex, the suggestion that parents skip the little birth-day treat that is the hep-B vaccine is “an attack on [the mother’s] purity.”
WHAT KENNEDY IS SAYING: “Since babies are not using dirty drug needles or engaging in risky trysts, they can only logically contract hepatitis B if the mother is infected. Rather than vaccinating every baby on the planet out of an abundance of
insanitycaution, we think it makes far more sense to test the mothers and inoculate accordingly.”
WHAT DERANGED LUNATICS HEAR: “Kennedy wants every delivery room to come with a scarlet letter and a parole officer!”
You know you’re thoroughly brainwashed when you’re arguing that basic common sense is misogyny—and that the government is your feminist savior.
The timing of this piece is no accident: the White House’s “September Autism Bomb*” that had already leaked—that Tylenol use in pregnancy carries a “very increased risk” of neurodevelopmental disorders—dropped the very same day, so Marcotte preemptively pounced on the OTC painkiller.
“Tylenol is already discouraged for treating minor aches and pains during pregnancy,” she writes. “The medical consensus is that [Tylenol] should only be used to battle high fevers that can be dangerous for both the mother and the developing fetus. But the vision of a woman enduring misery to “protect” her baby is romanticized by the right—even if the suffering would, in this case, only risk the health of the baby.
*I know that a lot of folks were disappointed in yesterday’s autism announcement, even though the vaccine link was clearly called out in a way it has never been before. I’ll be doing a deeper dive on that next. But for now—trust me, the dam is breaking.
According to Marcotte, “the idea [that pregnant women should avoid Tylenol] fits neatly into the right’s sexist vision of motherhood as a state of endless self-sacrifice.”
I can’t with this logic.
Parents: Standing up in the back of a pickup truck when you go under an overpass dramatically increases your risk of decapitation.
Children: That fits right into your tyrannical vision of childhood as a state of endless restriction!
To recap: The FDA says don’t take Tylenol unless you really need it. Kennedy says don’t take Tylenol unless you really need it. But somehow, in Amanda Marcotte’s galaxy-brain logic, the latter is sexist oppression because Kennedy said it… later? Louder? While standing next to Trump and wearing a red tie? I’m genuinely not sure.
Either Tylenol during pregnancy is dangerous (which, newsflash, everyone already admits in the fine print), or it’s just Kennedy’s latest plot to chain women to a life of barefoot misery and sourdough starters. You can’t have it both ways.
Of course, Pharma-loving folks are fuming while simultaneously trotting out the same tired arguments they offer up for any controversial drug: The humble medicine cabinet staple has been considered safe for decades. (So was Vioxx.) There’s rigorous research to prove it! (Funded, of course, by the same folks who sell the pills, but semantics!) So, lots of women who took Tylenol when they were pregnant have autistic kids—what’s your point? They probably also took showers and yelled at their partners. Correlation does not equal causation, you know. “Global health regulators” all agree giving Tylenol to expecting moms is terrific! (*This message brought to you by the Thalidomide and Tobacco Industries, collectively.)
FWIW: Both sides claim to have science in their corner. Here’s a radical idea: why not release all of the studies and let the people trying to protect our families decide for ourselves?
It was at this point in the piece that I scrolled back to the top of the article and clicked on Ms. Marcotte’s byline. That’s when things started to make sense.
The author clearly loathes all things MAHA, however she seems especially bent about the part that endeavors to put the DNA-donors in control of their children’s health.
“Even though it was advertised as the “Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy,” the report includes almost no substantive proposals for government action to improve child health,” Marcotte whines. “Instead, it shifts even more responsibility for child health outcomes onto the parents.
“Even on the issue of environmental pollution, which Kennedy claims to care about, the onus is on parents, not on government regulators. The report recommends that HHS ‘inform the public, especially parents and caregivers, about how environmental factors can affect children’s health outcomes.’ In other words, if you live in a high-pollution area, it’s on you to move. If you can’t afford it, it’s your fault for being poor.”
You did indeed read that paragraph correctly. Translation: “Telling parents about pollution is the same as blaming them for not owning a vacation home in Aspen.” That’s Olympic-level mental gymnastics right there; akin to accusing car manufacturers of hardship because they include seatbelts. “Why burden the driver? Congress should just pass a law forbidding collisions.”
My very favorite part of Ms. Marcotte’s rant, however, has to be “the deregulation of food safety being pushed by the Trump administration.” (I’m assuming she’s referring to refusing to condemn raw milk and allowing small farms to sell directly to consumers.) According to the senior politics writer, this would cripple busy mothers with the burdens of “researching” healthy food, swinging by a local ranch or farmer’s market on the way home from the weekly Walmart run, and “having to cook way more from scratch.”
First of all, nobody in the Trump administration is trying to deregulate food safety. They’re trying to actually regulate—and minimize—dyes, seed oils, and chemical additives. (You’re welcome!)
Second, does this lady live in a cave or in 1955? Allow me to “research” healthy food for you, Amanda: If it can be picked, plucked, harvested, hunted, reeled in, raised, or yanked out of the dirt, it’s probably healthy. If it comes in a box, bag, or bottle that has even one ingredient on it that you can’t pronounce, it’s likely not. No time to swing by a few extra markets to get quality food? I have an idea, let’s turn on your iPhone’s screen-use monitor for a week—I’m sure we can free up an hour or two. (If you easily bristle at the idea of giving up an episode of Love Island for your children’s health, perhaps parenting isn’t for you.)
As for the cooking more from scratch… yes, nothing screams Handmaid’s Tale like chicken breasts, sweet potatoes, and green beans—none of which require an apron, a rolling pin, or the ghost of Julia Child to prepare.
“Recommendations like these may not seem overtly sexist,” Marcotte admits. “But with the larger MAGA movement pushing traditional gender roles, there can be little doubt that women will be the ones expected to handle the new influx of responsibilities pushed on them by the MAHA culture. It’s women who would be expected to give up pouring a child a bowl of cereal in favor of making bread from scratch. It’s women who would be tasked with staying home with kids who have measles. And if those children were to die, women would be blamed for supposedly not feeding them enough homegrown organic foods.”
In the end, Marcotte’s article says more about her worldview than it does about Kennedy’s. If kids die, blame Mom. If women suffer, blame Kennedy. And make no mistake: MAHA is a right-wing movement designed to force women to spend their days grinding wheat by candlelight and hand-churning butter while homeschooling measles-stricken children between Zoom calls.
What Amanda cannot wrap her head around is the reality that Kennedy’s agendas aren’t about purity or endurance tests for women. They’re about whether government agencies are doing their jobs—regulating environmental toxins, ensuring vaccines and other medications are properly tested, and actually making kids healthier instead of sicker. But instead of engaging with the science, Marcotte defaults to her comfort zone: “This is just Republicans trying to punish women for having sex.”
The irony? Her conclusion is the most sexist take of all: that women are too weak, too helpless, and too perpetually victimized to handle advice on health without collapsing into oppression.
So yeah, Amanda, keep writing your fan fiction about evil farmers and slut-shaming vaccines. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. will keep talking about mercury, endocrine disruptors, and pharmaceutical corruption. You and your kids will wind up healthier for it—no apology or thank you card required.
What do you think? I know you won’t be shy.
I fantasized that yesterday was a 4D chess method of getting Tylenol to come out and scream, "FU GUYS, IT'S THE VACCINES!!!"
I’m on absolute bullshit overload. Thank God there are people like you willingly diving into the trenches of these nitwit writers (and she couldn’t come up with a shorter title?!)