The women of QAnon—and where they go from here.

RULING THE WEEK

The national politicians most associated with the false QAnon conspiracy theory — Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert — are women. (Boebert has repeatedly denied that she is a QAnon follower, but she has voiced support for the theory in the past.) Two of the people who died in the January 6 Capitol riot were women, both QAnon followers.

QAnon started in the “mostly masculine recesses” of the internet, according to extremism expert and author Mia Bloom: the message boards 4chan, 8chan and eventually 8kun. But since then, the dark conspiracy theory has evolved, moving from far-right forums onto almost every kind of social media, from Youtube to Etsy to Peloton, gaining momentum along the way. How? Women. Women, particularly white suburban women, flocked to the QAnon community once it migrated to platforms like Instagram and YouTube, and are a key part of how the theory flourished and went mainstream.

POLITICO Magazine is out today with a feature on Greene, with new details about how early and enthusiastically she became involved with QAnon. Her story made me curious about what draws women in particular to the theory, especially because it is often portrayed as a mostly male phenomenon. Bloom, a professor at Georgia State University, has a book coming out with radicalization expert Sophia Moskalenko on the topic, called Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon. I talked to her this week about the women of QAnon, and where she expects them to go now that the theory is facing its post-Donald Trump reckoning.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Katie Fossett: Does a typical woman’s path to QAnon look different from a typical man’s path?

Mia Bloom: Although it started in these mostly masculine recesses of the Internet, QAnon sort of jumped the shark when it ended up being on Facebook, and Instagram in particular in the spring of 2020. And that was when a lot of women started getting on board, and that was when it kind of went more mainstream. What we found while writing the book is that there were 24 QAnon candidates in the 2020 election—but even worse, there were 97 QAnon candidates in the primaries.

And not all of the women were conservatives. A lot of these women, surprisingly, who came to [QAnon] via Facebook or Instagram, were women who were Bernie Bros; they were into yoga and essential oils. They just weren’t the type I would imagine believing in this demonic, blood-drinking cabal.

KF: What do you make of the fact that some of the highest-profile QAnon followers or sympathizers in national politics are women?

MB: When QAnon went to Instagram, it became much more about “save the children” [from sex trafficking and other organized abuses against children that are part of the QAnon conspiracy universe], and it’s all about “we need to step up,” and in many ways it activates the inherent protective nature of women. You’ve heard all these stories about a woman being able to turn over a car to save her child. It just appeals to women at a very base level.

Everyone predicted Marjorie Taylor Greene’s win, but they didn’t predict Boebert. I don’t even think that they realized how many Republican women [were caught up in QAnon] … . It’s one of these things where women, especially middle class or wealthy women who would never have been part of a conspiracy, look at QAnon [and think] it’s about saving the children, and that appeals to them.

I’ve studied ISIS recruitment for years, and a French journalist, Anna Erelle, has a book called In the Skin of a Jihadist. And for the book, she pretended to be a young convert to Islam online, and she started talking to an emir in the Islamic state. He was trying to talk her into coming to Syria and marrying him, and he kept saying things like, Don’t you want to help the orphans in Syria? So using that altruism as a recruiting tool for women is similar.

With QAnon, we’re also pairing that with gun rights. Both Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene in their campaign ads were holding guns, shooting guns. The guns may have appealed to the male vote and the QAnon to the female vote. And then you have to take into account redistricting and voter suppression and the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district is something like 80 percent white.

KF: Can you briefly outline how Greene got into QAnon?

MB: She was involved in QAnon starting in 2017. I think part of it was she was very onboard with Pizzagate, which was actually earlier than QAnon. And early on she was also promoting this notion of adrenochrome, a naturally occurring compound in the body, that, these QAnon folks say, Hollywood elitists and other people harvest from children. And it’s either used as a recreational drug or for youth and beauty among Hollywood types, according to the theory.

And so she’d been part of these Internet communities even before she was part of QAnon theories. But she was a very early adopter of QAnon, because a lot of these middle-class women only discovered QAnon in late 2019, 2020. There was a 174 percent increase in posts about QAnon starting in March 2020 when the lockdown started.

KF: Q has gone dark on the message boards. So what happens to these believers now?

MB: Well, it left the message boards and went to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and even Peloton — NextDoor had to ban Q. So it’s seeping into different populations that use different platforms. You have the yoga moms, or as I call them the QAmoms. And Peloton—the gyms were closed this summer, so a lot of people started buying Pelotons, and you could log in and someone’s username was JoeBidenIsAPedophile. So they’re everywhere.

Happy Friday, and welcome to Women Rule! There was so much good news this week. Washington was 62 degrees on Wednesday, Covid-19 cases are plummeting so quickly that experts can’t quite agree on why and the days are getting longer. I didn’t cook because I’m getting a divorce from my kitchen, but I recommend the breakfast tacos from Republic Cantina. (Or, if you want to explore, PoPville recently hosted a discussion of the best breakfast tacos in D.C.) Thanks to Maya Parthasarathy for being my co-pilot.

Now for the latest on gender and politics …

ON THE HILL -- “‘A double standard going on’: Democrats accuse GOP and Manchin of bias on Biden nominations,” by Laura Barrón-López and Christopher Cadelago: “Women’s rights activists and allied Democrats are growing increasingly vocal about what they call the unfair targeting of women and people of color nominated by Joe Biden to top posts in his administration. Their fears had been bubbling for weeks, as Biden’s nominees of color came under sharp attack from conservative groups or saw their nominations delayed or opposed in greater numbers. But the worries burst out into the open over the weekend as Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget neared defeat at the hands of a Democrat.

“‘There’s a double standard going on,’ said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. ‘Her nomination is very significant for us Asian American and Pacific Islanders. I do believe that this double standard has to do with the fact that she would be a pioneer in that position.’

On Friday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) came out in opposition to Tanden’s nomination, citing her past tweets attacking lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Two key Senate Republicans followed suit. Inside the White House, it did not go unnoticed that many of the lawmakers objecting to Tanden’s social media missives — including Manchin — voted to confirm Richard Grenell, the acid-tongued Trump booster, to the post of U.S. ambassador to Germany. Democrats on and off the Hill likewise argued that Tanden, who is of South Asian descent, was one of several nominees of color being treated differently than Trump-era nominees who lobbed personal attacks or expressed bigoted views.” POLITICO

-- “‘She became an easy target’: GOP opposition to Haaland rankles Native Americans,” via POLITICO

A #METOO SCANDAL IN NEW YORK -- “A former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the governor kissed her without her consent and asked her to play strip poker, alleging a pattern of sexual harassment she detailed in a new account Wednesday.

“Lindsey Boylan, who is running for Manhattan borough president and formerly worked for Cuomo and the state’s economic development agency, wrote in a Medium post that Cuomo kissed her on the lips against her will at his office in Manhattan. …

“’Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected. His inappropriate behavior toward women was an affirmation that he liked you, that you must be doing something right,’” Boylan wrote. “He used intimidation to silence his critics. And if you dared to speak up, you would face consequences.’

“John Maggiore, Howard Zemsky, Dani Lever and Abbey Fashouer Collins issued a joint statement denying the ‘strip poker’ remark: ‘We were on each of these October flights and this conversation did not happen.’

“Outside of the blanket denial, Cuomo’s office did not specifically address the kiss that Boylan alleged. She could not be reached for comment.” POLITICO

WHAT RULERS ARE READING

AROUND THE WORLD -- “Hunting the men who kill women: Mexico’s femicide detective,” via The Guardian ... “What Happened to Lim Ji-hyun, the North Korean Defector?” via Marie Claire ... “Woman receives $7,000 compensation for housework in landmark Chinese divorce ruling,” via NBC News ... “Nepal’s bid to deter women’s job migration draws fury,” via Deutsche Welle

CIVIL RIGHTS -- “Black women’s roles in the civil rights movement have been understated -- but that’s changing,” by Brandon Tensley and Skylar Mitchell: “Claudette Colvin did a revolutionary act nearly 10 months before Rosa Parks. In March 1955, the 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The teenager and others challenged the law in court. But civil rights leaders, pointing to circumstances in Colvin’s personal life, thought that Parks would be the better representative of the movement.

“‘People said I was crazy,’ Colvin recently told CNN’s Abby Phillip. ‘Because I was 15 years old and defiant and shouting, “It’s my constitutional right!”’ Colvin’s story and the experiences of other Black women and youth underscore the difficult questions and realities that Black leaders and activists have been forced to grapple with. Who gets to represent a movement? And who’s the ‘appropriate’ spokesperson for Black Americans’ fight for basic civil rights? ...

“As a former leading member of the Black Panther Party, Ericka Huggins was one of the most consequential figures of the Black Power movement, which sought to bring more radical attention to the US’s abiding system of racial caste. Still, she was keenly aware that the fault lines of gender went through the party. ‘Women ran the party, and the men thought they (the men) did,’ Huggins says in the 1997 documentary, ‘Comrade Sister: Voices of Women in the Black Panther Party.’” CNN

-- “‘We have carried democracy on our back’: Black women leaders candidly talk power, progress and the future of politics,” via The 19th ... “She’s the only Black kid in her fifth-grade class. She spoke up when slavery wasn’t included in a lesson plan,” via The Lily

WOMEN AT WORK -- “For Women in Economics, the Hostility Is Out in the Open,” by Ben Casselman: “A few years ago, the economists Alicia Sasser Modestino and Justin Wolfers sat at the back of a professional conference and watched Rebecca Diamond, a rising star in their field, present her latest research on inequality. Or at least she was meant to present it — moments after she began her talk, the audience began peppering her with questions. ‘She must have gotten 15 questions in the first five minutes, including, “Are you going to show us the data?”’ Dr. Modestino recalled. It was an odd, even demeaning question — the session was in the data-heavy field of applied microeconomics. Of course she was going to show her data.

“Later that morning, Dr. Modestino and Dr. Wolfers watched as another prominent economist, Arindrajit Dube, presented a paper on the minimum wage. But while that was one of the most hotly debated topics in the field, the audience allowed Dr. Dube to lay out his findings for several minutes with few interruptions. Over a drink later, Dr. Modestino and Dr. Wolfers wondered: Had the audiences treated the two presenters differently because of their genders? ...

“So Dr. Modestino and Dr. Wolfers, who has written on economics in The New York Times, did what economists often do: They gathered data. Along with two other economists, Pascaline Dupas and Muriel Niederle, they recruited dozens of graduate students across the country to attend hundreds of economics presentations to record what happened. Their findings, according to a working paper that is expected to be published next week by the National Bureau of Economic Research: Women received 12 percent more questions than men, and they were more likely to get questions that were patronizing or hostile.” The New York Times

-- “Biden’s 36-Year-Old Economist Has Her Eye on an Equal Recovery,” via Bloomberg

-- “Working Two Jobs, and Barely Surviving,” via The Cut

MILITARY MAKEOVER -- “In a Changing Military, the Army Eases Its Rules for Women’s Hair,” by Dave Philipps: “In a military increasingly dependent on women, and particularly Black women, that is now changing.

“The latest update to the Army’s uniform and grooming regulations, which takes effect on Friday, offers several revisions that give the 127,000 women serving in the Army and National Guard a chance to finally let their hair down — at least a bit.

“For the first time, women will be allowed to have buzz cuts. And they will be able to wear combinations of styles, such as locks pulled back in a ponytail, which for years were off limits. The new rules allow short ponytails at all times, and long ponytails in combat and in training when a bun might otherwise interfere with equipment.

“’It’s long overdue,’ Captain McFadden said of the change. ‘It shows that the Army is recognizing we can be soldiers and still be ourselves, that being a soldier and a Black woman is valid and valued.’” The New York Times

CALL ME DOCTOR -- “Why we use women’s professional titles less than men’s,” by Christine Ro: “‘I’m fed up of people not introducing me by my titles in public forums. I am a Dr (medic & PhD). I’m an Associate Professor. I worked hard to gain these titles & I don’t give permission to omit them. Just because I’m an ethnic minority woman doesn’t mean that I’m just “Nisreen”!’ tweeted Nisreen Alwan, a public health professor at the University of Southampton in the UK, last year. Alwan explained she had no issue with people using her first name in conversations, emails or on social media, adding: ‘But it’s a common phenomenon introducing experts in public forums/platforms which leads to more gender & ethnic bias in science and society by enforcing socially conditioned stereotypes.’

“While many agreed with her comments, Alwan was also criticised for being ‘uptight’ and ‘insecure’; some people who recognised the gendered aspect cast doubt on whether ethnicity was a factor. Yet her experience is far from unique. Across many fields, women who have earned formal titles report that others neglect or dismiss these titles, or even condemn women’s claims to them. The situation is especially fraught for younger women and women of colour. And while many people claim to dislike titles because of their associations with elitism, this supposed egalitarianism often only extends to one gender. For better or for worse, professional titles continue to matter in the modern day — especially for those who are less likely to be perceived as experts, despite their qualifications.” BBC

IN HEALTH -- “Democratic senators ask Biden admin to create office focusing on reproductive health and wellbeing,” via The 19th ... “Doctors treat female UTIs with wrong antibiotics nearly half the time, study finds,” via CNN

PERSPECTIVE -- “The Lies Hollywood Tells About Little Girls,” by Mara Wilson: “I spent my 13th birthday locked in a hotel room in Toronto. It was July 2000, and I was on a press tour to promote the movie ‘Thomas and the Magic Railroad.’ I had been promised a day off for my birthday, but when I arrived from Los Angeles the night before, I learned I would be talking to reporters all day. Working on my birthday wasn’t new to me — I had celebrated my eighth birthday on the set of ‘Matilda’ and my ninth filming ‘A Simple Wish’ — but this was still disappointing. Aside from a nanny, I was alone.

“The next morning I got up, groggy from jet lag, and put on my best Forever 21 attire. Two press coordinators checked in before I started my interview: Did I want the air off, or a soda? I said I was fine — I didn’t want to get a reputation as a complainer. But when the journalist asked how I was feeling, I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I told her the truth. I don’t know why I opened up to her. But I had never been good at hiding my feelings. (Acting, to me, is very different from lying.) And she seemed like she really cared.

“The next day, Canada’s newspaper of record put me on the front page of its entertainment section. The article began, ‘The interview hasn’t even begun with Mara Wilson, Child Star, and she’s complaining to her staff.’ The article went on to describe me as a ‘spoiled brat’ who was now ‘at midlife.’ It described the dark paths child stars like me often went down. It embraced what I now refer to as ‘The Narrative,’ the idea that anyone who grew up in the public eye will meet some tragic end.” The New York Times

-- “Britney Spears Was Never in Control” by Tavi Gevinson for The Cut ... “Listen: ‘A Disaster for Feminism,’” via The Atlantic

CULTURE CLUB -- “In One Art Exhibition, Women Are ‘Taking Space’ They’ve Long Deserved,” via NPR ... “Alena Smith’s Subversive ‘Dickinson,’” via The New Yorker

VIDEO -- Here’s what you need to know about the Covid-19 variants

WOMEN RULERS

TRANSITIONS -- Gabrielle Gould has been named the first executive director of the Democratic Women’s Caucus. She most recently was staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Europe subcommittee. …

Pamela Smith was named the chief of U.S. Park Police. She has been a Park Police officer for 23 years. … Janelle Chan is joining the Ballmer Group as national director of housing. She previously was undersecretary of the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development. … Susan Fox is moving up to become SVP of government relations at Disney. …

-- Casey Black will be press secretary for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee. She previously was a spokesperson for former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.). … Joi Chaney will executive director of the Washington bureau and SVP for policy and advocacy of the National Urban League.

IMPACT PARTNER -- Running Start asked Kylah, Oriana and Tarina, three alumnae of our High School Program, what they learned from the experience. They described the program as supportive, unmatched and powerful, and they shared the reason why they would “a million times over” recommend it to others and their advice for our Summer 2021 participants. Learn more here.