Meggie Mapes: Frisella's rant voiced a dangerous trend of violent hate-speech toward women

Andy Frisella, founder of the supplement company 1st Phorm, is the latest Midwestern man who is in hot water after using his podcast platform to disparage women.

His comments highlight a dangerous trend in which high-profile men rely on the mic to spread damaging and hateful rhetoric related to gender.

"...There's a lot of police officers — to be completely honest, especially women police officers — who [expletive] try to emasculate men," Frisella said in podcast comments widely reported in St. Louis media. "They try to make men feel like they're being dominated or they're being, you know, that they have power over them. And, bro, the quickest way to escalate a situation is to do that to a grown man, you know?"

He added: "And that's why we, you know, that's why in my opinion, women shouldn't be in the [expletive] field and police officers. I just don't think they should be.

"Every woman cop I've ever dealt with," he continued, "every single [expletive] one that I've ever been pulled over by, tried to make me feel like a [expletive] [expletive]. No, that's not a way to deescalate a situation. Especially when you know that if that person didn't have a badge or a gun, you could punch a hole through their [expletive] face and end their [expletive] life."

In response, St. Louis-area police departments and organizations quickly cut ties with 1st Phorm.

St. Louis County Police Chief Kenneth Gregory announced his department "will no longer be providing services to 1st Phorm" nor receiving donations or services "of any kind" from the company. St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Tracy said Frisella's comments "do not reflect our views or core values and have no place in the SLMPD."

Derek Machens, president of St. Louis County Police Association, noted that Frisella's statements "crossed far over the line from criticism to sharing violent fantasies of killing policewomen."

While much the 1st Phorm backlash emerges from Frisella's disrespect to first responders, a deeper analysis of his rhetoric highlights just how harmful his comments are to women writ large.

Consider, for example, the opening moments of Frisella's rant, where he claims that "women police officers ... try to emasculate men. They try to make men feel like they're being dominated."

Here, Frisella represents men as having some innate access to power and respect that women should not be afforded — even women in powerful roles like cops. Instead, women should, in this line of reasoning, always respect men regardless of context, regardless of men's actions, and regardless of the job they are paid to perform.

It appears, then, that the right to a job, a career or a title for a woman (or women generally) is dependent upon how they make men feel. And, in turn, the only appropriate feeling to convey is big, strong and powerful — the apparent anecdote to feeling emasculated.

Frisella's comments, to be direct, support violence against women.

He says it explicitly: If a woman makes a man feel like a "[expletive] [expletive]," he could punch them and "end their [expletive] life." The only factor that dissuades Frisella from committing violence against women officers who make him feel a way he doesn't like is the badge and a gun.

It's clear, through his own words, that Frisella believes women do not deserve the same innate respect that men do.

In a culture with an intimate-partner violence epidemic, where 10 million Americans are affected each year, the flippancy with which Frisella reverts to violence is troublesome, to say the least. The World Health Organization reports that 1 in 3 women worldwide has experienced physical or sexual violence. And as a recent report by Rutgers International notes, "technology-facilitated gender-based violence ... often spills over into physical violence."

Frisella's focus on violence has damaging consequences for men, too, by elevating it as the appropriate response to unwanted feelings. His rhetoric continues a common trope in men who are violent by externalizing and justifying their bad behavior because "she started it" or "she made me feel this way."

In other words, if women make men feel small, they should be punished, and violence is an appropriate retributive response.

The truth is this: Men are responsible for their own feelings. And they are responsible for managing those feelings when they are heightened or unwanted.

1st Phorm has been a public supporter of first responders for some time, but Frisella's comments beg the question: Whose safety matters? He explicitly stated that women do not belong as first responders — a statement that in and of itself can pose a risk to women in those fields. And he goes further by actively advocating for harm against women.

Frisella's comments come just months after Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, in a commencement speech at Benedictine College, similarly attempted to argue that women are better suited for homelife than public life.

In an era of men on mics, it's time to heighten our standards, to hold men accountable — and to take seriously the impact of our words on the world.

Mapes has a PhD in communication and is a current faculty member at the University of Kansas, with research exploring gender and culture.