DeSantis appoints trustee who says career-focused women are 'medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome'

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may have gotten spanked in a humiliatingly bad supposed presidential campaign, but that's only allowed him an opportunity to focus on his true calling: Using the powers of the state to suppress speech he doesn't like and dismantling as much as he can of Florida's university and public school systems.

This week DeSantis announced five new appointments to the University of West Florida's Board of Trusties. True to form, he chose anti-education extremists who will push forward with DeSantis' plans to gut and/or rob the place.

One of the new appointees is the Claremont Institute-affiliated Scott Yenor. The Claremont Institute is an openly fascist think tank whose members have repeatedly advocated for the end of U.S. democracy so that the nation can be rebuilt according to far-right principles. Yenor, for his part, is an amazing piece of work.

Yenor, in particular, has drawn national attention for his critiques of feminism and higher education. Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference three years ago, Yenor called for a "sexual counterrevolution" and described career-oriented women as, quote, “medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome.”

"We need to de-emphasize our colleges and universities," he told the audience. "... Almost everything in these indoctrination camps complicates the male-female dance." He concluded the talk by suggesting that "the effort to erase the old standard of public men and private woman has been a mistake."

Imagine thinking this pudding-headed crank had any business at all being a "public man," much less someone in charge of a college campus. What, did every invasive python in Florida turn down the job first? Did DeSantis already work his way through the list of every job-wanting sex predator in the state, so had to improvise?

Even if you're Ron DeSantis, a man devoted to solely to his own ambitions and advancement, how do you even find a jackass who thinks "career-oriented women" are too "medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome" to hold those jobs? How far down the list of America's Sketchiest Creeps do you have to go to find that mental fossil? Has he just been thawed out from an iceberg? Do we need to be careful when showing him things like fire or automobiles, so as to not send him into a confused panic?

I am going to assume, because I still have some small amount of faith in America's younger generation even if all of its older generations have proven to be useless piles of self-absorbed paranoia, that Yenor is never going to be able to set foot on University of West Florida grounds to do the job because he'd be immediately surrounded by so many livid and screaming students that he'd have to be plucked back out of the crowd by rescue helicopter. I'm going to assume that he'll have to be doing all his pontificating about how Florida's young women shouldn't even be in college or pursuing careers from an undisclosed location three states away.

There's only one effective method of fighting fascism (well, two, as the U.S. military showed about eighty years ago.) It has to be shamed, harassed, and humiliated out of the public square. Fascist thugs like Yenor need to be given no space to squeak out their animalistic views on women; like David Duke and past such sleazebags, they need to be met with such visceral public revulsion that the politically ambitious don't dare admit to even knowing them.

DeSantis is a thug, and he owns every word that comes out of the mouth of those he puts in power. None of these appointments are accidents, and this is his signal that he, too, believes American women are too "medicated" and "quarrelsome" to have careers and that we should return to an "old standard of public men and private women." This appointment is Ron DeSantis talking, not just Yenor or his other allies.

Every day Ron DeSantis isn't hounded out of office by Florida's residents is a day of shame. Either own this or don't, Floridians. You can't have this both ways, not here in 2025.

This is what you voted for, Every Florida Republican. Don't agree that this is what you stand for? Then do something about it, you gutless liars.