The males of MAGA manspread their insecurity
Trump & Co. bring down the country to lift their fragile egos
In the last three weeks, Donald Trump has called female reporters “piggy,” “ugly,” and “stupid.”
That obnoxious behavior is not surprising from a man who was found in court to be a sexual predator and who included a naked-lady sketch in a creepy birthday greeting to his close friend, sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
But it’s appalling and sad nonetheless. Trump obviously feels threatened by intelligent, assertive women. His behavior reflects a characteristic of prominent MAGA men: They’re insecure about their own masculinity.
Social scientists have a term for how some men fear that their manliness is in relentless danger and must be constantly validated. It’s called “precarious manhood.” But for MAGA politicians, this personality problem isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. One they’ve learned to skillfully exploit in order to rope in similarly insecure male voters as well as some women who prefer traditional gender roles.
Researchers using Google Trends search data in a 2020 study found a link between male insecurity and support for Trump. They identified areas with high levels of web searches for erectile dysfunction, penis size, penis enlargement, hair loss, hair plugs, testosterone, and Viagra. Then they mapped areas where Trump made a strong showing in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
You guessed it: There was a strong correlation.
Last year, men went for Trump over Kamala Harris, 55% to 43%, while women backed Harris, 53%-46%. A poll in April showed the gender gap on Trump approval especially wide among voters under age 30, with 45% of men approving but only 24% of women. Three-fifths of voters under age 30 say it’s important to date or marry someone who shares their political views. Which means these pro-Trump men are limiting their romantic options. No wonder their egos are bruised.
Republican politicians routinely scam the voters with rhetoric that they don’t actually believe. The GOP’s long-unfulfilled promise of a health care plan is a good example. But when it comes to precarious manhood, Republican voters and their leaders seem to be in sync, with many of them concerned that their masculinity is under siege and determined to take it out on women.
Here are some key right-wingers who are manspreading their insecurity:
Pete Hegseth
The Fox News weekend host was confirmed as Defense secretary despite paying a settlement to a woman who accused him of sexual assault. Since then, he has been systematically removing women from top jobs at the Pentagon. In a speech to top military leaders, Hegseth vowed to ensure that every combat role “returns to the highest male standard.” That must grate on Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who lost her legs when the helicopter she was piloting was shot down in the Iraq war.
JD Vance
The vice president has denounced “childless cat ladies” and said professional women choose “a path to misery.” It’s as if Vance takes it as a personal insult when women decide not to be child-bearers. He also claims that “one of the weird things about elite society is it’s deeply uncomfortable with masculinity.” But with comments like that, the person who seems deeply uncomfortable is Vance.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Health and Human Services secretary thinks he looks masculine when he poses for videos featuring his 70-year-old bare chest, lifting weights in jeans for some reason, but he has spent his lifetime recklessly hurting women to feed an insatiable and unstable ego. Not to mention in October, when he went on a weird rant in the Oval Office about fertility rates, making highly questionable claims about teenage boys’ sperm and testosterone counts.
Jesse Watters
Is the Fox host really this sexist, or is its just a carny act? Does it matter, because surely many of his viewers think he’s serious when he says scientists believe that “when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.” Watters once said on the air that he let the air out of a female co-worker’s tires to get her to accept his ride. They later married. After an uproar over his stalker story, Watters claimed he was just joking.
Tucker Carlson
In 2022, the then-Fox News host produced a documentary series called “The End of Men,” which warned of the supposed “total collapse of testosterone levels in American men.” The New York Times described a promotional video for the series as “chock-full of oiled, shirtless men performing vaguely masculine tasks, like turning over giant tires and throwing a javelin.” One cure for the supposed crisis was “testicle tanning.” But mainstream media cast major skepticism on both the crisis and the cure.
Secure, well-adjusted men don’t panic over their manliness. They don’t force themselves on women or insult them. They don’t think every independent act by a woman is a challenge to their own self-worth.
But Trump sees political benefit in serving as the chief spokesman for male grievance while showing himself to be a lifelong adolescent. No man who was comfortable in his skin would share so much fantasy art of himself in ridiculously macho poses – as a pro football player, as Colonel Kilgore in the movie “Apocalypse Now,” and as an armor-wearing king with Democrats kneeling at his feet.
You may have forgotten an early example of Trump’s embarrassing male toxicity. In a 2016 debate, rival Marco Rubio made a joke about Trump’s hands. Trump responded: “He referred to my hands – if they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”
This was a future president of the United States bragging on national TV about the size of his penis. We may have thought it was a joke and an embarrassment at the time, but it was a sign of things to come.
How insecure can one man get? Enough to help bring down a nation.
I will be moderating a panel discussion on independent journalism and movement activism at the Courage>Cowardice end-of-the-year soiree Thursday, December 11 in Washington, D.C., hosted by COURIER, the news outlet that sponsors this newsletter.
Other guests include Rashad Robinson, Nourbese Flint, and Melissa Morales. Get more information and buy tickets here. See you there.
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All the men around trump are deeply flawed misogynists, among other horrible traits. I can't think of a single one who isn't off-putting at first glance. They're all trashy, cowardly and have no moral center. In other words, they are just like the demented rapist felon in the White House.
Some of the women who buy into the Trump cult seem to be suffering from a similar psychological problem, which is a concern with not being feminine enough. All the women in Trump's circle have a certain look--at least the 20- and 30-year-olds. There does seem to be allowance for wealthy, older women who are not extraordinarily thin and teetering on spike heels. Most of these women prefer to exercise power through men rather than directly, or to think that they are doing so. Their status, for them, depends on the status and power of the men who are their husbands.