Last Sunday, I had heard a ton of honking outside my house and I immediately knew what it was-- a Trump caravan. I knew because they’d come by once before a month or two ago.
Their giant, loud trucks with giant flags and people yelling screamed one thing to me: precarious manhood. Yes, this an actual psychological term.
When psychologists discuss manhood, they often discuss the fact that, compared to womanhood (once again, very binary), it is a much more unstable trait. So, in order for high masculinity to be maintained, one has to consistently engage in masculine or manhood-demonstrating behaviors.
If you are someone who doesn’t align your self-esteem or identity with manhood or you feel confident in who you are, then you are fine, it doesn’t really matter. But if you are someone for whom masculinity is a big part of your identity AND you don’t feel confident in it or are threatened at its potential loss, you will be in a constant fight throughout your life to demonstrate it to yourself and to others.
This will likely surprise no one who was ever in middle school, when this behavior seems to rear its head most, in the form of boys calling each other feminine or homophobic slurs, or roughhousing or getting into fights. Identity is fragile for pretty much everyone in middle school. The problem is when identity never solidifies and this behavior continues into adulthood, or for example, into the presidency.
Of course, this is all housed within systems of oppression that reinforce the value of manhood or masculinity over femininity, which makes it harder to address or change.
I’ve mentioned this on Mid-Riff before, but I highly recommend the podcast Scene on Radio’s season on Men (their season on Whiteness is great as well). There’s one story in there that I can never shake and I think about all the time. There are interviews with a father who lives in a very progressive East Coast college town, and he and his wife have raised his son to be very open to ideas around gender identity and sexuality. But when the son gets to middle school, all of the boys still call each other these super gendered and homophobic names.
But when he asked the boys about it, they totally thought that LGBTQ folks should have equal rights and not experience harassment. And according to at least one queer kid in their school, they didn’t experience harassment. It seems that the boys at the school focused on calling other heterosexual boys these names, without targeting the queer kids. The name-calling, in this case, really is just to demonstrate masculinity to each other and to themselves. A totally internal experience. By calling someone gay you are, inherently, saying that you are NOT gay, therefore separating yourself from them. The whole thing is wild.
This in-group policing is seen within many predominantly male, heterosexual groups, including, of course in music. Anytime someone makes an inference about one's masculinity on a discussion board or when talking about a particular band in feminized or homophobic terms, that’s what’s happening. They are demonstrating their own precarious manhood… all over the place.
So, what’s the impact of this?
I discussed the impact of the patriarchy on men in a previous post, and you can imagine how that plays out here. Cis men feel like they can’t truly be themselves or engage in any behavior that might be labeled feminine or gay.
And cis women, trans, and non-binary folks feel like their identities are devalued
All of this to prop up someone’s unstable masculinity.
Whether this is happening at a Trump caravan, on a discussion board, in a music store, or at band practice, it’s important for men to recognize the harm of this behavior and that engaging in it is really signaling insecurity rather than dominance. Gender isn’t a game where you constantly need to be the winner can hurt you and it can hurt others. Calling out other men on negative behavior can normalize the fact that precarious manhood is harmful and normalize more caring and support among and between men.