Know Your Enemy: Women vs. the System

Matt and Sam welcome Dorothy Fortenberry back to the podcast to discuss gender, the 2024 election, and whether or not women can run against “the System.”

Sarah Palin and Donald Trump on the campaign trail in 2016 (Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Know Your Enemy is a podcast about the American right co-hosted by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell. Read more about it here. You can subscribe to, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher, and receive bonus content by supporting the podcast on Patreon.

Back in October, before the 2024 election, our friend—and brilliant screenwriter and playwright—Dorothy Fortenberry came on the podcast to talk about gender and the presidential campaign. Amid all the postmortems and Democratic soul-searching, we wanted to have Dorothy back on to revisit some of those questions, starting with the difficulties women face in running as “outsiders” or against “the System”—an especially relevant consideration given the prevailing anti-incumbent, burn-it-down sentiment among voters across Europe and the Americas. Along the way we discuss Sarah Palin, Trump’s “bad sex” cabinet and administration, how “having fun” is coded in American culture, and more.

Further Reading:

Dorothy Fortenberry, The J.D. Vance sperm cups were probably a troll. But they got me thinking. Slate (2024)

— Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore, Commonweal (2020)

Martin Pengelly, RFK Jr sexual assault accuser says she chose to speak out after Super Bowl ad, The Guardian (2024)

Eric Lutz, Matt Gaetz Accused of Sex With Minor in House Ethics Report, Vanity Fair (2024)

Eric Tucker, Trump’s Pentagon pick paid woman after sex assault allegation but denies wrongdoing, his lawyer says, AP (2024)

Tony Tulathimutte, “Our Dope Future” in Rejection (2024)

Robert Hanley, Donor Apologized to Sister for Seduction of Husband, New York Times (2005)

Damon Linker, The Bestial Politics of Masculine Self-Assertion, Notes from the Middleground (2024)

Sam Adler-Bell, MAGA Misfits vs. Nationalists vs. Reaganites vs. Dorks: The battle of the Trump transition, New York Magazine (2024)

Listen again:

Suburban Woman (2019)