Dr. Ralph Alvarado’s campaign pushed out a press release this week on a curious piece in the Daily Caller, the right-wing website about Alvarado’s opponent in the 6th District Congressional race, Zach Dembo. In it, author Derek VanBuskirk cited Dembo’s 2024 interview on a podcast called The Good Guy Guide, in which Dembo talked about performative masculinity and other issues.

“He continued, saying that ‘the biggest issue that we’re still dealing with” when it comes to problems in leadership, intimate partner violence, and sexual assaults is the “expectation of what it means to be masculine,” suggesting that when someone falls short of those expectations, they tend to overcompensate aggressively,” VanBuskirk writes.

What the author fails to mention is that the show was about domestic violence from the male perspective, and what good guys can do to stop a scourge almost entirely committed by bad ones.

How do I know this? I was sitting right there. 

I’ve written about domestic violence off and on for decades, and I was told about a new podcast being recorded by Devine Carama, who runs Lexington’s anti-gun violence organization called One Lexington. 

The show was created through the It’s Time campaign from the Fayette County Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition, which wanted more emphasis on the root causes and prevention of domestic violence. 

As Carama has said: “Asking women to solve domestic violence is like asking Black people to solve racism.”

Carama and his frequent co-host, Sam Stockley, a British professional soccer player turned Lexington Sporting Club coach (you know how wimpy those guys are) would interview different guests about, as I wrote at the time, “love and violence and machismo and abuse and expectations and accountability and vulnerability and a bunch of other things that we assume (sometimes correctly) that men never talk about?”

Dembo also spoke about his love of butterflies as a young boy, which caused some problems at school, something the Daily Caller seems to think should disqualify him from office. 

The masculinity question is one that’s been used on other Democratic candidates, like Texas Senate aspirant James Talarico (“Low T Talarico”) and Sen. Jon Ossoff, dismissed by Trump as “PeeWee Herman.” 

Podcast co-founder Lillie Ruschell is dismayed by the hit on Dembo, but not surprised.

“The point of the podcast was to create a space where men could speak honestly about masculinity, vulnerability, accountability, and the role men have in changing a culture that too often enables violence,” she said. “To see that willingness to be vulnerable now weaponized against them is deeply disappointing.

“The goal was to create something that told survivors of domestic violence, clearly and unequivocally, that there are men in their corner,” Ruschell continued. “If we say we want men to step up, have difficult conversations, and be part of the solution, we cannot punish them when they do.”

Also, it seems like a kind of weak sauce attack (forgive me) given there are so many other issues to talk to voters about, like affordability, the Iran war, AI. But maybe it will work. 

I have no idea who’s going to win the 6th District race. All I know is domestic violence affects 10 million people in this country and kills more than 1,500 every year, and the more we talk about it – even with awkward syntax and genuine feeling – the better.