‘Only men should be firefighters’: MAGA attacks the female firefighters risking their lives to fight California wildfires
As female firefighters are working overtime and risking their lives to fight the devastating California wildfires, MAGA manbabies like Matt Walsh, from the safety of their cozy podcast offices, are blaming women for the natural disaster and declaring they shouldn’t be allowed to be firefighters.
In the year 2025, one would think the country would be long past advocating to bar women from certain professions. However, MAGA is intent on banning women from serving in the military, Secret Service, and fire departments, even as all three areas have faced dire staffing and recruitment shortages. Conservatives would rather gravely weaken the most powerful military in the world and cripple the agencies and departments tasked with keeping Americans safe just so that they don’t have to be triggered by seeing a woman.
The furor about female firefighters broke out amidst some of the most devastating wildfires California has ever faced. While the rest of the nation is desperately looking for ways to help as lives, homes, and possessions are lost to the fire, conservatives are most concerned about Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley. One can’t get more qualified than Crowley, who boasts a 22-year career with the LAFD and climbed a dozen ranks to earn her position. When she took the firefighter exam in the ’90s, she scored in the top 50 out of 16,000. A month before the fires broke out, the vigilant firefighter chief sounded the alarm on how budget cuts could impact the department’s ability to respond to emergencies. Of course, MAGA can’t get over the fact that she’s a woman and a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
MAGA declares its hatred for female firefighters
Much of the nation has been in awe of the firefighters working against power outages and water shortages while battling one of the worst fires in LA history. They’ve been working since January 7th and still aren’t out of the woods. Despite working in dangerous conditions for countless hours, they touched the hearts of millions when videos surfaced of them risking their lives to go into homes that couldn’t be saved to retrieve family photos and keepsakes for the residents. Unfortunately, there are some residents of the country whose cold hearts are incapable of being touched.
MAGA quickly decided to start viciously attacking and mocking Crowley before eventually extending their hatred to all female firefighters in the world. Conservatives quickly found her biography on the LAFD website and scrolled past all her qualifications to focus on one brief sentence that noted one of Crowley’s priorities is to create and promote a culture that “values diversity, inclusion, and equity.” We all know MAGA short circuits when they see DEI; this was no exception. Political commentator Megyn Kelly, conservative actor James Woods, and billionaire Elon Musk quickly concocted an entirely false narrative, insisting that Crowley put DEI above the fire department and that this is the reason the fires can’t be contained.
Somehow, they just know that it’s not the budget cuts, power outages, or unprecedented nature of the fires that contributed to this disaster. It’s solely DEI. Far-right extremist accounts circulated photos of Crowley on social media, writing jeeringly, “Does this make you feel safer?”
Then, of course, King of Manbabies Walsh had to weigh in with his opinion. Walsh is best known for spending his days bumbling around the streets in a wig, crying about Disney princesses, and watching baby shows for his little podcast hobby. He somehow decided he had the authority to declare, “Only men should be firefighters,” and claimed that “there are few women on the face of the Earth who can carry a full grown man to safety.” Of course, he fails to mention that few men can carry a full-grown man to safety, either. This is why fire departments are very selective and hold every male or female candidate to the same standards. The thing is, Walsh wouldn’t care if a woman like Crowley dragged a 200-lb dummy to safety in front of him. It’s never about the standards when men start talking like this. It’s about them believing that even if women meet the exact same requirements as men, they’re still inferior solely for being women.
These misogynistic arguments from Walsh, Wood, Kelly, and Musk have absolutely no evidence behind them and could be easily discredited by reciting the almost never-ending list of Crowley’s qualifications or perhaps by seeing how Walsh fairs in a firefighter physical test in comparison to any female firefighter. However, the reality is that this shouldn’t even be an argument or point of discussion. Ten people have died in the fires. More lives may be lost, and thousands in California don’t know what the future holds. It’s quite startling how far gone some of these people are that they look at the level of devastation impacting their fellow Americans and only find it within themselves to feel angry and jealous that women are saving lives.
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