Ike Shirley is determined to let the world know he’s never had sex. This YouTuber, who went from prank videos to the lucrative dissemination of pro-Trump fake news, seems to believe his sexual inexperience shields him from accusations of lying. “I’m a virgin. I don’t sleep with strangers. You’ll never accuse me of sexual harassment,” he declared on the PBD podcast, insisting he is “religious” and “without vices.”
This statement is bizarre, to say the least, not only because he conflates consensual sex with rape, but also because Shirley was responding to credible accusations that he was spreading a racist hoax to intimidate Somali-American daycare workers in Minnesota. The day after Christmas, the 23-year-old posted videos falsely accusing several daycares of not accepting children and then claiming federal aid for fictitious work.
These videos are clearly fabricated. When Shirley and her partner, David, a middle-aged man, arrived at the daycare centers to find the doors locked and were refused access to the children. This in no way proves the absence of children. Any responsible adult would likely have ignored the door when faced with strangers shouting and demanding entry to film the children. But the conservative public, always quick to believe that Black people commit crimes, disregarded this logic and rapidly circulated the video online.
Further investigation reveals the absurdity of the situation. Shirley has a history of spreading misinformation, including paying migrant workers to hold up pro-Biden signs, clearly hoping voters would believe their initiative. In another video, he falsely claimed that Portland had “fallen” and that “anti-fascist groups” had taken over the city.
CNN confirmed that children were being taken to a daycare center targeted by Shirley. The Minnesota Star Tribune visited the targeted daycare centers and, after being granted access, found the children playing and sleeping peacefully. CBS News reviewed surveillance footage showing children being taken to one of the targeted daycare centers. The other daycare centers were already empty; they had closed before Shirley was filmed outside the buildings.
Shirley is accused of racially motivated lying, which makes her “but I’m a virgin” defense illogical, at least on the surface. However, from a psychosexual perspective, it makes perfect sense, given the right wing’s deep-rooted fear and aversion to daycare centers. After all, the scandal Shirley is exploiting isn’t about daycare centers, but a larger case in Minnesota involving “Feed Our Future,” a fake food bank run by Amy Book, a white woman convicted in March of misappropriating nearly $250 million in public funds intended for pandemic emergency relief. While Book was the mastermind, the other defendants in the case are Somali Americans. On December 30, a federal judge authorized the government to seize $5.2 million in Book’s assets.
If Shirley had been solely interested in basing his hoax on this real and existing case, he could have targeted charities fighting hunger in his supposed trap. Instead, they targeted daycare centers, which have no direct connection to the problem, except that—like churches, mosques, schools, and community centers—they were places that were supposed to receive aid from the fraudsters, but never did.
It is almost certain that Shirley and his colleagues chose these institutions because they exploited the tendency of paranoid reactionaries to make daycare centers the subject of conspiracy theories. Besides contraception and abortion—constantly vilified by the lies of the right—daycare centers are hated by the right because they allow women to work instead of being financially dependent on their husbands. In the 1980s, daycare workers were accused of being Satanists. Today, as part of the “Make America Great Again” movement, the scapegoat for male fears about female independence has shifted from imagined Satanists to actual immigrants. White women are implicitly accused of using immigrant labor as a way to evade their divine duty to leave the workforce, stay home, and raise their children. Vice President J.D. Vance has been particularly adamant in his belief that daycare centers distract women from their supposed innate desire to be homemakers.
It’s almost certain that Vance doesn’t believe his own narrative. It’s simply illogical, for example, that women would think, “Oh my God, I just want to stay home, but if there’s a daycare nearby, I won’t have a choice.” His wife has openly expressed how much she loved working at the law firm that offered on-site daycare and how much she misses it. But Vance seems to have decided that the bulk of support for his 2028 presidential campaign will come from a world of misogynists, sexists, and people who idolize dubious influencers like Shirley. The vice president’s media strategy has long focused on this heterogeneous group known as the “men’s world”: disillusioned divorcees, “forced bachelors,” and adherents of the “red pill”—an ideology that views romantic relationships and marriage not as about love, but as a way for men to deceive or subjugate women.
The men’s world is not only deeply misogynistic; it is also appallingly sexist. To superficially observant liberals, it may seem disconcerting that men in the “Make America Great Again” movement would blame their emotional woes on immigrants. But in the swamp of incoherent resentment that Vance seems so obviously steeped in, the ills of feminism and supposed immigration are seen as part of a vast “awakening” conspiracy against white men. Before his death, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, frequently wrote that “the ones we really can’t stand are angry, liberal white women.” He portrayed white women as naive and unaware that immigrants are a threat. “If awakening is a mental virus,” he wrote, “then college-educated white women are the most vulnerable.” Influencers like the “TikTok liberals” present white women who oppose mass deportations as naive and selfish, simply wanting to keep their nannies.
Shirley himself adopted this rhetoric. In one post, he claimed that “liberal white women tend to support those who steal and plunder their money.” Another post was even more pessimistic: “The logic and compassion of liberal white women will ultimately lead to their downfall.”
In this toxic mix of sexual resentment, misogyny, and racism, it seems understandable that Shirley placed particular importance on her virginity. Anti-immigrant sentiment is rooted in the broader “Make America Great Again” rhetoric, which advocates the expulsion of supposedly foreign and decadent influences. People like Shirley believe that white male dominance can be restored by adhering to the strict sexual and social norms imposed by conservative Christianity. Abstinence until marriage is part of a larger project to establish male-dominated marriages, where wives are too busy raising numerous white children to work. The attack on the Black immigrants at the daycare center carries a strong symbolic charge; it is seen as a crucial front in a war to whiten America and return white women to their subordinate role in the home.
Ironically, Shirley’s inflammatory rhetoric about her sexuality only confirms that the attack on daycare centers is not, contrary to her claims, motivated by a sincere, apolitical desire to eradicate fraud. This was clear from the start. Shirley admires Donald Trump, himself convicted of fraud, who continues to exploit his office to enrich himself in an openly corrupt manner. Shirley has followed in the president’s footsteps: he, too, has a long history of spreading racist and xenophobic rhetoric.