Review of “Political Masculinity: How Incels, Fundamentalists and Authoritarians Mobilise for Patriarchy”

Abstract

“The feeling of no longer having control in the modern world is,” Susanne Kaiser writes in the conclusion of Political Masculinity, “a gendered feeling” (200). This declaration comes in the wake of a comprehensive treatise on the relationship between misogyny and contemporary authoritarianism, wherein Kaiser develops a strong account of how seemingly disparate groups, including “incels and masculinists; conservatives, right-wing populists and right-wing extremists; and religious hardliners and fundamentalists” (7), have mobilised in defense of hegemonic masculinity and male supremacy. It is her analysis of the role of hegemonic masculinity in these movements, and her willingness to name male supremacy for what it is, that serve as foundational strengths of her monograph. As Kaiser notes, the gendered character of the far-right (and the role of masculinity in particular) is often underemphasised. Throughout her analysis, she provides a compelling case for masculinity as a mobilising political force—one that is not simply one factor among many in contemporary authoritarian movements, but that has become “an independent form of the phenomenon itself” (200).