‘Cuckolding’ and the Republicans who love it
Jack Murphy made their sex secrets public
Tall, muscular, bearded, talking up his ‘masculinity’ and Republican politics, while insulting feminists, Jack Murphy has been a right-wing star.
But his community was thrown into upheaval in late 2021 when a blog post from back in 2015 surfaced. He’d written of his love of ‘cuckolding’.
That means watching his girlfriend have sex with other men.
Jack Murphy was an “alpha” or “giga chad,” as the lingo goes.
He was as ‘manly’ as a male could be. That was his reputation, at least. So why had he written about a sexual fetish that would be offensive to his target audience?
“We’ve done it together where we picked up a guy at a bar, took him home and I watched them have sex. Or we’ve brought a guy from craig’s list over and I took pictures as he banged her.”
The focus of right-wing masculinity is keeping control over a female, who is idealized when ‘submissive’. For Murphy to let other men have sex with his girlfriend made him that dreaded insult: a ‘cuck’.
That was as ‘unmasculine’ as a man could be—with the exception of what came next.
He was asked about the ‘cuck’ post in an interview.
In the formerly friendly territory of The Blaze, the calm, ‘masculine’ confidence seemed to have disappeared. This Jack Murphy was triggered and out of control. He exploded at the female host:
“I am not gonna talk about this. And basically, you know, fuck you for bringing this up right here and right now. Why are you doing this to me?”
Taking to social media afterwards, he tried to get the hosts of the interview fired.
It was perceived as so unhinged as to fuel curiosity about his past. Right-wingers found themselves on a Russian porn website, watching amateur masturbation videos done in 2018 for a gay audience.
Called ‘bigbadbear1000’, there was Jack, naked on camera, calling himself “heteroflexible” and talking about his history of male-male sex.
“I like men. I like men and I like boys.”
And putting that dildo in the oddest place.
Murphy tried to get on top of the scandal.
He said that re-posting the porn (as here and here), was “revenge porn” and “sexual violence” — claims that were laughed away.
By now, many felt, he had fallen as far as a man can fall. He was a ‘beta bitch’, if not an “absolute pussy.”
Suddenly his fans—and former fans—realized that ‘Jack Murphy’ was an alter-ego. He hadn’t concealed it, exactly. ‘Murphy’ was the maiden name of his Irish mother. His name was John Goldman. His father was Jewish.
This being the right wing, the anti-Semitism started firing. Murphy was widely denounced as a “Jewish pornographer” or “degenerate Jewish grifter,” etc. And unexpected images circulated of the liberal Washington D.C. businessman that he’d been a few years prior.
Was he gay?
As the right-wing mind pored over his puzzling case, the facts could hardly point anywhere else? Blair White, the right-wing transgender commentator, declared him a “power bottom.”
The ‘Manosphere’ fixture Anthony Dream Johnson completed the read:
“I mean, if you’re gay you’re gay, man. It is what it is. I’m not gonna hold that against you, in particular. But you seem to be at war with it, if that’s the case and totally in denial and in the closet.”
But Jack had seemed a model convert from his old liberal ways.
In 2018, he’d published a political autobiography, Democrat to Deplorable, that told of his leaving the leftist world and discovering his true self as a Trump-loving Republican. Then he’d boldly staked out an image of a white man in control. As he wrote on his website:
“The world always needs a villain and today, that villain is the white straight male who knows what he wants and is unafraid to get it.”
He was particularly noted for his commentary on feminism. A 2015 blog post had advocated rape fantasies as a therapy for feminist women. “Feminists seek me out to fuck them like the patriarchy,” as he’d written.
Or he’d tweeted: “I can smell a feminist yearning for thrashing from a mile away.”
He’d set out to transform—radically.
He’d spoken of the process in his ‘cuckolding’ blog post. He’d gotten a painful divorce, and gone into therapy, choosing a gay therapist.
A deleted post on his website had discussed it in more detail. He’d had issues to work through. As a kid he’d been “sexually assaulted” by a babysitter. And then there was just life in America.
“My mother is an alcoholic and drug abuser. My father beat me when I was younger and would rage on me and my family. They eventually divorced. We moved several times…
They taught me that I was never good enough, that I was not living to my potential, that I had failed myself and everyone around me. They taught me I was ugly, fat, and lazy. Worse, they taught me that I was unlovable and my desire for human affirmation would lead me to shame myself for caring.”
He didn’t want to be, anymore, the accumulation of effects from the history he had lived. He could be someone else, somehow he’d designed himself. He set out to revise his physical presentation in view of ramping up his sex appeal. As he put it: “I made it a goal to become objectified.”
Jack Murphy was on Medium in 2017–18, posting updates on his progress.
He started to think about masculinity and power.
He started to meet right-wing influencers, and share ideas.
He launched an organization to train males to be ‘men’.
In ‘The Liminal Order’, for a mere $100 a month, younger men could leave their ‘beta’ ways behind and learn to be their fullest, most ‘alpha’ selves.
His buff, bearded figure had seemed the effusion of a natural male self, but in retrospect, one might see how hard he was trying?
Maybe too much.
As right-wingers were struggling to understand this horror, Dr. David J. Ley came in for the save.
The psychologist and sex commentator, often commenting on right-wing sexuality, and once a guest on Jack Murphy’s podcast, piped up in a Twitter thread. He writes:
“Far right crowds gleefully attack men they label as ‘cucks,’ but fail to recognize that this sexual behavior is far more common in conservative crowds, probably because of their taboo against it.”
Right-wing men seem often to nurse ‘cuckolding’ fantasies. Ley had receipts. Around early 2017, Paul Manfort, the longtime Republican operative and Trump campaign manager, had a family secret spill out when text messages by his daughters were hacked.
It seems Manafort liked to make his wife have sex with groups of Black men—while he filmed.
Roger Stone, the Republican operative and Trump consultant, had a curious past.
Over the years, he’d responded to talk of his apparently nebulous sexuality by calling himself a “trysexual.” Among the things he’d tried: advertising for muscular men to have sex with his wife.
The Evangelical world had its share of such stories. Jerry Falwell Jr., famously, has shared his wife with young men—while he watched.
David J. Ley noted that he’d spoken to many right-wing men who’d affirmed it was “a powerful secret fantasy and behavior” to watch their girlfriend or wife with other men. And, as Ley continues:
“Multiple researchers and studies have found that cuckolding is a far more prevalent and popular fantasy in conservative, heteronormative, machismo-laden cultures.”
It’s not just right-wing men who are interested in cuckolding, he notes. Liberal men get into it too. But, he adds:
“…it’s the far right who attack other men and condemn this interest, without ever dealing with the fact that it’s more common in their own communities.”
Weeks later, Murphy had a blog post about it all.
All the discussion of him, he wrote, pertained only to a previous self who had “died before anyone even heard of him.”
Since then, he’d resurrected as a man dedicated to “Christian morality.”
I was left thinking about the problem of a guy named John Goldman who’d put on right-wing drag, and yet, in 2015, wrote a post on ‘cuckolding’ that would be very offensive to that audience.
Maybe his transformation into ‘Jack Murphy’ was so complete that he developed right-wing sexual fantasies?
Or maybe, around 2015, he’d been feeling out this subculture, and thought to vocalize their fantasies in a bid to be accepted by them.
What he’d learn is — it’s meant to be secret. 🔶
