BY PAUL RAEBURN
Men often harass women to prove their dominance over other men.
Many American men watching the
video clip of Donald Trump bragging about grabbing women’s genitals were quick
to separate themselves from Trump’s vulgar chest-thumping. Some boasted on
social media that they would never treat or talk about women that way. The
implicit message was: I’m better than him.
The irony is that these
self-satisfied viewers were engaging in a bit of chest-thumping themselves. So
were some of the television pundits who couldn’t condemn Trump loudly enough as
they endlessly replayed the clip. They were all displaying a central feature of
American masculinity: the need to dominate others, says C.J. Pascoe, a
sociologist at the University of Oregon who studies masculinity.
The object of that domination
can be women, employees, supervisors, other men or other countries. The Trump
video showed not only his disrespect for women; it also showed how he dominated
Billy Bush, the man he was talking to. Trump was more aggressive, more
outrageous, more entitled. Bush was reduced to sputtering, “Sheesh, your girl’s
hot as shit.” He’d been Trumped. This drive to dominate is what makes an
American man a “man,” says Pascoe.
Pascoe is talking exclusively
about American men. Other societies have different conceptions of masculinity
that don’t require domination. “Look at northern European socialist
democracies,” says Pascoe. It’s a softer masculinity, and it’s evident in those
societies. “They have parental leave for both parents, men and women are in
leadership roles,” and dominance over women or other countries “isn’t part of
their national identities to begin with” the way it is in the U.S.
American politics provides a
near perfect arena for clashes of masculinity. The 2004 presidential election
was a good example. It pitted Democrat John Kerry, a formidable political
figure, against George W. Bush. Kerry was portrayed by the Bush campaign as an
elite, even an eccentric. He spoke French. He was wealthy. And he enjoyed
windsurfing, footage of which gave the campaign an excellent way to illustrate
its charge that his policy positions shifted with the wind. Bush was supposed
to be the lightweight from Texas, whose political career owed much to friends
of his father, former President George H.W. Bush.
Yet, Bush proved to be the
more “masculine” of the two candidates. “He was a real man. He was from Texas.
He could shoot things; he was a man’s man, a guy’s guy,” says Pascoe.
By any other reckoning, the
portrayals might have flipped. Consider their military records. Kerry fought in
Vietnam, where he was a hero, returning home with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star
and three Purple Hearts. Bush served in the National Guard and never saw
combat. With proper crafting, that alone could have been enough for Kerry to
appear commandingly masculine. Instead, the cerebral senator couldn’t compete
with the Marlboro Man.
Threats to American men’s
masculinity can also distort their views of others. Christin Munsch of the
University of Connecticut gave undergraduate male students a phony test that,
she told them, would measure their masculinity.
She told half of them they fell
comfortably in the masculine range. The other half were told their scores put
them on the feminine side of the spectrum—a clear threat to their masculinity.
The students were then shown
several brief scenarios, including one in which a man and woman go to dinner
and then back to her apartment, where he ignores her protests and sexually
assaults her. Men who had been told they were on the feminine end of the
spectrum “exonerated the perpetrator and blamed the victim,” Munsch says. “They
said, ‘We don’t like that woman.’”
They sympathized with the man. Evidently the
threat to their masculinity prompted them to push back, teaming up with the
(masculine) perpetrator against the (feminine) target of that harassment.
Men whose masculinity hadn’t
been threatened were generous. They were sympathetic toward the woman and less
likely to defend the man, because they had little to prove. Their masculinity
had been “certified” by Munsch’s phony test. Other research has shown that men
whose masculinity is threatened are, for example, more likely to send dirty
jokes to women.
This distasteful head-butting
might be less distressing were it not for the effect it has on so many women.
In recent days, 11 women have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct. The
incidents allegedly occurred years or even decades ago, which has prompted
Trump allies and others to question their credibility. Trump has denied the
sexual harassment accusations and said he’s the victim of a conspiracy
orchestrated by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the media. Trump’s denials do
not, however, erase what we’ve all seen on the videotape.
Researchers say, perhaps with
a bit of wishful thinking, that norms and expectations change over time. The
outbursts that Trump characterized as locker-room talk “seems like something
from a different time, a time we’re not so proud of,” says Christopher Uggen, a
sociologist at the University of Minnesota. He doesn’t claim the problem has
been solved.
Some of Trump’s supporters no
doubt believe we’re heading in the wrong direction. “Many white men feel
aggrieved, says Pascoe. “Gains by women and minorities are often felt as losses
by these men.” The collapse of old norms has snatched from them the opportunity
to use women as props in their masculinity clashes with each other. Some will
feel deeply aggrieved if Trump is defeated—especially so, perhaps, because his
opponent was a woman.
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