The GOP attacks on James Tallarico come straight from the Incel evidence

Tuesday with Donald Trump Endorsing and supporting MAGA loyalists, scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn in a primary runoff to claim the Republican nomination for this seat.

He then quickly set about portraying his general election opponent, Democratic Texas State Representative James Talarico, as insufficiently masculine.

“My opponent is the most extreme the Democrats have ever nominated,” Paxton said in his victory speech. “He’s even running a vegan campaign, whatever that is. He uses some names that you’ve probably all heard of. Some people know him as Tovo Talarico. Some people call him Jimmy Sixth Gender. I’ve even heard some people call him James Talarico. Others refer to him simply as Low-T Talarico.”

The scattering of insulting epithets has not been an entirely successful Trumpian flourish. (Talarico campaign, indeed A fundraising juggernaut“Sale has started.”I’m Talafrico“Shirts on the spot). But Paxton’s attacks also seem to stem from Manosphere and Incel cultureoverlapping online communities obsessed with their unscientific theories about sex, sexuality, hormones, and diet.

Paxton’s first general election ad continued this coded vein, portraying Talarico as out of step with Texas values ​​and lacking in testosterone: the ad ends with the Democrat declaring “too low for Texas.” Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller went further, posting Wednesday on X that “Democrats made history in Texas by nominating the first transgender candidate for Senate.”

For his part, Trump claimed that Tallarico is “a vegetarian in Texas, and you can’t get elected as a vegetarian in Texas.”

While his actual hormone levels are not publicly known, Tallarico is neither transgender nor vegan. The latest claim appears to stem from comments he made while running for re-election to the Texas House of Representatives in 2022. At a fundraiser for the Texas Humane Legislation Network that year, he spoke about the need to reduce meat consumption — in part to combat climate change — and announced that his campaign was purchasing only plant-based food products for its events. Talarico did not claim to be a vegetarian, and has since denied that he is, eating meat and dairy products during the election campaign. At a campaign event at an Austin Taco Joint earlier in May, Talaric orderd two potato, egg, and cheese tacos — a perfectly legitimate taco order that also happens to be not vegan.

Focusing on the need to eat meat and maximize testosterone is a piece of male-dominated podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience As well as toxic social media spaces where men demonize weaker males and call them “soy boys”. But many of these concepts have found acceptance at the highest levels of the Trump administration — especially in the messaging and policy of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy Jr., whose book “Make America Healthy Again” espouses all kinds of medical pseudoscience.

Kennedy, for example, sounded the alarm Low testosterone in men. It skews the issue somewhat, because although research shows lower testosterone levels, they are not in the clinically “low” range for the majority of males. He has also been fanatical about urging Americans to eat more meat in order to get what they need Daily proteintaking photographs in Barbecue and Burger Restaurants. (Ironically, whole soy foods like tofu are a rich source of protein, containing all the amino acids essential for human nutrition.)

That Republicans are now weaponizing these concepts against Talarico suggests that the masculinist ideology has penetrated the national consciousness. However, it is not at all clear whether any Texan would be particularly affected by the portrayal of the former teacher and Presbyterian seminarian as unacceptably weak. Moreover, while “vegan” and “low-quality” may be common insults in some Internet hotspots, the language of petty online bickering doesn’t necessarily translate to a statewide contest that will be decided by nearly 19 million eligible voters.