🔒 Trump's America is a Masculinity Drag Show

Here’s the most fascinating thing I’ve read in a minute: Studies show that voting for Donald Trump makes men feel more masculine.

 To be clear, I don’t mean that Trump motivates men to be more masculine. That’s not the effect. He isn’t inspiring men to work out, or be more assertive, or confident, or stoic, or adventurous, or whatever they perceive masculinity to be. I mean that the mere act, alone, of voting for Trump makes men feel that they, themselves, are more masculine. As though the man himself, when situated in the White House, acts as a magic beacon that radiates outward and increases the masculinity of his supporters without them needing to take further action.

 Given this, you might not be any further surprised to learn that men who vote for Trump’s opponents tend to self-report a drift away from masculinity.

 To any actual Trump supporter reading this: First of all, hi, welcome to my newsletter, you’ll hate it here. But also, I know what you’re thinking—This makes absolute intuitive sense. Trump supporters are Based Alphas, and non-supporters are Beta Cucks. Supporters are drenched and nurtured in the high-T red meat (well done with ketchup) tiger blood winning energy of the God King, while his opponents languish and waste away on a diet of soy and estrogen. 

This MAGA slop explanation misinterprets the causation claim, here. Men’s self-perception of their masculinity is not driving their choice of presidential candidate; their choice of presidential candidate is driving their self-perception of their masculinity.

 The article I linked offers a pretty good theory about why men who don’t support Trump might distance themselves from the word: Though they might think of themselves as good men who identified with masculinity previously, the meaning of “masculinity” in the context of the Donald Trump administration may not be an image that they associate themselves with.

 But why, on the flip side, would men see the act of voting for a particular individual as something that enhances their masculinity more than any actual effort they put toward being masculine in either action or appearance? My theory is that it’s much the same reason that an insecure man might purchase a very large vehicle. I’m going to call my theory “proxy masculinity” because “compensating-for-something-ism” is unbearably cumbersome. 

The right will powerfully deny the idea of gender being a performative thing separate from biological sex in order to distance themselves from any implication that transgenderism might be a valid concept, but they will still paradoxically embrace the idea that men can be more or less masculine, or God forbid, feminine.

 I’ll try not to get too scholarly, here, but there are types of gender performance that don’t rise to the level of gender identity. People who identify in their lives as a gender different to the sex they were assigned are transgender, but people can perform a gender that is either different or the same as the one that they either identify with or which lines up with their chromosomal sex. This is called drag. In short, yes, there are cisgender female drag queens.

 The point I’m making is that Trump and his administration are basically drag performers.

They keep a stranglehold grip on a certain kind of male voter that is driven by fear: These people being in charge is what gives you your masculinity, and if they lose power, you lose your masculinity.

 And remember: These men have come to believe somehow that they can’t get their masculinity from anywhere else. Voting for Donald Trump is the literal source of masculinity, like taking a necessary medication. If Trump loses the presidency then your testosterone is shut off like turning a spigot. You can’t get it back just by lifting or smoking cigars or growing out your beard or taking your shirt off to eat an entire bull liver.

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