Abstract
The rise of Trumpism exemplifies a contest over masculinity, over who qualifies as a “real man.” This contest being waged not only by some obvious actors – President Trump, his supporters and representatives; it is a contest also waged by those who oppose the current administration and are perhaps actively working against the perpetuation of gender inequality. The themes deployed by Trumpists and anti-Trumpists alike address a core component of masculinity in the global west – dominance. Through sexualized processes of confirmation and repudiation multiple actors in this political and social moment draw on and deploy understandings of normative masculinity as dominance – dominance over women and dominance over other, less masculine, men. Both the Trumpist and anti-Trumpist movements exemplify similar discourses of masculinized dominance in which social actors claim masculinity through discourses and symbols of “compulsive heterosexuality” and divest others of it through the emasculating practices of a “fag discourse.” The story of Trumpism and movements against it is an example of the tenacity of inequality in gendered discourses.
Highlights
The rise of Trumpism exemplifies a contest over masculinity, over who qualifies as a “real man.”
The story of Trumpism and movements against it is an example of the tenacity of inequality in gendered discourses
Is one the kind of man who unapologetically talks about and engages in sexual assault? Is one the kind of man who opposes this sort of sexism by deploying homophobic and emasculating insults? In the rise of Trumpism we are seeing a contest over masculinity, over who qualifies as a “real man.”
Summary
The election of President Trump is, in many ways, the story of American white, heterosexual masculinity, of a noxious combination of racism, sexism and nationalism. As global economic relations are reordered, so are masculinities (Salzinger, 2016) This means that the trend of western economic and social decline increasingly noted by scholars (Hoang, 2015; Carlson, 2015) has specific ramifications for white western men and definitions of masculinity. This decline is a masculinized one, both in effects and response. In looking at the discourses of masculinity that thread through these movements, it seems that similar discourses of masculinity as dominance undergird each This seeming contradiction illustrates what Connell refers to as an “incoherence in gender relations” The story of Trumpism and movements against it is an example of the tenacity of inequality in gendered discourses
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