Women are the problem, Carlson and Fuentes declare

“It’s the women,” conservative white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes smugly declared on the Tucker Carlson show in response to Carlson asking why young people aren’t getting married these days.

“The men are extremely conservative, increasingly,” he intoned. “The women are extremely liberal.”

While it could be tempting to write these two off as clueless misogynists who should be ignored, unfortunately they can’t be described as irrelevant. In just the first 24 hours since their interview posted, they received more than 13 million views on X and another 2.6 million on YouTube. And the numbers are continuing to rise.

Given the ascent of white sexist men in our current political climate, it’s probably safe to assume many of those views were sympathizers.

Lest anyone accuse me of name-calling, Carlson himself openly admits in their interview, “I’m a little sexist.”

All these men who espouse patriarchy believe they’re being totally reasonable. But they also exist on a spectrum that goes from Only Fans producer Andrew Tate through Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson to mainstream complementarian men. All these men would try to differentiate themselves from the others as the true paragons of patriarchy. But when we examine their views of women, they’re all essentially in the same bed.

The thoughts and behavior of women

“How could you believe that?” the former Fox News star Tucker Carlson incredulously asked about feminists. “That gender roles are a construct, that none of this is in-born? Like, you’d have to be an idiot to think that.”

Apparently, the two of them must think women are idiots because Fuentes, who never has been married, responded by going on a rant about what women want and how women view themselves.

“The whole political system is just based around women never being accountable for any of their choices.”

“Of course I think all women naturally want strong men. They naturally want a Chad. They want like a tall, buff guy,” he began. “None of them want to work either. … They like these vague appeals to equality. ‘We want a chance to work! And we want respect!’ And ultimately, I think the whole political system is just based around women never being accountable for any of their choices. … I think a lot of men are looking at women and they’re very liberal, they’re overweight, they have a very high estimation of themselves. People call it ‘hoeflation.’ Their sense of their own looks and sexual value is very inflated. And so a lot of people are looking at these like frumpy, obnoxious, loudmouth, liberal women, who are also very promiscuous, and saying, ‘This is not actually appealing at all. And I don’t want to start a family with a person like this.’”

But in an attempt to thwart off any accusations of belittling and blaming women, Fuentes ultimately put the onus on men. “The one critique I have of the men,” Fuentes offered, “is they enable this behavior.”

Happiness and patriarchy

According to Carlson: “If you believe in the patriarchy, as I fervently do ‘cause it’s just reality, you know. We didn’t choose the system. We were born into a system that is part of nature. Can’t get out of it. So if you believe that’s true, which it is, then you think men should lead.”

Then Carlson suggested the reason male headship is so important is the happiness of women depends on it.

“I don’t know a single happily married woman who’s liberal. Not one.”

“I don’t know a single happily married woman who’s liberal. Not one,” he said. “I know a lot of married women. I mean, I’m 56. All the women I know are married. And every happily married woman is non-liberal. I can’t even imagine. There’s no category for happily married, middle-aged liberal woman. There’s never been one.”

When I shared these quotes on Facebook this week, my post was flooded with hundreds of comments from moderate to liberal women sharing their experiences of finally having happy marriages after leaving the power-obsessed world of patriarchal Christianity, some of whom have been married for more than 50 years. If Fuentes and Carlson would take the time to listen to and invest in friendships with women, they would know this. But they’re too busy hanging out with their man buddies.

Peers and equals vs. subordinates

At one point in their conversation, Carlson tried to root their patriarchy in the Bible.

“I think we’re required to love our wives,” he said. “Like that’s, I mean, all over the New Testament. ‘Husbands love your wives. Wives respect your husbands.’ That seems like a very natural balance to me.”

Of course, neither man offered any helpful reflection on the common false narratives in conservative Christianity about love and respect supposedly being gendered needs.

Instead, Fuentes was quick to remind Carlson about how the patriarchy defines a wife: “Guys will say, ‘I married my best friend.’ And I think, you know, she’s your wife. She’s not your best friend. ’Cause there’s a difference. I think when you talk about your best friend, you’re a peer, you’re an equal. And I think your best friendships are with other men. And I think your wife ultimately is subordinate to you. She’s your helpmate. And ultimately, as the man in the marriage, as the father, you have authority, the final say over the household. And she can give advice. It’s not to say, I’m not a freak where you say, ‘Shut up, woman!’ I mean of course, you discuss things with your wife and the wife gives input. But the authority rests with the man.”

“She’s your wife. She’s not your best friend. ’Cause there’s a difference.”

Carlson agreed. “Somebody needs to be the final decision maker,” he claimed. “And when you give up that, when you abrogate that, there’s no respect, there’s unhappiness, and there’s infidelity.”

Fuentes summed it up: “Men right now are the responsible party but have no authority. And that doesn’t work. If the buck stops with you and you’re to blame and you’re the responsible one, then you also need to be able to have the final say and call the shots. And one without the other doesn’t work.”

Two days before Fuentes and Carlson shared their theories, Sheila Wray Gregoire posted the findings from research Bare Marriage conducted on this very question. She said when a wife holds to the belief that men get to call the shots:

• She is 83% more likely to say, “My opinions don’t matter as much as my husband’s”
• She is 39% more likely to say, “I am frequently exhausted”
• She is 33% more likely to say, “I am in pain”
• Her husband is 63% more likely to say, “My spouse is often passive aggressive”

When a husband holds to this belief, Bare Marriage found “his wife is 50% more likely to say, ‘I am in pain.’”

So Bare Marriage concludes, “Having a leader and someone in authority actually makes marriages worse.”

Women talking

To make matters even worse for women, while patriarchal men are privileged enough to be in charge of their wives and hang out with a whole group of best friends, women in this world can’t even have friends without making their patriarchs tremble.

“Let’s say you find one of these so-called ‘good girls’ who’s Christian and traditional,” Fuentes imagined. “But through osmosis, wherever you go, she’s going to be in society. She’s going to be on TikTok. She’s going to be on Instagram. She’s going to be talking to other women. And maybe she’s one way when you meet and get married, but 10 years down the road, 15 years, 20 years down the road, people change. … I think eventually the pressure from society kind of gets to them.”

Then when Carlson suggested perhaps a man could attempt to “make a girl happy” so that “all of this nonsense ends,” Fuentes responded: “Yeah, I don’t know. I think that that could be a bottomless pit too.”

What’s especially frustrating about this conversation is how many internal contradictions there are. On one hand, Carlson claimed: “I think men care about their wives being happy much more than wives care about their husbands being happy. I have noticed. And that’s compensation for their lack of physical power.” But then on the other hand, Fuentes said men attempting to make their wives happy is “a bottomless pit.”

The net result of this conversation is that men get to have whatever friends they want, do whatever they want and hold all the power, while women are subordinate, can’t have friends without drawing their husband’s suspicion and are considered impossible to please. In other words, women exist for the pleasure and power of men.

The coercion of patriarchy, power and porn

“This is why Andrew Tate has so much appeal,” Fuentes suggested. “Andrew Tate’s a Muslim polygamist who is very chauvinistic and you could even argue as someone who has run an OnlyFans site himself is not an observer let’s say of Christian sexual morality. But men are going with him because he’s putting women in their place.”

I covered Andrew Tate for Episode 1 of “Highest Power: Church + State.” Tate has been very influential in convincing young men to be attracted to Donald Trump. Listen to how he talks about women. This is who Fuentes and Carlson think American men are gravitating toward.

Tate’s words: “I became a multi-millionaire. I did this by creating a webcam studio, by taking girls who didn’t know how to be effective on webcam, girls who had never done webcam before, girls who didn’t have the equipment, didn’t have the know-how, didn’t have the will, didn’t have the premises, didn’t have the ability to make money with this exchange.

“Once you teach a girl how to do this, she has the ability to make unlimited money from home. Why would she still give it to you?”

“I created a system that allowed me to convince girls to do this, allowed me to retain 100% control of their income, allowed me to make sure they were effective. …  I learned every tip and trick it takes to make sure a girl gets paid. I know how to make sure the girl can’t run away. ’Cause once you teach a girl how to do this, she has the ability to make unlimited money from home. Why would she still give it to you? Why wouldn’t she just run off and keep it all for herself? Why are you getting your percentage? I learned how to do everything to take a nobody and make her a somebody. I learned how to take a nothing and turn her into a cash cow. And betas from all across the world would be sending money into her — my — bank account.”

Ultimately, Tate’s involvement with porn isn’t about sexual pleasure. It’s about power. Even a man abstaining from watching porn in Tate’s mindset is doing so in order to be considered an alpha male. In his mind, beta males watch porn, while alpha males hold all the power by putting women in their place and controlling the money.

He said: “I was all about trying to get paid. Like my whole … I used sex as a tool to make women love me so they’d obey me and live in my house and make me money. … I was trying to get women to obey me, and I realized that’s easier if they like to have sex with me. If they don’t like having sex with me, it’s pretty hard to make them listen to me.”

It’s almost as if he’s viewing them as Christian patriarchs define “helpmate.” In fact, Tate essentially said that to Piers Morgan in an interview, claiming: “I believe the woman is given to the man. I believe she is given away by the father. I believe she belongs to the man. … I believe she belongs to the man in marriage.”

The weakness of Christian men

Fuentes contrasts Tate with Christian men, whom he says “are kind of losing this conversation.” He said while Tate is “talking about patriarchy and women’s place in a society like that,” Christian men are “kind of tone policing the men and they worship their wives. They worship the women, put them on a pedestal.” As a result, Christian men “kind of get bossed around. They get henpecked by the women.”

So the implication is for Christian men to start acting more like Tate, as a way of living out the created order God naturally ordained, of course.

The parallels between the views of Fuentes, Carlson and Tate and the views of complementarianism are numerous. Conservative complementarians are celebrating the rise of patriarchal men in society. They claim a woman’s happiness depends on her submission to a place of subordination to men. And they center the plans, pleasure and power of men. The number of women giving witness to this reality is too high to ignore.

But men like Fuentes, Carlson and Tate have one thing going for them most evangelical complementarian men don’t have: At least they’re honest enough to refrain from rebranding patriarchy in a more palatable way. At least they’re honest about not viewing women as their peers. At least they’re honest enough to admit they’re being sexist.

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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