Posted by Alumni from The Atlantic
June 12, 2026
A couple of weeks ago, Democrats posted a photo of James Talarico, the U.S. Senate candidate in Texas, captioned 'November, here we come.' Talarico, strangely alone at a picnic table, is wearing a lone-star flag button-down, and he has four baskets piled with fried foods in front of him and, most significant, a turkey leg thicker than his forearm jammed in his mouth. Presumably, this image is a response to Republicans calling Talarico all manner of terms that effectively mean 'unmanly': low-T, transgender, secretly a woman, gay, man-child, and'God forbid'vegan. Democrats could dismiss this line of attack as childish and homophobic. But they are not. Instead, Talarico's campaign staff are widely circulating the turkey-leg image to send the message that their man is not merely a man, but a caveman. The MAGA movement has fully embraced masculinism, which The Atlantic's staff writer Helen Lewis defines in her cover story this month as 'a movement to fight back against the advances of... learn more