What Charlie Kirk's Death Means to Me

Liberals are rushing to participate in his canonization. Don't let them.

Yesterday, I traveled to give a talk on my usual topic—misogyny and sexual violence—at a large public university. I worried about the usual things: tripping over my words, losing the thread of my argument, getting a scratchy throat. Getting shot by an audience member. Leaving my five-year-old daughter motherless and my husband a single parent.

I worried a lot more yesterday than I have recently. The thought is never entirely absent from my mind though—not since I received death threats and rape threats on the regular. But there is no doubt that Charlie Kirk’s murder contributes to a culture in which the assassination of controversial figures is thinkable, even normal. Of course, I am no Charlie Kirk in terms of platform and prominence—not hardly. But I certainly have my haters and people who would not be disappointed to see me shot in public. I just have to hope that none of them is willing to perpetrate this violence.

And many of them doubtless became aware of me through Turning Point USA’s watchlist of professors, assembled by Charlie Kirk’s poisonous organization, to “expose and document college professors” who “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom” and exhibit “radical behavior.”