Republican wingnut Rep. Madison Cawthorn (NC) has made numerous comments about society trying to “completely de-masculate” young men. However, the 26-year-old congressman himself once dropped his ultra-masculininty to enjoy partying in women’s lingerie, as newly unearthed photos show.
Politico unearthed the photos, and Cawthorn later said they were taken from a cruise. While there’s nothing wrong with dressing up in women’s clothes, they demonstrate the hypocrisy of the hyper-masculine, anti-LGBTQ congressman.
Related: Madison Cawthorn to divorce after 8 months. He just told young conservatives to “get married young.”
“I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me?” Cawthorn wrote via Twitter. “They’re running out of things to throw at me…”
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However, the photos may not have been provided by “the left,” as Cawthorn thinks. Politico wrote that they were provided by “a person formerly close to Cawthorn and his campaign,” adding, “a second person formerly close to Cawthorn and his campaign confirmed the origin of the photos.”
In his Twitter comment, Cawthorn linked to an article describing the Quest game show, an adults-only scavenger hunt that happens on the Royal Caribbean cruise line. The article explains that Quest is an on-board scavenger hunt where teams are required to display “bawdy” items like “a man wearing lipstick or someone with their pants on backward.”
“By the end [of the game show], it was barely controlled chaos,” the article says, “with one male member of our group wearing a bra and poorly applied makeup declaring his name was Savannah Sunshine.”
Not Madison Cawthorn in womens lingerie and hoop earrings, chile.
Is he using the right bathroom? Is he grooming children? The people demand to know. pic.twitter.com/tq4dzwCxNK
— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) April 22, 2022
The cross-dressing seems at odds with Cawthorn’s past statements, worrying about how society is trying to emasculate young men. He considers women to be “earthen vessels” that should be forced to give birth and has told mothers to raise their sons to be “monsters.”
Cawthorn himself has previously lied about his being accepted into the military academy and the Special Olympics. He is an avid devotee of former President Donald Trump, the most anti-LGBTQ president of all time. Cawthorn has mocked the use of pronouns and has said that he personally knows no transgender people.
During a conservative talk show, Cawthorn said that the LGBTQ movement “is saying that we need to be able to have gender reassignment surgery for 12-year-olds.” Such surgeries are incredibly rare but commonly mentioned as a right-wing scare tactic used to shut down discussions of LGBTQ rights.
