MAGA's view of masculinity is not natural or normal

At the conservative publication "Washington Times," Don Feder proclaimed that "Trump’s victory marks the return of masculinity." I wondered what the heck he meant by that, so I read the piece. Apparently men like Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff don't qualify as "masculine." Neither does Joe Biden.

For the past four years, we’ve been misled by an increasingly feeble old man who hid in the White House or on the beach in Delaware. On Jan. 20, there will be a man of the house again.

The closest Feder comes to a definition of masculinity is when he writes: "Men take responsibility, whether it’s by fighting crime, guarding our borders or meeting foreign threats." It would be interesting to ask him whether women are capable of taking responsibility for those things as well. 

Amanda Marcotte captured the dilemma facing men like Feder by recognizing the larger paradox (emphasis mine).

They venerate masculinity, but cannot tell you what it is. Look closely at their manhood discourse and the contradictions are immediately apparent. They insist gender is "natural," fixed at birth, and beyond an individual's power to change. They also treat manhood as a fragile status, easily snatched away by the smallest of choices. According to Jesse Watters at Fox News, merely wishing another man "happy birthday" is enough to remove man status from a person. Manfluencer and accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate declares one emasculated for admiring a woman's beauty. As I wrote about last week, MAGA hype man Josiah Moody claims it's "gay" to have sex with your wife for pleasure. Fox News' list of foods that strip your masculinity away is long, ranging from ice cream cones to soup....

MAGA masculinity is such a hazy and contradictory concept that it mostly gets defined by what it's not: not female, not queer, not allowed to eat ice cream or say "happy birthday."

So if Trump and his enablers are masculine, but Biden, Walz, and Elmhoff aren't, doesn't that raise the question of whether or not gender DOES actually exist on a continuum? Hmmmm... 

Also, if you remember, these are the same people who went apoplectic if a liberal couldn't provide a short, succinct answer to the question, "What is a woman?" And yet, when it comes to masculinity, they define it primarily as the opposite of anything they consider to be feminine.

The truth is that boys and men are constantly being told to prove their masculinity - indicating that it is not, in fact, "natural" or "normal."

Riane Eisler - who is best known for her book The Chalice and the Blade - wrote that the underlying problem is not about gender at all.

The root of the problem lies in a social system in which the power of the blade is idealized - in which both men and women are taught to equate true masculinity with violence and dominance and to see men who do not conform to this ideal as too soft or effeminate.

The ethos of our patriarchy is this idea that dominance (often achieved via violence) is the only way to power. We're seeing this run amok these days in how MAGA describes our current political situation. In order for dominance to be effective, it must be rooted in fear and insecurity. People are seen as enemies to be defeated and subjugated. The blade is the weapon of choice.

And so the flames of fear and insecurity are fanned, while threats/hostages are made/taken in an attempt to subjugate the enemy. Any reaction other than to fight back on those terms is viewed as capitulation and derided as effeminate: "weak," "p*ssy," and not "manly enough."

Is it any wonder that, as our country struggles with this form of patriarchy as the status quo, those who are most fearful of going forward have rejected two supremely qualified women who ran for president against an old white man with heavy makeup who rambled on about a famous golfer's dick on the campaign trail? Even more ominously, is it any wonder that the president-elect is guilty of sexual assault and has nominated several other perpetrators to his cabinet?

When it comes to solutions, I am reminded that several years ago my friend Robinswing wrote a piece titled "We Can't Fix Ya."

The blackwoman has been thinking it might be time to seek out some solutions for eliminating racism. A more difficult project than I imagined.

Race is a problem for white people to solve. If black people or brown people could have made racism go away it would have long since disappeared back into the nothing-ness from which it came.

Nah, it’s on white folks to make the necessary moves to kill and bury, once and for all, the notion of race. I think in a generation or two this just might happen.

On that last sentence, my friend might have been a bit optimistic. But on the larger question, she was right. It's on white people to kill and bury racism. And after watching what happened to Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, I'd suggest that it's on men to kill and bury patriarchy once and for all. 

I'd like to personally thank men like Tim Walz who have stepped up to the plate on that one!