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Toxic or tonic? Voting on masculinity in US election 

Washington — Unlike Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign slogan, “I’m With Her,” there is no overt gender messaging in Kamala Harris’ run for the presidency in 2024. Yet, gender is on the ballot as the Harris campaign and that of her Republican rival, Donald Trump, present competing narratives on masculinity, the latest front line in America’s culture war.

The contrast was clear at the parties’ conventions. At the Republican National Convention, retired pro wrestler Hulk Hogan took off his suit jacket and ripped off his shirt to reveal the muscles bulging under his Trump-Vance tank top. Hogan was preceded by Tucker Carlson, TV personality and star of “The End of Men,” a documentary on American men’s “collapsing testosterone levels.”

The message was unambiguous: Former President Trump, who days earlier had survived an assassination attempt, is the self-proclaimed “warrior” who will “Make America Great Again.” He was introduced by Dana White Jr., CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and a day earlier walked into the arena to James Brown’s song, “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” The audience greeted him with raised fists, chanting “Fight, fight, fight!”

Trump’s persona is coupled with the traditionalist view of gender roles of his running mate, JD Vance. The Ohio senator introduced his spouse as “my beautiful wife, Usha, an incredible lawyer and a better mom.”

The 40-year-old father of three and Catholic convert has advocated pro-natalist views, including in a 2021 interview where he criticized the “anti-child ideology” of women who do not want to bear children. In the same year, he called Harris and other high-profile Democrats “childless cat ladies” who didn’t have a “direct stake” in the country. Harris has two stepchildren from her marriage to Doug Emhoff but no biological children.

At the Democratic National Convention, speakers focused on reproductive rights and all-gender inclusivity. As the country’s first female vice president, Harris has not focused much on her own gender identity. But her take on gender roles was in clear view as she ended her acceptance address at the DNC, sharing the stage with her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Emhoff.

Before entering politics, Walz was a high school teacher and football coach who served in the military. Emhoff is a lawyer who stopped his practice to dedicate himself full time to being the country’s first second gentleman. In their professional and personal backing of Harris, Walz and Emhoff, respectively, are outliers in the traditional thinking on presidential partnerships, where women usually play the supporting role.

Toxic vs tonic masculinity

Walz and Emhoff are portrayed by the left as embodying “tonic masculinity,” a term coined to contrast stereotypical male dominance over other groups that some brand as “toxic masculinity.”

Trump and Vance have “evidenced a desire for and a love for this old style of masculinity,” said Christine Emba, author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation.

“The idea that men are in charge and are making the decisions,” she told VOA. “A particular kind of man, a sort of theatrically strong man, a man who has paternalistic control of the family.”

In many ways, Walz is a counter to that narrative. While he is known for being an avid hunter and outdoorsman who shares home and car repair tips, he is also famous for his award-winning “hotdish” recipe.

On gender inclusivity and reproductive freedom — key issues for Democratic voters — Walz speaks from personal experience as a former faculty adviser for a high school LGBTQ club and by going public with his family’s struggle with infertility. In doing so, he is messaging empathy and vulnerability, traits that stand in contrast with more traditional masculine leadership qualities, such as assertiveness and dominance.

That view of leadership is shifting, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Voters have shown they also value “warmth and compassion and empathy, all of which are traits that are more likely to be associated with femininity,” she told VOA.

The campaign is positioning Walz to resonate with voters who seek those values in their leaders. At the same time, they hope his handy and helpful Midwestern dad persona will appeal to more traditional voters.

“Guys who hunt, the guys who fix their cars, the dads, the heads of families, showing that he can still be male and masculine, but also in support of a female candidate,” Emba said.

This narrative stands in contrast to the Trump-Vance take on masculinity that aligns with the campaign’s broader Make America Great Again message, said Matthew Levendusky, professor of political science at University of Pennsylvania.

Their strategy is to appeal to a particular vision of American life, “a kind of imagined past,” he told VOA, where a woman’s value “comes from being a wife and mother.”

The gender divide

Polls show an overwhelming divide along gender lines. Women favor Harris and men favor Trump, with the gap most apparent among young people.

Anxiety over shifting gender roles may be a contributing factor, coupled with the fact that American men are doing less well than women in general.

In his book, Of Boys and Men, Richard Reeves, a senior fellow focusing on gender inequality at Brookings Institution, outlined various indicators, including education, income, health and access to a social support network, to argue that while American girls and women are making huge strides in recent decades, boys and young men are struggling.

“Profound economic and social changes of recent decades have many losing ground in the classroom, the workplace and in the family,” Reeves wrote. “While the lives of women have changed, the lives of many men have remained the same or even worsened.”

At the same time, with the rise of the #MeToo feminist movement, liberals were increasingly seeking to disrupt the way that power is distributed, Dittmar said.

These conversations can be alienating for some men. “There was a sense that their masculinity and their manhood was in some ways precarious, and that they needed to reassert or reclaim that power that has been threatened or lost,” she said.

Male grievance

The Trump campaign has been aggressively courting male voters through what’s called the manosphere — online forums with male-centric audiences that promote masculinity and, in many cases, opposition to feminism.

It’s a continuation of Trump’s 2016 strategy of “tapping into male grievance politics,” particularly that of white males, Dittmar said.

On the other hand, Democrats are leaning into rights to abortion and in vitro fertilization.

All these issues, in addition to how the candidates “talk about women and talk to women” could influence voter enthusiasm by motivating turnout among different groups, she added.

In many places around the world there is societal discomfort about how quickly women are coming into roles outside the home. However, competing narratives on masculinity may be unique to American politics.

Countries with female leaders have not faced the same struggles; neither in Northern European countries that in general are more advanced in closing the gender gap, nor in developing countries where female leaders are often related to the male leaders who preceded them.

“There’s sort of a generational continuity that is soothing and attractive,” Emba said. “In the United States, we just simply haven’t had that.”

Instead, the idea of women’s role in society “feels very unstable in a comparatively new way,” she added. “America is experiencing that quite strongly in this moment, it’s just showing up everywhere.”
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