AOC Deserves Motherhood + Phetasy Digest
AOC Is Lying Her Way To The White House | Based Jennifer Sey Has Good Stuff To Say | WNBA Can’t Define What A Woman Is Despite “Women” Being In Their Title | Bridget’s Viral Egg Freezing Article
This week I attended a party at a cat diner. At the back, there was a many-windowed room full of furniture and toy mice and 20-or-so cats, who were mostly hissing or comatose. In the afternoon light, surrounded by terrible lions, I thought about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This was a cruel week for maternity—the Lindsay Clancy trial, the late-term abortion bill in Massachusetts, and the clip of AOC freezing her eggs. She came into my mind at the cat cafe because I was there with my kids. Without them, that experience wouldn’t have been so lovely: their joy as they tried grabbing cats, and their distress when one of them bit back. Not having kids is perfectly fine, even admirable in some situations. A lot of people solemnly determine that parenthood just isn’t for them. And there are others who want to have children more than anything, but can’t. Then there are the anti-natalist types, the teenage nihilists. What struck me about AOC is that she froze her eggs. It reminded me of the time my youngest kid collected rainwater for a week so that she could build a water castle—and the way she cried after the water lost its shape and vanished.
Obviously, parenthood is far more complicated than all of this. Maybe AOC will unfreeze her eggs in a few years and have triplets before turning 40, and she’ll become the greatest Democratic Socialist of all time, the first to conquer the White House. It’s possible. I happen to know a certain someone who became a mother at 43. In fact, Bridget wrote a great piece about how she wishes she had frozen her eggs when she was 37: “There are things you have no way of knowing until you experience them. For me, being pregnant, the excitement of getting to be a parent with a man I love—these are things I couldn’t conceive of until they happened to me. And sure, frozen eggs aren’t a guarantee. They’re a very expensive insurance policy most people can’t afford that might not even pan out.”
But for AOC, cryopreservation is political. It shouldn’t be. The fourth-wave feminist power move: “I’ll be a birth-giving mammal when I decide, after I’ve proven that I’m way more than a surrogate for the patriarchy.” (Why the rush? It’s not like there’s an age limit for Congress or the White House.) In reality, AOC would probably be a great mom. And, ironically, parenthood would give the political insight that is currently inaccessible to her. If the rumors are true about her presidential aspirations, she would be a better candidate if she had kids. Because civic duties take real meaning when you’re a parent. You aren’t voting or serving for yourself. You’re doing it for your children, and the hope that they’ll be lucky enough to do the same in return with children of their own. Politics without parenthood is a game, an activity.
But what AOC doesn’t realize—because how could she? why would she abandon the path to empowerment?—is that every moment without a child takes her farther from the meaning of life itself. When you become a parent, you’re basically launched back to your own infancy with all the knowledge you’ve stored, and forced to start your life over. That’s how brutal it is. And it is unfathomably brutal. Harrowing. Exhausting. At times, maddening, dizzying. Children wreck everything you thought you wanted. The Oval Office is cool, but it’s nothing compared to a cat cafe with your kids. You don’t actually even know yourself until you have kids, because, until then, there’s too much persona in the way. Dreams of yourself vanish—career goals and old bucket lists—the moment you hold your child the first time. From there, you rebuild yourself. A rare opportunity. Having overcome obstacles you assumed were insurmountable, you’re lighter and sharper. Parental anxiety gives you a new clarity. And here’s what AOC doesn’t realize: parenthood may slow you down, but only because it builds you up. She also doesn’t realize that, from that moment, your understanding of time changes. They grow so fast. Life whirs forward. Because when your kids turn 18, you’ve spent 95% of your time together, for the entirety of your lives. It’s impossible to describe the weight of this reality. Not to mention the broader effect AOC’s viral egg freeze has had on American women who now see themselves in her. We live in a funny nation, though. Because none of this will matter if Taylor Swift gets pregnant. Her pregnancy would inspire the next Baby Boom.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #340
AOC Wants To Be President And She’s Lying To Get There
AOC has a new name for the last decade of insanity — she’s calling it “Woke 1.” Bridget breaks down why the woke era didn’t start with COVID, why the unwokening is a massive retcon, and why AOC is exactly as radical as she’s always been — she just learned to hide it because she’s running for president.
WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #403
We’ve Been Waiting For Sophie Cunningham | Jennifer Sey
Bridget sits down with Jennifer Sey, founder of XX-XY Athletics — to talk about why the fight to keep men out of women’s sports is gaining ground. They get into Sophie Cunningham becoming the active pro athlete willing to say girls deserve their own spaces, why the WNBA, the media, and corporate America are still acting like it’s 2020, and why Caitlin Clark shouldn’t be a target for saying she just wants to play basketball. They cover the Fauci Diaries and the rage of being proven right when COVID cost Jennifer friendships, family, and the life she loved in San Francisco — and why, in her experience, only about ten percent of people will ever take a stand that costs them something. It’s a conversation about courage, resilience, and what it actually takes to say the true thing out loud when everyone around you is too afraid to.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #341
The WNBA Can’t Define A Woman And Now Men Are Signing Up
Two former NBA players have declared themselves eligible for the WNBA draft. One is six-foot-eight and says he “identifies as sometimes identifying as a woman, for purposes of basketball.” The WNBA responded by holding a meeting, validating everyone’s feelings, and adjourning without a resolution. Bridget breaks down why this was always inevitable, why there’s no way to tell the “sincere” trans women from the bad actors, and why that’s always been the point.
I Wish I'd Frozen My Eggs
Back in June 2021 I received a call from my OB-GYN about a lump in my breast that needed to be biopsied. She called with the news and almost as an aside said, “Oh and your blood work came back—you’re in full menopause—but we can’t even really deal with that until we figure out what is going on with your breast.”
THE SPECTATOR
The internet is dying and so are we
DESCR
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A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down
Mar 22
I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…
THE DAILY WIRE
America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.
America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.
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